Recently, while my daughter was Baker Acted, I tried to take her $30 paycheck to her to sign so I could drop it in her bank account. The pdoc at the facility quickly said she could not sign any legal instrument during her stay as this was for her protection. I was glad the pdoc said no because I had not even thought about that and realized it was to protect my daughter.
In a similar situation, my father who has Alzheimer’s was in a different mental health facility because he was hallucinating and having delusions and became aggressive. He didn’t recognize family and thought they were intruders. The facility heavily medicated him because he became aggressive with the nurses. During this Baker Act, my step mother and half brother had my father sign a quit claim deed on his house which added my step mother to be equal owner and then last month she sold the house and never told me. My father has no will filed and my step mother is keeping the money for herself. This whole thing is weird to me because my father was married to this woman before I was born and remarried her again a couple years ago (I think he married her a second time because of the Alzheimer’s as he was reverting back in his years when he was previously married to her). He is now in an assisted living facility paid for by medicaid. It’s hard for me to know what my father’s intentions were with his assets but I don’t think he intended for this to happen. I think that he would want them to be divided in a reasonably fair way between his wife, my half brother, half sister and me. My step mother knew very well that he had Alzheimer’s when she remarried him so it is pretty clear what her intentions were. Maybe I shouldn’t say that but that is what it looks like.
Look how my daughter was protected over a little paycheck, but my father had no protection of a huge asset at the facility he was in.