What is the difference between the role of medical power of attorney and the role of guardian?

Thanks for your answers. I have two other brothers who are in charge my parents' trust (my mother passed away four years ago), so I can tell that my parents wanted us all to have a piece of things... and we generally work together as well as can be expected. I just wasn't sure what the role of medical power of attorney even was if the guardian role can trump it. Sometimes we caregivers feel a bit invisible, don't we?

My best guess, due to the fact that the assignment of a guardian was a one-liner in Dad's Advance Health Care Directive, will be that he wanted the guardian to take care of anything else that might be necessary after the Medical POA takes care of the specific things outlined in the document.

We are having a meeting this weekend with my four brothers and me, and they are researching lists of local assisted living facilities, as well as companies that provide home health care. I'm wondering why the sudden interest in professional health care providers right when I've asked for a care agreement. (sigh) I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were researching how much to pay me (hold on while I stop laughing) and hope for the best at our meeting. Thanks so much for your support!

It is a pity that your father didn't seem to understand the difference between POA and guardianship either. My guess would be that he had in mind sharing the responsibility fairly between the two of you, you and your brother, and perhaps thought your brother could manage finances and paperwork? But guardianship is alas not the term he was after.

Going on the apparent grumpiness of your brother's preferring to put your father in an ALF before he'll see you and your husband enriched - ha, funny - by caring for your father, should I gather that you and brother are not seeing eye to eye?

Be that as it may. With no court order to say otherwise, whatever authority your brother is exercising on your father's behalf it is not guardianship. So in a way it doesn't matter.

But seeing that your father did want your brother involved, and you know that he did, is there any way that you could include brother in discussions without letting him be a pain in your neck?

Your brother doesn't have guardianship unless there has been a judicial proceeding, as Glad states.

Why does your bother want to move dad to AL? Has this issue been discussed among the siblings?

Yes, guardian trumps poa's, BUT, only a court can grant a guardianship.
Who prepared the POA? Was dad competent when he signed it? Because he stated bro was to be guardian makes me wonder. Often times siblings share poa's one over medical one over financial.