My Sister-in-Law age 89 in Florida gave her two daughters POA. The oldest one, with whom she had a very good relationship and lived close by, died a year ago and the youngest daughter took over. She lives in Atlanta. She picked up her mother to take her to her home. Went back to Florida without her mother and sold the house.
Due to Covid, my Sister-in-Law was unable to meet friends and she was very lonely in the place. After several months she moved to an Independent Senior Retirement Place. She fell over her dog and broke her hip.
While in the hospital, her daughter took care of her financial affairs.
The daughter put her in an dependent Senior facility. Her mom was very unhappy, contacted me and asked for help.
I tried to meet with the daughter, have dinner and talk to the doctor if mom maybe spent a month with me in PA. I am also living in a Retirement Community. Have my own villa with two bedrooms. My husband died and I have the space available. The conversation was quite disappointing. No, No under no circumstances could this take place.
She was considering putting her mother in the Dementia Unit.
I was horrified. I had been speaking to her mother hours at the time.
No sign of dementia I could detect. My husband had Dementia so I am familiar with this horrible disease.
She also discouraged me visiting. My heart would not allow me to just forget. I drove to Atlanta and visited her mother. On the day of my arrival they had placed her early in the morning in the Dementia Floor. I visited there for 2 days and my heart broke. This was no place for my Sister-in-Law to be, not yet. Quite a few patients were on heavy medication and so heavily drugged that the nurse could not even feed them. She not able to suck on a straw to drink liquid.
I tried to call some lawyers in the Atlanta Area and was recommended to call a certain attorney. The lawyer requested 1 hr consultation fee of $545.00 non-refundable. I was shocked but agreed. He listend to me, called the daughter, advised me that the he would not take the case since the daughter seems to be taking care of her mother very well.
The daughter cancelled her mother's iPhone so she could not call out or receive any phone calls from any relatives.
It is a terrible situation. I am afraid my Sister-in-Law has very little time left in this place before she becomes unable to fight for her freedom.
She is not poor and I think that the daughter is afraid that her mother might change the POA.
Anybody with a good advise ?
I am so sorry for your distress. Try to be supportive. Your actions so far have merely served to upset everyone and get a phone removed from your SIL. This is all hard to see, I know, but you are not there, are not privy to the MD information, and cannot know; try to trust the daughter. The POA cannot be changed with a diagnosis of dementia.
You asked: "Anybody with a good advise ?"
Here's my good advise which I suspect you won't think is good.
Do realize that you do NOT know enough (or anything) about your SIL's condition to conclude that she does not have dementia.
Do realize that you are no spring chicken and are in no shape physically or mentally to take care of another old woman with broken hip, and possibly dementia and other health issues.
Do not assume that SIL's daughter has some kind of evil plan to put her mother in a home. You have no basis for this assumption.
Do assume that you and SIL's daughter both want the best for SIL. Assume this unless you have concrete evidence to the contrary.
Do apologize sincerely to SIL's daughter for doubting her not having the best intentions for her mother.
Do offer support to SIL's daughter by asking her what support she needs to help her mother, and do help where you can.
When you are able to get on the same side and on the same page with SIL's daughter as to how best to help SIL, you might then see for yourself the true health condition of SIL.
Good luck. You have a good heart, and I suspect SIL's daughter does, too.
"The mother cannot change the POW" which is actually a POA (Power of Attorney) because she suffers from dementia which makes her incompetent to do so. You're way off base on that one.
You may be sad & frustrated that your sister-in-law lives where YOU believe she does not belong. But since you have no idea about her day-to-day issues, how can you SAY where 'she belongs' anyway? Also keep in mind how unhappy & miserable your SIL was living in INDEPENDENT LIVING which gives her 100% freedom, and ask yourself this question: what WOULD have made this woman happy? Living in the Palace of Versailles? Or perhaps the gold would have been tarnished there, too?
You go on to say "She not able to suck on a straw to dring liquid." How is this woman in such great shape, according to you, that she is not even able to suck on a straw to drink liquid???
Phones are often removed from a loved one's room when they are suffering from dementia b/c of people like you who will call them and cause more trouble FOR them than anything else. Having you in this woman's ear telling her how she shouldn't be there to begin with, how does that HELP her???
Your SILs daughter has already told you that you are not allowed to take her mother in to live with you, yet here you are, hiring lawyers and forcing yourself on the situation regardless! If I were the daughter in this situation, I'd get a restraining order against you to prevent you from coming 100 yards within her mother.
You don't have to 'like' what's happening here, but you do have to accept it. You are not qualified to diagnose your SIL or disqualify a medical diagnosis that has been made by a doctor. Step away from the situation before you are forced to do so by a lawyer or by the police, that's my suggestion. Or go ahead & call APS and let them know you feel 'elder abuse' is going on, and see what happens.
The 'good advice' you can get here is to put the shoe on the other foot: what if this were YOU trying to get YOUR mother the help she needed, after breaking a hip, and getting her set up in Independent Living, which didn't out? And there was a pushy friend or in-law that was doing everything in her power to discredit you and make you look like a monster for the efforts you were taking when you were at your wits end, with no other alternatives available? What actions would YOU take to stop this pushy friend and make her go away?
My thing is unless daughter had a formal diagnosis of Dementia, she could not have sold Moms house. POA is not in effect until a Doctor has made a formal diagnosis if its a Springing one.
Dementia is different in everyone. I would say the daughter living near was able to keep Mom in her home because the daughter helped her. When she died, the youngest found that she could not do for Mom the way her sister had done so she moved Mom near her. Selling Moms house to use the proceeds to offset the cost of the IL. Then she broke her hip. Do you realize that breaking a hip in the elderly can cause death. Its a shock to the body. Then there is the anesthesia. Both probably contributed to worsening the Dementia she may have had so the need for more care. Decline can happen overnight. Happened with a client of the VNA I worked for. Literally, one day she is living in her own home with some overseeing, the next day they are looking for a NH. My boss called it an episode.
I have no idea how you approached the daughter. She may have felt you were interfering. She is the one that has seen her Mom on a daily bases and has had to make hard decisions. And deal with all the stuff that comes with it. Maybe Mom forgot how to use the phone. Actually, they are not needed in a MC unit. You saw she didn't know how to drink out of a straw. The daughter is doing the best she can. The one thing you find out after caring for someone, especially a person suffering from a Dementia is...you cannot judge others when it comes to caring for someone. We do what we have to with what we have at our disposal. If the woman is 89 her daughter must be a Senior too.
I agree that sending a card each month would be nice. I had two Church ladies Mom knew do this each month. I put them around her walker basket.
:)
i hope your SIL will be ok.
there’s no way for us to guess whether your SIL’s daughter is acting in the best interests of her mother, or not.
there are adult children (and family…and non-family) who indeed aren’t acting in the LO’s best interests (in particular when the LO has wealth).
you know infinitely more about the situation than we do; and your SIL’s daughter knows even more.
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just pointing out:
it’s totally possible your SIL signed a POA that was immediately effective upon signing (no need at all to have dementia).
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i hope your SIL is all right.
Be a friend to your SIL, write cards and letters, call the memory care place to talk to her (they'll bring the phone if you're allowed to talk to her at all), and do not discuss or criticize her daughter or her decisions. Apologize to her daughter as well, because truly, you were completely out of line to interfere. Do that first, because her daughter may have blocked your access to her -- and with good reason.
I had a 'helpful' relative like you. She kept inserting herself in my father's care management plan. Kept demanding of me...what are WE going to do about him. Unless she was offering to take him to a doctor's appointment, there was nothing she could do that was helpful. Considering she lived in Arizona and we were in NJ, that kind of help was highly unlikely. I had a hard enough time dealing with this as an only child, I didn't need someone else I had to run my ideas by. She even called me at my new job demanding to speak to me. That got her cut out of my life for good. She cried to other cousins that she was just trying to help. There was nothing she did that was helpful. She caused me so much more stress when I already had plenty of that to go around.
Apologize to your niece and ask if there is anything that you could do that would be of help to her. But don't be surprised if she doesn't want to talk to you.