Can I be charged with neglect, even what my Mother tells people is not true?

Has your mother been evaluated and/or diagnosed with any dementia? If not, this is worth investigating, because you will need a plan as it gets worse...and it will explain a lot if it's there. My Mom has always been a pretty weird communicator who confabulates and doesn't see what really happened other than as she WANTS to see it...but we finally know that Alzheimer's is officially in the mix with whatever was in her personal make up before. If dementia of any kind is part of this issue, you need to get the POA set up while she can still know what she is signing. Otherwise, she will be worse, and too late for knowing what she is doing and it will be a lot of money going to court for guardianship of her in order to keep her safe the rest of her life. When my Mom was saying lots of untruths to anyone and everyone, I finally said to her, " Mom you are simply not making sense all the time, and I want you to have a doctor's app't and see what might be wrong" I did not say it had anything to do with her mind, as she would have refused to even think about it. I work closely with her primary doctor and get the doctor to 'recommend' things...because my Mom will do something if the doctor thinks it should be done. As for anyone calling APS and you being charged with neglect....if your Mom lives alone, and if you can show that you make visits to her and if her home is generally clean and she's got food and is eating, no one can come after you, no matter what she might say. BUT, if there is a diagnosis and repeated calls to them, they will spend more time investigating. Bottom line, if they believe your mom is not safely being cared for, they can order her moved out of her home, or go in for an investigation of her mental status evaluation etc. IF you have the POA or legal responsibility for her, then YES, they could come after you if you were not keeping her safe. In my situation, my parents were both home, but refusing any kind of in home care or assistance, and were fighting with each other, yelling, my dad was drinking to cope with his dementia and neighbors were aware of problems. I finally got POA. I met informally with all neighbors and explained that I was trying to create a safe plan. I made sure neighbors could contact me for issues ....and then, actually, there were times I called the police for the welfare checks on them, so that I COULD say to them...." Hey, if the police keep getting called, they will call Adult Protective Services and you will have no say so about any plan to stay in your home....BUT if you cooperate in a plan to have an agency send someone in for a few hours a day, and someone calls APS, then there IS a plan here and they will leave you alone" Fortunately, my parents went for that, and we got a helper in part time. My Dad was eventually placed in memory care. I increased the alarm system for my Mom, who was home alone...added a video camera and made her get a panic necklace in case she fell or had a medical problem while alone. We got along for another two years....but now she's worse, and now we have helpers again for 6 hrs/day. This is all because I live 5 hrs away. One of our daughters lives 2 hours away. No other family in her town. We have an eldercare attorney, who handled their trust and the POA etc, and a caseworker there in her town too. SO, for safety, she is covered, but neighbors are still concerned and she's working up to needing placement in AL herself now. And she tells all manner of people some of the most horrible things, but because I am in touch and check in with them, they know what is real and what is not. I also keep a 'diary' of sorts, of strange things said and observed, so I can report that to her doctor....and also in case I ever have to show anyone else what Mom is all about on a day to day basis. It proves that I am in touch with her as well. So...bottom line, you need a diagnosis and a plan that shows she is being monitored and is safe at home.

It appears that Joannes has covered this issue thoroughly. I would have benefitted from this information in 1979 when my father died suddenly and "left" me with my mother, who had Alzheimer's. And I could have used the info again in 2014, two years after my husband -- who was on hospice care for other diseases -- was diagnosed with Alzheier's. He kept telling the hospice nurse that I wouldn't let him out of the apartment. Actually, he was afraid to go out. The hospice nurse took him out for a walk and realized that he couldn't distinguish the paved walkway from the grass, and his depth perception was so diminished that she had endangered him by taking him outside for a walk.

Just to add to arianne777's comment, I did not realize until recently,when I listened to an inservice on YouTube relative to dementia and driving, that the depth perception and field of vision changes so much with dementia and Alzheimer's. I was shocked to hear that with even moderate Alzheimer's, a person can have their brain not send the right signals to the eyes and the person maybe can only see as much as a 12 inch circle of vision right in front of them. They lose peripheral vision really fast, and then later on, all depth perception as well. NO WONDER...there are all these precautions about not letting these people drive!! I was studying this after, just last month, my Mom pulled the back bumper off her car, while driving into her carport. She was apparently too close to the support wrought iron upright and caught the edge of the bumper on it and kept driving forward, until it pulled right off onto the ground. And then has totally denied it...and claims it 'just fell off' in the drive way. She claims all manner of people including the insurance adjuster, told her this happens to cars in Arizona, because the desert heat causes the rubber to rot out! I checked with the neighbor guy whom she called over when it happen and talked with the insurance adjuster too...both said they clearly told her that she must have hooked the bumper onto something and then kept driving forward!! Anyhow...a $1600 job and another $500 out of her checkbook....the deductible...and now we wait to see if her rates go up! But it's all over for her, since SHE didn't have to put the actual dollars in front of the repair shop! But her neuro psych eval is coming up on 6/29 and I am sure they will be saying she should not drive anymore. IF she insists, she'll have to pay another $500 to take the 4 hour driving eval that MVD recommends. And the money keeps going out the window because she refuses to be in reality. Today she missed taking her car in for an oil change, and when she remembered and called me, I suggested very nicely that it seemed her memory was getting worse. Her response was, " There's nothing wrong with my memory!! This wouldn't have happened if someone in my family had called to remind me this morning!!" Sometimes you just have to laugh......

BTW...when I speak of her taking the car in....she has caregivers who do the driving...since March. The bumper incident happened when she drove the car around to the front of the house, so she could hose off the carport ...and then was driving it back into the carport....so she was NOT out driving on the road!

While I agree many of these incidents are helped along by dementia, how many of these oldsters have all their marbles and still do things like this.
I am not so quick to dismiss this smearing by an oldster, especially if they acted the same way years and years ago.