2600 Magazine_ The Hacker Quarterly - Digital Edition - Summer 2011 - 2600 Magazine [2]
As usual, there is information in here that can be used for nefarious purposes. Please don't. Electricity can cook a meal for a man, or can cook the man. Use these tools wisely. Also, this article gets better towards the end, but there is information in here that I want you to read, so please eat your veggies before going to dessert.
My story starts with mom falling down a flight of stairs and breaking her neck (C2 and C7), shoulder, scapula, and three ribs. From there, it goes downhill. After the third surgery, they had to bury her in enough Haldol that dementia kicked in. On advice of the attorney, before this happened we had her sign over her rights using a General Power of Attorney (POA) and Medical Power of Attorney (MPOA). These documents gave me the right to act on her behalf and take care of her financial affairs. The technical term is that I became her attorney-in-fact (AIF). We had to shut down her apartment (where she fell) and moved her legal address out to my brother and sister-in-law's house. We had to deal with her cell phone provider, banks, insurance companies, the cable company, utilities, the DMV (a completely different hot mess), and more. Everyone wanted some level of proof that I was supposed to act on her behalf.
Lesson 1: Don't wait until an injury or illness to get the proper legal representation and documents in place. Had my mom been brain damaged during the fall, I would have had to go to court to be appointed her guardian, which would have been a much bigger pain to do and deal with.
My mother had numerous department store credit cards, most of which were very old. The older cards generally didn't have 16 digits on the front. Most of these were already expired accounts. However, it is necessary to call and make sure these accounts are truly dead and shut off. If they are not, then she is more likely to be the victim of identity theft. Since we had to qualify her for Medicaid (which includes spending her down to a net worth of $2000 plus a car), anything like this would be fiscally devastating, and a royal pain for me to have to fix. All the cards were chopped up.
Once I explained Mom's situation, considering that most of the accounts were already closed, they didn't ask for my POA papers. They believed me when I said that I was the AIF, and confirmed that I already had what I wanted.
Lesson 2: Get your parent's SSN number from them while they are still alive. They probably have yours so they can conduct affairs for you (especially if you're recently or currently a minor). Turnabout is fair play, and it makes it much easier to manage things in situations like this.
On the couple of occasions that department stores had valid credit cards that weren't a branded Visa or MasterCard, it took more convincing, but I was able to close the accounts. Fortunately, my mom hadn't used them in quite a while, and I was asking to close the accounts. It turned out okay.
After those cards were taken care of, there were four cards left: a Sears gold MasterCard, a pink Discover card, and two Chase credit cards (the one about to expire, and the one that had to be activated). My goal with these cards was to keep them active, get the address changed to my brother's house, change the phone number, and reactivate the Chase card.
My mother didn't have a net presence. No email, no computer, no nothing. So, my sister-in-law (who has been great about helping during this trying time) took advantage of this, but forgot to tell me. The same kind of thing happened when shutting off the cell phone with Verizon, but I digress. I was dealing with the automated system and was asked to enter Mom's full credit card number. I did so. I was then asked to enter the last four of her SSN. I did so. I was then asked to enter her zip code. I did so, using the