My father whom I love and who has dementia, has been emotionally and financially abusive his whole marriage. My mother knows nothing about their assets or accounts. Nothing. He does have an accountant, and she does know his name. We have to fill out information for the Elder Law firm in order to do medicaid planning, and she's simply unable to fill out the financials, which obviously they need. How do lawyers and families deal with this? My father refuses to share information with her. I am about to call the accountant to ask him to share absolutely all information with my mom, and ask her to ask him to do so (she is not good at taking agency; she feels everything is hopeless and just goes into decision/action-paralysis, so I have to jumpstart anything). Any other ideas? Do lawyers have resources? Will this cost us even more? Thank you
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You will get excellent financial and legal advice.
Geaton and other posters here have a wealth of information, but Bogleheads has more specialized expertise that you need in this situation.
Even if you have FPoA for your mother, you won't be able to get info from the accountant. You would need to become your father's PoA and I doubt that he would agree to this or cognitively he may be too far gone.
Another solution is to go through the courts to get guardianship of your father, then any and all of his info will be accessible.
If you know that your father files away his tax returns at his residence you can look there to see what he has (every accountant I know sends a hardcopy back to each client when they file the returns) -- but you still won't be able to access any of it.
I suspect others on this forum will suggest your mom go to a divorce attorney and file, then the assets will need to be split with the spouse and at that point she may be able to have access -- but only to whatever accounts can be found. Not sure how his accountant would factor into this scenario and if he is required by law to provide information seeing that your father is incapacitated.
If your father passes away before your mother then even if there is no Will she would then get her legal portion (after probate). If you have success it would be awesome for you to come back and post what solution finally worked for your mom. Wishing you success.
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