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[quote=Anonymous]My mom is in her 90s. She is confused or forgetful more frequently. Yesterday she forgot she had gone to a doctor's appointment in the fall, saw a bill and called and told the office they had made an error. That was before her HHA started.

She lives in her home and has a caregiver through an agency, that part is working well and communication is good there, with weekly reports, calls for something more urgent, etc.

My brother has POA and is executor of her will but is not interested in any aspects of caregiving, including being on accounts or interacting with her doctors or monitoring her online medical notes from appointments. She has a will and POA but never set up the interim documents, does not want us to talk to doctors, have access to online medical records, etc. I have gone to appointments in person when there but she has refused to consent to my calling in. I foresee things getting messy, but not how to change it? She is a difficult person whose sense of self is being "smarter" than everyone else. As she has become more forgetful she seems almost a bit paranoid toward me.

My brother is pretty callous, his new wife and I convinced my mom to stop driving and his response recently was, "we should give her keys again and move this along, I don't really care if she takes someone else out with her." His wife said she feels differently, thank goodness. He refers to her as "my mom" to me, which is odd. My parents put their house in a trust that he is the sole trustee of, so I expect he will not divide that money and the house is worth a decent amount, but he still complains if my mom goes shopping or about the HHA fee, he has said she was wasting "his" money. The other day he told me that I should not worry about keeping in touch with her, just call every month or so, that they have "got it." They have wanted to move her to live in their isolated rural house in a state where we have no family, so I suspect he wants to ramp up the pressure tactics.

Other relatives have expressed concern about the situation but I'm not sure what I can really do since I have no legal power. If I got her to add me to say credit card accounts I could monitor if they have been paid but not make payments with her funds, w/o POA or being added to bank accounts. I wonder if she makes any changes if he will claim she is incompetent and force a move/isolate her. When I was down visiting, he called on speaker while in the shower, which was kind of creepy and on a practical level was hard for an older person to even hear. He has weird boundaries and I have had very limited contact with him as an adult. He initiated contact when she had a health emergency last year and I was there, mostly pressuring me to get her to move to his home, "it would be cheapest and most convenient for us."

Is there any point encouraging her to allow me to help with bills and doctors if I have no legal power?

If she changed MPOA to me at this point how does the recent forgetfulness impact any changes she makes?

I'm not going to limit my contact with her, obviously, but am not sure what I should do otherwise. One thought was to ask to go with her to talk to her lawyer when I visit next and have him talk about the need for interim steps. My brother was once on her investment accounts years ago and he said she was paranoid about her money and he told her to take him off. Since she is more paranoid and angry now, should I just let things play out and problems develop? He was unequivocal that he will not be on her accounts now.

How to best support her in this next phase? My brother does not share info with me unless directly asked, there is not really collaboration, more him trying to get me to carry out his wishes. To me, if she has to spend down assests anyway, being close to her familiar doctors and with the HHA and with extended family not too far away is one means to that end. I do plan to go no contact with him again when she passes but have tried to create a working relationship in the meantime. If anyone has BTDT with similar dynamics, any advice would be appreciated.

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