Getting Parent made a ward of court

Dammitall

Hi

I hope someone can help here.

My father is bad with dementia, he lives at home, and my brother is his carer. My sisters and myself cover for him a 2 days a week. My mother died recently; she was in charge of their finances, I'm the executor of her will. She left everything to my father. One of my sisters has her bank card and has been using it to purchase the weekly messages etc - money comes from their joint bank account. The bank has disabled the card she was using after I asked them to close my mother's personal bank accounts and to transfer the money to the joint account.

My sister has spoken to one of the members of staff in the local branch and they have said that we'll prob need to have my father made a ward of court. I've spoken to a solicitor about this and he reckoned that the ball park cost will be €5K.

In total the amount of savings my father has wouldn't be much above 30K, and 5K seems like a huge chunk of money to pay to be legally allowed to do what we are already doing - looking after our father's finances so that he isn't short of anything.

I suppose I have 2 questions

Is 5K a true figure as to the cost of getting someone made a ward of court?

Would my father be eligible for free legal aid?

Thanks in advance for any advice offered

Ken.

Go to this website https://www.flac.ie/help/centres/. Find your nearest FLAC centre and go for a visit. It's free and they will give you a ballpark on what it'll cost for what you need.

Bring one of your siblings with you. Then there can be no trouble for you in the advice you get.

holly_johnson

Sorry to hear about your Dad. I have intimate knowledge of dementia. My mother had it for 15 years and 6 months after she passed my father was diagnosed.

As someone who went through the ward of court process with my now-deceased mother, yes, 5k is a relatively good estimate. I think I paid between 5 & 6k 2 yrs ago. Also, it took ages. Several years. It finally came through 6 days before she died so ended up being a total waste. I don’t think these sort of legal matters qualify for legal aid - I think I asked flac about that at the time.

I didn’t need it as much as you though because my father is still alive and I was able to apply for the fair deal scheme by going to court & being appointed her care representative.

Dammitall

Thanks for the information and advice folks. I spoke to flac and someone in the Ward of Courts section - and all were very helpful.

It does seem that the whole ward of court procedure is unnecessarily complex and drawn out. I understand that it is a huge step to remove someone's power of self determination, however as the vast majority of cases would be taken to protect a vulnerable person, not to harm them, there should surely be a fast track option to facilitate that.

In my father's case we've been lucky; the bank manager has said that there is no official notification to the bank as to my fathers condition so he has issued a bank card in his name to his address - which we can now use to access his account and pay his expenses. We won't now need to proceed with the ward of court application.

Again thank you for your help and advice.

Melendez

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