My sister, who has early onset Alzheimer's, has been at her assisted living place for just a month now and has not required anything more than regular rent with meals, light cleaning, laundry. On this, her second month there, she got a letter saying they were raising her rent by a whopping $1005! Is that even legal? Evidently they did so without any warning, not even a 30-day notice. I am obviously fuming. Advice? We just moved her in. Hate to have to move her back out right away.
Speak with atty as to if a new Poa needs to be done or if you flat may need to go guardianship route. She has the $ so when u get guardianship you can be reimbursed.
The “springing” is a real issue. TX laws just came up with whole new DPOA format to deal with this as it had gotten way way out of hand when the banks (esp BoA, Chase) just routinely froze anyone with any type of DPOA out of accounts. It’s a new multi page dpoa with specific categories to be initialed and even has an separate Agent form that must be signed off on, a notary page, and different bank forms that banks must fill out in detail in order to disallow POA from access and state why. I just got one done to deal with our in college sons legal & trust stuff. No witnesses needed in this dpoa!
Atty can run a bkgd ck on the manager.
And if you don't mind my asking, how did you let that pass if you were there?
If your sister is considered competent, then it is true your POA has no authority beyond what your sister agrees to. You can't act without her consent. But with her consent, you can do whatever she instructs you to. Your power is held for her, on her behalf. Reassure her of that.
That the facility has already made a refund is a good start.
Now you want, for your sister:
the original contract that your sister signed, and make sure it's not a copy that has been subsequently amended. The two copies, yours and the facility's, must be identical and must both be signed. The manager can hardly blame you for being punctilious about this considering what's happened.
a checklist of the points for attention
deadlines for acting on same
You also want a Plan B. If this ALF doesn't pull its socks up satisfactorily by, what, say three months since her admission, what options are there for moving her?
Be clear about what you're expecting the attorney to do, by the way. You can spend a lot of money getting grievances off your chest and have nothing more to show for it than his agreeing with you.
Is it a brand new facility or something? Change of ownership or management? Is there any reason they've been so slapdash?
And hold on as tight as you can to your temper. I once lost my temper to the tune of several thousand pounds. My mother just sighed and later remarked: "you get it from your father." 😡
Also be aware in most assisted living facilities you can't just move someone out. Read your admission contract, in there it will tell you how many days notice you have to give the home prior to moving her out. It is usually 7, 15 or 30 days (most contracts I have seen have the 30-day notice requirement.) If you move her out before the 7, 15 30 days is up you could be charged for those days and yes they can do that.
I’ll bet a case of Prosecco that within the contract, it either has a initial evaluation period of 30-90 days that the AL can use to determine the level of oversight needed and the increased costs reflect a different level of oversight that has been determined she needs OR there’s a rate increase for 2019.
If she has dementia, she could have totally glossed over the contract or didn’t fully understand it. It could be that with all the emotion and upheaval of the move that family didn’t read the fine print on the contract or admissions agreement.
It could well be that she’s actually way beyond early dementia but appears pretty cognitive and competent. For my mom, she had Lewy Body Dementia and really she seemed really together and with it and this was in her 90’s as with Lewy really they outwardly look & seem totally ok and good on their ADLs but there’s no executive functioning ability. If your sister seems happy at this place, you might just have to chip in to have her stay there and till her contract runs out with whatever notice required for a move out. It may be that she needs a higher level of care than an AL provides. You really might want to look at NH for her and getting her eligible for Medicaid. If part of the decision to move into AL was price & that a NH was too expensive, you might have to revisit that decision and consider having her assessed to be needing skilled nursing care in a nursing home as Medicaid will pay for that if she’s eligible.
If she walks on her contract, it will be placed for collections and she’ll be toast on getting into another place as others ALs can run a recent history and credit report. If this AL has a SNF NH facility that has Medicaid beds, you might want to talk with admissions as to her moving over to SNF as Medicaid Pending resident. You might get heavy push back as AL are imo really the only profitable option for companies doing elder living places. If this is purely an AL and part of a chain, they will do whatever to hold her to the contract that she signed. Hopefully you did not sign off any responsibility and only your sister signed her paperwork. NH & MC are really expensive to operate; ALs are profit centers imo.
Who handled her contract for the admission, did you?