ISA 3rd Party Access

RetiredandHappy

My Mum, who is 91 and getting a bit doddery prefers to let me organise her money for her and pay her bills - using her money.

She has a Natwest current account to which I have 3rd Party Access - its very good - well done Natwest. She also has an instant access savings account on which I am a joint account holder - not as good as 3rd party access but its OK.

Then there is a Yorkshire Building Society ISA. I asked in the branch whether I could have 3rd party access to it but they told me there were so many restrictions on what I could do that it was no use. The only possibility was for me to get a Power of Attorney and even then they said they would make me jump through hoops every time I wanted to access the money.

Mind you, this is the same branch that previously told me that to transfer an ISA, I should tell the losing provider to send it to the receiving provider - so they certainly got that wrong.

Has anybody faced this problem before and got any advice. I basically just want to be able to top up Mum's Natwest current account with small amounts (£1000???) from Mum's ISA whenever her spend exceeds her pension - so once or twice a year maybe without worrying her about it.

I am happy to ask her to transfer it elsewhere if there is a more helpful ISA supplier somebody could recommend

Vortigern

Is your mum still a taxpayer? - If she isn't you could use any available savings account and register for tax-free interest.

RetiredandHappy

Vortigern wrote: »

Is your mum still a taxpayer?

Thanks for the idea but yes, her pension is big enough for her to need to pay tax. Even then, 20% of the ISA interest is not a huge sum at present so your idea might make sense even if we do lose the isa tax protection.

xylophone

Could you use an on line isa?

RetiredandHappy

xylophone wrote: »

Could you use an on line isa?

I am not sure. The YBS ISA does have online access to it, so officially my Mum could access it online but she is very nervous of the internet and finds phone calls difficult (YBS sometimes phone up after a transaction to make sure the transaction is genuine). So getting her to do the transaction is very hard though possible. I could do the internet part (though legalistically that would be wrong of me), but the phone call makes that high risk.

I run the other accounts over the internet but as I am a formal signatory to both it is all totally above board.

Do you know of an ISA account where I could run the account over the internet without having to pretend to be Mum?

innovate

I reckon the proper answer to your and your mum's questions is a formal Power Of Attorney. You both sound very sensible, so before your mum gets even more diddery (it tends to happen to most of us at some stage), now could be a good time to set up a PoA. Apart from the financial affairs, it could solve a whole lot of other issues before they become issues.

Plenty of advice on PoA about on the interweb, but I think one of the best is this one:

http://www.ageuk.org.uk/money-matters/legal-issues/powers-of-attorney/