This is another container on the topic of renouncing my rights.
Why I renounced my right as joint power of attorney for mum's finances and wellbeing
- to avoid being responsible for his decisions while having always being prevented by him from making any myself
- to reduce the risk of being attacked again by him and social services for whatever else they wanted to invent. He had already got social services to try to harass me into giving up power of attorney after mum left. They had also allegedly reported me to the Office of the Public Guardian anyway, who had done nothing.
Why I renounced executorship of dad’s will
Because Pigface persuaded dad’s lawyer not to investigate the huge sum he took from dad's account, just before dad died when he was delirious in hospital, claiming it was a deathbed "gift". As a result I felt the whole process was prejudiced
I didn't agree with contents valuation which massively devalued many items.
I was being forced to agree to and sign off on things I didn't agree with,
I was being threatened by the lawyer with witholding the process and thereby, wait for it... harming mum. It's all too easy to imagine Pigface whispering in the lawyer's ear, the same way he convinced Social Services: can't we claim she's harming mum if she does X?
I was disgusted at how he took items from mum's house before and especially after the contents valuation.
I was disgusted at seeing in the seven year “listing of gifts” legal process how he had shamelessly described the gifts dad gave him as handouts as though, he a high earning professional with a wife similarly employed. It was there in black and white: he had gone asking for handouts for repairs to his house, to support his wife when redundant. In contrast, only one of us was in paid employment, our much older, larger house was in far greater need of repairs yet we never once asked for handouts, even when dad saw I often struggled to complete repairs myself, we never went on family holidays, almost never ate out as a family. I think the last time we did, Pigface, a guest, ruined a birthday meal for one of my kids attacking me again forcing me to leave my own child's birthday. I realise just now it was another of his double bind techniques I came to experience far too often: a way of asserting dominance.
I was always surprised at how financial gifts varied year to year. I never, even once I had the balance sheet, compared the totals year on year, not wanting to see my father in any worse light after his death. But those surprising handouts I occasionally received were probably simple parity with whatever Pigface was demanding that year. As far as I know, Dad was even-handed.
Overall, I renounced both my rights, and probably my inheritance, to rid myself of being harnessed to him. With no oversight, all the control and a history of greed and taking for himself, though mum's allowance probably covers her care home fees, I am almost certain he will make sure that, nonetheless, come the end of mum's life, nothing remains of her other assets. It will all have "disappeared".
I was just generally disgusted at how vile and grubby Pigface made everything related to my parents after dad’s death, especially everything to do with money. I preferred just to walk away, let him have it all, embezzle whatever he could get away with and not be embroiled in his filth.
Everyone has said I am making a mistake. That I should fight to protect the rights that my parents setup for me, to protect them and make decisions in their interest with the expectation that I exercise those rights. But they didn't set up the POA in the right way. I have been systematically prevented from exercising those rights.
The great flaw in this process is that where power of attorney is joint, the parties should never be allowed to take information pertaining to that person's affairs, nor make decisions independently. That is handing someone a lever for abuse. Just watching, as an example, the mess Nicola Sturgeon's husband is in for embezzlement, we know that it is common; that temptation to steal and to over-control is common even among people in whom we place all our trust, not just in families but in running the country. We know it, if nothing else from the expenses scandal that showed virtually every MP was on the take and from the weekly corruption news stories about politicians.
The number of stories of abusive, embezzling relatives I have heard since this happened is shocking. It seems to touch almost every family and yet society ignores this problem. The Office of the Public Guardian, tasked with ensuring Power of Attorney and Guardianships are not abused, investigate only a tiny percentage of reported abuse. I should think most of those are not "family conflict" which will invariably by messy and time consuming, but alerts from "valid" sources: social services, care homes, banks.
People are baffled. They say I should fight to protect my inheritance. But Pigface has been so extraordinarily successful in persuading many organisations and people not just of innocence in the face of serious allegations, but, "deny and deflect", a classic council strategy, that I am the problem. My only expectation is that he would continue in that success. I do not want to throw money we don't have at a lawyer who would fail me as everyone has failed me. I looked into asking if we could use mum's money to try to get the information and decision making power that I should have as Power of Attorney but he acted quickly and consolidated all his power. Decisions have already been taken, much money has already gone and the lawyers said at best we would have to pay the fees ourselves and try to reclaim them after, which I wasn't willing to do.
At least ten times I wrote to Social Services to tell them about what Pigface was doing to mum: taking money, isolating her, taking her hearing aids, and to me.
I wrote to the Office of the Public Guardian three times to no avail. When they acknowledged my letter asking for my POA to be removed I had to write again to ask if they were confirming it. They granted it. At that point, independently, I had realised I should have sent a form, which I believe is a legal requirement, signed by a doctor or lawyer saying that this person understands what they are doing nor is being coerced. In that letter to the Office of the Public Guardian I had said I was so afraid of the co-executor that I was afraid to die, in case I was pursued by him in death. It was safer to stay alive where I could try to keep him at a distance. That is not the letter of a well-balanced individual. That is the kind of thing someone indeed terrified and coerced might say. What did they do? They waived the requirement for an assessment by a lawyer or doctor.
Most of all, I renounced to try and help my health. It's all you've really got and having watched one parent die, one terminally ill, and struggle with my own health since those events and the Pigface abuse, the value of health can't be overestimated.
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