What is the real difference between POA, guardian, attorney?

Very wise words.
She has been a gem and still is. She had a hard life and served everyone else so selflessly. I was hoping her last years would not be more suffering.

Hopefully if a third party manages her finances and she receives Medicaid, I could move her to a better place. Have to figure out how to afford an advisor/attorney.

All the replies are greatly appreciated an are being studied.

My only concern for the house was she is depressed being away from home. Im not sure if she can handle living in a facility. I know loosing her pets would be a final blow.

She got a visit from legal aid but they will not discuss anything. I was hoping they could advise on how to access her account to pay her bills to a place that declared her incompetent. Her funds are tied up. I cant hire anyone to help without accessing her funds. It is looking like an outside party has to step in.

Thank you for the insight. To be clear I have no one else to help. I have been handling her bills and accounts. Her rehab is applying for Medicaid. I believe I have gathered the documents they need. She needs to get out of that covid filled rehab asylum. She does have a person staying at her house looking after her cats and doing minimum things.

It would be ideal to have someone handle the financial side of things like a helper but allow my mom to keep her house or choose a better facility. I guess once someone else is appointed you loose all control?

I would caution you, if you do not want to take on POA you REALLY DO NOT WANT GUARDIANSHIP.
Look up what the POA can do. Basically, if your Mom can give you this, eventually you will be paying all the bills for her; you would register as the signee for all her accounts, handle all money into and out of account and also keep meticulous records. You are responsible to your MOTHER and not to the court unless you are accused of wrong-doing and someone hires a lawyer to petition the court to examine your records. I did POA and Trustee for my brother and did everything, leaving him a small personal account and giving him monthly accountings. THIS WAS DIFFICULT to do from half the state away and I had to fly to him often. It would be WORSE to attempt for you long distance. To be honest, it is VERY DIFFICULT.
Every single entity and bank out there wants something different from you, and puts you through their own wringer until you are literally nuts with it all. It is worse today I am hearing with every entity outsourcing everything, and the folks who handle the outsourcing being not trained, visa workers from East India brought here to work in sort of ghetto home environments.

I am just saying I would not do it. I would not be either POA or Guardian long distance and would NEVER EVER CONSIDER GUARDIAN. Let the state take that on. You can't do anything without court permission and guess what that includes? You CANNOT EVEN RESIGN without court permission. Do not take this on in my humble opinion.
Do you really want to handle all this? Sales? Of a home and heaven knows what else? Do you want to handle all the taxes and all the problems when SS says to you "Nope, a POA means nothing to us; from us you have to make yourself the representative payee".

If you haven't done this, don't have time, don't have the knowledge tell this volunteer attorney to let the state appoint a court Fiduciary.
Do know, however, if you do that your opinion about sale of anything, placement and where and when it occurs, etc. will not matter. They handle everything.

That's just the opinion of someone who did this out of love and obligation and found the learning curve very steep indeed. I did it 5 years ago when my brother, newly diagnosed with Lewy's asked it of me. I would never do it again, and would ask that a Fiduciary be appointed, but then I am now 82, and honestly the hours on the phone were a nightmare. I once spent from 10 a.m. in the morning to 4:30 p.m. on the phone with spectrum when they inadvertently took the phone service out of my brother's room instead of another resident who had died. I talked to folks across this country and from East India all day. That's how long it took. It was really a farce, but one with nightmareish aspects to it. And this was for a well organized man who had everything set up and in place. So go figure what it would have been otherwise.

A primary question is whether she has legal capacity to assign a PoA. From my personal experience, an attorney can determine this in a private interview to assess capacity and to make sure the elder is not being coerced. The legal capacity bar is pretty low, so a person with some mild dementia and memory loss may still be considered legally able. A medical doctor can test and provide a diagnosis but is not the one to say whether someone is legally incapacitated or not. One can go online and download PoA forms, assigning a rep this way (which my Mom did) but it gets hairy if there is contentions within a family. I'm an only child and my Mom is single. She did hers a long time ago. We filled it out, signed it with the requisite witnesses and notarized so it is legally finalized. Again, only do this if there is no chance of any family getting weird about it. We see LOTS of that here on this forum. Guardianship is pursued through the courts. It can be very expensive for family to go this route and they still must prove incapacity. The difference here is that the guardian is assigned by a judge whether the elder wants a specific person or not, but they are usually so incapacitated that they are unawares. One can create a Pre-Need Guardianship (legal form) where a person who has capacity names a desired person in the case where the PoA assignment gets screwed up (usually by the elder). Sometimes if a judge sees family infighting over guardianship s/he will assign a 3rd party guardian, or co-guardian (family member + a 3rd party guardian). If the elder winds up with a court assigned 3rd party guardian, then the family no longer has any control or insight into their elder's affairs. They will be locked out of residences and accounts immediately. No "protected" info is shared (like banking or medical info) but family can still carry on a relationship as long as it is healthy and in the elder's best interests. If you want input, then you either become the PoA or pursue family guardianship through the courts.