Dad dumped in nursing home in Colorado by his stepson. My dads wife dies recently and because of his memory deficits, stepson put him in there. he is ambulatory and just needs cueing per staff. I am a RN with 15 NH experience. I live Pennsylvania and so does all of my dads family. there is no family out there for my dad. The stepson in the legal POA and now he want guardianship. there must be an underlying motive for him to gain something since I am the biological son and he is not.
I have a feeling from what you describe that the step-son made a good decision. There comes a time with dementia that family aren't able to handle it at home anymore. Your father probably reached that time in his life. If the step-son is doing a good job, I would throw my support in behind him and visit whenever it is possible. Does your father still know you? I hope so.
Good thoughts for you and your family. Dementia is always hard to know exactly what to do. We just do the best we can. Big hugs.
It is admirable that you want to provide care for your father and are concerned for his long term care and think his family in PA will help provide it.
Devil's Advocate here for Guardianship hearing with somewhat long post:
Your father and his wife live in Colorado near the stepson, not in PA. The relationship is a good one, as your father gave legal POA to stepson, not to you or any of the family in PA. Your stepmother died in CO. Your father's stepson as his POA places your father in Nursing Home: an at-risk dementia patient that doesn't have a primary caregiver living at home any more to provide one-on-one care which includes behavior management like cueing. Unless the stepson was living with them, your father would be staying at home alone after the death of his wife. As a dementia patient, the confusion, anxiety and grief must be overwhelming, not to mention any other medical events that an elder person may have. Even with paid caregivers for one-on-one care around the clock which would cost your father many thousands of dollars per month that he may not have and that Medicare will NOT pay 24/7, someone has to manage that household as well as their own, coordinate the windup of estate (if any) for stepmother, and determine care for your father. Your father may be on Medicaid in CO, if so it won't transfer directly to PA. Father may have a managed Medicare plan in CO that won't easily transfer – at the very least, his doctors, caregivers, and any social circle are in CO. A judge will look at who's been there in CO and managing day-to-day events for your father and who your father trusted enough to make his legal POA. Are you prepared to provide 24/7 care in PA? If the guardianship is acrimonious enough, you may both lose your father's care to a state-appointed guardian. And nobody wants that, because father will still be in CO. And paying whatever he does have in assets to guardian and nursing home/memory care anyway. A professional mediator can help or the social worker at the nursing home if your stepbrother and you cannot come to some agreement about your father's care by yourselves. If your father's welfare is your major concern, don't make a legal drama further deplete assets and traumatize an already fragile dementia patient. If you think father is being exploited, gather your own evidence of nursing home care where he is, financial situation of your father, and his medical conditions. You may find that stepbrother actually took a huge burden of care on himself that you are not fully prepared to take on. Would it be better to be in nursing home in PA? Would family there visit your father? Don't count on it.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this plan on the face of it. But.
Your question, seeking research to back up your argument, suggests that you are making a great many assumptions when it comes to deciding on where your father's best interests lie. Any court awarding guardianship is going to be looking at the whole picture and asking searching questions. Such as:
How long was your father's second marriage?
How long has he been living in Colorado?
What is his relationship like with his stepson?
Family aside, what kind of social network has he built up in his current location?
How long has the stepson been acting with POA for your father, and how well has he managed this job?
How good is the facility where your father has been placed?
How well would your father cope with relocation?
What plan is there to meet his long term care needs?
So that, all in all, you are going to have to have extremely convincing answers ready unless your stepbrother has been demonstrably falling down on the job.
My guess would be that your stepbrother is applying for guardianship because he doesn't want your father uprooted at this stage by his biological family and he wants to make sure you can't do that. Biological does not always equate to more familiar, especially not to a man whose memory deficits mean that continuity is essential to promoting his welfare.
There could be financial considerations too, of course, I wouldn't know. But going by what you've described, I don't think it's a fair or reasonable assumption that they're going to be your stepbrother's only or main motive.
And in terms of research, for every resource you find showing that lack of interaction (family don't come into it, it's who your father knows best that's the question) escalates dementia, your stepbrother would probably find ten to prove that the disruption and dislocation of such a major move could be catastrophic.