Beth Pinsker

It's really hard to pull anything off without the proper paperwork anymore.

Yeah, a lot of banks want the person to come there themselves and sign their own paperwork at the financial institution.

When my mom and I got around to this, she was already too sick to do that.

So we had the proper paperwork, but they gave us a huge hassle about actually using it.

And so it took me three two-hour visits.

to the bank with scheduled appointments in order to get through just one of the financial institutions that I had to get through.

They will throw every hoop that you can think of at you.

You know, the person needs to come down.

You need to sign our own paperwork.

The signature isn't valid.

It has to be notarized in a different way.

They'll claim anything and they'll just stop you up.

And you can't move forward

to take care of any of these tasks until it's cleared up.

So you have a much greater stake in this than the bank does, and you have to learn how to stand your ground.

This is why it takes a close family member to do this.

The financial stuff is not something that's easily outsourced.

I could hire somebody to help my mother bathe or help her in the bathroom, but I couldn't hire somebody to fight for her tooth and nail for all of these things.

there was nobody else who could be the financial authority and the trusted financial person with her bank account information, with her passcodes, with her ATM card and the code on it.

She's not going to just hire some person off the street and give them that information.