My brother has POA. Can my mother with dementia remove him from taking care of her finances?
My brother was given Durable POA for my mother who has failing dementia. Can my mother keep removing him off and on when ever she feels like it? She does this to be mean and constantly accuses him of stealing her dishes, money and other personal items. This is the Good son. My other brother come to find that before his death ( due to drug and alcohol abuse in Dec of 2016) $89k was discovered missing from our mother's account when my Good brother was named POA in January of 2017. She's got it all wrong. Our mother added my first brother T to her check book then found out she had money missing but did nothing about it. He was the golden child. Anyway it's so upsetting that not only has she dementia, she has NPD. Always had even growing up she was a very mean and physically abusive. Now my Mother acusses my other brother of stealing her money. He has copies and receipts of every transaction he has helped her with since he became her POA. The reason he was made her POA was because she could not keep up with her finances paying bills and stuff writing checks out of an old account that had no money in it and we were getting phone calls from companies saying that the checks had bounced. Any suggestions on what can be done? She is going to mess herself up financially and then someone's going to have to come in and fix things again. Her lawyer can't doing anything about her removing him from her bank accounts. What do we do now?
It sounds like your Mom is in a stage of dementia where some patients make up stories and where they become paranoid about finances and people stealing things from them. This is normal. Just go with the flow until this stage eventually disappears, and another stage appears. This is a tough journey not only for your Mom but for everyone around her.
Here's an excellent article that I found here on Aging Care regarding such an issue with story telling. https://www.agingcare.com/articles/how-to-handle-alzheimers-disease-lying-144204.htm
Understand sometimes banks make mistakes. Not every teller knows all the intricacies of law. I was barred from my mother's trust upon her death by multiple tellers - even though I was the trustee of the trust. One of the advantages of a trust is that there is no freezeing of the account and it does not have to go through probate. I called my attorney, who called the bank's attorney, and I was given access to the account. You may want to ask the attorney to get involved in this way.
Finally, understand that she is not just being mean. This is part of the disease. She honestly believes things that you know to be untrue. As hard as it may be, try to find compassion for her. In her world things no longer make sense, her loved ones are stealing from her and people are treating her like she is incompetent! How would you respond if you woke up one day and this was the world you lived in? This is their reality. My Aunt (in nursing home) was in a remarkably good mood one day when her daughter took her out for a drive and lunch. When they returned to the NH my cousin commented on her good mood. My Aunt's reply? "Well, you would be in a good mood too if they cancelled your execution". Have empathy. They live in an alternate world and sometimes it's a really scary one, and we don't even know it.
There is no point in trying to convince Mother of what really happened to the missing money. As ff says this kind of paranoia is part of dementia. There is no reasoning with it. Given your mother's underlying mental illness you probably couldn't convince her even if she didn't have dementia.
If Mother was able to put on a good act and get the POA changed, who would she name instead of your brother? What would happen if she removed him and did not name anyone? What is the worst case scenario here?
Again, hugs to you and your brother. Here you are doing your best for a parent who abused you, and you are getting all this grief.
Having said that, there have been threads on here about some banks refusing to acknowledge POAs unless it's done their way or on their form.
Recently my sister called to tell me that a bank account she and I were co owners of had been frozen. The reason was from no activity on the account. It's a small account of a few thousand dollars we were on along with our late mother. The bank had recently merged with a another much larger bank. New rules it seems. We write a couple of checks on it per year to pay for cemetery cleaning and a family reunion. We want to use the money to benefit our collective families. My mother probably had that account for 60+ years. We've been on it probably 15 years. Town population 6,000.
So it pays to check out any banks operational procedures even though
we think we know them already. I've added that to my annual review of legal documents.
Good that your brother is willing to put up with moms "confusion" and that he has your support. Hopefully it will work out.