Adding early dementia grandparent as attorney POA

[Katkin7]

Currently in process of doing POA for my grandparents, health already done.
Finance has been delayed due to them thinking they already had one registered, so it has taken a while to establish they haven’t!

Grandfather early stages of dementia (although not diagnosed & he refuses to engage with anything to do with this, refused memory clinic referral, he very much has head in sand so diagnosis not likely anytime soon) he does have capacity for POA though.

My question is whether its worth adding him as an attorney to my Nans financial POA.
They have a joint account but realistically she deals with everything & if she was incapacitated in reality it wouldn’t be him dealing with anything & he is happy for us to do so ….
But would it be best to have him named on it anyway?
It would be jointly & severally so not an issue with validity if he did become incapacitated also. Or is it best to just leave him off?

I just don’t want to be missing an obvious reason to name/not name him that will make life more difficult with a lot of stuff being in joint names.

He is not named on my Nans health POA but wondering if finance is different.
They are happy to ‘do what you think is best!’

I wouldn't add him. If they are happy with you as attorney just stay with that.

Just leave him off.

He may not have his head in the sand, so much as be blissfully unaware that he has any issues. After all, if there is a problem, he can't remember it. And if you point it out, you must be wrong as he has a lifetime of experience sorting these things out so it can't be him.

We only got my FIL to the doctor when he was no longer able to argue with us. Problem had been apparent for years by then. And he never did believe he had anything wrong with his memory, even after diagnosis.

I would leave him off

Dementia can proceed quite rapidly. I def. wouldn’t add him.

You are supposed to do POA before people have dementia. It may not be valid if done after.

DH and I have our offspring as PoA. I pointed out that as we are getting older this made more sense.

It’s up to your GPs to decide who they want as attorneys, not you. Me and my DH have each other plus our DDs as attorneys even though the likelihood is that we would either not have capacity ourselves at not be alive should the need arise!

How can you do his POA if his capacity is in doubt? We've just done my parents on Sunday and you need someone to certify their capacity who is not a member of the family or has anything to benefit from it.

This is true, but it is also possible for dementia to be in the early stages and a person to still have sufficient capacity to understand what a POA is and to sign it. It helps that the concept won't be new to him now, as he has already done a health POA (and indeed, thought he had already done a finance POA)

From what you've written I wouldn't add him. He can have access to joint accounts anyway if needed. As long as they both do have POAs - him as well? -then I think you've got things well set up.

If everything he and your Nan have is in joint accounts, there's no point him being POA as he can already do everything as an account holder.