Her drivers license has expired and I can't get her an ID because DMV wants a paper trail of marriages and divorces. She was common law married to a man, took his last name, then signed that name to marry.
She now has dementia /alzheimer's.
The deed of her house is in both hers and my husband 's name.
Do we need A POA?
Also a medical POA.
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It's unfortunate you didn't use her maiden name to marry Hannon. That would have made it easier. Do the marriage licenses have the SSN on them? I have never checked mine to see.
How are you paying her bills? Are you jointly named on her checking account?
If there is not POA in place, the only option may be guardianship and conservatorship. See an elder law attorney with her. They should be able to determine whether the POA is understandable by her.
Also, be aware of the enormous responsibility of taking on these duties. It's a full time job, even if she is in a facility.
Hot - really as others have said, you need to do all this ASAP with mil. Can mil "showdog" - most elderly can in the early stages of dementia still be quite competent & cognitive for a couple of hours. If so, I'd try to go over several times what needs to be done, have mil do a beauty shoppe visit/dress nice & see legal at whatever time of the day mil is most high functioning. You want to try to do the dpoa & MPOA & update will ASAP. Otherwise you will have to go guardianship route which is expensive and with court hearings & reporting.
None if this is simple. You are already ahead by knowing & managing her bills & debt. What seems to happen is that something happens that becomes the tipping point downhill for them becoming end stage dementia. Try to be prepared & get a binder going on all her finances, deed & tax assessor statements, her awards letters & w2 from SSA and any other sources of income. Mil may never need to enter a NH or apply for Medicaid, but if she does having started a binder on all things mom will save your sanity.
Life would be easier if women just kept their maiden names, wouldn't it?
The banks are especially notorious in not accepting POA if not done just right and in not allowing family to cash or write a check or do on-line banking IF they get a whiff that the elderly account owner is not doing it themselves. I was lucky in that for my mom, her bank is a smaller community bank that also had a trust department so some degree of expertise in elderly $ issues AND I was a signature & POD on her account of long standing AND I myself had an account at the bank. They were good about stuff. But the big banking groups - Bank of America, Chase, Citi -are oh so difficult to deal with and seem to do the nuclear option of freezing an account rather than deal with POA's. Most elderly accounts are tiny, with just their SS & maybe a retirement, a couple of low value CD's etc. going through it so not a $$ maker & so not ever a priority no matter what sunshine&lollipops are on their advertising.
As far as they needing an ID, my mom;'s Medicaid application required ID and also citizenship validity. Mom actually had her original naturalization paperwork so good there. But that is a beast to try to get nowadays. Now I did take her to TXDOT to get her DL changed to a forever ID and they were good about it and basically I went over the day before and got the paperwork and spoke with intake so mom had a speed-pass and a place to sit the next day (after early morning beauty shoppe!). Everybody could not have been nicer... she was everybody's grannie or auntie but I had cleared the path so to speak.
If your parent is living at your home, has no assets, owns zero, and never needs to deal with Medicaid or SSA or retirement / insurance companies, or do any significant banking, has a fully paid up funeral & burial, then you probably can do without legal. But something is gonna come up and you need a DPOA and like need it yesterday. Then what?
You know when mom died, I had to email the FH a current photo of her in order for them to process the body. Current too, not the nice 1970's obit notice photo or her forever state ID, but one in how she looked the last year of her life. Have no idea how common this requirement is now done. Caught me by surprise.
You have all been very. Helpful.. Thank you!
You have all been very. Helpful.. Thank you!
Interesting, though, about the photo; nothing like that either, wonder if it was because the funeral home knew him; he was in the local Honor Guard, though hadn't been in a while, certainly not in the last year of his life, but maybe he hadn't changed that much, that they could still tell who he was.