I think you are both right. @interested3 is correct, but in real life, people (both the POA and the institution accepting the POA) use it in the gray area. Like, if someone with dementia doesn’t want to go into assisted living, but is persuaded to “try it for a few weeks” and then says they want to leave . . . As a practical matter the facility defers to the POA even if there isn’t guardianship. This was exactly the case with my mother, who even got the NY Health Dept to launch an investigation claiming she was improperly held. The Health Dept came out and did in person interviews of her, the facility director, reviewed records etc. And found she was properly placed, and getting good care.
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In our experience, a power of attorney was not sufficient. The person had the ability to purchase a car, engage a law firm, refuse to let people enter their house, get discharged from hospital etc. We could shame most people into not accepting their wishes (and a threat that we would charge them with taking advantage of an elderly person often worked), but could not stop them from making decisions without guardianship.
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In our case the doctor filled out a form to invoke the proxy and P of A, which said that I acted for my mother. I"ll dig up the form. I was able to give gifts from her trust, decline meds, and the facility required me to consent to vaccines, not her. I spoke with her financial managers, and she didn’t. I was also on her credit card and Medicare without her consent. She did put me on her bank account but they would have accepted the invoked P of A.
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Yes, the power of attorney and health care proxy/instructions give you the power to act on her behalf unless she revokes the power of attorney/health care proxy (which you could challenge that she was not competent to do so) but it does not give you the right to stop her from acting on her own. As someone else said, you can often finesse the situation, but there is no legal way to stop her form taking action other than guardianship. We had to go to probate court to stop my mother from discharging herself from the hospital even though everyone knew that she was not competent to make that decision but they would not hold her against her will unless we were willing to have a hearing to determine her competency.
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Not going to debate but that is not what my experience was. My mother had no power to revoke P of A once it was invoked. I was told this avoided needing to go to court, since the P of A was done while she was still competent. MD invoked due to dementia , the from said she was no longer competent, and I could act not only on her behalf but in her place. Maybe it varies from state to state. Last post so as to align with TOS.
But you are talking about different scenarios. @interested3 is correct.
A good reason why anyone caring for an elderly person should consult a lawyer to understand what powers they have, or don’t have.
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I skim/revisit this thread off and on so I’m not sure if this has been shared before:
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He does get social security payments - enough to pay the lawyer, his cell phone bill, etc. (I call him broke because he has no assets at this point).
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SIL did get liquid form of meds so that’s covered.
Upon our arrival, mom perked up but then got pretty quiet and mumbly. My sibs are worried about her lack of eating. I fixed her half of a salami sandwich with chips and she ate all that and later an Ensure and some banana muffin. That seemed like plenty to me. Mom remarked that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, which was correct. I also took her for a quick walk in her wheelchair, which def picked her up. They’ve been putting her to bed at 7, but at 7:15 she was still awake and watching baseball with me. I did put her to bed at 7:45, because I want to keep close to their routine.
Normally, I wake her up at 8 a.m. to get her to use the bedside potty and to give her her morning meds. I asked her whether she wanted to get up to go to the bathroom this morning and she said yes, but she wouldn’t help me get up at all. She wanted to keep sleeping. She was still dry so I gave her the meds that I could get in her and let her go back to sleep. I’ll get her up at 11 for breakfast and try again.
I’m the strongest of the three women taking care of her, and I can see why things aren’t getting done. They are worn out. I am tired of trying to get them to hire help. I hope they reach that realization soon.
I’ll be curious to see how she eats today, as in using her utensil at breakfast. I could see last night how she was trouble just holding her sandwich. The nurse a week ago thought that she might have had a stroke, but then somehow that was ruled out. I don’t know, man. That left side sure looked weak, but, thankfully, she’s right handed. She is just moving so slowly doing things such as reaching for a potato chip, and she’s dropping then almost as much as she gets them to her mouth.
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It is a little different in each state for POA. I ended up having POA, kicked Mom off as trustee for her trust for dementia (per trust set up), AND went to court to get guardianship. She cooperated with all of them, telling the court that she wanted me to take care of her when she wasn’t able, she thought she was still able, but I’d be her go to when she wasn’t. Then they asked her what day, her mother’s name, and she failed so I got the guardianship without major hassle. I had to do scorched earth because she had a handyman that had wormed his way in and taken advantage of her much worse than we realized. He was working hard to get her to sign over her house to him so he could live there and take care of her. Scary times.
… Oh and don’t forget the banks do not accept many POA’s but want their own . I dragged my poor demented Mom into the bank and had her sign some form which she had no idea what was and they knew she didn’t know (but they knew her, small town!) and so got it done. Insane though.
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There was reference to a Nerd Wallet article on another CC thread about how little some people have for retirement savings, but this gives an idea of how there are a lot of people who are old and broke. I found a similar article:
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Here is the article. It speaks about net worth, but this is right on with retirement savings. Shows how little many/most have saved.
For many, one has to not trust people who will take advantage! Good think you figured the handyman out (I believe in the past you indicated your DH was the one who said watch out for him) and got that situation under control. Yikes!
@SOSConcern yes you have a good memory. This was a while ago.
It was really bad, I don’t think I mentioned that once when my brother went to do maintenance there, the handyman threw rocks at him and told him it was his place. They got into a fist fight and the cops were called. Before that, my brother was not as hostile to the creep as I was. Changed his tune then though! 
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A year and a half ago when my Dad had his crisis and had be moved to assisted living, I went down to his bank with my generic financial POA and tried to get my name on his account there (it is not his individual account, it is the trust) so that I could pay his bills. They told me that they could not do that because the trust specifically stated that Dad was the sole trustee and I would have to get Dad to change the trust and name me as a co-trustee. The POA was not sufficient. If he would not do that, I would have to get Dad declared incompetent by two doctors (also a stipulation of the trust). Dad was unwilling to make me a co-trustee and if he’s not willing, I have to get him declared incompetent. The POA that he gave me as an individual will not break the trust. With the brokerage account (a different institution), they did allow us to sign their own internal POA docs which Dad did have to sign and notarize (this was in August after he got out of the hospital and was in rehab). The brokerage firm was also not willing to use my generic financial POA drafted by the lawyer. We have encountered a couple of situations where the POA has not been useful/honored. I do have electronic access to Dad’s trust account and I have set up autopay and autodeposit in it and double authentication with my contact info, but it the bank knew I was doing this, they’d put a stop to it. I just hope they don’t find out.
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As I wrote before, the doctor filled out a form saying my mother was not competent, I was not a trustee of her trust. A P of A that was not invoked, was not sufficient.
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It’s important to be sure to run the POA docs through wherever the assets are held when everyone is working together so the POA will be effective when needed. Each company can have differing requirements, according to my bro who is the bsnk’d atty.
Local sibling and mom decided it would be good if he were on her bank account, so he could see if she had done things correctly for bills, etc. To their surprise, after she added him to her account, the IRS/bank came around to say he needed to pay tax on this new income. So they tried to remove him, and the bank then said they couldn’t do that.
In the end, we opened another bank account, drained the first one, and now she uses the second one only. I don’t know why banks make everything so complicated; she also had to have several fancy notary stamps to change the name on Dad’s investments to hers (Note to every couple – do it in both names!)
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The lengths creeps will go to try to steal! Throwing rocks and fist fight, wow. That sure did push your brother ‘over the limit’ for sure!
Wow—I guess the handyman thought family would be as easy to fob off as the elder. Spooky!