Willpower Sisters

Sue Mitchell investigates how two sisters in their nineties lost control of their money.

Right across the UK, something is going badly wrong in safe, friendly neighbourhoods, and it's going unchecked. It's the misuse of power of attorney. It sounds technical, but it's deeply personal. When it happens people can be stripped of control over their own lives.

Two sisters in south-east London say that's what happened to them and they were in the dark about what was going on. Maureen is 93. Edna is 90. They live together in their family home, a grand Victorian villa on a quiet, leafy street. They're bright, independent, and glamorous, dressed in designer vintage from the 1960s. They have always run their own lives and their own money.

Then, almost overnight, that independence was taken from them. Edna's bank card stopped working. She went overdrawn for the first time in her life. Her account was frozen, and bank staff told her she'd been said to lack the capacity to manage her own affairs. She couldn't use her own bank account, and nobody had told her why. She and Maureen had to have their capacity confirmed by their doctors before the bank would deal with them.

It all came about through a power of attorney: a legal document that lets someone you trust help manage your affairs or take over if you no longer can. On the advice of a financial adviser, the sisters had named each other, with a professional as a back-up in case one of them could no longer act for the other. They say he was put on their forms even though they had never met him, and that they never asked him to take charge.

The sisters are much loved on their street, and their neighbours have rallied round. They're horrified at what has happened, and at how easy it was for someone else to take control of something so central to the sisters' lives. They're also worried that if it can happen here, to these two women, in their own home, it can happen to anyone.

Sue follows the trail through the bank, the paperwork, and the payments, and asks how a power meant to protect two elderly women could end up causing them such distress.

File on Four: Willpower Sisters, Tuesday 17 November, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.