Our mother is diagnosed with Alzheimers. She lives at home with our stepdad who is 88 and still lucid, but not willing or able to provide the care for mom. How do we get POA? Can we ask him for it? Does our mom have to go to a lawyer and assign her son? He's a lawyer and pretty controlling, sometime angry and abusive of mom.
At least in my state, POA at the first two levels only gives the POA appointee the legal right to make decisions also for a person. That person still has a voice in a decision. With guardianship, the person no longer has a voice in decisions. For this, you have to go to court to legally establish incompetence on the person for whom the guardian is being appointed.
He informed me that such matters do have to go to court (probate court) here when there is a dispute over guardianship.
However, whoever is acting on behalf of your mother should be respecting her decisions unless they have a guardianship over her.
Otherwise, this is elder abuse. I am having to deal with this issue myself since I do not have POA for my mother and she has a similar situation going on.
Unfortunately, these cases rarely get to court before an elder dies. It can take up to 5 years to resolve these cases.
Best of luck. I just pray for protection for my mother. And I will use the lawyer's advice (and the lack of legal knowledge of my mother's current POA) to try to "sneak" her out of her situation when the opportunity arises.
Take your Mother to an appointment without your stepdad. Stop by your bank and have her sign the papers. After this ,you should have a bit of power for her health decisions. Do what needs to be done. You are dealing with people who you might have to do a bit of underhanded ways but in the long run,you will have some peace of mind.
I thought my bank Notary would not let Mom sign since she was ill but she said she could only notarize things without question. Call your bank and ask before you head there.