Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Georgia

A payable on death clause bypasses the will, so the will is irrelevant. Many people with dementia do have enough mental capacity to do a POA, so that issue is fact dependent on medical testimony no one here has heard.

Nothing in your post tell us he did not understand the documents, and as stated, you would need to prove that. if you want to contest the estate, see a lawyer immediately. Otherwise, money that disappears tends to stay gone the longer you wait.

You do not share any of the relevant details. When was the power of attorney made by your father? Was it drafted by a lawyer? Who took your father to a lawyer? Your sister? What about the payable on death (POD) designation? When was that done?

You are correct that if your father had dementia such that he was no longer mentally competent, he would not be able to execute a power of attorney or a payable on death designation. But the issue will be is whether he suffered from dementia at the time he did those things? Or were these things done while he was healthy?

Do you have medical documentation of the dementia? As noted by Attorney Ashman, people with dementia may have mental capacity so if the power of attorney was made early on in the diagnosis, then maybe it was ok.

If I were you, I would get to a probate litigation or elder law attorney. The POD designation overrides the will in the sense that the will governs the disposition of probate assets only. A bank account with a POD designation is a non-probate asset and will pass to the named beneficiary. So the checking account would pass to the sister.

If you do have some kind of grounds for challenging the POA and POD designation, I think you would have to be the executor of your father's estate. You would then have to bring a legal action against your sister and get a court order directing her to pay the money into court or getting the funds otherwise frozen so that she cannot spend them.

Litigation is very expensive. I would get a copy of the will and POA and pay an attorney to review these documents as well as the circumstances here. If you get the green light from the attorney, you will need to find out what a lawsuit will cost, the chances of success and what you will recover to evaluate whether you should proceed or not.

As noted by Attorney Riddle, you need to act quickly. Once the money is gone, its gone unless you can trace the proceeds into other assets.