Do any of you use a particular program (excel template? for example) to keep track of your acting as conservator for your spouse? I have a friend who is preparing to do it all by hand, and not having done it I'm not sure how much detail is needed. I know it varies from state to state. Can anyone recommend anything?
I just zeroed everything out at the end of the year. No one ever asked for a detailed accounting and I could always show that what my husband received in income from Social Security Disability was taken up with mortgage payments and utility bills. I figured that if anyone asked it would be easy to prove.
My post disappeared! A conservatorship is done through the courts and accounting has to be submitted to the court periodically. All assets and liabilities have to be accounted for, receipts for all income/disbursements. I believe most courts will have a form to use for this, Briegull*, so she might want to check with them. This is all different from a representative payee, etc., not the same as SS or SSDI.
Conservatorship will vary by state and country, but is a lot more work than accounting for SS or SSDI. I suggest using Quicken or another financial program to record all expenses and income and then tag entries for those you need to report. One advantage is that if you realize you made a mistake you can fix it by adding or removing tags. With a spreadsheet, if you forget to record an expense, or realize later that you should have recorded it, then you might have trouble finding records of that expense.
I would then use the Quicken data to fill out the court ordered reporting tool.
Oh dang....you are right......! It has been so long ago I forgot about that. I just turned all the financial paperwork part of it over to my financial planner and he and the lawyer worked it out. It was a big deal but they took care of it for me, so very little work for me. I was lucky to have them......
Now that's an idea, just turning it over to someone else. I don't think she's up to Quicken or any such. She is a devotee of what another friend called the PINK method - Pen and INK. I was just writing to her that my handwriting is so awful that I would hate for anyone else to have to read it.
I gather she has to have a conservatorship because her husband was a longtime fulltime (?) National Guardsman, and the pensions etc require that she have conservatorship to be able to use them for his care. She's handling it all marvellously well, keeping track of various incomes and dispersals, but does I gather find the recording a chore. I know I would!
If she uses computers she could use an excel spreadsheet or openoffice.com (they have free software for programs that microsoft office has). She can set it up, then print it out for use. Or fill-in once a week or so to have a nice copy to submit
Quicken Basic is really very simple. You DO NOT want or need Quick Books The basic edition very simple for recording Deposits & Expenses far more so than Excel or the Open Office free equivent All that has to be entered is either a deposit or expense and assigm to a catagory such as. SS income, medical, clothing, etc Many transactions are repetitive and can be " memorized ".