I'm caring for my 96 year old mother.
Her mind is still sound. She does have mobility issues and her hearing and sight are starting to fail. I'm caring for her in her home and I had a lawyer put the house in my name upon her death. In addition my name is on both her savings account and checking account. She has two money market accounts that are to be divided equally between myself and my two brothers and one sister. She no longer drives and I had her car signed over to me. Just about all her bills are automatically paid out of her checking account. I pay the ones that arent.
I would say the house is valued at about 90k and between the checking, savings, and money market accounts she has about $200k.
The majority of her cash is in the savings account which has my name on the account. My brothers. sister. and I have a close relationship and its my intention to share all the resources that are left after she dies. My share should be somewhat larger than the others simply from the fact I'm saving quite a lot of her money from going to a rest home. But I think that can all be worked out. There may not be all that much to divi up if she has to eventually go to an assisted care facility. The savings account would be used for that possibility.
My question is should she have a will and should I get a power of attorney?
It sounds like if worse came to worst and she had to go into some kind of long term care facility she would have resources to be private pay. That is awesome. Let's hope it doesn't come to this, but if it did, which resources would be used first?
Are your sibs all cool with this uneven distribution of the inheritance? If not, work with the lawyer to make sure everything is perfectly clear with no room for contesting mother's intentions.