Has anyone sought guardianship of their elderly parent...
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
| How bad does the person have to be? This would be in Florida. He is late 90s and has an alzheimer's diagnosis. The problem is he is a very difficult person - yelling and cursing at people - and insists he needs to be in charge and that his crazy ideas are reasonable. So if we (his kids) try to take guardianship, he will yell and scream about it. He can walk and talk but doesn't know the date, for example, has signed a contract he couldn't fulfill (to buy a house), and is giving away tens of thousands of dollars. What is the process? We do not want to take his money; we want to protect it in case he needs memory care. |
Anonymous
| Get recommendations for an elder care attorney in his area to help you. |
Anonymous
|
Engage an elder care attorney, get team of neurologist/gerontologist/psychiatrist to assess competency, then competency hearing
Then GAL designation after hearing plus POA finances and health At least, that’s how it went for me in PB county a couple of years ago. YMMV, good luck |
Anonymous
| If the person with dementia previously executed estate planning documents which include a trust, that would typically provide for a successor trustee in the event of disability, allowing the successor trustee to take protective actions to preserve the grantor's assets. Usually a medical certification of incompetence is required which, when sent along with a copy of the trust document naming the successor trustee, would allow the successor trustee to begin acting on behalf of the grantor with respect to bank and investment accounts, insurance, to sell real estate, etc. |
Anonymous
| Thank you. He put his properties in trust but that was it. And he created a medical power of attorney and a medical directive. How bad does the person have to be? I mean his ability to make financial and legal decisions is not good - but he’s able to walk with a walker, talk, go out to lunch, watch tv, rant about politics - but he has weird paranoid thoughts which I guess are part of the Alzheimer’s. Maybe I should call the neurologist who follows his Alzheimer’s for his advice? |
Anonymous
Adding: the head of the local branch where he keeps his money has expressed safety concern to me. He has gone in, railed some paranoid thoughts, and taken out $10,000 in cash for no reason and then flashes it. 
|
Anonymous
|
You might consider meeting with his physician without him, if that can be arranged, to describe the concerning behaviors and your request for a certification of mental incompetence. Otherwise, you can write a letter which notes your concerns and your position as successor trustee (assuming you are the successor trustee).
The physician will likely want to examine the patient before possibly agreeing to your request. Dementia is a spectrum; the key issue is usually whether the individual understands the meaning and consequences of their actions, rather than merely expressing idiosyncratic personality traits which have been there all along. A person can be more or less physically ok, can carry on a conversation, but be fundamentally irrational, delusional, and/or incapable of managing their daily affairs like paying bills, scheduling medical appointments when needed or even recognizing the need for them, etc. They may be unable to drive safely due to impaired judgment, if not due to physical issues like slowing reaction times, limited dexterity and vision, etc. The existing diagnosis of Alzheimer's gets you most of the way there. You want to provide the triggering language in the trust to the physician, asking that it be repeated in the letter declaring that the patient meets those specific criteria, e.g., is unable to manage his own affairs, is mentally disabled, or whatever language the trust includes to define the trigger which can bring in the successor trustee. |
Anonymous
| Yes, I did. I filed in court myself. Easy process. You do not need an attorney. |
Anonymous
Did your parent consent to this? I find it disconcerting that it was an easy process to get guardianship over another adult with no attorneys (or doctors?) involved. |
Anonymous
No, she was to far gone with the dementia but I had been handling her money and other things and could prove it. We just found a random primary care and made an appointment and they signed off. Then, for the second doctor we used an urgent care that we have used in the past that knew us. Done. I filed myself. The court assigned them an attorney to represent and the attorney agreed with us. She handled most of the 5 minute court year. Yes, it is very disconcerting how easy and quick it was. You need two doctors to agree with the diagnosis/concern. |
Anonymous
Not our experience at all. If the parent refuses the neurological exam or walks out during it, good luck! Perhaps it is easy with a compliant and pleasant parent. Try one who threatens to sue everyone and is explosive. |
Anonymous
New poster here I saw the bolded and in your later post that he is ranting about politics. I posted here about a month ago that my siblings and I recently discovered my Dad has given away over $60,000 in political contributions (actually a month later, we are discovering it is even more than that!) One thing I found, you can look up who donates to what/whom...and how much, here. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?two_year_transaction_period=2022&min_date=01%2F01%2F2021&max_date=12%2F31%2F2022 We were able to see all the specifics of my Dad's donations by searching by his name an city We were shocked to see the extent--there were some days where he made 100+ small ($20-75) donations in a single day! When searching for my Dad's contributions, I noticed other people's names popping up frequently enough to be concerning (though none as bad as my Dad's.) |
Anonymous
|
I just went through something similar with my dad. He had named me POA and medical POA. He had a trust, which spelled out what I needed to do to be able to access his money as successor trustee. His trust stated I could get a letter from his doctor or go to court. His dementia was such that it required multiple trips to the hospital and by this time, it was pretty evident to anyone who spoke with him that he was having significant delusions and paranoia. So, getting a doctor to provide the letter was fairly easy. Although during this time he switched his primary care doctor and the new PCP wouldn't write the letter, but I was able to get the new neurologist to provide the letter.
Like you, I was worried that he was giving away large sums of money. He was convinced that he wrote out large checks, which I determined were really delusions, as no checks ever were cashed. In working with his doctors, they were able to find some medications that reduced the delusions and paranoia and agitation. That might be something that you look into. |
Anonymous
| Oh yikes. My mother is busy buying love, but I don't think I can intervene because it's her money, she can afford it and she seems to still be paying her own bills. She gave a couple thousand to a friend of her's daughter who is getting married and maybe 10,000 to an inlaw's business and a couple thousand unsolicited to a friend who's grandkid just had surgery (the family is wealthy and the parents of the kid who had surgery have very high paying jobs so it is strange) . The thing is she can tell you she is buying love. She expects these people to drop everything and do as she says if she needs them. She has always been manipulative like this-giving gifts with strings, but gave much smaller donations like in the hundreds not thousands. She brags about how much she gives which shows awareness. She can afford to make these donations so not sure there is anything I should do. She will not got evaluated again by neurologist and she only went kicking ans screaming to an evaluation a few years ago when she was having a lot of mood lability and she passed. |
Anonymous
That is scary. My friend's dad was acting really nutty at the bank too and they got alerted. |