re: Wife’s uncle is disrupting care plan for her father who has dementia

Sounds like you and your wife need to mind your business

If there is a durable power of attorney and a medical power of attorney, whoever is named as POA has the ability to make decisions. In the event there isn’t a valid current POA and medical decisions need to be made, in Louisiana (and most other states, if not all but I don’t know specifics for other states) the following is who the doctor will listen to:

If there is a spouse and they are capable of making decisions, they get the final say.
If there is no spouse, then any children are next.
If no spouse or children, then any living parents.
If no spouse, children, or parents, then any living siblings.

The brother/uncle gets no say unless the father has previously identified him as POA over the wife and daughter.

I once worked with someone who called people like the uncle seagulls. Someone would be in the hospital and the family has a good handle on things and have made some decisions about care, and then this family member flies in (literally or figuratively), shoes all over everything and makes a lot of noise, and flies away leaving the rest of the family to deal with the mess they created.

Your wife and her mother need to stay united. They have the power here. Sad we even have to talk in terms of power.

Perhaps the uncle is using the fathers name in some business dealings that he doesn't want found out.

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So what steps can she or my MIL take? I told my wife she needs to get a conservatorship of him to add protection, but she doesn’t want that responsibility. I think her uncle is going to show up tomorrow, put him in a car, and go to a lawyer himself.

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Interdiction, if in Louisiana, or conservatorship elsewhere. Does he have an official dementia diagnosis? When was the last time he visited a neurology doctor? How did he score on the SLUMs test?

Interdiction/conservatorship is very serious. You are essentially taking away someone's civil rights, and it is a huge responsibility, as the court would essentially deem in them dead in all matters related to their health and well-being.

Your MIL might want to file conservatorship first, before his brother does, as this could get sticky. She will become the curator, and another person will need to be assigned as the under-curator - a checks and balances system of sort.

yeah - my Uncle, who is an X-Ray tech at a hospital, has blissfully ignored everything and tells my dad that the doctors are wrong, and that my mom is a bitch because she took his car keys away and sold his gun.

he came to visit my dad on his birthday this past Feb, and would not talk to my mom, and started his shite again and I got involved.

after I said my piece, he left and drove back to Mobile and we haven't heard from him since then. good riddance

If FIL has dementia and cannot tend to his business, an interdiction or curatorship is the way to go. A power of attorney does not give the holder of the POA any control over the person - it simply gives them the power to act on the behalf of the person who granted the POA.

For example, assume you have FIL's POA and you think he needs to be in a residential home. FIL says "no." He wins.

If uncle is included in a signed POA then there are business partnerships in play here. Uncle has an angle, either he wants all the money from the business interests or needs to keep some things from being revealed so he is trying to get control by proving dad is competent to sign docs that will accomplish his goals

Yup. That's why my grandmother and mother both gave me medical POA's as they didn't trust my brother.

Who has power of power of attorney? Maybe you can get a restraining order against him?

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Her uncle has also convinced him that he should be driving

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There are laws against this. Have him arrested.