LPA - controls over loved one’s freedoms

Hampshire_person

Have invoked LPA over mum’s finances at Santander and Halifax after she was scammed. Experience with both banks was fantastic BTW, but it seems no bank offers what I would like and I wonder if anyone has any suggestions.
Mum is independent and still wants access to her money which is fine. I can monitor and intervene after she might do something undesirable again which might be too late, but what I would REALLY like is to have to authorise any transfer over a specific single transaction or daily amount. Banks don’t have that facility, but I might be missing something. 

Help please.

Flugelhorn

Is there anyway that you can get app notifications if there is money going out of the account?

Ref44

Santander certainly allow alerts to be set up. I get text and email notification of any transaction over £100 on my current account

Hampshire_person

Hi, I can get notifications of transactions over a certain amount, but I feel it’s too late then. If a transaction over £2k for example was attempted, If the bank stopped that pending my approval, mum would still have a high level of control but not get emptied.
Thanks for your reply and interest.

Hampshire_person

Ref44 said:

Santander certainly allow alerts to be set up. I get text and email notification of any transaction over £100 on my current account

Hi, thank you. I will look into that. Santander have been really helpful. My fear is that I could get a message to say £10k has been transferred, but I would like the opportunity to intervene and stop that, but allow a still high but sensible amount under mum’s authority to allow her a level of control. It has been suggested to look at a prepaid card, but I need to see if mum can still log in and check her accounts, but only access money through the prepaid card.

thegreenone

Is it possible to open a joint account with Mum and leave her current account as hers alone (no card on the new account).  Drip feed money to hers every week, so the balance is not too high, as you probably would for a prepaid.  That way Mum gets to keep the bank card she is used to and you can keep an eye on the 'main' account.  

Thinking about it, not sure if that would work if Mum still has internet access to move money over.   

doodling

Hi,

Whilst your Mum has mental capacity to manage her own money (and your post doesn't suggest that she doesn't) then there is nothing you can do to prevent her from doing whatever she wants with it.  (Just as I can't tell you what to do with your money).

Note that if she wanted to she could simply revoke the LPA.

AskAsk

my brother has a barclays bank account.  i have the app on my phone and i can put restrictions on the card spending.  daily ATM limits, what type of retailers are allowed, so no gambling for example, no online transactions etc.  there is a lot of option on card control.  may be worth opening an account with barclays for her.

i also get notification when a transaction is made.

Hampshire_person

Everyone, I truly appreciate everyone’s input and support. I have a couple of things to go and look at now and make the balance between freedom and security better. Nice to find a place where all of the responses are well intentioned, helpful and most useful.

Mrs_Z

If I recall correctly, you can set up a transfer limit on Santander current account. The thing is, that there's nothing to stop your mum increasing it (depending how IT savvy she is). Maybe a joint account as suggested above would be a way forward.

Archergirl

There was something on Dragons Den a few weeks ago about a new type of card for just this, the Dragons said there was already something like it available, sorry I can't be more specific.