Mother is 69 years old and has to retire because of her Alzheimer's. She is starting to forget bills or lose them so they get paid late. I am the oldest of 3 sister's. My middle sis is no help. So it is just me and youngest sis. My Mother's baby brother and his wife lives with her to help out and have for 4 years now. But we need to take some legal issues to help with the paying of the bills and to know what is going on medically. She is forgetting to go to her appointments and I don't believe she is taking her medications correctly. Any suggestions or advice?
1. Get a Durable Power of Attorney - Banks, Doctors, Pharmacies, Insurance agencies, medical and life will not speak with anyone else without. You have to send to them.
2. At Bank - with POA- add your name(s) to her accounts, then sign up for online banking with each financial institution she gets bills from. It is a breeze to take care of her payments.
3. Add your name (s) as beneficiaries to all life insurance policies, also her assets with banks/investment firms.
4. We have also arranged funeral arrangements in advance & paid too.
It took a good long year to get everything where I could manage without Husband's help. Thank goodness there is light at end of tunnel for us all with loved ones afflicted with this awful disease. Take care and Good Luck!
When you provide your mom with direct deposit account for her income, eg., soc sec.and or pension. Place your name, as a beneficiary., and if you become her poa,etc free to sign her checks for bills. All my moms bills, eg, utilities, cable, prescription premiums,health premiums were direct with draw. This way you know what's happ in her account in advance. It so much easier on you to be certain they are paid on time. Assistant living locations are typically private pay. If the time comes for Long term Nh, check with a social worker about Medicaid assistance. There's a lot out there that I didn't know about Medicaid. Be sure you talk with somebody that knows the rules better than you. Keep asking questions!!
Take care
Equinox
I'd like to add to make sure that the POA is a DURABLE POA. It seems that in many states more & more it is that the banks and other financial institutions will not recognize a plain POA or one that seem to be pulled off the web and not done by an in-state attorney with the appropriate notary seals and clear witness. What they will say is that the POA is "springing" and that you have to provide documentation that the document has "sprung" into effect in order to use a POA. That means getting physicians to do letters on this. Most doc's will not do this, ok, well, will not do this easily as this is legal and not medical. Trustmark, which is a bank group in maybe 5 states, will not recognize POA because of litigation from families along the lines of "who took dad's $" lawsuits.
There are certified elder law attorneys in most states and if you can go that route , I would recommend it and get all the paperwork done: DPOA; MPOA, update will, Advance Directive (if you think that won't freak her out) and if your state allows it a document call "Guardianship in Case of Incapacity". If there seems to be no elder law attorneys in your area, I'd speak with the social worker at a rehab unit or NH and ask them for a couple of attorney's names. You could go and look at a couple of places, as if you were planning on moving mom, and ask what documents they would recommend you do in advance and who they recommend. The social worker reviews all these documents and will have a good idea of who is out there and understands the nuances of dealing with the elderly. Social worker will be most helpful, the admissions one's no quite so much as they seem to be all about closing the deal imho. This is not the time to get your nephews old roommate who went to law school to do this. Or you could contact your Area Agency on Aging to see who they have on their resource list. This site has the AAOA contact info by state and city. AAOA are paid for by your tax $$ so use them.
If you can get mom's SS and other retirement income direct deposited into an account, that will make your life easier too. For SS and federal retirement, you can do this on-line on her behalf. Also you could have it so that the 3 of you can go on-line to see where the $ gets spent, just in case your middle sister gets huffy.The attorney might suggest that mom do a "personal services contract" to your brother & SIL as they provide day to day care and management for her, and he may also suggest how to best handle the house (it sounded like your mom owns a home and bro & SIL live with her) that will work for how your state does estate laws and Medicaid review. Good luck and keep a sense of humor.
With POAs, you can have secondary people assigned, too. So maybe you or your sister would be first, and the other a secondary person to be POA if you aren't available. That way you can pay her bills and with the medical POA, you can take care of her medical appointments and make decisions.
Good luck. The sooner this is done the better, because if her AD gets too far along, then an attorney may feel that she can't make the decision to assign a POA.
Carol