Power of attorney...???

When mum was diagnosed with dementia 8 or 9 years ago,
the clinic outreach worker automatically suggested we apply for power of attorney..

I didn't feel too comfortable with doing that because mum had been so fiercely independent up until then.
We briefly discussed it, but she refused to agree with it anyway.

At that time our perhaps naive outlook was that we are a traditional old fashioned council estate working class family:
we've never had to do it before,
why would we ever need it at all...???

We've never owned property and investments,
or had any savings that family can fall out about.
None of us have ever even written wills..
Never needed them..

.. and we were naturally resistant to wasting money being ripped off by the legal parasites administrating POA..

So for a few years I just acted informally,
gradually taking over Mum's financial and administrative affairs..

Things ticked along reasonably ok dealing with occasional essential phone calls and form filling..

Things worked out ok, we got results.

But there came a point only a few years ago,
when suddenly just about every phone call to banks and utilities, etc,
started becoming blocked through demands that I submit evidence of POA.
Petty jobsworths on the phone refusing to discuss anything with me..

This seemed to have happened over night, like there'd been a legalistic culture shift behind the scenes.
What it effectively meant was that indifferent lazy telephone operatives now had a good excuse to avoid doing any work to help us..

Something the unhelpful buggers could add to "sorry can't do it, data protection.."...!!!

Whether family's genuinely needed POA or not,
it seems the unavoidable fees for setting it up
are a nice little earner for for some folks in the bureaucracy business...

Handy for their professional class that they could benefit from a tory government for so long...!!!???

Anyway regardless of our disdain for middle-class legalistic parasites,
Mum's too far gone now to agree to POA now anyway..

So, since social services have recently moved mum into a care home,
we've just got to sort things out as best we can as we stumble along from any new problems to the next....