Managing someone else’s money

Millions of Americans manage money or property for a loved one who’s unable to pay bills or make financial decisions. To help financial caregivers, we’ve released easy-to-understand guides.

About the guides

We created guides tailored to the needs of people in four different fiduciary capacities:

Each guide contains information on the fiduciary’s responsibilities and tips on how to spot financial exploitation and avoid scams. Also, each guide includes a “Where to go for help” section with a listing of relevant agencies and service providers.

The guides are not intended to provide legal advice or serve as a substitute for your own legal counsel.

State-specific guides

Because people’s powers and duties as a fiduciary vary from state to state, we also created six sets of state-specific Managing Someone Else’s Money guides. These state guides provide information about the state’s unique laws and practices, as well as state-specific resources (see states listed below).

To make it easy for legal and aging experts in other states to adapt the guides for their states, we developed a set of tips  and templates for creating state-specific versions. The tips summarize what we learned by collaborating with lawyers and other professionals to produce several state-specific versions. Below you'll find a Microsoft Word template for each type of guide.

Order or download the guides

For each guide, you can:

Power of attorney

This guide is for people who have been named in a power of attorney to make decisions about money and property for someone else. You can also order these in bulk at GPO.gov  or download tips on adapting the guide  for your state.

Description
Actions

Court-appointed guardians

This guide is for those who have been appointed by a court to be guardians of property or conservators, giving them the duty and the power to make financial decisions on someone’s behalf. You can also order these in bulk at GPO.gov  or download tips on adapting the guide  for your state.

Description
Actions
  • Help for court-appointed guardians of property and conservators
  • Ayuda para los guardianes o tutores de propiedades nombrados por el tribunal
  • Help for court-appointed guardians of the property in Florida
  • Help for court-appointed guardians of the property in Georgia
  • Help for court-appointed guardians of the estate in Illinois
  • Help for court-appointed conservators in Oregon
  • Help for court-appointed conservators in Virginia
  • Court-appointed guardians Microsoft Word template

Trustees

This guide is for those who have been named as trustees under revocable living trusts. In these cases, ownership of some or all money and property has been transferred to a trust and, as a result, the person named as a trustee has the power to make decisions about what is in the trust. You can also order these in bulk at GPO.gov  or download tips on adapting the guide  for your state.

Description
Actions

Government fiduciaries

This guide is for those who have been appointed by a government agency to manage income benefits, such as Social Security or Veterans Affairs benefit checks, for someone. You can also order these in bulk at GPO.gov  or download tips on adapting the guide  for your state.

Description
Actions
  • Help for representative payees and VA fiduciaries
  • Ayuda para los representantes de beneficiarios y fiduciarios del VA
  • Help for representative payees and VA fiduciaries in Florida
  • Help for representative payees and VA fiduciaries in Georgia
  • Help for representative payees and VA fiduciaries in Illinois
  • Help for representative payees and VA fiduciaries in Oregon
  • Help for representative payees and VA fiduciaries in Virginia
  • Government fiduciaries Word template