How can we help Mom? She has no access to her money without a penalty .

She has dementia and was talked into buying an annuity at aged 90. Mom now lives safely in a Memory Care facility, however, a year ago she was still insisting on living in her home with no outside assistance. Her dementia has progressed over the past 4 years or so, from forgetfulness and mean spiritedness to loss of her executive functionability and serious safety concerns. Mom has historically accused all of us of stealing her knic-knacks, clothes, dish pans, silly stuff. Big stuff, not so much. Complete strangers have been really robbing her through unsavory schemes and she sees nothing wrong. With us, old lamp shades that have virtually disintegrated with age, Mom has accused us of sneaking into her home and shredding while she slept. She has seen helicopters flying overhead, reportedly sprinkling pine needles onto her yard. Neighbors digging up her bushes in the middle of the night. She has had a difficult time, worst of all has made many poor financial decisions along the way. Until recently, though, she has kept her affairs close to the vest and has refused our help and intervention. As her dementia progressed, we have been able to step in and reverse most of her poor money decisions and have her ill spent money returned to her. Unfortunately though, last November, she was solicited by an insurance salesman to partially surrender an annuity she had purchased in 2011 to secure herself into another annuity that promised a 1% better interest rate for the first year she had it. She is unable to cash out until she turns 101. The original annuity held most all of her available funds, but its balance was significant enough that after four years she would have had liquid funds available from interest earned that would have enabled her to live comfortably, to transition into assisted living. Also, it was around that time, end of year, 2015 that Mom's dementia had progressed to the point that she did not even remember having made this transaction. It was not until a few months later that she called my husband, her son, and told him she was missing a large sum of money. We lived 200 miles away from her at the time (she is since relocated to within 10 miles of our home) and started making inquiries and went to her home to see what we could find. My husband called Mom's bank, and they were able to confirm the deposit and subsequent check that Mom wrote to the new insurance company for the new annuity. Mom had no recollection of this event. When we explained what had happened to her, she acted as though nothing had happened, and that if it really had, that it was no big deal. We found the annuity contracts, scoured them for ways to help her get out from under either one of both of them, only to learn she did not sign a waiver that would entitle her to be released from the annuities should she need the funds for care. She opened her books to us to review and we learned she was making late payments on credit card purchases for unnecessary, ridiculous items and writing checks willy nilly to every Tom Dick or Harry who asked her for a contribution. Her check book made no sense, and was filled with scrawl and scribble, it was clear she had lost her ability to handle this part of her life. It was at that time that she did acknowledge she should no longer be handling her finances and agreed to have us start paying her bills. We had her mail forwarded to our home and gained access to her checking accounts (My husband is DPOA, thank God). We also got her to agree to home health care, figuring their presence would afford her some protection and provide care that she needed. We made the mistake, though, of leaving her with checks and a credit card at the time, figuring that since we were receiving her mail and handling her money, we could put a stop to any shenanigans. We were wrong. She got scammed by a home repair person (who has been caught and is facing felony charges but has no money to pay Mom back) about a month later. Fortunately, the home health aide alerted us to this occurrence, or he would probably have not been caught. After this ordeal, we explained to Mom that too many bad people prayed on vulnerable like herself. She agreed that it was time to move closer to us in a protected community. We now have her safe, but she has funds locked up in these annuities and needs that money to help pay for her care. She is in a pickle. We contacted the state insurance commission for assistance with getting her investment money back, but they saw nothing wrong with the annuity being sold to Mom. In reviewing the sales papers, Mom did not complete the financial statement, that it was actually completed by the agent. The only writing on the application in Mom's hand, is her signature. She truly had no idea what she was purchasing. She thinks an annuity is just an account that she can take her money from whenever she wants or needs it! She needs it now, but it is trapped. We do not know if we should take the penalty (which is approximately 18% of the value) to free up funds, or what. Help.