If I want to legally take over my Mom's finances is there a way to do this without saying she is incompetent?

Tad, the Guardianship hearing is very sensitive to your mother's dignity. Nobody is going to point to her and call her incompetent. The court evaluator will interview her and ask her if she trusts you. The MD will submit a medical opinion. Your mom will have her own lawyer called a Guardian ad Litem for the hearing. She doesn't even need to go to court if she does not want to. Our mom did not go, she was perfectly happy to let someone else handle all the decision making.

It's called DPOA.

The guardianship process (called conservator ship in CA) is a very expensive and cumbersome legal process and should only be undertaken if there is a dispute in
about who should be in charge of the money. I worked for 3 years as a court investigator for such cases.

Hi Milburn3ts! Although our attorney drew up all the paperwork for DPOA, the banks gave us the run around and it took over two months to get them to accept it and only after we brought both my inlaws in to see the branch manager. I couldn't believe that the bank didn't care the DPOA was duly witnessed and notarized and all the signatures matched up to the ones on file at the bank. Can you speak to what to do now that banks are wary of accepting DPOA due to an increase in elder fraud?

If your mom is able to understand questions and terms of a medical, durable, and mental health POA than you can have a competant Notary sign the papers for your mom. In AZ you do not even need to be present however it is a good idea. The notary is witnessing that your mom is aware of the content of the documents and agrees to them. She is her notary - not yours. People can make this very complex if they want to or keep it more simply done. Once deemed incompetant things can get very sticky. Too many people wait to long and then there is no going back. You can find the appropriate paperwork online and yes, once signed and notorized they are legal documents. Most banks have forms they want used for financials but the process is the same. Do this as soon as possible before your mom shows significant signs of incompetance -some forgetfullness is not the same as incompetance. A good notary should say that you mom is not able to understand what she is signing and won't go any further if that is the case. Make sure when your mom is w/ the notary that she has not taken any altering meds ie: pain meds, sleep aids, etc. as that can alter her mind set and can make her appear less capable than she really is.
Good luck and don't wait. A mental POA has nothing to do with current incompetance . It is designed to address needs in the event of.......

yes, life, and I just shared mine; she could have a problem, even if you didn't

One word of advice. Definitely get a POA in place. Also, you at be a little reluctant to tell her what should be done but this situation may get out of hand unless you take control now. I have a POA in pace for the past 5 years but didn't begin taking over paying the bills fully until about a year ago. If I had only been able to do this sooner, my Mom wouldn't be stuck with a equity loan that she initiated. Good luck.

I got the run around from the banks too, even with valid poa's.
Not like it used to be. Having a local lawyer who can later get involved is helpful since these "bank rules" are often not written..they just don't want to go through the expense and potential exposure of validating the poa. One regional small bank I dealt with had their legal depth review it. No problem . Great. The other was a global commercial bank that wouldn't budge until the lawyer called the manager.

tad, my cousin didn't find his guardianship hearing to be quite so as pam is stating; he did not want his granddaughter to be his guardian - question, are you in the same state as your mom? - she was his only relative in his state but he even wanted to move to the same state as his sister and let her be his guardian - since they said it had to be somebody in the same state as him - but at that point they said he couldn't and she couldn't; not sure what MD was involved; do know she'd already placed him in a nursing home - or at least he was in one, had at least been sent there for rehab but I think at that point they would not let him go back home to live by himself, even though he had completed his rehab; they're the ones who were saying he needed a guardian because they'd released him like that before and he'd just wound right back up there so I think it was their doc who submitted his medical opinion along those lines and his guardian ad litem just went along with it; one thing that helped facilitate it along those lines was that his granddaughter's mother-in-law was the head nurse of all the nursing homes in the state, so either she was concurring or was even behind it, even though they all said granddaughter wasn't really wanting it but if so, then what was the problem with letting him have it his way; he wasn't trying to say he didn't want or need a guardian; he just didn't want it to be her but it didn't matter; that's who they appointed anyway and she immediately moved him in the entirely opposite direction from where he told the court he wanted to go and they didn't care; nothing anybody else, his sister, who went to court and told him, as well as him, what he wanted and what she would do, mattered, so..