Family Finances, POAs, and Telephone Help Lines in the Third Age

Roz Chast’s memoir of life with her parents as they aged, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, uses humor to explore the complicated issues that can arise when aging parents and their adult children try to address physical frailty and financial complexities in the “third age” of life.   Another look, equally realistic and also ruefully humorous, comes from William Power, writing for the Wall Street Journal in “The Difficult, Delicate Untangling of Our Parents’ Financial Lives.”   Thanks to the WSJ for making this an  unlocked article for digital access! 

Power begins with that ever-humbling attempt to use “help lines” to solve problems by phone:

“No, no, no, don’t transfer me to her again,” pleads my wife.  It is a typically frustrating moment in our family crisis, one that many grown children will have to face, ready or not: We are people in our 50s who are unraveling the finances of parents who can no longer do it themselves.

 

My wife, Julie, is on the phone with the company where her 82-year-old dad had once worked, trying to change the direct deposit of his pension checks to a bank closer to the assisted-living home where he and his wife now live, which is near us in Pennsylvania. Again and again, she is transferred to the person in charge, “Rose.” And every time, the same recording: “This number has been disconnected.”

Power’s account is punctuated by practical advice for others, including the importance of teamwork, involving both family members and others, in tackling the issues, as well as the use of key document-based tools, including Powers of Attorney, or as he stresses, “Repeat after Me: POA, POA, POA.”  

My thanks to Amy Bartylla, a long-time friend, for this article referral.