My mother was notified yesterday of the hearing about conservatorship and guardianship. I filed for them when she told me she was changing her DPOA. The guardian ad lidem met with her yesterday. Today, she and her boyfriend dropped in on me.

My mother thinks the DPOA takes effect when she dies and that my greedy step-sis would harass me. She said that's why she was changing it. She argued when I said it ends when you die. She asked why anyone would have one then. I tried to explain it but she said I was arguing with her so I stopped. Anyone who disagrees with her or tells her something she doesn't like is "arguing." She still thinks the DPOA is for after she dies.

I told her that I thought she was at the point where she needed help with her bills. She said good, she wanted me to help and claimed that she had asked me. Nope, she always put me off when I said anything. So she agreed to have me work with her on it and agreed to listen to my advice. She also agreed to take my advice on any major purchases, contracts or taking out loans.
She signed the paper that I typed up and then immediately told me that she was going to sell her RV right away and use the money to buy a condo, etc. I told her that it was a major purchase and that I expected to be in on it. She said no, she didn't need help with that. She has friends to help her. Arghhhh!

She is much further gone than I had thought. I know they want me to drop the petitions and at first I figured that I would. Now, I'm not sure about anything.

What would any of you do about going for conservatorship and guardianship?

I don't have DPOA or guardianship for my Grandma (and I'm her primary caregiver and then some), but she has no assets to speak of, and no one else in the family is trying to become her primary caregiver. Her doctors don't seem to care that I sign everything for her. So, for us, it's totally not an issue.
But, since your Mom does have assets which need to be protected for her now and in the future, I think I'd continue on with it. She's already showed you that although she agreed to let you help with major purchases, but plans to buy a condo without your input, that she could really use you looking out for her best interests.

I am also in the same situation as Jellybeans, however in your mom's case I agree with her. As we all come to find early Alz persons can be taken advantage of easily.

Follow through with the guardianship or conservatorship request.

She has assets, her own judgement's poor, and she's not listening to you or handing her affairs over to you voluntarily.

If you don't follow through with the petition, she won't HAVE assets soon - and believe me, caregiving is a heck of a lot harder when you don't have financial resources.

It is quite obvious from the interaction you just described that she does not understand what she is doing and is apt to make some really big blunders very soon. She sounds ripe to be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous. You may get her to agree to sensible plans of action, but she will not remember the agreement.

As her POA you are obligated to act in her best interest, since she no longer can. Persue the guardianship.

Continue on with your plans with guardianship/conservativeship. Your mother has no idea what she's doing and as many, many others have stressed here, she's ripe to be taken advantage of soon. It doesn't take but a few simple signatures on your mom's side to sign her whole estate to someone else. Has the "love bug" gotten to her (doesn't she have a gentlemen friend)?

Do not be nieve and think Mom will be okay, plse follow thru for her future.

Best to you and plse do keep us posted as we all care for you and your LO!

Keep going forward. Maybe after you get this the boyfriend will move on...but another one may also come along.

You will be the only one there to pick up the financial mess as her mind deterorates and her resources disappear.

I agree with the others. Keep the fight alive.

As she deteriorates, her boyfriend will disappear. By then, the assets will be gone, too.

In the end, she will not remember, but you will. And you will probably be filled with regret if you do not pursue this. Those assets, when needed later, may be all that stands between homelessness for you and her. Or stand between good medicine and no medicine. Or a decent ALF or NH and none at all.

You only have one chance at this. I would not let it go.

I say, not only keep up the fight, accelerate it if you can. From what you say, I don't trust BF at all. Technically, since she does not understand what the DPOA is, she cannot execute a new one, but most attorneys don't question that closely.

I would document these conversations -- write everything down in detail and date it. This will be important information to be able to use in court.

Hang in there! Keep us posted!

absolutely get it done, afterwards you can agree with everything she says and do what she needs done anyway.

Didn't her attorney already refer you to someone? He won't have all the time in the world..so he was helping you. Let your new attorney know what is happening every step of the way.

Con artists have strong nose - they can sniff out the money and skip town befor you know it.

If you are really worried about the money, since you have POA you can close her bank accounts and open new ones that are in her name but restrict her access. You should probably check with your lawyer before doing this since that might look bad at the conservator review. Or it might go in your favor since you were concerned enough to take that step. But that is what you will have to do once conservatorship is approved. You will have to take total control of the assets.

Thanks for your wonderful support. I am going to see her this afternoon to go over her finances with her. I don't know if she'll even remember our agreement or much of the conversation.

I'll talk to the guardian ad litem on Monday and get his perceptions - I want to know what he is going to say to the judge.

The hearing is set for Tuesday morning so I'll talk to my attorney then.
K

We had a good friend whose father was in own home. No clue to them, he had live-in girlfriend. When they got wind of her and all the things purchased from his bank accounts, he was almost broke.

Girlfriend had her name on all his accounts (he signed and approved) -- had 1 driver (he was wheel chair bound) and 4 vehicles...wow! She purchased items with his signature, but never found where they ended up (most likely in her home?).

By the time they got to court, he was pennyless -- having gone thru almost $300K. Watch out as it can happen so fast you'd never know until way too late as in this case.

Keep your eyes and ears wide open to unknown sleezy people! You're moving in the right direction.....forward to help LO~

quote:

Originally posted by Lflood:
I agree with the others. Keep the fight alive.

As she deteriorates, her boyfriend will disappear. By then, the assets will be gone, too.

In the end, she will not remember, but you will. And you will probably be filled with regret if you do not pursue this. Those assets, when needed later, may be all that stands between homelessness for you and her. Or stand between good medicine and no medicine. Or a decent ALF or NH and none at all.

You only have one chance at this. I would not let it go.

I wholeheartedly agree!

I'm not overly worried about him fleecing her. My concern is the amount of money she spends on him voluntarily. He's not stopping her though. I think she's trying to be overly generous to sort of "reel him in." She's also being very, very sweet to him. I've never seen her that way.

For some reason he thinks he needs to protect her from me. I'm insulted and very, very frustrated. She is so nasty to me when there aren't any witnesses. I know I'm not supposed to correct her when we talk but it's SO hard sometimes! She comes up with some really bizarre stuff.

His attitude worries me a lot in terms of the conservatorship and guardianship. I don't know what he's capable of so I don't know how to protect myself.

Thanks again for your support. This is such a major and serious step - it's good to have some validation from those of you who've been here.
K

I smell a big rat. He probably knows her social security number, etc...he could steal her identity, etc. and create all kinds of trouble besides taking any funds she has.

Move quickly.

I think you should continue to pursue guardianship....DPOAs can be revoked by the grantor. You need to protect your mom, and that is what you are trying to do. This disease will only continue to get worse, and she, in my opinion, needs that protection now, for her future.
Good Luck. Nothing about this disease is ever easy!!!
Oh, and DOCUMENT EVERYTHING, his behavior, her behavior, and if you have a mini-recorder, even better (without their knowledge).

I agree wholeheartedly with all of the advice. Move forward asap

If this man were a real friend to your mother, he'd realize that she is ill and he should not be letting her spend money on him. That's the main rat I'm smelling. What he's doing is called exploitation. He's benefitting financially and otherwise from her estate and he's not trying to keep her from doing it.

My FIL has a girlfriend, thirty years his junior. He's supporting her entire family, including grandchildren and parents. He doenst have dementia, yet, but I figure that she'll have spent everything he has by the time he's gone.

He thinks he's going to avoid having to leave her anything and that his property is safe to go to his sons when he dies. But he won't have a will made, and so, I'm thinking that all his property, what he hasn't sold at her behest, will be tied up in probate forever because she's going to claim to be his common law wife.

Avoid this. Get guardianship. My husband isn't interested in listening to me about it. I hope he can stand to see his grandfather's homeplace sold off to support a bunch of people he's not related to... She calls all his things, "her's" anyway.

I'll be at the courthouse tomorrow morning to pursue both. The guardian ad litem called to say he will recommend both for her.
K

I haven't been on the message boards in quite a while, but I saw your post and I had to urge you to get guardianship as quick as possible.

My dad has had AD for about 6 years. Mom died 5 years ago. A year after Mom died, Dad got involved with a lady he met at the Senior Center. I realized what was happening immediately and took him to his sister's house while I got guardianship papers started. His "girlfriend" took over and fought it.

This has been a year and a half ago. To make a long story short, she tried to take everything he had. She took him to another county and they got married. Boy was she surprised when she found out in court that his house was already in mine and my brothers name. Dad just couldn't remember that so he couldn't tell her.

On the day for the first court hearing, Dad was completely lucid, so the court did not grant me guardianship but did give me conservatorship. She lived with him for one week less than one year. After she left, the court immediately gave me guardianship. I moved in with him and lived there for 5 months. The disease progressed along with other complications and he is now in the Veteran's Home.

He gets the best care there. Soooo much better than I could have given him at home. And because I have guardianship, he has the means to take care of all his needs.

Again, I urge you get the guardianship. You are the one that loves her and is going to be left to care for your loved one. You are the one that is looking out for her best interest.

Good luck today, K!

In all likelihood he is negative toward you because he knows he shouldn't be taking advantage of your mom's "generosity" or because she has told him lies about you. Or both. Forge ahead with the guardianship, etc!

I'm glad the guardian ad litem agrees. Judges tend to value their opinions.

I'll be thinking of you today -- please let us know how it goes.

Court went fast - I'm done already. I got both temporary guardianship and conservatorship. I have to be "bonded" to get the letter of conservatorship. That's supposed to take a few days which kind of defeats the purpose of the emergency hearing. She could clean out her accounts before I can do a lot. I need to go a put a freeze on one account and transfer funds out of another to a third account that she has no access to. That's the easy stuff.
Then I have to somehow do an inventory of all her assets, etc, in the next 30 days. I'll know more about how to do it later.
Thanks for all your support - I'm much relieved this is over. The guardian ad litem said her boyfriend has a lot of influence and that she had agreed to me being her guardian and conservator after the g.a.l. explained each one several times. Boyfriend piped up and said she should get an attorney and fight it.
Thanks again,
K

Way to go, K!
I do beleive any transaction by your Mom and/or her boyfriend, between now and your Conservatorship, would be questioned.

I'd make her bank aware of what is going on and have them on the lookout for your mother closing accounts, moving around a lot of money.. They could flag it pretty easily, epscially since there is a court case going on involving these funds. Is there something you could show them to indicate this? IF it were my dad's bank they would take this quite seriously. Small town, though.

Good luck and hopefully you can get her money safely moved out of his hands. I have a feeling that he's gonna break up with her as soon as the money runs out. While that may be hard on your mother, it is for the best.

I can't abide by people who exploit others for their own gain.

Happy, and relieved, to hear all went well. It's sad that we have to go to such lengths to protect our loved ones from exploitation, but it must be done.

I am fortunate that my mom had her DPOA done years before she became ill, and named me as POA, plus guardian of her person and estate, if that became necessary. Makes a very difficult job a little easier.

I am thrilled to har of your results.

To prevent a last-minute cleaning of accounts, inform the bank of the court decision, and give them copies if available. This should stop the bank from allowing any changes at all. They could be found liable for losses during the time you put this all together.

Schedule a sit-down with the branch manager. Uually they cn do this the same day. Once they understand, you should be okay.

Congrats!!

Hi K,

I'm so glad that court went well for you. As long as you bring the proper documentation to the bank, there should be no problem with what you have to do.

BF should be told to take a hike! (BTW, does he have dementia or a similar illness?)

Lflood has it right! Get to the top at her bank -- branch mgr -- and show them the legal papers. They can "flag" the accounts and stop any major changes. This should bid you time to get all the other ducks in a row.

Good for you as you're on the way. Bet you money, her boyfriend will be gone when all the money access is cut off. Mom will be heartbroken when he leaves, but you can jump in and give her the support she needs. We all do crazy things when our minds work, then add ALZ and the situation is really a crazy mess. Thank God for loving kids to jump in and rescue our parents -- know they did it for us when we were young!

Best to you and keep us posted as I look for how you're progressing...

I am so glad that this went well. take care of yourself and your mom. I dont know if bf is wicked or just not on the right page, but his power is limited. make it clear to him that his continued presence in her life is dependent on your judgement that he is a good influence. peace.

It's nice to hear a good result. It's one more hurdle crossed -- good for you!

I'm so glad things worked out so well

I'm glad you got the guardianship. You should notify the banks right away. This same situation happened with my mother. She got a new "boyfriend" (predator) who took advantage of her and I believe was on the way to trying to move in or even marry her! After the guardianship, we took all checks and ATM cards away from her, but didn't immediately change the name on one of her checking accounts. She walked 4 miles to her bank,had the teller help her withdraw a large sum of money with a counter check, then walked 4 miles home (with all of this cash on her). Very unsafe. Proceed with paperwork as soon as you can. I agree with others, the boyfriend will fade away when the money dries up. As guardian, you are basically in charge of your mother (like a child). We told the predator that he was not to have contact with her or we would take legal action. As guardian, you can get a restraining order against him, if needed.