Does financial power of attorney have authority over mom's homes contents?

He may need to inventory and eventually sell the assets, so this is essentially marshalling the assets for that potential obligation of whoever is named as Personal Representative or Executor under the Will.

I think it would help if you raised the issue directly with him so there's no confusion or misunderstanding of his intent.

It's not so much that he is allowed to withhold your mother's property from you, as that he is responsible for safeguarding her property for her. It is a monumental administrative task and manual labour combined, so I would understand his wanting to keep things simple - such as not going to the storage unit and attempting to fish out individual bits and pieces, and not wanting you to do that either.

A friend of mine has just had a traumatic falling-out with her older brother over exactly this kind of labelled items issue, and she's very, very sore about it. Be careful.

Best case scenario: in the fullness of time, the storage unit will be attended to, your brother will keep you informed about when it's happening, and you will be able to turn up with a suitable vehicle for taking your labelled items away.

Um. I wouldn't set my heart too fixedly on that if I were you.

Worst case scenario: for the sake of simplicity, he sells everything as a job lot and divides the proceeds. How upset would you be if that were to happen, can you say?

If things haven't already got out of hand, the best thing is to assure your brother of your being happy to co-operate but ask him as a courtesy to give you reasonable notice when he plans to empty the storage unit. It may well be that this will not be until after your mother has passed away, and there are good reasons why not: she may need the cash value, for example, or at least it may need to be accounted for.

I assume there's no urgency about it from your point of view?

abbe, emptying out a parent's house is backbreaking time consuming work. It took me months to get everything organized on what to keep, what to donate, and what to haul away. It's wasn't easy, but it needed to be done as the house was on the market for sale. And in the mean time, vacuuming the rugs, cleaning the floors, dusting as cobwebs can form, flushing the toilets, not to mention shoveling snow and having the grass cut. Maybe items going into storage was all that your brother had time to do, he will sort everything out later.

Be lucky the items are in storage, and not hauled away. I was to a point where I just wanted to throw up my hands and say bulldoze everything, I was so tired. I had to go through every piece of paper in the filing cabinets and desks, I am still doing that, but all that is in bins in my house.

Maybe your brother is waiting until Mom passes. It's good that your Mom indicated what items will go to whom, hopefully it was done in writing, and attached to the Will?

Give your brother some breathing room, this process of emptying the house and selling is really exhausting.

The items may all have to be appraised and the $$ value accounted for if your mom ever needs to apply for medicaid. This doesn't necessarily mean that you can't receive those items, just that you may have to pay for them. Keep records, if the need for medicaid doesn't arise you can ask to be reimbursed the money spent from the estate.

The things are in storage and not disposed of, so you should still be able to get them. It may be that you weren't there before he needed to move things into storage to get the house ready for sale. That is a huge task that he is facing for your mother. He might not want to help you to retrieve the items at the moment, because they are in storage and it would take some time. Is it important that you have these things right now?

Sounds like a family feud in the making. If mom made here wishes clear when she was competent the POA should abide by such wishes. Getting him to do so is another matter. You could take legal action possibly but is the stuff in question with it? Is it worth a family fight?