Sounds gruesome if you take it literally. Taking it mythically, though, the Father eats the Son, meaning the child becomes the adult.
Roles and life is not forever. There is a natural cycle to things, from birth to death, from one generation to the next. In this case, in switching roles, you truly become the adult, and leave behind the last remanent of childhood.
And when you grow old enough, it will be your turn, just as it will be for me.
As saddening as seeing that happen can be, stealing from someone "for is own good" is still stealing.
I'm comfortable with the decision and feel that we as a family made the right decision for him and it's hard to say it was "stealing" when the money was ultimately used for his own needs. It was a gamble, he could have passed away right after we protected his funds, then the money wouldn't have been spent on him, but that didn't happen.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
This was likely illegal as it was done without his knowledge, but it proved invaluable as it let us afford expensive home health care in the last few years of his life and avoided the need to move him to an assisted living facility (which he staunchly refused to do).
It took all of his retirement savings and most of the equity in his house to pay for it.
If he'd continued giving away all of his money, as his health declined, he would have had to be moved to a state subsidized care facility when it got to the point that he needed more care than family members could give him at home.