I understand why but….

When it became clear that Pamela’s father was no longer capable of managing his own affairs, we acted upon the Power of Attorney that his solicitor had advised him to draw up. That meant sending the document along with all sorts of other documents to the Court of Protection.

Once that was done, we thought that the rest should be plain sailing but we were wrong. Getting access to his various accounts has proved very difficult for us because of the rules that banks now apply due to the concerns about money laundering. These days you need to have all sorts of documents to prove who you are and where you live before banks will allow access to your money. Whilst we fully understand that, we don’t understand why some banks make it infinitely more difficult than others.

Issue one: to prove where you live most organisations ask for copies of utility bills. However, since many utility companies now allow you to access your bills online to save paperwork and postage that is not as straight forward as it used to be. In addition, all of our utility bills are in my name and not my wife’s so they do not provide evidence of her address only mine. Luckily, for whatever reason, our bank account is in Pamela’s name but then we don’t receive statements from the bank in Spain  anymore and a statement printed off on my computer is apparently not acceptable. Doh!

Issue two: to prove who you are you need some form of ID. One bank suggested we should send our original passports – as if we would do that! No, we are only prepared to send photocopies of our passports but of course they have to be endorsed to show that the originals have been seen. Without passports, I am not sure what we could do to prove who we are. Our residencia cards are now out of date and Spanish driving licences do not have a photo on them.

Issue three: all of Pamela’s father’s accounts were joint with his wife who sadly passed away a few years ago. Before any organisation will remove her name from their books, they want to see her Death Certificate but we only have one original copy. Naturally we are loathe to post that in the same way we  are loathe to send off our passports or the original Power of Attorney document, so we have to get the copy endorsed by our fiscal advisers and send that off in the hope that is acceptable.

Luckily we are nearly there now but it has taken a lot of hard work and  lot of patience on our part to deal with all this. The one good thing, Pamela’s father is blissfully unaware of all the problems this has caused us; he resides comfortably in his care home totally unconcerned about how it is paid for.