My husband and I have helped place my FIL (who has advanced dementia) into an assisted living facility that he helped select. He's thriving like he wasn't when in his home. My brother-in-law has not been present until now that FIL has an estate to resolve and he's taken FIL out to sign documents that FIL doesn't remember and now is claiming to be financial POA, that he's in charge of selling the house, has taken FIL to alter bank account so my husband (and FIL, too) has no access to his account so we cannot pay his bills and must use our money to maintain the home. BIL is not paying the bills, massive financial waste, and we are at the point where we need a guardian for FIL's estate. BIL got documents the dirty way and I don't believe they'd hold up in court but his verbal bullying that "I'm in charge" is creating a block for us to sell dad's house and use it to pay his care and pre-pay his funeral, etc. BIL even claims that he's meeting with FIL's lawyer but FIL says he doesn't have one and there's no evidence of one in his financial records (when we had access to them). We've consulted 2 elder lawyers who both say FIL shouldn't be signing documents because of his dementia even though medically he's still declared competent. They both say he needs a guardian since we don't have a POA and won't get one the dirty way, like BIL claims. A lawyer will cost $10,000 and we know that, if we win, it will be returned out of the estate but we can't afford that. We've filed with APS because of all the financial abuse we have documented but we're worried that, since FIL is safe and not out of money yet (we're trying to be proactive and deal with this before he faces eviction) that APS won't do anything. How can we get him a guardian? Do we need to file on our own with the courts? Would we have to represent ourselves? We feel like our hands are tied when it comes to helping FIL sell his house, pay off his debts, and have money to pay his care (before Medicaid kicks in). Any help would be appreciated. He's in the 5 year look back period and with his dementia there's no saving money for an inheritance which we're not worried about anyway because it's FIL's money, he earned it but BIL had mentioned trying to put the house into a trust, etc to get himself a slice.
https://www.agingcare.com/local/elder-law-attorneys
Best of luck and shame on your BIL 😑
Does this mean he has had actual testing and there's an actual diagnosis in his medical records? This is a critical piece of information for any lawyer.
But neither you (nor your spouse) were ever his PoA. An elder law attorney can send a letter to BIL demanding to present the PoA paperwork and it can escalate from there. Once your BIL sees that you're serious about fighting for...guardianship (?) he may give up if he doesn't have the funds to put up a fight -- especially if he really isn't the PoA. Most likely he downloaded PoA forms and was somehow able to get them notarized but if the date of this signing is after your FIL's medical diagnosis, he'll have a lot of 'splaining to do.
Then there's guardianship... if a judge tires of the family power struggle s/he may just assign a 3rd party legal guardian. But if you fight an win, you/your spouse will be responsble for FIL's financial support.
You will need to count the cost of this fight carefully. Consult with an elder law attorney, who will weigh whether your case has any chance of winning and what a winning outcome will mean going forward.
A question for you, the home…. do you live in it? OR is it the situation where you have your own home BUT you have been using your own $ to pay for the upkeep and other costs of Dads home? Has spending been such that you have a very clear record of all those costs paid? Like receipts, cancelled checks, etc. & with absolutely no commingling of costs paid for your own home*. If so, as a suggestion get all those items together and do a timeline of each and every penny you have personally paid for Dads property.
Then you take this to the atty meeting and ask what options you have to get a lien placed on his house. If for how liens run for your State, this really isn’t feasible, then imho you have to - HAVE TO - 100% not spend another penny on anything Dad….. no spending on his house, no paying his bill from the facilty, no paying for even his barbershop costs at the NH. No support whatever. And if y’all somehow signed his admissions documents so that you are personally responsible for dads bill, have the atty send a certified letter to the facility that this is not longer the case.
That brother / BIL sounds like 100% AH and will walk over whomever he needs to so that he has Dads $ and used for is own interest. He will use the $ and leave his Dad with unpaid bills. The NH will NOT just let dad stay there. They will find a legit reason to call EMS to take him to the ER/ED and then will find a legit excuse to not allow him to return.
This becomes major crisis. You have to hold firm that this is not your responsibility to solve. Not your responsibility to pay. Not your monkey & Not your circus. It can be really hard for kids to do this and why it’s such a good idea to have an attitude involved.
* by this what I mean is the invoice/ bill that y’all paid for clearly has dads address for the location of the work performed. That nothing on the bill or the receipt could ever had included an item you ought for your own home.
It's a shame that DAD did not have a Living Trust to assign a Directive over Trust, along with assigned POA's for health and finance.
DAD is Your FIL..
YOUR SPOUSE, Child of FIL, needs to investigate this, find the Living Trust.
Spouse should be the one doing the heavy lifting of this situation..
Your Spouse needs to confront Brother.
Should your spouse deems to really not care about the finances as you insinuated, then maybe hand over all Bills to BIL and tell BROTHER, he is now in charge of dad, supplies, appointments, house upkeep, and AL Rent...EVERYTHING DAD.
Should dad get evicted due to BROTHER not paying AL facility,
or his health declined because he's not taking adequate care of DAD, spouse will need to file elder abuse directly caused by BROTHER's actions..
DO SEEK LEGAL COUNSEL For elder abuse.
Forcing someone to sign anything under duress is not right, especially if he is clinically diagnosed with dementia..
If you bring the medical documentation of your FIL's dementia to the bank manager, they may be able to invalidate the recent paperwork that he signed. That would not make your husband POA if he wasn't already, but it would invalidate BIL's claims and restore the access your husband had before. (If your husband does succeed with this, he should change the passwords immediately to something neither FIL nor brother could guess.)
Getting someone's password from a senior can be either maddeningly difficult if you need it, if they kept no records of it and can't remember -- but it can also be frighteningly simple, if they kept it written down somewhere visible or accessible, or if they use the same password or few passwords for everything.
you are in a chess game. Your. BIL. is a pawn.
Set up your chess pieces, figure out your strategy now.
Action creates reaction.
Call his bluff and meet it with action., legal action.
I believe caring4FIL said he is not competent now. Clinical dementia....
caring4.. please do not hesitate..
call BIL bluff. Act upon it now. It's Tuesday.. talk to your lawyer. It's Tuesday,
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