My dad has mild dementia and my mom managed most of their finances, but she recently passed away and I am now his POA. I found out that last year, a family member convinced him to co-sign for a car loan and then defaulted and had the car reposessed; now the creditor is coming after my dad for the substantial debt. Am I responsible for the debt? Is he even responsible? He wasn't fit to be making financial decisions then either. Any ideas on how to proceed with this?
Your Dad's funds pay for this via your POA. You are allowed to seek expert advice on his behalf.
YOU are in no way responsible and you should never make any payment on anything in your own name lest they try to say YOU are assuming the debt. If and when you pay sign only your Dad's name followed by your name and the words POA, or Power of Attorney in fact.
Do know that your father, even if a judgement is made in court against him for payment, cannot have his SS or any disability payments attached. They cannot collect on these or confiscate these funds in any way.
And if you do not pay likely the worst that can happen is that your Father's credit can be ruined. As it is unlikely that your Dad NEEDS credit at this time (won't be buying a home or taking out loans anymore) this will have no affect on him. It is quite unlikely any lien will be taken agaisnt a property, but if so it would be collected on sale of that property by Dad's executor.
Your Dad did sign, and that paper will likely hold him responsible for the car payment, but I would bet this is already turned over to a collection agency for non payment; said agency makes makes only pennies on the dollar of these loans.
Feel free, until you speak with an attorney, to say nothing, or to write the company saying you are POA for your father and that he was suffering from dementia when he signed that paper, and still is, and has no funds to pay them. Or say nothing, and let them "pound sand".
As for the family member, he or she still can arrange a payment plan with the creditor and do the right thing. Why aren't they doing that?
My main concern at this point is that they called his house and he gave them a payment for $100 before I was aware of the situation, which came out of our joint account. At the least, I will have to send a cease and desist letter. I'm just not sure how much more we're on the hook for.
As I said before, the worst they can do to your Dad is ruin his credit. No one should care about that at this point as he isn't going to be taking out loans and shouldn't have access to credit cards. They cannot tough his social securiity funds.
It is irrelevant really at this point how Dad came to sign this. It was signed and it does exist.
What's important now is that the POA act as a fiduciary to protect Dad's funds, to keep meticulous records of every penny into his assets and every penny out of them, giving Dad a small spending account of his own, keeping bills and mail away from him if he is incompetent in handling them.
At the time this happened had Dad been diagnosed with a Dementia and this made ur POA effective.
"they met up with my dad alone without the knowledge of my mom or myself when we were at work" Are u saying that the dealership salesman came to the home and did not thing that was kind of funny? I blame the Dealership. The salesman had to notice Dad was just not right.
I have sent u a Private Message.