Can an elderly adult be forced into a nursing home by the state?

Factual Questions
21

I am in the midst of a nasty and loosing fight with the local Elder services right now.
My father now 83 with Vascular dementia (MOCA 16) left fairly detailed wishes, and appointed an MPOA and POA long before he was incapacitated.

We have been caring for him from the point where his banks forced the activation of the POA to just a few days ago.

His mental decline attracted numerous vultures including another family member before the bank stepped in and stopped that. We had reported most of them to the police, and the local office of aging (repeatedly). As my father had not been legally declared incompetent (and still has not been), they claimed they could do nothing.

Yet just a few days ago on an emergency exparte court order filled with easily disprovable lies he was forceably removed from his home and our care.
He resisted, fell and ended up with a concusion in their care - he has never been bruised or injured in ours, we have tried to get an emergency reconsideration before the judge - he has refused to hear it essentially saying I had a hearing that you were not allowed to attend and found all this crap true, I am not interested in your side. Prior to this Office of Aging had been in twice and received full access to his care and financial records - which they never bothered to read, or they would have known the accusations were crap.
We were accused of giving him medications that would kill him by the doctor that perscribed them, we replaced those meds with placeabos while seeking a better doctor AND thoroughly documented that we had done so.

Nor are we finding this is rare. Apparently the greedy conservator game has been adopted by local elder abuse units. They step in - particularly with upper middle class olders, they take over generally without any hearing, they seize assets, charge exhorbitant fees for their lawyers and staff, and then dump the old people into a home. When their funds are bleed out Medicare takes over.

I would be very interested in similar stories from others. I am planning on bringing up a web site on this at www.thebrokenwindow.net, i can be emailed at jbsay@thebrokenwindow.net

22

Because it’s their house and they want to stay there. Even if the amount of the compensation being offered is enough to pay for a move (irl it often is not), it will rarely pay to move a short enough distance to be able to visit with your neighbors of decades, shop at the same store where you always did and so forth.

From her relatives’ point of view, the best thing about the old folks’ home where my grandma now lives is the quality of care (her health has improved enormously); from hers, that it’s less than 400m from her own home. The park where we take her for walkies is the same one where we always went in the summer.

23

More often than not an individual cannot afford to stay in their home. Options in some places are limited. When there isn’t an ACLF or other group home, a nursing home is sometimes the only choice. Of course, the value of the home (assets) will be used to pay for the care until the it runs out and then Medicaid will kick in.

Caring of the elderly is always tricky. My mom has Alzheimer’s and is burning through her assets and will likely be broke before she dies. There are some funding sources but my siblings and I will have to pony up some big bucks until mom’s condition gets to the point where she “must” be in a nursing home and then Medicaid will take over.

24

We all know better than to take Pixar animated movies as gospel, but even in the movie Up, elderly Mr. Frederickson wasn’t committed to a nursing home out of the blue just because a developer wanted his land.

Mr. Frederickson was forced to enter a nursing home because he committed a physical assault with his cane in front of numerous witnesses. That gave the authorities some legitimate reason to think he was senile and potentially dangerous.

IANAL, so I have no idea if that would be sufficient grounds for institutionalization in real life.