Does difficult parental POA affect personal credit rating?

Lala69

I’ll try and keep this as brief as I can, but would really appreciate any knowledge or experience in this regard. 

I have recently been assigned financial POA for my mother who has terminal cancer. For various reasons which I won’t go into we, as a family, do not believe she is of sound mind, but she is very good at ‘faking it’ during mental health assessments, so I am legally obliged to follow her instructions to the letter as far as her finances are concerned, regardless of how unwise we believe they are. 

She is currently booking services which she has no intention of paying for, going as far as to message me banning any payment for these services from her bank account. I am really concerned that her deliberately unpaid bills and debts may affect my own, currently 999, credit rating, which I simply can’t afford to happen right now as we are having to move house in the near future and apply for a new mortgage. 

Does anyone have any experience of this, or know whether my mother’s financial affairs remain entirely separate from mine regardless of the POA? Many thanks in advance for any info you can offer. 

masonic

They should remain separate, but you can verify this by keeping an eye on your credit files and ensure you are not named as a joint account holder on any of her financial accounts.

p00hsticks

Lala69 said:

I have recently been assigned financial POA for my mother who has terminal cancer. For various reasons which I won’t go into we, as a family, do not believe she is of sound mind, but she is very good at ‘faking it’ during mental health assessments, so I am legally obliged to follow her instructions to the letter as far as her finances are concerned, regardless of how unwise we believe they are. 

She is currently booking services which she has no intention of paying for, going as far as to message me banning any payment for these services from her bank account. I am really concerned that her deliberately unpaid bills and debts may affect my own, currently 999, credit rating, which I simply can’t afford to happen right now as we are having to move house in the near future and apply for a new mortgage. 

In those circumstances, if I was in your shoes I'd be tempted to resign your position as PoA and leave her to it... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/disclaim-a-lasting-power-of-attorney

Keep_pedalling

In your shoes I would ignore her demands and pay the outstanding bills. The worse that can happen is that she cancels the LPA. 

mattojgb

Mental capacity should be assessed for any/each decision a person makes. So a person can have capacity to decide they want beans for tea, but not that they should have a particular course of treatment. One of the things to weigh up is whether they understand the consequences of the decision they are making. However, making an unwise decision is not a sign of a lack of capacity.

Nasqueron

As an aside, your 999 rating means literally nothing, no lender ever sees it, no decision is ever made based on the gimmick number - please refer to the sticky at the top (near where you clicked + Create New)

PRAISETHESUN

Credit files below to individual people. The only way her credit file can have an impact on your credit file is if you hold a joint financial product with her (eg. joint mortgage, joint current account). If not then her unpaid debts will have absolutely zero impact on you.

KeepOnKnitting

Lala69 said:

my mother who has terminal cancer

She is currently booking services which she has no intention of paying for

One could argue that she is making entirely rational, but morally unsound decisions.

I'm sorry you are going through this. You have good advice above about keeping separate finances. Make sure you take care of your emotional wellbeing too. It sounds like you have support from other family members, so make sure you all help each other.