My 83-year-old mother had a will drawn up. The completed will was brought to her to sign. An additional durable power of attorney was included on a separate form. My mother has told me she absolutely does not want any power of attorney. My older sister is listed as the agent on the durable power of attorney. I told my mother to not notarize the durable power of attorney and destroy it. But will she have to revoke the durable power of attorney or is it null and void if it is not notarized?
She has every right to take it round to the responsible attorney's office, rip it into tiny pieces and set fire to it on his desk. Cheek of it! And he'd better not charge her for it, either.
She hasn't signed it, it's not valid, it's waste paper.
(whatever the truth, having a POA in place is a necessary thing and you should encourage her to have one)
Your mom may be fine now, but you never know what can happen. My mother also resisted POA. I finally got it but by then she was already having dementia issues. I can't imagine how I could have helped her without it.
If she didn't sign the document; its not valid. Usually you can revoke a POA at any time in writing.
Ideally, DPOA should be the main person doing the caregiving. It must be frustrating to be the one identifying an immediate need but then having to go to someone else for any action to be taken. This goes from using moms own money to buy her Depends all the way to making the call on life support.
As mentioned above, if you miss the window of legal opportunity to get DPOA and then some tough decisions need to be made - the next route is guardianship which is both expensive and time consuming - especially compared to the process to obtain DPOA.
I also was lucky in that my mom wanting nothing to do with handling the administrative aspects of her life - my dad had always taken care of that - and mom was more than happy to give me the legal authority to act on her behalf. The alternative would have been to drag my mother to the bank or to the store on a weekly basis - having to make endless trips to her IL to get things signed, etc. Things were hard enough as it was without that.
So before you dismiss the subject as a whole - with your mother - have the conversion with her why it would be smart to have a DPOA- and who would be the best person for the job.