Your state may well have a “Department on Aging” or the equivalent. If so, although it will be focused on investigating physical abuse of the elderly, it will also have a mandate to investigate financial exploitation. It may well have a hotline you can call.
A normal or durable power of attorney is generally revokable at will – do you know if your friend has tried stating that the power is revoked? Sounds too simple to be true, but it could be the answer.
Susanann, does this man have access to a telephone? The next time you visit, could you bring a cellphone to him and let him initiate the call to your lawyer?
Susanann, your instincts about this situation seem generally sound, and commendable. But not this one. Misrepresenting the client’s identity, and paying money to a lawyer in order to induce his or her action on that misrepresentation, is fraudulent. You can hire a lawyer for yourself, but not for someone else, so hopefully the lawyer would see through the dodge right away. But if the lawyer believes you and acts in reliance on that belief, and gets called on posing as an attorney representing your friend without actually being your friend’s attorney, then he or she will probably get investigated for an ethical violation–which will be a bad thing for the lawyer, even though he or she will ultimately be exonerated by pointing the finger at you. And it will be even worse for you, who will have set yourself up for a charge of tortious interference with the contractual relationship between the hospital and its patient (which is what I assumed astro was warning you about).
Please don’t deal with a lawyer, or a patient’s-rights advocate, or a health-care regulator, or anyone else in this matter by playing loose with the truth. If you try and fail, it will be bad, but if you try and succeed then it may end up much worse. A lawyer or other advocate can give good advice only when armed with the facts. As Visual Purple, Zette, and mangeorge have each suggested, the solution may be quite simple.
To quickly answer the title questions, yes it’s possible. You do a revocation of power of attorney form, get it notarized, and file it at the courthouse
Lawyer advice would be a good idea.
Yes, they certainly can.
I have an aunt who suffers from Alzheimer’s, and we looked hard to find a Nursing Home that could physically keep her there, and do this competantly. The first 3 we tried were less capable at keeping her there than she was at getting away (this at nearly age 90). At one, she climbed over a fence, hiked to a nearby implement dealer, and persuaded them to let her take a tractor for a “test drive”, and headed for home 80 miles away (going the wrong direction, though).
The current home does a much better job with her. First they adjusted her medication (said she was way over-medicated) which helped a lot. And they were smart enough to let her take over much of the backyard for a garden. Between a flower garden & now vegetables, she’s probably covered about half their backyard. But after 75+ years as a farm wife, I guess you get used to growing things. It’s given her something to do, and she’s much more contented. And they have a lot of fresh flowers & veggies at the home!
And we (her family) are all quite happy that this nursing home DOES physically prevent her from leaving.
I didnt even think of that.
If I can even get in to see him again.
A nursing home cannot legally hold someone against their will unless they have been deemed to lack capacity. Even people released to nursing homes from psychiatric hospitals (as has been done in NY recently) cannot be legally held without their consent.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen anyway, it just isn’t legal.
Most likely, though, the “power of attorney” cited above is/was either a “springing power of attorney” which takes effect in the event that the grantor becomes incapacitated, or else it is (as mentioned before) not a power of attorney at all but rather a guardianship crafted by the court subsequent to his having lost a competency hearing.
Incidentally, you have to be competent to issue a power of attorney. If someone is allegedly no longer able to make decisions, that includes the decision to issue a power of attorney, and a power of attorney issued by an incompetent person has no legal validity.