I assumed she only had two or three bank accounts, but it turns out she has around forty - and maybe more that I'm not aware of. She had no proper filing system for her various accounts, and left bank statements all around her flat in a haphazard fashion.
My brother in law and I have been trying to collate all the statements, find out how much is currently in each account, and consolidate them into a handful of accounts we can keep up with easily.
For me to get access to the accounts, each bank requires proof of my power of attorney and proof of my identity, so I'm busy sending or taking copies of all the relevant documents to each bank - a very time-consuming task.
Today one bank verified my power of attorney - just another eleven banks left! I can only keep going by telling myself that once this plethora of accounts has been whittled down to a manageable few, my life will be a lot simpler.
Frankly, I think it's very thoughtless of my mum not to have simplified her finances some time ago to avoid just this situation - the rest of the family trying to make sense of her elaborate financial dealings. Thank goodness she didn't still have a pile of stocks and shares - she decided they were too high-risk and got rid of them all.
So here's my advice - "the more the merrier" isn't the best approach to banking.
