…A True Story
“What is your emergency?” answered the 911 operator.
Neighbor reporting: “There is a half-naked lady wandering in her yard, and she can’t seem to
find her way back into the house.”
Minutes afterwards, the police show up and confirm the situation. Inside the house, which is
filthy, the police discover the wandering lady’s 88-year-old boy friend – who is also very frail
and ill, and unable to care for himself.
The police officer places a call to adult protective services. Right in the middle of their phone
conversation, the lady’s 60-something-year-old son pulls up in the driveway.
The son had moved into town two years ago to care for mom and her boyfriend. He was living
in mom’s boyfriend’s home while providing care to them 2-3 times a day. The problem was, the son was also very ill. As a mater of fact, because of his terminal diagnosis, the son could
probably die before mom and boyfriend.
The son, with all his good intentions, had started working on power of attorney documents so he could manage mom and mom’s boyfriend’s affairs. Mom’s boyfriend has no children and no close relatives but owns a nice house. The police officer makes a deal with the son to arrange for care right away, or else mom and her boyfriend will be sent to the hospital and then placed in a nursing home.
Ring, ring, ring – and that was my telephone ringing and their lawyer saying to me, “Please
rescue my clients… do something today, or they will be placed in a nursing home!”
That is when I got involved. I started with round-the-clock care, mental health assessments, new medications, long term care planning, and lots and lots of complex caregiving issues.
Come to find out, the power of attorney documents the son had just worked on were no good,
because mom and her boyfriend were recently diagnosed with dementia. There was not enough
money to pay for care, so a reverse mortgage and cashing of the IRAs were in order.
Yet all of that had to be stopped because the son did not have authority to execute these decisions after all. He had waited too long to obtain the powers of attorney. And, because of the recent diagnosis of dementia, the power of attorney documents where no good.
Long story short, they all ended up in the nursing home against their wishes because there were no “good” documents in place, no long term care plans, no wills and no willing family members to help out. Mom’s house and her boyfriend’s house, all worth over $300,000 dollars, will end up in estate recovery while they live in the nursing home.