What rights do we have to protect mom with dementia from her friend that puts her in danger?
This is a thorny one—and I do applaud you open-mindedness in supporting your mother-in-law’s choice of companions. But it is also wise to be concerned about her safety, and you need to act quickly if her new friend is really moving out soon.
The best and possible next steps to take depend on your mother-in-law’s actual legal mental capacity. If the POAs have already gone into effect, which usually requires a diagnosis of mental incompetence from a doctor or two, then she would no longer be considered able to change that document to name a new agent, and your husband would remain. As an added protection, it may become necessary to have your husband or some other responsible person named as your mother-in-law’s conservator, which would give that person some stronger legal rights to indicate how and where she should live.
If she is still mentally competent, then the truth is she is free to move if she wants.
Since you want her to be as safe as possible at the facility, it might be wise to involve someone there in the situation. A good choice to begin might be the facility’s ombudsman, an independent third party assigned by state law to deal with handling concerns of residents and their families. You should be able to find contact information for the ombudsman posted on the walls of the facility—or through the national website at www.ltcombudsman.org.
You might also call the local Area on Aging, which you can find through Caring’s website at www.caring.com/local/area-agency-on-aging, and explain that you’d like a confidential consultation about the situation with a local resource. Depending on what’s available in the area, that may range from a geriatric social worker to an elder care lawyer.
Your best solution is likely to come from a creative resource willing to act in your mother-in-law’s best interests, which trickily include both her safety and her right to associate with those she wants to see—and you may have to work with a few different people to achieve that.
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