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Merla

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terei

A POA is not ‘recorded’ it is simply a piece of paper that can be destroyed. Generally, when a POA is created, it is given to the person designated a POA. I would expect if she has any of these docs, they are in her possession. Is there any way to get her absent from her home so you can search her papers for them? You need originals or to at least identify an attorney who might be involved to contact him/her.

I am assuming you are a child of the PWD. You are going to have a lot of roadblocks to getting info unless you have some legal standing.

harshedbuzz

I'm not sure if this is applicable where you live, but a friend of mine had to, with his brother, go to court for emergency guardianship of their dad. Dad was a retired scientist with a lot of cognitive reserve-- enough to hire his own legal counsel. But he could do well enough on the court ordered competency exam and the sons were awarded custody and costs.

HB

harshedbuzz

@Merla said:

My mom is a smart driven independent woman so I do think she is going to fight me hard. I think that she is probably much worse than what I think from hearing how she acted on trip to visit family where she was out of her normal routine. She essentially has designed her own MC program at home because she follows the same routine every day.

Dementia is progressive and terminal. If you haven't interacted with her IR: recently, she probably is worse than she was. That said, it is pretty common for a PWD to slip into the next stage when removed from their usual surroundings and routines. What happened on her trip that concerns you?

I think that she could fool a dr on a superficial level because she looks very healthy and fit and is very opinionated and confident

That's the good thing about a complete dementia workup; the tests are designed to separate treatable conditions that mimic dementia and to tease out areas where the cognitive shift/brain damage are impacting her. This would be things like executive function, reasoning skills, short term memory, language and word finding.

When my aunt and my friend obtained guardianship of their LOs, the judge in charge ordered a complete evaluation that included imaging of the brain and several hours of comprehensive neuropsych testing. At the time my aunt was quite impacted in her IADLs but her language and social behavior was still quite good. My friend's dad was very bright but his short term memory was enough for the judge to side with the sons. FTR, he lived in my friend's carriage house and socialized with his son and family while this was going on.

My reason for trying to get POA is that she could have access to high qualify of care and not crash and burn herself into a crappy facility. She however is being very difficult. My family and I were supposed to visit her as part of a vacation and she changed her mind about us staying with her for 2 nights and is acting like she doesn't even want to see us when the reality is that we went out of our way to plan Visiting her into our vacation with her consent and didn't buy our plane tickets until she was sure about the plan.

This sounds very familiar. My story in a minute. By "high quality care" do you mean treatment or do you mean a safer and nicer living arrangement than she has now? There's probably not much in the way of treatment IME except in rare instances.

I picked up changes in dad's mood in 2005 and cognition in 2008. I communicated my concerns which were enough to be a warning to my dad to be wary of me. He put his changes down to "a normal part of the aging process" and my mom bought in. Dad and I never got on well, so any concern I raised to her privately was brushed off with "you just don't like him". Dad knew on some level that I knew he wasn't doing well cognitively and cared enough for my mother to step in and take over both their lives which I did eventually do but it took some time for the multiple shoes to drop and allow me to put my Plan B into play. It took a crisis that nearly cost mom her life, but I did manage to get him evaluated via the ER for a change in mental status when he had a psychotic episode. I moved them near me for ease of caregiving on my part and worked on getting the legal pieces set up.

If you don't feel you can act now, I get it. I wish I had been able to pull off my Plan B sooner; dad managed to day-trade away $360K while mom was just happy he wasn't battling with her over some nonsense real or imagined. That money would have come in handy for his care or potentially my mom's as she's losing her vision and may need to go into some sort of AL sooner than she'd like.

HB