How to unload the representative account to a safe keeper for a stubborn aunt who has Dementia (about 25% of her time) and has been a scammer victim (since at least 6, 7 years)? Our aunt of 92, lives in AZ alone. Her house is under the Reverse Mortgage - loaded with garbage and junk as she is a hoarder. For at least the past 8 years, she has not thrown anything outside of the house. She also lost all of her savings, jewelries to scammers. She is still in contact with them and continues unload whatever $$ she has until her last pennies. As she gave the scammers all pertinent info, her credit was all messed up from these scammers withdrawing her funds from her accounts. Worse, no bank allows her to open an account with them. Our aunt has 1 step daughter and 2 step sons - Two of the 3 are in very close contact with her. However, they do not want to be involved further than Cares and Concerns as our aunt is very stubborn in her own way. In November 2015, from one of our visits to AZ, with her poor health and living conditions, we took her to our home in California. The house was without utilities and was on foreclosure as she did not pay property tax and utility bills. ..she did give us the POA of Health and Finance. She also went with us to our local Social Security office to give my husband the Okay for opening the representative account on her behalf. With this, we were able to have all her monthly incomes of approximately $5000.00 (SS checks of hers and her passed husband and 1 annuity check). She stayed at our place for 3+ months then decided to move back to AZ. By then, we were able to save up to $18K in her account after paying to some of her property taxes, HOA, Insurance, Utilities, personal debts etc... At this time, she recalled all her monthly incomes (except for one SS check of $1750) to send to her address instead of auto deposit to the Representative account. When she returned to AZ, we had a very nice lady J who helped her with rides to DR, everywhere and bring foods to her home on a daily basis. We paid lady J $400.00 weekly from the Representative account for her compensation. Lady J did more than we expected, including chasing scammers, who came to the front door of Aunts house to get any cash or check that our aunt may have. In May, she came back to visit us and stayed with us for another 2 months and returned AZ July 2016. Both times, her stays with us are 100% free, not a penny was taken out from her account to ours...including expensive trips to Hawaii and other places during these stays. We have been in contact with the Senior Protective Service and AZ District Attorney since 2014 to get helps with her Scammer and Dementia ...A case was opened in November 2016 to allow an agency to obtain the Conservator-ship and guardianship as her stubbornness and the legal cost . The fees to go thru the Conservator-ship and guardianship process can not be taken from her account. We do believe that the case may be closed now for an unknown reason. Her Doctor in AZ did issue a letter (May 2016) that confirms her competent is managing her affairs -- Her Kaiser Doctor in CA issued a letter (Feb 2017) to confirm her incompetent in managing her overall affairs. The second alert test she took is more sophisticate than the prior one. As she can not have an account opened on her name -- we have to maintain the Representative account to reserve the funds to pay for the house expenses and her Care giver - lady J. At this time, she receives $3000+ incomes to her and the other $1700+ goes to the Representative account. The account balance is at approx. $48,000.00 to date. We used approximately $30000.00 in the past 18 months to compensate Lady J for her tremendous care giving to Aunt -- Bringing food, giving rides to Dr appointments, chasing the scammers away and many more.. after a few times we told Aunt about the expenses of compensating lady J 's work...Aunt rejects her rides or helps -- so we avoid not to mention this subject to Aunt. It is critical that she has these minimum cares - food and rides All of her account statements are shared to the Senior Protective Services and her account balance are very transparent to her friend Opal and family members...from time to time, she accused my husband and I of stealing her money...I was trying to recontact the Senior Protective Service Representative to reopen the case without success. How to unload our aunt representative account to a safe keeper to act on her behalf legally?
it’s a court process (usually probate) and it can be filed by APS (which I assume is SPa) or by an AZ atty you hire and pay for from the $ in the Representative Payee bank account that gets her SS checks. The advantage of hiring atty is that it shows you are doing whatever for aunties best interest and bring responsible with the SS $ that is under your management. As far as finding an atty, I’d suggest you go online to look at recent filings in probate court. For most places these are all open records although you may have to do some serious Nancy Drew or Veronica Mars to find the portal.... anyways within the filings will be the name of attys who filed. There likely will be a smallish group that does the vast majority of guardianship filing. These you call to find one that you seem to gel with and that also has a CA license or has a CA law firm that they work with in your area. So makes paperwork flow simpler. There will be a down payment needed, maybe 5-10k. Final costs could run 7-20k.
Good luck. It’s hard to help those that fight & carp at whatever you do. Having a outside non family guardianship may just be best.