My Mom will be 93 in a couple of months -- she's still moderately sharp mentally, but she has trouble gripping things like pens, she is illiterate with electronics & the Internet, and she gets frustrated & loses patience easily.  No problem -- both my sister & I are devoted, and we all trust each other completely, so my sister & I divide up the tasks needed to take care of Mom.

One such task falls to me.  My dad, a songwriter, died ~15 years ago, and my mother has been receiving the writer's royalty checks (as is appropriate).  Years ago, Mom would spend the cool months in Florida and the warm months in her hometown in Pennsylvania.  For tax purposes, she declared herself a Florida resident, and all was good, but a couple of years ago, she decided that moving back & forth twice a year was too much for her -- she chose to stay in Pennsylvania, to be close to her doctors & several family members.

My task:  provide a change of address to those handful of music companies that send her royalty checks.  While we are at it, we all agreed to look into direct deposit and the electronic issuing of her royalty statements.  My sister & I talk to my mother frequently, so we can view the statements & alert Mom when a check gets deposited.  My sister is also a co-signer of Mom's bank accounts, and can transfer the big checks out of the checking account & into an interest earning account.

So, here's the thing:

     Some companies required a signature & a voided check in order to implement the change of address
     and the direct deposit.  That is as it should be.

     But other companies made the necessary changes just on my say-so.  Anyone who stole one of the hard
     copy statements from her mailbox could have made the changes to get her checks deposited elsewhere.

That was literally too each.

While working in association management I needed to get a block of street front temporarily re-zoned so the residents of a 100 unit complex would have a place nearby to park.

I was wearing slacks, a nice shirt and a tie and looked respectable. I downloaded the form I needed online, took it to City Hall and got it approved without showing any identification. Then I took it over to the Police Station and got it approved without any identification.

Everything was done on my say-so, there were no questions asked with regards to my identity. The Police Station even printed out a couple of postings for me so nobody would get a ticket.

I am tempted to dress up and close down a block of our busiest street at 5pm, just on my say-so. Paper shufflers just shuffling paper.

Literally too easy!

I'm glad your mom has someone (in this case at least 2 people) who obviously care enough about her to handle the affairs she can't or won't handle anymore. So many get older and forgotten. It's not funny even in a sick or sad way. Your mom has obviously great children. Everyone should be so lucky and/or skilled. It would make the world a better place, I'm sure.