Taking Away the Car from Mom – Part 2

paperwork by kozumel (Flickr)

Mom’s car continued to sit in disrepair while my husband and I tried to figure out what to do.  Since she is a dementia patient with Alzheimer’s disease, we did not want to fix it and have it available to tempt Mom into driving.

We came up with two options.  We could tell Mom we would have it fixed if she would give us the keys.  We would drive her car to take her places she needed to go.  The only problem would be that I didn’t think Mom would willingly give up her keys.  Also, I was afraid that seeing her car parked outside would depress her.

The other idea was to convince Mom to sell the car.  The car’s value would only continue to depreciate, so it would be best to sell now and she could put some extra money in the bank.  I just wasn’t sure if I could convince Mom to sell her car.

It just so happened that while we were considering our options, two different people asked us about Mom’s car within a week’s time period.  An 11-year-old car with only 34,000 miles and one owner is a good find!  We told Mom that some people were asking about it, and to my surprise she seemed interested in the idea of selling it!  We looked up the value, and Mom agreed we could try to sell it for her.

Great!  Mom was ready to sell, we had a buyer and an agreed upon price.  The problem?  Mom had no idea where her title was.  I remembered that at the time, Mom had enough money to buy it direct from the dealer without having to have it financed.  Since it had been 11 years ago and she had moved twice, I was sure she wouldn’t be able to find it.

Last Saturday morning, we were going to the license branch to apply for a duplicate title.  I had called the BMV, and they said she just needed to come in with a photo ID and an old registration to help identify the vehicle.  We knew where her last registration renewal was, so I thought we were all set.

Mom was in her room getting ready, and I knocked on her door to see if she was about ready to go.  I told her that all she needs is the registration paper and her driver’s license.  “Driver’s license?” she asked.  She looked in her purse and it wasn’t there.  I’m not sure why, but Mom stopped using a wallet some time ago.  She usually keeps her license and debit card in a plastic zippered bag inside her purse.  Apparently, she had taken the bag out of her purse and moved it to a “safer” place.

We only had about an hour and a half before the license branch was ready to close.  I tried to help her find her license.  We checked all of her usual places she keeps important things.  It was really sad, like many dementia patients, Mom has some clutter hoarding tendencies.  Her room looks neat at first glance, but nearly every drawer, shelf, and box sitting around is stuffed with random papers and useless stuff.  Even her file cabinet that still has some folders was not organized in any kind of logical fashion.  After looking for awhile, we ran out of time to find it and go to the license branch that day.

Later, Mom finally found her license.  It was inside one of the containers she saved to put important things inside.  I took the day off on Tuesday so we could go and not be rushed.  We got to the license branch and the lady pulled up Mom’s VIN number.  She informed us that a bank  had a car lien on Mom’s car!  I explained that I believed Mom had purchased the car directly from the dealership.  She shrugged her shoulders and gave me a slip of paper with the bank’s name and address.  She said the bank would have to send a lien release before they could issue a duplicate title.  She also gave me their fax number so the bank could fax it directly to the license branch.

We went to the car so I could get on the internet to find the bank’s phone number (thank goodness for my iphone!).  I had never heard of this bank, but I was able to find an Indianapolis phone number for it.  When I called, the lady answered with a different bank name.  I told her I was looking for a different bank and asked if they had ever gone by that name.  She said they had, but it had been a long time ago.  I explained that we needed a lien release, and she gave me the number for the bank’s call center.

After waiting on hold awhile, I finally got a live person to help us.  Before she could talk to me, she had to get verbal permission from Mom.  She looked up Mom’s social security number in their system and found nothing.  She said it was so old it wasn’t in their computer system.  She said she would have to submit a request to their research department to go through old archives to try to find it.  She said it could take up to two weeks.

I realized we wouldn’t be able to resolve this in one day, so we went home.  I tried calling the car dealership to see if they had any records from when Mom bought the car.  Of course, the dealership had changed owners and they did not have records from that long ago either.

I’m hoping the bank will find something soon so we can take care of all this.  Mom keeps looking through her papers to see if she can anything from when she bought the car.  Maybe it was financed initially, and she paid it off quickly?  I’m really not sure.  I just know her car will continue to sit out there until we figure this out.  Hopefully we will figure it out before Mom changes her mind about selling it…

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 10:38 am and is filed under Alzheimer's Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.