Acting for someone else
Applying for a parent who cannot apply alone
Care Entitlement screening tells you what a household may be owed. It says nothing about who is allowed to ask for it, and that is where families lose weeks. The document most people reach for is a power of attorney, and two of the largest programs will not accept it.
Three permissions hide inside "acting on their behalf"
Agencies do not treat helping as one thing. They separate it into three, and they grant each one through a different instrument:
Getting information. Permission for the agency to talk to you at all, read the file aloud, and explain a notice. Filing and pursuing the claim. Permission to sign the application, receive the mail, answer requests for evidence and file an appeal. Receiving and controlling the money. Permission to have the payment sent somewhere you manage, and to spend it.
A general durable power of attorney drafted by a lawyer, notarized and perfectly valid for banks and property, may carry none of the three at a benefits counter. Not because it is defective, but because these programs run on federal rules that name their own paperwork.
Social Security does not accept a power of attorney for benefits
This single fact causes more wasted trips to a field office than any other item on this page.
The Social Security Administration states plainly that a power of attorney is not an acceptable way to manage another person's Social Security or SSI benefits. To handle the money, SSA must appoint you as a representative payee, which involves its own application and interview, and which carries duties: the funds are the beneficiary's, must be used for their care and needs, and may have to be accounted for.
Two things soften this. First, an adult who is still managing fine can file an advance designation naming up to three people they would want as payee if one is ever needed, which SSA will consider first. Doing that early costs nothing and removes a fight later. Second, helping with a claim is a separate track: Form SSA-1696 appoints someone to represent a claimant in dealings with SSA. Being an appointed representative on the claim does not make you payee, and being payee does not make you the representative.
Medicaid and Medicare want different pieces of paper
Medicaid is the easiest of the three. Federal rules at 42 CFR 435.923 require states to let an applicant designate an authorized representative, in writing and signed, who may then submit the application, sign it, receive notices and act through the appeal. It can be a relative, a friend, or a staff member of an organization helping the family, and where a court order or legal document already gives someone authority, that can establish it instead. If your parent can still sign one page today, this is the page.
Medicare grants only the narrowest of the three permissions by default. The "1-800-MEDICARE Authorization to Disclose Personal Health Information", form CMS-10106, lets Medicare speak to you about the file. It authorizes disclosure. It does not appoint you to make decisions, and it is not a substitute for the Medicaid designation above.
The VA rule that catches helpers by surprise
Only a VA accredited representative may assist in preparing and presenting a claim: an accredited Veterans Service Organization representative, an accredited attorney, or an accredited claims agent. A daughter can help her father gather records and can sit beside him, but the formal role goes to an accredited person appointed on VA Form 21-22 for a service organization, or 21-22a for an individual attorney or agent. VSO representation is free.
Be careful with anyone charging a fee to prepare an initial claim. Fees for representation are permitted only after VA has issued a decision on the claim, so a company asking for money to file the first one is operating outside that rule.
Managing the payments is again separate. VA runs its own fiduciary program and appoints the fiduciary itself after a field examination. A state guardianship or a durable power of attorney does not automatically make you that fiduciary.
The order that saves the most time
While your parent can still sign, collect the signatures: the Medicaid authorized representative designation, CMS-10106 for Medicare, SSA advance designation, and 21-22 with a county or state veterans service officer if there is any military service. Four signatures on one afternoon replace months of institutional friction later, and none of them cost anything.
If that window has closed, go program by program rather than to a courthouse. Each agency has an internal path that does not require a judge, and guardianship or conservatorship is slow, public and expensive by comparison. Start with the county office listed in your plan: they file these designations every day and will tell you which form the local process actually uses.