You see your parent’s steady decline: the falls, the medical conditions, and the memory loss. You know they need help, but you can’t do it yourself and in home care is just too expensive. So you may ask, “Can’t we just move them into assisted living?” As some of you may have experienced, it is not exactly as simple as just packing up and moving them into assisted living. Many times elderly people are understandably attached to their homes, the associated memories, and personal independence and are therefore unwilling to leave. So your next logical thought may be, “I guess we’ll just force them to move.” The rest of this article will discuss how that is not an easy step either.
Guardianship, a very important word in your struggle to get proper care for you parent. If you have guardianship then you already have the power to compel your parent into an assisted living facility. If you don’t have legal guardianship over your loved one, then you potentially have a long, difficult road ahead of you. If you have Power of Attorney (POA) or Durable Power of Attorney (DPOA) for your parent it would be a mistake for you to think that you have the ability to force a move because, unfortunately, a POA or DPOA does not give you the necessary legal control to force them into an alternative living environment.
According to the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision, the unnecessary institutionalization of people with disabilities constitutes discrimination and violates Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. If you are asking “What is unnecessary institutionalization?”, according to Agingcare.com a person must be mentally incapable of taking care of themselves, a threat to themselves, or a threat to another person for the judge to give you guardianship and, subsequently, the right to force them into assisted living. A natural question might be “What does a judge have to do with it?” To receive guardianship over your parent you will have to appeal to the court.
Once you’ve appealed to the court, it can get expensive. You have to pay for all of the court costs, which could include paying a doctor if they are called in to assess the elderly person. Another hurdle in the process is that you are trying to assume actual guardianship of this person, i.e., taking their right to make decisions for themselves. That being the case, judges will generally require significant evidence of incompetence or imminent personal harm, as noted above, before giving you guardianship preferring to defend and protect that individual's rights.
Receiving guardianship, so that you can take the actions that you think are necessary for your parent, is a difficult undertaking. However it is not entirely impossible. The best course of action is to make plans early in the aging process so that conflict, as new challenges become apparent, can be avoided, and smoother transitions into necessary living arrangements are welcomed by all.
For more help visit: www.agingcare.com/articles and www.caring.com
