Enduring Power of Attorney and banks

oide10

I hope someone can help me. My sister and I have EPOA over my father who has dementia. He is still in the community and has home care but can be remiss about paying bills, eating properly etc. My mother is in a nursing home and has been for a few years. When we got EPOA we were delighted as we needed to pay bills, insurance and the nursing home. But my parents have a joint account and even though we are acting on our father's behalf we are not allowed to use his account. He is locked out of his own account as it is recognised that he no longer has capacity but we can't help him with his finances now either! We are out of pocket ourselves currently as we have been paying some of the more immediate debts.
Where do we stand? How can we help him? I'm sorry now that we ever got the EPOA drawn down as we are in a worse position then before. If anyone could point me in the right direction of who to talk to. I spoke with the solicitor who worked on the EPOA and they have given no insight in to our dilemma.

loobylou

Banks can behave oddly sometimes. I had an EPOA for my father but they would not let me set up online banking on his account. When I argued the point they seemed to double down, even saying that they were not bound by the court issued EPOA.
I got them to detail their reasoning in writing and with a subsequent mention of the ombudsman all was suddenly possible.

Mrs OBumble

Who has EPOA for your mother? The bank should be willing to deal with both sides of the equation at the same time, but I can see why not separately.

oide10

Mrs OBumble, no one has EPOA of my mother, she became incapacitated before we could put anything in place.

oide10

loobylou wrote: »

Banks can behave oddly sometimes. I had an EPOA for my father but they would not let me set up online banking on his account. When I argued the point they seemed to double down, even saying that they were not bound by the court issued EPOA.
I got them to detail their reasoning in writing and with a subsequent mention of the ombudsman all was suddenly possible.

Thanks for that, I will try same.

TheBody

That's odd that you are having so much trouble. My sister and I had power or attorney over my Dads affairs for the same reasons as you.

We just had to drop in a letter to the bank (Ulster Bank in our case) that our solicitor prepared and away we went. They issued us with bank cards. We had no problems at all.

Mrs OBumble

oide10 wrote: »

Mrs OBumble, no one has EPOA of my mother, she became incapacitated before we could put anything in place.

Pretty clear why the bank won't let you touch the money then, it's as much hers as his.

It's solicitor time, there must be some court process to get her affairs managed.

oide10

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Pretty clear why the bank won't let you touch the money then, it's as much hers as his.

It's solicitor time, there must be some court process to get her affairs managed.

But my father was able to access the joint account, and aren't we now acting for him? I'm sure getting a ward of court for my mother will take as long, if not longer than getting the EPOA. I'm worn out from the bank, I'm waiting 2 weeks for a definitive answer from them.

oide10

TheBody wrote: »

That's odd that you are having so much trouble. My sister and I had power or attorney over my Dads affairs for the same reasons as you.

We just had to drop in a letter to the bank (Ulster Bank in our case) that our solicitor prepared and away we went. They issued us with bank cards. We had no problems at all.

They are saying that the issue is that my father's account is a joint account with my mother. They told me that I was not to use his Visa Debit card.

December2012

Have you registered the Epoa?

oide10

December2012 wrote: »

Have you registered the Epoa?

Yes, it has been registered in court and we have the certificate. These were presented to the bank and a letter was issued to us stating that we could act jointly on the account and sign cheques etc Then they rowed back a few days later saying that they wanted their legal team in Dublin to check that we could use his account. So now everyone - my father, myself and my sister are locked out of the account while money is owing. This was over 2 weeks ago and even though I check in with them regularly we have heard nothing since.

Sorry for the angry face at the top, it's directed at AIB, not you!

loobylou

Had their account required both of them to sign cheques/withdrawals?

oide10

loobylou wrote: »

Had their account required both of them to sign cheques/withdrawals?

No,never. I have a joint account with my husband but when he or I use it we don't have to co-sign anything. So surely if we are acting for my father we should have the same entitlements as he has had. I've said this to them and they said that this is different, I don't see how.

Peregrinus

oide10 wrote: »

No,never. I have a joint account with my husband but when he or I use it we don't have to co-sign anything. So surely if we are acting for my father we should have the same entitlements as he has had. I've said this to them and they said that this is different, I don't see how.

You and your husband can effect transactions individually on your joint account because you have jointly given a mandate to the bank to that effect. Either of you could revoke that mandate at any time. If either of you become mentally incapacitated, the mandate is automatically revoked, and the other will find that they can no longer effect transactions on the joint account, which is the situation your father is in.

The bank's in the right. Strictly speaking the joint account ought to have been "frozen" as soon as your mother became incapacitated, but probably the bank weren't made aware of the situation. Your father continued to operate the account solo and the bank did not know of the circumstances which meant that his mandate to do so had been revoked. But now they do know.

The problem would have been avoided if your mother had given an enduring power of attorney before becoming incapacitated but, as you have said, that didn't happen and now it's too late.

The lesson for you and your husband is that you should both execute enduring powers of attorney now, if you haven't already.

Re your parents, it's not so simple. In the end you may have to take wardship proceedings for your mother, but keep talking to the bank to see if they can find a practical way to avoid this. Banks can sometimes be flexible on issues like this.

oide10

Thanks Peregrinus.

I don't understand why our solicitor didn't explain all this to us. The irony of all of this is that the money we are trying to access is mainly to pay for my mother to stay in the nursing home. I am so stressed that we won't be able to keep up with payments. If we go down the route of ward of court we will be waiting months and would they not seize all my father's assets too since everything is in their names jointly?