Monday 21 September is World Alzheimer’s Day. There’ll be a lot said about early signs, research and treatment – and rightly so, by people far more qualified than me.

I want to talk about something quieter that happens afterwards. Because a dementia diagnosis lands in a family’s finances well before anyone has had time to catch their breath.

It usually reaches me as a phone call. Often an adult daughter. Her voice is steady for about thirty seconds, and then she gets to the part where she says her mum has been diagnosed, and there’s a pause, and she asks whether she’s allowed to sign things on her mother’s behalf now.

I hate that the answer isn’t always yes.

Whether she can help doesn’t depend on how much she loves her mum, or how obviously she’s the right person for the job. It depends on whether an enduring power of attorney was signed while her mum still understood what she was signing.

That’s the whole design of the document. It has to be made by someone with capacity. Once capacity is gone, the document can’t be created – not by a spouse, not by a child, not with the best intentions in the world.

What’s left is an application to have an administrator appointed. It works, and families do get there. But it takes months, it costs money, and it arrives at the moment everyone has the least left in the tank. I’ve sat with capable, loving families stuck for the better part of a year over something that would have taken twenty minutes at a kitchen table a few years earlier.

Even when the paperwork exists, families are often flying blind. Which super fund. Whether there’s insurance, and who’s nominated on it. The old account nobody remembered. The logins for all of it.

Superannuation is the one that catches people out most. It doesn’t automatically pass under a will – it’s governed by the fund’s trust deed and whatever beneficiary nomination is sitting on file. If that nomination is out of date, or was never made at all, the money may not end up where anyone assumed it would.

None of this is complicated to fix. It’s just easy to postpone, because there’s never a week where it feels urgent. Until there is, and by then it’s too late to be simple.

1. Put an enduring power of attorney in place – financial and personal/health. Have it drafted properly, and tell the person you’ve appointed. Being handed that responsibility cold, in a crisis, is a rough way to find out.

2. Write down where everything lives. Accounts, super funds, insurance policies, your adviser, your solicitor, your accountant. A single page in a drawer beats a perfect system that never gets built.

3. Look at your will and your super nomination side by side. They’re separate documents doing separate jobs, and they need to agree with each other. Reviewing one without the other is how good intentions come unstuck.

You’re in good company. Most of these conversations start with someone worrying about Mum or Dad rather than themselves.

If you’re in your fifties or sixties yourself, the same logic applies to you. The best time to sign these documents is long before anyone thinks you need them, when it’s an administrative afternoon rather than an emotional one.

If this has been sitting on your list, it doesn’t need to be a big project. A conversation about what’s already in place, what’s missing, and who you’d want stepping in if you couldn’t make decisions yourself – that’s usually enough to get it moving.

 

General information only. It doesn’t take into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs. Estate planning documents should be prepared by a qualified legal practitioner in your state.