Naive. There is no malice here aside from the one you project. Why are you conflating legality with morality? The father is clearly self destructive and going through legal ramifications to prove it does not serve anyone but the government, or one's self to cover their ass. Who cares if it's a father, mother, grandfather, boss, elderly person you care for, sister or other relation. That has little to no bearing on how one treats self destructive behavior.
Letting him have his money because he's your 'father' is no different an argument than letting X do Y because he's Z relation. It's a piss poor argument and doesn't hold.
"I'll let my alcoholic father drink some more because he's my father, and if I take away his drinks, well that'd be indefensible because I'd be stealing! He should be allowed to drink however much he wants. If I want to take his alcohol away I need a court order to prove that this is a morally acceptable act, because moral authority resides with the government! In fact, I'm worse than the punks around the corner who regularly steal alcohol from under his nose because they are unrelated despite crappy intentions, whereas my good intentions for his health and my relation as his son and son's should pay deference to their elders makes my act oh so terrible. " /sarcasm
At the time, his doctor and attorney said that while his behavior may have been out of character, it was not egregious enough to get a court order declaring him mentally incompetent. One of those professionals recommended (completely off the record and in literally whispered voice) the route that we followed.
So he was not mentally incompetent, and you illegally took all his money, and you still think this is defensible?
I'll never understand you people, thinking you have the right to touch other's property and decide their lives, because you think you know better than them. (and then collectively downvoting me to hell because I dare to defend the right to private property of mentally competent people and condemning theft)
It's hard to know the full truth from a truncated post on the internet with limited other context, but it's advisable to take it as it is and not project so much of your own opinion on it.
It's impossible to know the trust-dynamics in this family.
When I was a young child, my mother would regularly take money which was given to me as gifts from relatives and I would never see it again. I have full faith that whatever she did with the money was spent in more productive ways than I ever could, despite that being theft by your interpretation.
Going up this thread, the topic is that at some point the parent-child dynamic fully-reverses. Now the parent is less responsible than the child and the child may or may not need to exercise some authority in the parent's best interest.
The definitions of when this dynamic should reverse, of what "best interest" is, of what "responsible" means are all subjective but much of our world is. I personally put faith in my ability to judge people, and therefore by extension, put faith in my friends and family to generally help and intervene in my best interests when the time is necessary - I would prefer this every time over having some legal intervention and hope that it never has to come to this in my own case.
You seem to be confusing legality with ethics, or perhaps morality.
But in any case, since you're convinced he was fully mentally competent, then what was illegal? He must have fully understood that the power of attorney paperwork he signed was transferring full financial control. And it'd be hard to argue that the money was not managed in his best interests.
So if a fully competent adult willingly signs away financial decisions for his money, and those decisions are made, what problem do you have with it? After all, it was his decision to sign the paperwork, if a grown man wants to hand over financial control to someone else, why should anyone stand in his way? Just like in your scenario, if a grown man wants to hand over his life savings to anyone that can tell a sad story, why should anyone stand in his way?
Regardless of what arguments were made to persuade him that signing the paperwork was a good idea, the details were all clearly spelled out in the paperwork.
I'm here to say that you're not alone even when downvoted.
My grand-uncle (brother of grandmother) was always 'strange' for all my family, for the entire life, because he had some ideas unavailable to mere mortals that live their cooking-eating-relaxing lives. But when we spoke in his room full of books and maps, I was surprised how many things he knew and did. He spoke on 6 (iirc) languages and traveled a lot on ex-ussr territory. In last years he suffered a stroke and became helpless for some time and cannot speak with usual speed. Ofc family members took care of him, but now that they are stronger and faster thinking, they can laugh on his intents and not take his wishes seriously, saying he is dumb. It's all about cooking-eating now. Though recently one day he just went to train station, bought a ticket a met his friend in other city (800km). He returned succesfully. He is not an idiot, I visited him after disease and he is still my grand-uncle, the same mindset, just very slow speaking and thinking. Others don't give a fck. No, they treat him with care, but never seriously. That's hell.
Now, dear reader (not to kahrkunne, he already knows it), after you read that, I beg you, please stop supporting that awful attitude to a human being* who lived his life and now wants to spend his worth as he wants. Do not put your nose into his business, because there is a chance that your comfortable-cooking-eating mind just cannot understand what life is about.
