Helping sister get out of an abusive marriage

Location: South Dakota (her location)

My oldest sister has had a very rough and complicated life over the last 10 years. About 9 years ago, she had a massive stroke that resulted in a brain bleed. Then, about 3 years ago, she fell down the stairs and suffered another brain bleed. As a result of both bleeds, she has had some mental changes. She’s never had a physician or judge declare her incompetent – she has capacity to make her own medical and financial decisions. However, she has a lot of medical needs, and cannot safely live on her own. Her husband of 38 years has to get her up and down to the bathroom, help her with dressing, and provide help with activities of daily living.

Unfortunately, he has become very emotionally and financially abusive, and in the past 2 years he has progressively become physically abusive – including sexually assaulting her. She has finally reached a point where she wants to get out. I realize this is going to be an insanely complicated endeavor, and I realize we are going to have to have everything in place first to safely get her away. He takes her to and from appointments, and often cancels them if he feels like she’s revealing too much to her counselor, physical therapist, and even her various physicians. He also does not allow her to speak to her counselor without him being present, and he uses the excuse that she needs him to help her get around. All of her immediate family live ~7-9 hours away, so that further complicates things.

I am starting by searching for divorce/family attorneys in her city. She has disability income but has no access to it, so I will be making a trip there to take her to a bank to open a new account and have it switched over when she’s ready (when it’s safe to do so, essentially). We know we’re going to have to find an assisted living facility or nursing home so she can get the medical care she needs. We also know we’ll need to arrange transportation to and from appointments while we’re working towards getting her out of there. I am going to try to arrange for her to speak with a domestic violence advocate while I’m in town. We’ll meet with an attorney as well, but I wanted to be prepared.

Do we need to prove she has capacity?

Should she work on setting up POA?

What else am I not thinking of?