Mom Has Dementia. I Found Her Stock Certificates. Now What?

The answer depends a bit on what kind of paper you found.

Stock certificates typically fall into one of two categories:

• Certificates from a company still actively traded (a name you’d recognize, like an old blue-chip stock)
• Certificates from a company that’s been acquired, merged, renamed, or gone private (much more common with older paper certificates)

Check the company name and date on the certificate. If the company doesn’t exist under that name anymore, it may have merged into or been renamed as something else, which changes whom you need to contact.

Whom to contact

1. The company’s stock transfer agent. This is usually the fastest path. Every publicly traded company uses a transfer agent (common ones include Computershare, Equiniti/EQ Shareowner Services, and Broadridge) to maintain shareholder records. A quick search for “[Company Name] transfer agent” usually turns up the right one. They can tell you whether the shares are still active, what they’re worth, and how to process them.
    
2. The issuing company’s investor relations department, if you can’t find a transfer agent. They can point you to the right one, especially for older or renamed companies.
    
3. A brokerage firm, if you’d rather not deal with the transfer agent directly. Firms like Fidelity, Schwab, or Vanguard can often help deposit physical certificates into an account and handle the research on your behalf, sometimes for a small fee.
    
4. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)’s or your state’s unclaimed property office, if the certificate turns out to be for a defunct company or one you can’t trace. Old securities sometimes end up escheated (turned over) to a state.

The Bigger Issue: Do You Have Authority to Act on These?

This is the part worth pausing on. Whomever you contact — the transfer agent or a brokerage — is going to ask who is authorized to act on your mother’s behalf, since these are her assets, not yours. Before you get anywhere with the shares themselves, you’ll need to establish that authority.

• If a valid, properly executed power of attorney (POA) exists naming you (or someone else) as agent, that person can typically act (e.g., contacting the transfer agent, transferring the shares into a brokerage account, or selling them, depending on the POA’s specific powers around securities and financial accounts).
• If no POA exists, or it doesn’t clearly cover this kind of asset, and your mother currently lacks the capacity to sign documents herself due to her dementia, you may need to petition the court for conservatorship or guardianship over her finances before anyone can act on these certificates.
• Transfer agents and brokerages will typically require certified copies of the POA (or letters of conservatorship) plus a certified death certificate if this comes up after she’s passed, so it’s worth gathering that paperwork early — it tends to be the slowest part of the process.

Start with the transfer agent (or the brokerage route, if you’d rather have help) to figure out what the shares are actually worth and whether the company still exists. However, before anything can move, confirm who legally has authority to act for your mother. If there’s no valid POA covering this, that’s worth resolving with an elder law attorney sooner rather than later, since dementia can complicate — or eliminate — her ability to sign off on it herself down the road.