Living Wills are a very good thing however they don't always work. My mother had a living will & I would become trustee to make medical decisions if she was deemed not competent to make those decisions. Do you know how hard it is to get that determined. As an only child, you look like you are trying to make your parent look mentally incompetent even though you know they are not making the right decision. They can make the people in the hospital who don't know them as well as you do think that they are just fine. It takes the written decision of two doctors to allow you to become in control. The doctors would not do that on their own & I didn't want to make it look like I was trying to be controling. Because of that, they kept me from helping make the decisions of where my mother was going to go when she left the hospital & because she "was determined to live at home" with the least amount of help necessary, we ended up getting involved with an RN that stole her identity, all her valuable jewlery & tried to get the police to find me abusing my mother.

It is a tricky issue no matter how you look at it. It is good on one hand once the competence is determined, but until then, you have your hands tied while they are alive. Once my mother died, it made things much easier in that I could just take over & no probate & just pay bills & I am working on organizing things now since she just died in January & I was in the medical hospital until February with problems caused by the RN that set herself up to take care of my mother.

Just one warning. If someone wants to be at home & refuses to be in a nursing home make sure that you use nursing care that is licensed & bonded & not just the friend what in my case was my mothers boyfriend & his daughter. Check out whoever you are having do the care thoroughly & DON'T TRUST ANYONE ALONE IN THE HOUSE.

The trauma I went through will never go away & it made the last month & the funeral a nightmere I probably will never get over. I don't know how to get around these problems that are built into the process but I got so hurt in the process even with the living trust (will), it is actually scarry.