@TranquilMind You are sorely mistaken if you think a POA only applies when someone is incompetent. The time to do a POA Is before the person becomes incompetent. I have a POA for my husband and parents. I can manage their retirement accounts , go to the bank and do all sorts of things even though they are all fully functional. I will handle my grandmother as I see fit when the time comes. You keep pressing the move issue as if I’m getting ready to make her move right now even though I have clearly stated that I’m only concerned about her driving right now. As long as her sister is living she will remain in her current location.
People make their elderly parents move against their wishes all the time, it’s not like it’s unheard of.
None of us know the woman like the OP does. Only they know the personality and full situation. Even if she is living with another older relative, if she starts falling and help is called to pick her up, after a few times they might be advised that an elder abuse report could be made.
A family member was diagnosed with parkensons. He and his family had always been apartment dwellers. Suburban rents are not cheap. Their only son died in his late 20’s and their only daughter never married but lived in an apartment close by until her company moved to the east coast and she went with it. His wife cared for him though his decline which included having to feed him (stated to show his health level). Once in awhile he would fall and his wife would call 911 to pick him up. Over time the falls increased to the point that a fireman took her aside and informed her that if they had to come one more time that they had no choice but to file an elder abuse charge. They couldn’t afford home help or most nursing homes. A county home was out of the question. It took quite some time and a waitlist but she finally got him into a VA home that was a couple of hours from her. Since he was in such a state of decline when he entered the home he only lasted about a year. I’m sure things would have been different if the daughter didn’t have to move half way across the county so he could have stayed at home with the daughter helping out. Even if we have the best intentions and try to follow the individuals wishes, that doesn’t mean that those intentions cannot be interpreted as elder abuse by an outside source.
You have a general POA to conduct their business with consent, it appears, from what you say, and perhaps you have a health care POA. This is fine and dandy and is revocable at any time. I was unclear that I was only referencing doing anything without consent.
What you do not have is the power to enforce it AGAINST the person’s will without a declaration of incompetence. And that is what you are talking about doing here, with all this “I will inform her she has to move.”
She doesn’t have to do a darn thing unless she chooses to do so, absent a medical finding of incompetence.
Be careful who you choose when the day comes, folks.
@GloriaVaughn You hit the nail on the head. Some are acting as if my grandma would be kicking and screaming whereas I don’t think she would mind moving if her sister passes. Now as long as her sister is living, I would have to pry her out of there. As you said no one knows her finances etc, better than us. What I do know is her friendship, transportation and heck most meals reside with her older sister. My grandma hardly cooks as she goes downstairs and eats with her sister. Once she is gone, she probably wouldn’t last long anyway because they are so close.
But is it likely that the older sister will die first? Yes, she is older, but it looks from what you write that she is in better physical and mental condition.
@partyof5 Have you done any research as to what is available in their area in the way of assistance? Just thinking ahead that if they are both still capable of living at home but need some help at times. There are home help aides that can come weekly to daily to help with showers, laundry etc. Meals on Wheels (some churches have stepped in and starting offing the a similar type of thing since the budget cuts). Some churches also have volunteers who will take people to doctor appointments or to pick up meds. Some areas have volunteers who just go for a weekly visit. Someone to talk to, play cards with and the volunteer is looking for any changes in the elderly person. The local area on aging is a good place to start. At least you could have options then if they needed some assistance.
@thumper1, it’s actually not a bad thing for an elderly driver to buy a new car. They have a lot of safety features that older cars don’t. My 2017 Subaru Outback beeps when you cross a line without using your turn signal, brakes for you if it detects and impending collision, has a backup camera and brakes if you’re about to hit something, and actually steers the car back into the lane if you start to swerve off the road. I find some of these features annoying, but for an older driver, they might mean being able to drive for a little longer.
I love those safety features. Because of my neck history and surgery, I don’t have full range of motion. It’s hard for me to look over my shoulder when changing lanes. My car will shriek at you if you show intentions of changing lanes when there is a car in that lane/in my blind spot. I also have the backup camera, and a feature that senses and alarms if you are sleepy and need to pull over.
@partyof5 these situations are so difficult. Ideally, a person will recognize when he or she shouldn’t be driving and voluntarily relinquish the car, but if this doesn’t happen, the relatives are put in a challenging predicament. OTOH, you don’t want to take away someone’s autonomy just because driving seems riskier than it used to be for them; on the other, if you can prevent a disaster, you want to try.
And after a horrible incident, like a crash through a storefront because the driver mistook the gas for the brake, people always wonder why the family let the elderly person keep driving. The right thing isn’t always obvious.
Along the lines of @GloriaVaughn’s suggestion to check out resources in their area, look to see if their is a community-based senior village in their general area.
@GloriaVaughn honestly they don’t need any assistance at this point. As I mentioned they won’t even hire anyone to shovel snow and we’ve begged them to do so. My grandmother is fully able to cook she has just gotten lazy so she goes downstairs and eats whatever her sister has cooked which makes my aunt aunt mad at times lol! Their homes are immaculate. Even when they were in their 70s and their mom was in the hospital they would kick the nurses out and clean the bed and change the sheets. They are tough old birds.
Interesting story, my great aunt fell on ice in front of the house , probably 8 years ago, and my grandma didn’t know she was outside. By the time they found her she was in bad shape. She had broken her leg and she had been outside in frigid temps. Well she wound up in ICU so we were called to say our goodbyes. The doc told us she would never breathe on her own so we should say our goodbyes. She was hooked up to a breathing machine and was basically comatose. No one wanted to make the call to disconnect it even though she had always told my grandma not to leave her hooked up to a machine. So after being there for 5 days, my grandma said she was going to let her go.
Well they all went to the hospital and a longtime neighbor went and asked if they could say a prayer because they were going to disconnect her the next day. The doc asked if he could stay in the room, and commented on how powerful the prayer was. My aunt woke up the next morning.
So she has poor circulation and they had to amputate all of her toes. She was still so weak they wouldn’t even put her to sleep to do it. So after all of that, the docs thought why even bother sending this 80 something year old woman to therapy to learn to walk, because she will never walk again after the bad break and having all of toes taken off. My aunt said I’m going to show them. So she has no toes, and wears special shoes with the hard bottom but she is still a firecracker.
Well that was about 8 years ago and she hasn’t missed a beat. They were both at my sons wedding last summer!! I call them the golden girls.
I can’t decide if those features would be good for my mom if she were still driving. She was not the most confident driver even in her youth and I could see a sudden noise from the camera or the lane change thing surprising her to the point where she slams on the brakes or overcorrects into the other lane or does something worse.
Which would underscore the need for her to stop driving I suppose.
@surfcity, I could see that. As it is, there is some feature that I think is meant to get you to pay attention, but all it does is scare you to death. The blind spot feature only works when you put your signal on, so when it beeps, you know why. When you are backing up and your back up feature beeps, you know why. But there is another feature that I THINK may indicate that you are in some sort of danger, but you have no idea why. It is a VERY loud beep, and you have no idea from which direction the danger is coming or what you need to do to avoid it. I hate it.
Those kind of features vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Some are better designed/give more feedback than others.
I do think, in general, many of these safety features are good - for drivers of all ages. That’s why you can often get reductions in insurance rates for having them. Heads up displays, backup cameras, driver assist, etc. are all good, IMO.
No matter how much my mom didn’t feel well or how hard some tasks got for her to do–she did them even though we always offered. She just said if she wasn’t doing them or didn’t have to she’d “just stop” and that would be it. She needed the physical exercise and the need to take care of some things herself.
You’re very lucky to have at least two so very independent souls in your family.
It seems to me that we should distinguish between the case when a senior is endangering themselves, and the case when they’re endangering others.
I understand the rationale that a senior ought to be able to, for example, choose to live independently, knowing that they risk having a fall and being unable to access help. Their children might feel happier if the parent did not take those risks, but the senior might value their independence over their own safety. Adults should be allowed to take risks with their own health, if they take those risks knowingly.
The calculation changes in the case of driving, because it’s other people’s safety that is at risk. A senior might value her own independence over the safety of the people she will kill or injure with her unsafe driving, but she does not get to make that tradeoff. If she is unsafe, she should not be driving, no matter how much she wants to drive, how infrequently she drives and how unpleasant it is for her not to drive.
Take away the keys of drivers that are manifestly unsafe. Do it.
Our state does not have a program for requiring aging drivers to be retested via the road test. The other day, we saw a driver driver OVER the curb at the shopping center and cane fairly close to hitting several folks who were standing there. He got out and acted like it was no big deal, though it alarmed many of us.
I later asked someone who works for one of our city council members if there is any way to get folks like that re-tested and he said nope! I think it’s because so many of our elected officials are themselves very old and wouldn’t want to be tmretested themselves, plus SRs vote!
My parents are very hard to deal with. My father is 87 and should not be driving. He even admits he probably should not be driving, but then justifies it by saying he only drives during the day, locally and not in rain.
He is having increasing difficulty. He got “lost” one block from their condo recently - my mother directed him home. He never drives alone, she is always with him, but she has not driven in decades and is also disoriented at times.
Today he scraped the back right of the car on the post next to his parking space while backing out - he is clearly having trouble backing out of his space. Their strategy is that my mother - 4’9" and partially blind - is supposed to look to the right and tell him it is clear to back out. Horrifying.
I printed out a driving self-assessment to go over with him. In my view, he would answer Yes to many of the questions. One or more Yes responses means you may be an unsafe driver.
Any other ideas?
My parents are fortunate in that they have plenty of money. I already have a driver arranged for them. He takes them out when my father is not feeling able to drive - lengthy medical appts and such. He is having Mohs surgery next week and has agreed to use the driver for that at least. Between the driver and my help as needed, they can manage without the car. Now I just have to convince them. My mother is a big part of the problem. She lives in a world of denial and refuses to see anything distasteful. She just tells me everything is fine and changes the subject.
I want to resolve this now before something awful happens.
