Legal Question in Family Law in New Mexico

Your question is three fold: (1) If her husband has given a power of attorney to another person she can ask him to make a writing to revoke it. If he did that because their marriage is on the rocks then she should begin to consider other options as to her marital relationship. (2) Unless mother in law owns the house she cannot tell your sister to move out. A power of attorney will not be effective as within a marital relationship in the course of who decides where one of the persons and the person with the children lives. If she does own the house then she has to act as a landlord in a landlord tenant kind of way. You can go to Legal Aid - or their website - and get a copy of the Landlord Tenant Handbook. That handbook is very good on telling / explaining about the landlord tenant relationship, i.e., what landlords and tenants can and cannot do. Last, in this area - the mother in law is not a landlord in a situation where husband and wife live in his home and he goes to jail. She might eventually get mom moved out but I think it could take some real heavy duty court orders that are coming from a court that is not a magistrate court dealing with landlord tenant issues. [As an aside on this point - I suppose grandmother will find out the hard way that she is going to loose her relationship with the grandchildren if she is picking on their mother to the point to make her move away.] If the mother-in-law does not own the home and the husband owns the home your sister can file for divorce and claim a property right interest in the home - which she may actually have. This will force husband to choose between his mother and his wife. If he chooses his mother then that says something in a whole different way about the marriage. (3) Why is the father/husband in jail? Is he in there for a long time? Did he do something to the wife or children? Maybe it is time for your sister to simply re-evaluate her relationship with the husband.

Hope this helps.

Law Guru