What Happens When There's No Power of Attorney and a Parent Loses Capacity

Why being a family member isn’t enough

Banks, brokerages, the DMV, and government agencies aren’t legally permitted to discuss or act on someone’s accounts with a family member just because you’re their spouse or adult child. Without a signed power of attorney (or a court order), you generally cannot pay their bills, manage investments, sell property, or make many medical decisions on their behalf — even with the best intentions and a genuine emergency underway.

The default path: conservatorship

Without a valid POA and without capacity to sign one now, a court conservatorship becomes the route to gain legal authority — a formal petition, a court investigator’s visit, a hearing, and months of process before authority is actually granted.

Faster, narrower options worth checking first

• Temporary conservatorship — a court can grant limited, emergency authority faster than a general conservatorship, specifically for urgent situations.
• Medical decision defaults — California law has a default priority list of who can make medical decisions absent an advance directive (spouse, then adult children, then parents, then siblings), which can cover some medical situations without a court process.
• Representative payee — for Social Security income specifically, the SSA has its own, separate, faster process to name someone to manage those benefits without a full conservatorship.