My husband has DPOA as well as Medical and Financial POA for his father who is in assisted living in Maryland. Is guardianship necessary with all the POAs in place?

No facility can force a resident to do what they don't want to do. According to my daughter, once a person is a resident of a NH or AL it is considered their home and they cannot force them to take meds, eat, bath, dress, etc. So even if you have guardianship you cannot make him to anything. If you try it becomes abuse no matter how far into Dementia/ALZ they are. The guardianship means that a judge has made a decision in court that you are legal guardian and no one can override that unless they take you to court. With POAs someone could talk LO into revoking ur POA and assigning them. Guardianship is not cheap but cost can be taken from Dads money.

Thank you both for answering. We felt inclined to seek the advice of our attorney, who in fact did suggest guardianship. Even though he has dementia and has had numerous physicians sign off on that, all he needs is one cognizant day to go to the courts and fight the directive. We actually found that no matter what POAs my husband has, the responsibility ultimately lies with his assisted care facility. My husband can "suggest" what he wants done, but the facility has to enforce his wishes. When and If his father fights, having guardianship in place appears to make it easier to make him compliant. Thank you again for your help

DPOA works OK as long as the patient is compliant. If the patient fights the person designated in the DPOA, and there is difficulty in getting providers to follow the directive, then it may be necessary to get guardianship.

I'm going to answer to bump up your question Emowen. It seems to me that guardianship would be unnecessary, especially since he has been deemed incompetent by multiple physicians. Many people with dementia resist the reality that they can't live on their own any more, I don't understand why his facility doesn't know how to deal with it.