My answer: AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Start quietly, if possible. Set up wills and POAs for BOTH of you as soon as you can - make some excuse like having a friend who didn't have a will and.. something like that. The best lawyer to answer most of your questions is one experienced in elder law (and this is the case no matter how old you are). As someone advised, find out as much as possible about what the financial situation is with him (again, make up some cautionary tale)
Read, read, read. On Joan's homepage alzheimerspouse.com on the left she has a link to a lot of resources for the Newly Diagnosed. The more you are prepared the better off - don't let us scare you off.
Lullie, sorry for your problems. Most of us hear can relate to most of the problems you have. You sound like you are unhappy in your marriage and given your "young" age, if it were me, I would try to get some kind of a job and branch out from there. You may have to start with min. wage but once you have some experience then you can improve your situation financially. Now, that is what I would like to have done at your age, but my DH would have a absolute fit had I got a job other than working with him. So, lots of things can upset out plans.
Actually, at 71, I would love to have a 2 day a week job at minimum wage, but I can't because of DH.
Employeers like employees in their 60's (retail). Factory jobs, I don't know about.
The answer on the wills, DPOA, and Medical DPOA, for both of you is NOW. It doesn't matter if there is anything wrong with you. I don't care if you are in your 20s. The time is NOW.
In the case of us and our LOs, their should be a Primary and Secondary person on both the DPOA and the Medical DPOA. I choose myself and my daughter for my husband's, and my daughter and her husband for myself. My husband didn't blink an eye over the fact that our documents didn't match. If he had I'd have had them match and then I'd have had the attorney change mine.
It has been a year since I got our documents done. At this point my husband can still sign his name, but he no longer could follow the conversation with the attorney. I got them done at the last possible point in time. We had documents from our time in California that were basically the same as the ones we have now in Pennsylvania. I wanted documents for this state so when the time came things would work out OK. It turned out that there were some legal differences.