Its been a long hard road. Mom did make a living will and POA years ago but would not give me a copy. She has always been suspicious and did not trust anyone including myself so here we are now — she has severe dementia, in state care at a nursing home out of state from me AND the state conservator allowed me to go through the house but I could not find the living will (the POA is of course of no good now) she has always said she did not want to just be “let die” and felt care should be provided even in (what I considered) would be grim circumstances. In the last two to three weeks her mental status and physical abilities have decreased dramatically. She is complacent and nonchalant (total different then her normal personality). I’m an only child- out of state- what do I do? I spoke to a elder law attorney and they said maybe a surrogate decision paper would be in order but I still believe the will is in the house somewhere-and I read the surrogate papers and it says that the person has no living will though I know she did make one out I’ve checked with the county courthouse and it’s not on file. I’m driving in again to search next weekend. I’m exhausted pls any advise.
2. You can have her declared incompetent and that will give you full charge of her physically & financially.
3. If you can attain control you will have access to everything.
We had a similar problem in our family where a relative wrote a will and then refused to sign it. Unsigned, the will was useless. The disposition of his assets was done according to the law and not according to what was written (but unsigned.) I think he knew that would happen. He just wanted to hurt someone by writing the will the way he did.
If your mom felt very strongly about being given life support no matter what the circumstances, she would have made sure that document could be found. Maybe her own death was just too frightening for her to contemplate. It's important to consider the quality of her life...not just how long she lives.
I'm sorry you are going through this. It's hard.
Does she have a safe deposit box at her bank? With letter from mom's doc you may be able to get a court order to open it.