Responsibilities of Power of Attorney
Signing on to become a power of attorney (POA) for your loved one carries multiple responsibilities. It also does not come with an instruction manual, and we often wind up learning the responsibilities the hard way. In this post, I will outline a few important roles of being a POA. There are different types of power of attorney. Stay tuned for a future post on health care power of attorney (HCPOA) or power of attorney for health care.
Think of the duties of power of attorney for your loved one in the following ways:
1. Acting in their best interest;
2. Keeping their wishes in mind (which you may or may not have discussed with them in the past);
3. Understanding from a lawyer your role as power of attorney and also the risks of being a power of attorney according to state law. Start with actually reading the document. Anticipating every single scenario that can happen is nearly impossible; however, once you read it, this will likely prompt you to have questions to ask your lawyer.
4. Relying on a combination of common sense, gut instinct, and advocacy for our loved one.
Do not wait on your loved one to make decisions.
This applies to many scenarios, but a few big ones when it’s time to stop driving, or when it’s time to move to memory care. The parts of the brain that are degenerating in dementia take insight with them. Insight means one’s ability to understand or “see into a situation” (thank you, Merriam-Webster!). A lot of times, caregivers will say to me, “I’m waiting for my mom to tell me when she’d like to stop driving,” or “I don’t want anyone coming after me for doing the wrong thing.” First, your mom will not tell you that. Second, no one is going to come after you if, again, you’re acting in their best interest, according to their wishes, and within the scope of your role. Instead, consider the fact that you may be just feeling fear, rather than a true reality that someone will “come after you.”
And here is where common sense and gut instinct come in: your role is to realize that, if your mom is losing keys to the car and getting lost going to the grocery store, then it may be time to have this discussion about no longer driving, no matter how ugly it is. Do not shy away from being the decision maker. Think of the consequences of unsafe driving. Are you already afraid of a car accident? Then it’s time to take action. This brings me to my next point…
Consider worst-case scenario, and act as your loved one’s insurance policy and advocate.
Think of why we have insurance: we are paying a certain amount of money per month to insure our health, home, car and other things in the event that something catastrophic happens. While we cannot always prevent catastrophe, we can take steps to mitigate it and prepare for it.
Let’s stick with the driving scenario. If your loved one were to get into a car accident and injured themselves or someone else, you can see how utterly legally and financially devastating this would be for your loved one. You may burn through life savings and assets paying a lawsuit or hospital bills instead of using it for their day-to-day care, not to mention the trauma and turmoil of seeing them or someone else injured, which is of course also your responsibility to tend to: medical appointments, legal forms, court dates, garnished assets, on and on…. In comparison, this all suddenly makes the day-to-day care for dementia seem a lot less chaotic, doesn’t it?
Send in your POA documentation to payees so that your role is formally recognized pre-emptively rather than in a crisis.
For example, once you obtain your POA document, send it to your loved one’s utility companies, mortgage company, cell phone company…. You get the idea.
And call and confirm it’s on file. Fax, despite how widely available it is, is a suboptimal means of communication (mental image: hundreds or thousands of documents arriving per day, sitting in a pile, overflowing onto the floor…). Don’t assume it’s been received.
This also helps prevent fraud, or at least get early notification of it unfolding. Sending in your POA grants you the ability to set up alerts on your loved one’s bank account, share in text messages so others do not take advantage, and set credit card limits. Your loved one likely does not need a $10,000 credit card ceiling. That’s $10,000 for a fraudster to rack up rather than, say, $2,000 which is a more realistic amount for you keep available, or adjust quickly as needed, in the event of emergency.
True story: a contractor knocks on your loved one’s door explaining “your neighbor noticed rot in your siding and sent us over to patch it up for you.” Instead of finding a $10,000 charge, you get an alert that someone is trying to charge more than that $2,000 credit card limit that you set. Not today, financial fraudsters!
Know your duties as power of attorney. Be the decision maker. Fax it in. Feel better.
