Father declared unable to handle financial affairs by doctor, wants to do his taxes himself. Any advice?
My father was officially diagnosed with dementia last month and the doctor signed an incompetency letter. I am his only child/daughter (57 yrs old) and his POA. It's tax time and his wife (#3) says he wants to do his own taxes this year, even though I volunteered to do them. Some of the tax documents have come to my home and I took them over to him today. When I arrived, she was already gone for the day and he was sitting at the table paying a bill, well, trying to pay a bill. It took him about 15 minutes to figure out how to write the check and for how much. I showed him the tax documents and set them on the desk in their office. We then went to lunch with my daughter. We got to talking about taxes and I asked my dad about the documents I showed him earlier, of course he couldn't remember and then said he hasn't seen any tax documents. The wife is a tough cookie, but can't seem to say no to my dad. My dad has always been secretive about his finances, so I feel stuck. I KNOW he can't do them, she thinks he can or wants him to try and I am upset at the thought of him trying and being overwhelmed and then being late. Help. This wife is difficult at best.
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Last year my parents thought they could do their own taxes, and I never realized it was becoming too difficult for my Dad to deal with it until half the 1099's were missing. Then and only then did I realize something was amiss. It was only late last year that I learned that my Dad would be putting current bills into the wastepaper basket or into the recycling. That's probably what happened to those 1099's.
Ah, I know all about the secretive thing with parent's finances. It wasn't until my Mom recently passed that I found out they had bank accounts scattered all over the place, last week I finally consolidated all these accounts into one bank that has user friendly website.
And my parents stock is also scattered everywhere instead of being under one stock broker because Dad didn't want his stock broker to know how much money he had :P In the ream of things, Dad is small potatoes compared to what other clients his broker may have.
PNWgirl58, any way you could hire a CPA or Tax Accountant to take over the filing of the taxes? It would be money well spent.
In an ideal world, everyone holds hands and gets along.
In the real world, we get attorneys involved when we can't make headway with diplomacy.
My life approach is to try to understand the position of the person I'm trying to persuade. Why don't they want to agree? Maybe the wife is in denial to avoid losing her normal and can't see it's already gone. She some mileage to cover to get to the same place as you in understanding.
Worst case scenario, you can file for an extension to get more time for the taxes to be done.
Use your POA, file for an extension, get copies of everything, take the whole mess to your tax person, let Dad piddle around if he wants and let him think he's all set. Just don't let him mail anything to the IRS.
This is essentially what I did when I realised that my Dads dementia was getting worse. He eventually got so frustrated with the paper work he asked Mom to call the tax lady they had used before. At that point the "Tax Lady" was all done due to my intervention. It was a little dicey but it worked.
Tell dad the accountant wants to see everyone. Then let the accountant tell dad the plan.
This is the only thing that works with my parents who are impossible to deal with.