April 2015- What not to do as an elderly person's POA

So in March 2015 Sonya got POA with the plan to rent a house and care for her mother Carol, and her own kids N Kim and her 15 year old son Mike1, and start up a hair salon business. The house was more what Sonya wanted and less what Carol, as a 70 something woman with mobility issues, needed. The spending also reflected this Sonya-centric worldview where the account goes from basic needs to spending every day (except for the 19th) when you compare the April 2015 statement to the November or December 2014 statements.

This is NOT how to use the Power of Attorney (POA), a power given with the purpose of caring for a person who cannot care for themselves. You as the POA are supposed to do your everyday spending from your own accounts, not the accounts you were given access to. If you have a relative who was given POA and is co-mingling accounts, that should be a glowing RED ELDER ABUSE FLAG! But if your family dynamics are like like my spouse's the dominate family member will probably continue to abuse the elderly parent until the weaker family member if forced to step in.

I suspect Sonya is certifiably unbankable and a financial screw up. I have a feeling that Sonya's credit was so busted she did not have her own account and used her mother's bank account. When you've done enough bad bank things, banks decide not to open accounts for you. She has claimed she had her own bank account, but I doubt it. Her brother Mike, my beloved spouse, is also inept with finances, which is why I do them for us. He did not have a savings account until we were engaged. He was and is better off than his sister, in that he's worked in the same job for 20 years, wasn't a single parent, was on good terms with almost all of his exes, and has an amazing support network with healthy relationships. I didn't have any authority when Mike took over his mother's accounts but I did advise him and the activity level went back to it's 2014 levels and clearly is for Carol's care.

Okay with that let's start looking at the April 2015 account:

There are three deposits on April 1 from Carol's pension and the brokerage account that had been providing her an income around $700 a month. That deposit from Pershing is the first big hit to Carol's retirement fund, and that's a big $36K. The third deposit could have come from Sonya, however, $400 is nothing compared to the $38,859.77 that came from the retiree. There are 5 withdrawals, three from Target. Not sure that those are for Carol or Sonya. Two are for two cashier's checks to NorCal Property Management. The $22850 is for 6 months rent. I can't remember exactly, but I suppose, this goes back to someone having really bad credit and the management company not wanting risk too much. Most normal people just put down a deposit of first and last months' rent, that's the $7,707 check.

I'm going to break here to point out that Carol was financially bearing the burden of renting a three bedroom house with a yard, when she previously was in a single room at the assisted living facility.  I should also mention Carol was paying somewhere around $7000-$9000 a month for her care, so in theory she shouldn't have had to have more than $9000 leave her account per month. Sonya was not paying for half the rent, which was $3800 a month. No this scheme allowed her to move out of her dreary 1 bedroom apartment to a place where she could pretend she was middle class.

Okay back to the spenda-palooza with other people's money. It seems that she returned to Target on the 2nd to spend more money and hit the Walmart twice. On the 3rd day Sonya went to Mattara Inc at 4652 Meridia San Jose Ca. There is a car-wash and gas station at that address. Carol does not drive. This is clearly a Sonya purchase, that should not have shown up on Carol's account. This is one of thousands of financial abuses Sonya inflicted on her mother.

Oh, but wait there is more, so, so much more. The statements for Carol's account go from 2 pages to multiple pages, with daily spending as if Sonya's job was to spend down her mother's retirement and put the woman in poverty, which she did. So besides going to get gas or wash the car on the 3rd, she hit a liquor store, the Walmart again, and Again, and AGAIN, the Kohls (got tired of Target?), and Tomatina an Italian restaurant. Maybe Carol went there, who knows. Since Carol was a Kaiser P member that got paid on the 3rd as well, the only clearly for Carol expense on the 3rd. With Carol's medical condition she really shouldn't be getting anything from the liquor store, but who am I to deny a woman some wine, I just doubt it was for her.

I'm going to go for another paragraph to cover the 4th. Well we see Sonya gets a U-haul because Carol did not have enough stuff in her room to fill more than an SUV, that was $118.64. Sonya, because this WalMart addiction cannot be Carol's, hits Wally World twice, again. This looks like a serious shopping addition only a few days into April and a couple weeks into Sonya's POA. Well in addition to WalMart and Target (hey we're back to Tar-jay) Sonya decides to eat out a couple of times at Micky D's and the Burger Barn. I have my doubts any of this was for Carol. Not sure where Orchard Supply, a hardware store fits into this.

On the 5th day, more shopping! This time it's Wally World supersized, the Wal-Mart Supercenter. No clue what Hamilton-Basc in Campbell happens to be for $203. There is a Capital Premier Car Wash that I didn't include (sorry) but once again, that looks like a Sonya purchase, NOT a Carol purchase.

Alrighty, I need to come to a close and I haven't got past one week of Sonya's non-stop, can't stop spending of her mother's retirement money.

Okay, April 6th there is the Safeway, maybe that food was for Carol, Wal-Mart (AGAIN, seriously this looks like signs of a shopping addiction), and a bunch of fast food places (Taco Bell, Domino's, Jack in the Box and Tacomania). We do see an insurance premium for United Healthcare, a possible leftover from Carol's recently late husband Gene. 

April 7th, another day, another shopping trip to Wal-Mart with multiple purchases! It seems Sonya (not Carol, because Carol's stuff could fit in a SUV) returned the U-Haul. Sonya got some gas, because Carol, does not have a car and does not drive.

I'll return to April 2015 in another post, cause this is really long. But you should get the point, it looks (obvious to me) like Sonya started using her mother like an ATM and fed some unnatural shopping addiction (I suspect there are other addictions this feeds too) that supported the Wal-Mart corporation. This is so not what you're supposed to do when you have someone's POA. This is wrong. This is elder abuse, financial elder abuse.