How pedantic are banks?

Unlikely.

Now you are being even more silly than you usually are.

Nope. Usually when someone is old, it's likely that all their relatives are younger than them. It's basic Maths.

Unconscious has a simple meaning, it means you passed out. Subconscious always means your autonomic half of your brain. Why use an ambiguous term?

It might be likely but likely is not the same as this being true for everyone. Do you really not know any one without close relatives who can oversee their day-to-day financial dealings?

I know of a number of the old folk have lost their partners and are childless or have children who do not keep in touch or who live abroad include one I used to help with shopping until he died.

A friend of mine also used to buy shopping and pay the bills for a very elderly neighbour, until the day he found her dead on the floor when he went round to take her food order. Turned out she did have a son living somewhere in the midlands who turned up for the funeral but my friend had never heard of his existence before then.

I even have a work colleague in her 50s who is a widow and who's only close relatives are her elderly mother and a childless brother who has lived on another continent for the last 25 years. There are a couple of

So, as I said, stop being silly.

That is only one meaning of the word. I suggest you refer to a dictionary:

I guess you know some weird estranged families, and the people I know are more civilised, and look after their relatives.

I guess you just can't take the silly out of some folk.

In message , Flop writes

Not particularly unusual, I believe.