← Return to Dealing with a Spouse with a “Mild Cognitive Impairment”

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@alwayda

I was in the same boat with the taxes and this is how I worked around it. I told my husband that he needed to have the taxes done and filed by a date certain….and if he missed that date, I was going to make an appointment with HR Block. He agreed.

Well, 3 weeks went by and he had made NO efforts to do them. So I told him, we’re getting close to the deadline. I am going to go on-line to make an appointment with HR Block “just in case.”He agreed. HR Block assigned us a Tax Advisor and we were encouraged to start uploading documents in advance of our appointment….but had still not committed to having HR Block prepare them. And then our Tax Advisor said, “I have everything I need. Can I start preparing your returns.” At this point, I did NOT consult my husband and simply said to the Tax Advisor, “Go ahead.” I then waited until my husband was in a good mood and relaxed later in the evening and said “Hey! HR Block said that they have everything that they need from us and can prepare the return and we can just review and sign it at our scheduled appointment. It seems so easy so I just told him to go ahead,” And my husband agreed!

I actually think that my husband knew that he would have trouble preparing our tax returns but was too proud to admit it….and I gave him an easy way to hand off that responsibility to someone else. Just a suggestion to see if it can work for you,

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Replies to "I was in the same boat with the taxes and this is how I worked around..."

Many thanks for sharing. Please give me details of how to reach & make appointment with HR Block for my Taxes? We live in Baltimore. Please help as soon as you can. Thanks, ksl.

Hi @alwayda, in 2018 my husband kept putting off doing our taxes. I knew something was amiss, but he had not then been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.
I filed for an extension with the IRS, paid what I thought we would owe, and purchased H&R Block software to try to do the taxes myself. Since we had some foreign source income, it was too difficult for me, and I wound up taking them to H&R Block in town.
We were assigned to a senior consultant who knows her stuff (that's important), and I've been taking them there ever since. I tried AARP one year, but they didn't have anyone certified in something we needed so I wound up taking them back to Block.
My husband just avoided doing them, and was relieved when he didn't have to.
H&R Block is going the route of more and more automated, electronic filing, etc. so sometimes the personal touch is missing. However now we get side by side comparisons of our taxes each year.
They always try to sell "Peace of Mind" for $50, a kind of insurance policy for if you ever get audited, but I don't go for that as it's redundant with the guarantees that come with their tax preparation.