Dutiful Child Or Financial Manipulator?
Caregiver or Financial Elder Abuse?
Our parents age and their physical and mental capacities diminish. We, as their adult children, recognize our parents’ decreasing ability to care for themselves. We see that we need to step in and help them. Often, one of us children will take over the bulk of the responsibilities such as taking the parent to doctors’ appointments or the attorney’s office.
We see our parent begin to depend on that child more and more. So, our parent decides to appoint that child as a trusted decision maker. Our parent may even give them a larger inheritance to compensate them for their time. At the same time, the other children must take extreme care to ensure that our elderly parent is not being exploited by a manipulative caretaker.
We need to ask ourselves, is our sibling caretaker being a dutiful child or a financial manipulator?
Who Is Susceptible to Financial Exploitation?
With more people living into their eighties and nineties, elder abuse is a serious and increasingly common problem in our society. Elder abuse can take several forms. Elder abuse consists of physical, sexual, emotional, and verbal abuse or caretaker neglect or exploitation. Up to one-half of all elder abuse in the United States is financial exploitation, which is the aspect this article focuses on. Financial exploitation includes outright theft of money or property, illegal transfers of property, identity theft, and misusing a position of trust, such as through a power of attorney.
Research has shown that the following characteristics indicate that an elderly person is more likely to be financially exploited through undue influence:
Physical limitations that require them to depend on others to perform daily living activities such as home and yard maintenance, personal health and hygiene, preparing meals, paying bills, and transportation
Mental limitations resulting from medication side effects, dementia, or injury
Having recently experienced the death of a close loved one, such as a spouse or sibling
Social isolation that results from few family or friends who visit or living alone with little or no access to community activities or healthcare services
Experiencing anxiety or depression caused or worsened by loss or isolation
Being generally naive and extremely trusting
Having little to no knowledge about their financial situation or little to no experience handling finances, for example, if their recently deceased spouse handled all the finances
Why Elder Abuse Can Happen
Often, people who use undue influence to financially exploit an elderly person do not begin helping them with the intent of using the elderly person’s trust to manipulate or exploit them. Nevertheless, as time goes on, whether because of resentment or entitlement or another reason, the helper begins to feel justified in helping themselves to the elderly person’s money and property.
Although it is most often a family member who financially exploits the elderly person through undue influence, financial exploitation can also occur at the hands of any person whom the elderly person trusts, such as a neighbor, a fellow member of a religious organization, a housekeeper, or a professional adviser.
Exploitation Warning Signs
Below are some warning signs that a dutiful caretaker has crossed the line into elder abuse:
Disappearance of the elderly person’s cash or valuable possessions
Unusual charges on the elderly person’s credit or debit cards or unusual withdrawals from their bank accounts
Unexplained transfer of accounts to another institution or person
Changes to legal documents, such as a power of attorney, will, or trust, by the elderly person naming the caretaker to trusted positions or granting an inheritance or a larger inheritance, particularly when such a change goes against the elderly person’s previously expressed wishes
Placing the caretaker’s name on accounts as a joint owner or payable-on-death beneficiary
Signatures other than the elderly person’s signature, or forged signatures, appearing on checks or credit card or loan applications
The caretaker socially isolating the elderly person by limiting their access to communication (phone, mail, or email) or social visits or disallowing privacy on the phone or with visitors
The elderly person’s bills going unpaid or the elderly person expressing concern about not having enough money to pay bills when there is sufficient income or other financial resources available
Unexplained changes in the elderly person’s demeanor or interests
How to Prevent Financial Exploitation
Although the estimated annual cost of elder financial abuse is billions of dollars, it regularly goes unreported because the abuser is often a family member or trusted caregiver and the elderly person is either unaware of the abuse or too embarrassed or afraid to report it. Yet by being aware of the warning signs and helping to create a community network around the elderly person, as well as taking careful and appropriate steps to plan for their decreasing ability to manage their own finances, such as setting up automatic bill pay or creating a power of attorney or trust, you can greatly reduce the risks.
How Can We Help?
We can help you take the steps necessary to protect yourself as you age or to protect your vulnerable loved ones. Call us so we can discuss the appropriate steps to take.
