My Mother ramped up £3,000 of debt without me knowing, she did not get asked by the lender neither did she have to tell the lender that she had nominated me as her enduring POA. When I discovered the lending I challenged the company and they struck the debt off.. stating they were unaware of a pre-existing POA being in place.. yet they do not ask or check... The lender says 'policy dictates they have to strike the debt when a POA comes to light' why ???? and why don;t they check ?
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Wow! I didn't know that! I did some advocacy for a person with mental illness, who had gotten into debt and messed up their finances badly, was about to lose their house.
I learned that in the USA, evidently, it is NOT required for any lender to ask if someone is competent to handle their finances or to make contracts getting them into debt--they just write up those contracts.
Contacting same companies after-the-fact, and explaining that the person has mental illnesses, that the contract should never have been made, got little progress on getting the debt struck.
But then, this person had NO POA, therefore there was nothing legal to show they should not have made a contract owing money.
It would have been better if that person had some sort of docuemnt that attested to them having impairments regarding making contracts.
It was a huge mess to clean up.
Learning this, I will certainly advocate for clients having some kind of POA on file somewhere!
Companies are so focused on conning people into contracts to get them paying money, they rarely if ever ask about the abllity of the person to pay...just get them to sign up--it is usually related to teh seller working on a commission basis.
Also, "predatory marketing" in all it's shades of gray, is rampant world-wide.
The various shades it comes in are rarely even admitted to or recognized as such...for instance, connecting credit card protection fee that has to be "opted out of" in a certain time limit--the company is betting most folks will forget it is there, miss that opt-out date, and the company then starts making those extra charges. "Opt-Out" is a rather successful game for some time now, and even company employees have been scrupulously schooled to deny that it is actually a form of predatory marketing.
Or the home alarm systems.
Or anything!
Just beware! Short of removing the telephone from the person's house, and preventing them using communication devices to contact the outside world, you cannot totally prevent an elder from charging up debts.
But as long as you have a POA, it must then at least make it easier to wriggle out of those contracts.
I know how stressful it can be to be a POA. I am in that same situation!
Ellie
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