My mother who lives in NJ has been somewhat estranged from me for the the past 37 years. She is now in a situation where she should be in a assisted living facility. She has been caring for herself with the help of her family and my brother who lived with her up until he past away last January, and now because she doesn't listen to anyone and keeps getting hurt, basically becoming a burden to her sisters who are also older. They now are calling for me to take responsibility of the situation. These are individuals that haven't spoken to me for almost twenty years. My wife, kids and I live in NC. Could I be legally forced to take responsibility of the situation? Please don't think that I am heartless, but we are a struggling family ourselves both emotionally and monetarily. This could very well be the wave that sinks my family.
Thank you for any advise.
BTW, there really isn't much of a downside to being someone's POA. It gives you complete access to their medical information and financial assets and you have complete power to determine things such as where the person will live, what doctors they will see and so forth. You are responsible for paying their bills out of their financial assets, but you are not financially responsible for them from your own money. If your mother ran out of money you would be responsible for applying for medicaid for her and getting her a medicaid room in a nursing home. If your mother has a lot of money and assets, then you would have a lot of options. For example, you can sell your mother's home in order to pay for her care. You can also claim reasonable expenses from her estate, such as your travel, hotel, and food expenses while you are in NJ taking care of moving her to an ALF and selling her home and various items from her estate. These expenses are at least partially tax deductible for your mother.
But the place to start is finding out who the POA is, if there is one. If there isn't, then there needs to be a POA. If you don't want to act as POA, and no one else in the family wants to be POA, then you can hire an estate attorney, have the POA drawn up and hire someone to act as POA. That person would draw a salary for this responsibility from your mother's estate.