Power Struggles With a Power of Attorney
I shudder when I see these situations. The parent thought, somehow, she was doing the right thing. Or dad wanted his kids to “work together”, even though they’d never done so in their lives before.
The parent appoints two children as “co”- powers of attorney for finances. Mistake!
When the aging parent gets too incompetent to make decisions because of dementia, or some other condition, the two siblings begin to argue and hassle each other about money. One wants to spend it on mom’s care. One wants to move property and money around (all to be done legally), make the parent poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, and not spend the money so that he/she can inherit it.
These are difficult situations to mediate. The sibling who wants to impoverish the parent so he or she can qualify for a Medicaid bed in a nursing home is looking for that inheritance, and not for what is best for the parent.
It’s not that every nursing home is bad. Some do a good job. But, many are unsafe and neglect is quite common. I know this because I’ve personally sued nursing homes for neglected clients. Three beds to a room are often the situation when Medicaid is paying. Private pay beds are expensive, but usually, a lot better. Some nursing homes do not accept Medicaid.
How do we help families negotiate these situations? We encourage them to research the nursing homes in the area, to visit them personally, to spend time there observing.
We help them explore all the options available. We encourage them to choose one of them to be the decision-maker and the other to be the back-up. That’s a lot cleaner way for the parent to set things up to begin with, but it doesn’t always happen that way.
Greed can drive a dispute pretty far. If your parent has set up his or her power of attorney for finances with two, instead of one decision-maker, and the parent is still competent to change this, talk about it now! It can get very messy later, if the two who are supposed to decide such important things as spending money on a parent’s care are unable to agree.
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