I Used Mum's Card Under a Power of Attorney

If you used your mum's credit card as her attorney and she has now died, the first thing to understand is that your authority ended at the moment of death. A power of attorney does not survive the person who gave it. From that instant you had no legal power to spend her money, move it, or pay anything from her accounts — not the funeral director, not the care home, not the electricity bill.

Whether you will be questioned about the spending you did before that point is a different question, and the honest answer is: possibly, and it depends almost entirely on your records. Executors are entitled to understand where the money went. Beneficiaries who expected a larger inheritance often ask. Most attorneys who kept receipts and used the card for the donor's benefit are fine. Most attorneys who cannot explain a pattern of cash withdrawals are not.

If you are reading this at two in the morning because a sibling has started asking pointed questions, the useful thing to do is not to argue. It is to assemble the account of what you did, in date order, with the statements beside it. That is the answer to almost every version of this problem.

The short answer: the authority ended when she did

A power of attorney is permission given by a living person to act on their behalf. It exists because they wanted decisions made for them while they could not make them. Death removes the person, and with them the permission. There is no winding-down period, no month's grace, and no discretion for the bank to extend it.

In England and Wales this covers both a lasting power of attorney and an older enduring power of attorney. In Scotland it covers a continuing power of attorney, which deals with property and financial affairs. In Northern Ireland it covers an enduring power of attorney. In every case the effect of death on the document is the same, and the document itself becomes a historical record rather than a source of authority.

This has a very practical consequence that catches decent people out. The direct debits she had running were her instructions to her bank, and the bank cancels them once it is told of the death. Her accounts are frozen. If you carry on paying her household bills from her account on the reasonable basis that they still need paying, you are acting without authority — even though the bills are real and even though nobody else is doing it. The right route is to pay urgent costs from your own money and reclaim them from the estate, and to tell the executors immediately what you have done and why.

Who is in charge now

Once she died, control of her money passed to whoever administers the estate. If she left a will, that is the executor she named. If she did not, it is the administrator entitled to apply under the intestacy rules. Very often the attorney and the executor are the same person, and that removes most of the friction from this situation immediately. Sometimes they are different people, and that is where the questions start.

If you are not the executor, your job is now handover rather than management. In the first fortnight, that means:

• Telling the bank about the death and stopping any further use of her accounts, including any card in your possession.
• Returning cards, chequebooks and any keys or documents you hold on her behalf.
• Sending the executor a list of the accounts and providers you know about, which is often information only you have.
• Writing down what you spent recently and why, while you can still remember it.

Doing that unprompted is worth more than any explanation offered later under pressure. An attorney who volunteers a clear account looks like an attorney with nothing to hide, because that is usually exactly what they are.

What executors and beneficiaries are entitled to ask for

An attorney owes duties to the donor, and after death those duties are owed, in effect, to the estate that stands in the donor's place. The core one is the duty to account: to be able to show what was done with the money and on what basis.

In practice an executor can ask you for an explanation of the transactions, and can obtain the bank statements themselves once they have the grant, whether you cooperate or not. Beneficiaries have no direct right to interrogate you, but they can press the executor to investigate, and an executor who ignores a credible concern risks a claim of their own. If matters cannot be resolved, the court can order an attorney to produce an account of their dealings.

What that scrutiny looks for is not perfection. Nobody expects a receipt for a newspaper. It looks for a pattern that makes sense: money going out at a rate consistent with the life she was living, payments going to identifiable providers, and cash withdrawals that match the way she actually spent cash. It is the unexplained shape of the spending, rather than any single transaction, that raises questions.

What usually looks fine, and what causes trouble

The line an attorney has to stay on the right side of is simple to state. Money spent for the donor's benefit is fine. Money spent for your benefit generally is not, unless she could have authorised it and the amount was reasonable.

Spending that rarely causes difficulty:

• Care fees, top-up fees, household bills, insurance and council tax paid from her account for her home.
• Shopping, clothing, hairdressing, chiropody, taxis, and anything else that plainly kept her comfortable.
• Repairs and maintenance to her property, particularly where you have a quote and an invoice.
• Reimbursement of your genuine out-of-pocket costs, provided the amounts are recorded and reasonable, and match receipts.

Spending that regularly causes trouble:

• Gifts. An attorney's power to make gifts is narrow. Customary gifts on the usual occasions — birthdays, Christmas, weddings — to people the donor would normally have given to, and reasonable given the size of her estate, are permitted. Anything larger, including inheritance tax planning, needs the Court of Protection's authority in England and Wales. Substantial gifts made without it are the single most common cause of an attorney being asked for money back.
• Cash withdrawals with no explanation. Regular round-figure withdrawals, particularly if they rose over time, are exactly what an executor's solicitor looks for first. If she liked cash, say so, and show what it went on.
• Mixing money. Paying her money into your account, or paying your own bills from hers, breaks the separation an attorney is meant to maintain, even where the underlying spending was for her.
• Paying yourself for your time. Unless the document allowed it, an attorney acts without payment. Expenses are not the same thing as a wage.
• Buying things you kept. A television bought for her flat that is now in your living room needs an explanation.

Where the estate concludes that money was taken improperly, it can ask for repayment and, if refused, sue for it. The point of the records is to make that conversation short.

Payments that arrived after the death, and spending after it

Two separate problems live here, and both catch people who did nothing dishonest.

The first is money that came in. State pension and most benefits are paid for periods the person was alive, and payments covering any period after the date of death are recoverable. The Department for Work and Pensions will write and ask for them back, and it is entitled to. The same applies to housing costs paid to a landlord after a tenant has died, a problem covered separately in housing benefit paid after a tenant dies. Occupational pensions frequently overpay for a month or two as well, and the scheme will reclaim the excess. None of this is an accusation. It is arithmetic, and it should be dealt with by telling the payer promptly rather than waiting to be found.

The second is money that went out. If you used her card after she died, tell the executor before anybody else does. Spending on a deceased person's account is unauthorised and can amount to fraud, even where the money went on her funeral flowers. The usual outcome for small, honest, well-documented amounts spent on genuine estate costs is that the executor treats them as estate expenses and the matter ends. The outcome for concealment is much worse, because the concealment becomes the issue.

Related oddities crop up in the same fortnight. Vouchers and gift cards in her name may or may not still be usable, which is covered in whether gift cards and vouchers are valid after someone dies. If she ran a company, a director's loan account can turn out to be an asset of the estate rather than a debt of it, as explained in a director's loan account in credit on death.

The Office of the Public Guardian, and where its role stops

The Office of the Public Guardian registers powers of attorney in England and Wales and supervises how attorneys behave. It can investigate concerns about an attorney's conduct, and it takes them seriously: it can apply to the Court of Protection to have an attorney removed while the donor is alive.

Its role narrows sharply after a death, because the instrument it supervises no longer exists. In practice, concerns raised once the donor has died tend to be redirected to the people who now have standing: the executors or administrators, who can bring a civil claim on behalf of the estate, and the police where dishonesty is alleged. The OPG can still be told, and information it already holds from an earlier investigation does not disappear.

Scotland has its own Office of the Public Guardian, which registers continuing and welfare powers of attorney and supervises them under Scottish legislation. Northern Ireland registers enduring powers through the Office of Care and Protection at the High Court. The bodies differ; the expectation that an attorney can explain themselves does not. The Office of the Public Guardian publishes guidance for attorneys that is worth reading even now, because it describes the standard your spending will be measured against.

Building your account of it now

If you did the job properly but kept nothing, you are not in trouble — you are in a reconstruction exercise. Do it deliberately.

Start with the statements. Ask her bank for statements covering the whole period you acted, which they will provide to the personal representatives, and get the card statements too. Then annotate them. Go line by line and write what each payment was, in ordinary language: "care home invoice", "Tesco, her weekly shop", "cash withdrawal, she liked to keep money in her purse". Where you have an invoice or a receipt, note the reference. Where you have nothing, say so honestly rather than guessing at a purpose.

Then write a short covering note that sets out the shape of it: when you started acting, why, what her regular outgoings were, what changed when she went into care or became more unwell, and how you handled cash. Two pages is plenty. An executor reading that has their answer and can move on.

If the sums are large, if a beneficiary has instructed a solicitor, or if you are being accused of something specific, get your own advice rather than relying on being obviously innocent. Free starting points include Citizens Advice and the government-backed MoneyHelper, and the government's own guide to what to do after a death sets out the sequence of the estate work.

One thing worth noticing while you are in the middle of this. The reason so much of it fell on you is that there was no ready money at the moment it was needed, and every route to hers was closed the day she died. People who have watched that happen often decide their own children should not repeat it, and arranging cover that pays a sum on death is one of the ways families keep the first weeks from being funded on a son or daughter's own card. If that is where your mind has gone, you can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker explain the options rather than working it out alone.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The central rule is UK-wide: the power ends at death, everywhere. What varies is the supervision and the estate process that follows.

In Scotland, continuing powers of attorney are registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (Scotland), the grant needed to administer an estate is confirmation rather than probate, and the person administering it is an executor-nominate or an executor-dative. Scots law also gives a surviving spouse or civil partner prior rights, and children legal rights, which are calculated after debts and can change who is entitled to complain about how the money was handled. Dishonesty is prosecuted as fraud at common law rather than under the Fraud Act.

In Northern Ireland, enduring powers of attorney remain the instrument in use and are registered through the Office of Care and Protection. Grants are issued by the Probate Office of the High Court in Belfast, and the nidirect service sets out the local process, which differs from the arrangements in Great Britain. The rest of the questions families face about accounts and borrowing after a death are collected in our guide to debt, credit and finance after a death, including what happens when a bank tries to use money in one account to clear a loan and how other credit agreements are handled, such as a car finance balloon payment falling due after the owner has died.

Frequently asked questions

Does a power of attorney still work after the person dies?

No. A lasting or enduring power of attorney ends at the moment of death, and every authority under it stops at the same time. From that point only the executors named in the will, or the administrators of the estate, can lawfully deal with the money, and the deceased's accounts are frozen until they have the authority to act.

Will my spending as attorney be examined?

It can be. Executors are entitled to see how the money was used, beneficiaries often ask, and the Office of the Public Guardian can investigate an attorney's conduct, although its role narrows once the donor has died and the executors take the lead. Bank statements and receipts showing that spending was for the donor's benefit are the answer to that.

What if I paid myself back for shopping and bills?

Reimbursing genuine out-of-pocket expenses is allowed, provided it is recorded and reasonable. Gifts to yourself, unexplained cash withdrawals and paying your own household bills from the donor's account are what cause trouble, and the estate can ask for those amounts to be repaid, through the courts if necessary.