My mother is 90 and in an assisted living facility. She is mentally competent.
However, my brother is her financial POA. Which is all good with me. However, he has taken my mothers furniture, (antiques, sentimental items) an placed them in a storage unit in preparing to sell her property. That is fine, however, my mother labeled specific items/furniture with our names during discussions over the last few years and what each individual requested. I want to obtain my furniture, and my brother will not inform me of the location or assist me to retrieve my furniture. Is he allowed to do this? He is "financial POA'. Trying not to involve my Mom, she "is" 90!
I think it would help if you raised the issue directly with him so there's no confusion or misunderstanding of his intent.
A friend of mine has just had a traumatic falling-out with her older brother over exactly this kind of labelled items issue, and she's very, very sore about it. Be careful.
Best case scenario: in the fullness of time, the storage unit will be attended to, your brother will keep you informed about when it's happening, and you will be able to turn up with a suitable vehicle for taking your labelled items away.
Um. I wouldn't set my heart too fixedly on that if I were you.
Worst case scenario: for the sake of simplicity, he sells everything as a job lot and divides the proceeds. How upset would you be if that were to happen, can you say?
If things haven't already got out of hand, the best thing is to assure your brother of your being happy to co-operate but ask him as a courtesy to give you reasonable notice when he plans to empty the storage unit. It may well be that this will not be until after your mother has passed away, and there are good reasons why not: she may need the cash value, for example, or at least it may need to be accounted for.
I assume there's no urgency about it from your point of view?
Be lucky the items are in storage, and not hauled away. I was to a point where I just wanted to throw up my hands and say bulldoze everything, I was so tired. I had to go through every piece of paper in the filing cabinets and desks, I am still doing that, but all that is in bins in my house.
Maybe your brother is waiting until Mom passes. It's good that your Mom indicated what items will go to whom, hopefully it was done in writing, and attached to the Will?
Give your brother some breathing room, this process of emptying the house and selling is really exhausting.