Chicago Senior Living Advisors Blog
Happy New Year to one and all!
As many of you know, I act as seniors power of attorney for healthcare and property and finances when s/he are deemed no longer able to make decisions for him/herself. The senior appoints me on a legal document when they have no one else to act for them or they don’t care to have a family member act for them.
Recently, I have had several situations come up that have been complicated. The first situation involves two women who are both in their nineties. One still has her faculties, and the other has dementia. I am not their power of attorney, but I literally do everything for them. They were powers of attorney for each other, and that was all right at the time the documents were prepared. Now that they have aged, the woman with dementia cannot make any decisions for herself or anybody else. The other woman is capable of making decisions for herself. Their home had been on the market, and I perceived the dementia was going to cause an issue with the transactions and with many other issues I won’t mention here. I called the lawyer who had drawn up the documents and he told me I needed to have them both psychologically evaluated to have the secondary power of attorney move into the primary position.
When the evaluations were completed, it was obvious that the person with dementia couldn’t act for herself or anyone else. The other woman was deemed as able to make decisions for herself. But due to extreme anxiety issues, it was stated in the report that she shouldn’t make decisions for anyone else. When I told the attorney about the test findings, he drafted documents that stated that she was relinquishing her ability to make decisions for her friend. Those abilities were given to the successor POA and she signed the newly drafted document that made the change official.
The following morning, she called me and asked me what she had done. Apparently, she didn’t understand even though three people had explained it to her. She was indignant.
The second case involves a terminally ill woman and her brother who has dementia. I was named as the secondary power of attorney and the trustee of his special needs trust over a year ago. I was expected to take over as the brother’s POA and trustee upon her passing. I was assured there was plenty of money in the special needs trust and that 10% of the proceeds from the sale of her house would go toward his care.
I was recently contacted by the woman who was calling me from a hospice. She told me she wasn’t expected to last until Christmas.
She informed me that her brother was living in an assisted living community and paying privately. However, I was told that she thought he had $40,000 left in his special needs trust. I also found out that he has dementia, uses a catheter, becomes violent, and requires more care that the assisted living community can provide. He will need to go to a skilled nursing community and file for public aid (which is a very time-consuming process). I also found out there is trouble with his insurance. Unfortunately, she passed away the day after Christmas and a lot is still unknown about his finances. It’s too bad that someone didn’t catch some of this a while ago so I could have stepped in and tackled these issues. While I will do some initial investigation into his finances, this case may be more appropriate for one of the Guardianship offices.