Tips on How to Legally Take Over Parents Finances

Throughout childhood and adolescence, we got the support of our parents in all aspects. Now that we have turned adults, we must ensure they feel alright about money management. 

With growing age, everyone slowly becomes susceptible to cognitive and physical disabilities. Additionally, elderly people hesitate to ask for help, but that does not necessitate you sitting back and waiting for their request. Taking over elderly parents’ finances legally is often crucial to ensure they do not get tricked while completing transactions using the latest payment methods.

1. Insist Your Parents Not to Share Any Personal Information Through Mail

Once a scammer finds the financial institutions you have been sharing a relationship with or learns about your closely related people, they can simply frame an email account and send monetary requests. Hence, you should advise the elderly not to respond to dubious emails asking for banking information or personal data.

These spam practitioners have mastered multiple ways to provide an unauthorised email with an official touch. Hence, taking over elderly parents’ finances legally becomes essential to ensure they do not fall victim to any illegitimate requests. Moreover, if you notice a company creating urgency stressing the well-being concern of your parent, stay aware of them because they are potentially frauds.

2. Stress the Necessity to Verify a Phone Call Before Sharing any OTP

We often make a phone call to our known people to meet an urgent financial crisis. For such situations, you should teach your elderly acquaintances to ask specific questions to affirm the right person has rung them.

For instance, suppose an elderly person receives a call from his son. He is asking for ₹2,000 from a restaurant after discovering insufficient online funds and the fact that he has forgotten his wallet at home. Then even if he claims to call from his friend's phone, the elderly person should verify the truth. He can do that by:

• Judging the caller’s sense of urgency
• Asking for a precise reason behind the requested sum, address of the place visited, etc.

3. Explain How a Power of Attorney May Prove to be Helpful in Protecting Elderly Parents’ Assets

It is the most challenging step to execute and requires cooperation for success. The parents need to understand that with gradually diminishing mental capabilities, at some point, it will be next to impossible for them to undertake any vital financial decision all by themselves.

Without advance planning, your elderly loved ones can run into multiple complications that further delay the processes later on. If you need help with how to take over your parents' finances, consult a dependable advocate to avail of their services.

Elderly individuals may get financially exploited by a cunning salesperson or even an outright scammer. Their persuasive methods do not necessarily pose harm only to elderly people with diminished cognitive abilities. At times, they sound too convincing even for a person not suffering from dementia or any pre-existing mental condition. Therefore now you should seriously refine your knowledge on how to legally take over parents’ finances to protect them from the following common scams:

• Scams pulled off while transferring money to a third-party bank account
• Lottery frauds
• Electronic phishing or identity theft
• Work-from-home scams
• Unauthorised transfer of assets
• Investment frauds
• Fake loan approval calls
• Threatening phone calls

Gaining knowledge of instruments that help taking over elderly parents’ finances legally does not conclude your responsibility towards them, especially when you are firmly committed to ensuring their financially stress-free retirement life. Besides ingraining the standard precautionary measures inside their minds, you should define a simple-to-follow financial plan for your elderly parents.

Sit with your parents and allow them sufficient space to discuss their typical difficulties regarding overall savings and daily transactions. If you are confident regarding helping, suggest the intervention of a lawyer who can issue a power of attorney.

Besides this emergency measure, you can set up a simple budget where you define monetary allocations according to any conventional system, say the 50-30-20 rule. Here, 50% of the monthly income goes towards utility expenses, while 30 and 20 parts are used to fulfil 'wants' and savings quotas for each month. Such a clearly defined and risk-free financial plan makes life easy for elderly parents.

Taking over elderly parents’ finances legally becomes necessary after a certain stage to ensure they are not financially exploited. The idea is to give them a sense of security and provide a confidence boost so that they can slowly adapt to the new technologies and, at the same time, be aware of the latest scams. To start and execute the requisite steps, follow the guidelines described above.