Dad lets political campaigns drain his bank account

My dad has always been politically opinionated and very active in donating to candidates. I was helping him balance his checkbook recently (thank God he lets me do it!) and noticed he had written ten different $100 checks to ten different campaigns. That’s $1000! And that was in just one month.

Dad still lives at home, but I think he’s slipping mentally. He’s fallen for phone scams (“IRS” collection kind of stuff) in the past and is easy prey for bad guys. I’m not saying the campaigns are “bad guys”, but Dad doesn’t have any discernment any more, and he definitely doesn’t have the income to be donating $12,000 a year to political campaigns.

I’m already trying to plan for care in his declining years, which may be upon him sooner than he thinks; and I’m concerned that at this rate, he won’t have any money left to pay for it.

What are my options here? I’ve already tried to get him to let me be a signatory on his bank account but he either keeps putting it off, or if I bring up the subject, he says I’m too anxious to get at my inheritance and that I should “wait for him to die first.”

I feel trapped.

What you can do now

As a practical matter, you may be able to anticipate when Dad makes these donations. For instance, if you know when the mail gets picked up at his house each day, you can simply remove the checks from the mailbox. For credit card donations, you may be able to call on his behalf to dispute the transactions.

You can attempt to help Dad work through his monthly budget, guiding him through what he has and what he can actually spend without drawing down his savings. You can also ask Dad if he’s willing to let you take care of the bills and give him “the rest” to spend as he wants. Then give dad just a tiny amount of “mad money” to spend however he likes, taking care to set aside whatever he still has in order to pay for his care down the road.

When you DO approach Dad about letting you help with the finances, do so from a position of HELPING, not taking over. Any suggestion to Dad that he might not still have it all together is probably going to be taken badly, and until you’re in control of his assets, you don’t have a say-so in how they’re spent.

Which is awkward at best. The real problem is that he’s still “independent” (barely), living at home, and responsible for his own bill-paying, financial stability, and everything else.

What you should do soon

Intercepting mail, disputing credit card transactions, and helping with the bills will only get you so far, especially if Dad doesn’t see anything wrong.

In order to stop Dad from giving his own money away to complete strangers, you’re going to have to take some kind of action to have yourself appointed as his guardian and/or get power of attorney. Start by approaching a gerontologist to set up an appointment to determine Dad’s mental state, and if the conclusion is that he’s got some sort of dementia, talk to your father’s attorney, whose responsibility it is to look after your dad’s best interests from a legal perspective. Talking to his attorney can also help address potential disputes among siblings that might spring up from differences in opinion about how “with it” Dad still is.

If Dad’s doctor thinks he has dementia, Dad’s lawyer probably won’t push back on the general idea of custody over his affairs. At worst, he might suggest some ways of handling things that protect your dad while preserving his remaining independence, ensuring his assets are used to pay for his care while he’s still alive, and making sure there are no conflicts of interest between paying for the best medical care and preserving his assets to pay for SOME kind of care for as long as possible.

Talk to the gerontologist and attorney NOW, while Dad’s still mentally able to sign papers granting guardianship or power of attorney. As soon as he starts to need paid medical care, it’s important that you are able to spend HIS money to take care of him rather than draining your own bank account while Dad continues to write Suzie Smith for Mayor thousand-dollar checks.