Elderly mum hiding cash in the house and claiming pension credits

Ames

Fbaby I think I gave incorrect information and she is entitled to both Pension credit and council tax.

In which case she's free to keep saving and living in poor conditions, although it's desperately sad for her.

GlasweJen

That's assuming she's on an assessed income period and she's not hiding her cash because she knows she isn't.

Even if she is on an AIP no one should have stacks of money while sitting in a cold house. Particularly not vulnerable mentally ill people, someone needs to know that she's not coping so that they can help her manage her day to day needs better. Has she always been like this or is this a recent thing? What's stopping her spending her money? Does she eat well or does she scrimp on that too?

Does she have a CPN you can speak to or can you make her an appointment with her GP and go along with her? She might need a medication change or input from the mental health team to work out what's driving these behaviours and help support her look after herself a bit better.

Worriedformum

Thanks for the responses everyone. I understand it must seem Absolutely crazy my mum not putting her heating on, but she hats always been like this. Growing up we weren’t allowed the heating on because we were a very poor single parent family. I had to shower at my sisters house. She’s had bipolar all my life and Yes, she is on medication (sertraline, solphadol for a back problem) and the scrimping applies to all areas of her life. She cuts her own hair, will only buy reduced food and I had to pay for her to go on holiday with me for her 60th and even then she wouldn’t eat in cafes abroad when I offered to pay. She has issues with money which are very deep seated from her divorce from my father and being repeatedly threatens with repossession. It’s very hard to broach this with her because she will either just bombard me with stories about how abusive my father was and I’m just like him, or she’ll wail and cry and threaten stupid things.

My problem is she is very closed. She won’t tell either me of my sister the truth and lies to us both no matter how good the intention. I went through a phase of turning her heating on for her when I rarely visit but she got so annoyed she wouldn’t let me in next time and told my sister how bad I was for doing it!!!

All this aside I think I need to go an investigate some more. I think I’ve decided to buy her two new doors and have them fitted and just tell her to pay me back. I’ll have to book the carpenters to come do it without her knowing which will probably get me an earful but I’m concerned about her safety. I couldn’t live with myself if someone got in and harmed her.

Regarding her benefits; I need to find out the truth, what she’s claiming for and for how long. I’m going to try be find the money if she won’t show me as well and see how bad this has gotten. I feel exasperated by this but no one else will help her.

konark

You have 3 courses of action.


1) Leave things as they are, it's clear your Mother is happy with the current arrangement even if you aren't..


2) Get involved and take over her finances , use the spare cash in the house for things she needs like the door and heating. But don't expect her to be happy with this so there's a danger of you falling out.


3) Dob her in to the authorities. Problem is they will only look at her bank accounts, they won't want to come round to her house and play 'hunt the fiver, even if they are legally allowed'. And how can you report this if you don't even know exactly how much spare cash she has- even if you went round and counted it there might be loads more you'll miss.


Alternatively they may just stop all her benefits when she was actually entitled to them, and that's not going to go down well when she works out it was you who grassed her up.



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