Looking After Mum and Dad: The Admin Nobody Warns You About pdf

The paperwork nobody prepares you for - and what to do if none of it was done in time.

It usually starts with a phone call. A fall, a diagnosis, a letter from the hospital. Within days you are the one expected to find the will, speak to the bank, deal with the council and sign forms you have never seen before - while nobody will tell you anything, because you are "not authorised".

Looking After Mum and Dad is a plain-English guide to the administration of ageing parents: what needs to exist on paper, who is allowed to see it, where it all lives, and what happens when it was never put in place.

If there is still time to get organised

• Lasting power of attorney for property and financial affairs, and for health and welfare - what each one actually allows, why it must be signed while capacity still exists, and how long registration really takes

• Making a will that stands up: witnessing rules, choosing executors, and the marriage that quietly revokes it

• Advance decisions (ADRT), DNACPR and ReSPECT - who decides what, and what a family can and cannot insist on

• Building the single record of accounts, pensions, insurers, utilities and online logins that an executor can actually follow - the map, not the keys

• Care funding before it becomes a crisis: means testing, the twelve-week property disregard, NHS Continuing Healthcare, and why "putting the house in trust" is so often mis-sold

If it was never done, and you are already too late

• What you can do when a parent has lost capacity and there is no power of attorney: deputyship, DWP appointeeship and third party mandates

• Finding a will nobody can lay hands on - and the search of last resort when it cannot be found

• Probate step by step: the grant of representation, what banks will release without one, and the circular problem of proving an estate you cannot yet get into

• Dying without a will - who inherits under the intestacy rules, in what order, and who does not

• Tracing accounts, policies and pensions from a drawer of unopened post

• The deadlines that catch families out, including the six-month limit under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975

• Money going unclaimed right now: Attendance Allowance, Pension Credit and the Council Tax disregard most families never hear about

Written for readers in the United Kingdom, with the law of England and Wales set out in full and the differences in Scotland and Northern Ireland flagged where they matter. Processes and figures checked in 2026, with sources given so you can verify them yourself.

This book is not legal, financial, tax or medical advice and creates no professional relationship. It is the briefing you would want before walking into a solicitor’s office: what to ask, what to take with you, and what it should cost.

Sort it now, or sort it later at the worst possible moment. This book is written for both.