Financial Elder Abuse: Mother Victimized by Son, Daughter

La Puente, CAIt is unthinkable that an elderly person could become the victim of financial elder abuse at the hands of her son or daughter. Unfortunately, that is what Susan S. says happened to her mother-in-law. Susan says her brother-in-law and sister-in-law stole money from their mother, violating California's financial elder abuse laws.

"My mother-in-law had been living in the same little house since about 1965," Susan says. "It was paid for and her husband had passed away in 2000. Her oldest son passed away in 2003 and she was left with three sons and a daughter. My husband was one of the three sons. The daughter, my husband's half-sister, lived in my mother -in-law's house with her teenaged daughters. There was financial and verbal abuse going on against my mother-in -law from her daughter.

"My mother-in-law had diabetes and was a double amputee. In 2004, she died after living in a rehab facility for over a year. She was suffering from diabetes, the amputation and dementia. In the course of the year that she lived in the facility, my husband's sister, older brother and older brother's wife handled my mother in law's money and mail. They were cashing her retirement checks and spending money illegally out of her account.

"We were told that the older brother was taking care of the bills while his mother was in hospital. We assumed that meant he was doing that legally, either until she got better until her living trust went into affect. The living trust set out that all four children were to split the proceeds of her estate equally and all four were to act as co-trustees, meaning they had to agree on everything.

"When things started look bad to us, I started phoning the banks and getting copies of paperwork. All the two siblings would do was hang up the phone or refer us to the other sibling or an attorney when we questioned them about what was going on. No one would tell us the truth.

"I had a beautiful relationship with my mother-in- law. But about 6 to 8 months before she died, I had my last telephone conversation with her and it didn't seem like her. She was really negative, angry, bitter and depressed. She was upset and said that we accused the others of abusing her when no abuse was going on. I expected her to say that because she never said a bad word about any of her children. She loved them no matter what.

"But we found out that prior to her surgery, my mother-in-law was sleeping in her home on a dilapidated, old living room couch. Her daughter was sleeping in her bedroom and the teenagers were sleeping in the other two bedrooms. My mother-in-law was healing from having a toe removed and was sleeping on an ancient couch.

"The daughter got a copy of the living trust and tried to break it, but was unsuccessful. It was about the only good thing about this—the sister and older brother tried to steal the house and stop my husband and the younger brother from inheriting anything but they weren't able to.

"In the last few years, the older brother and his wife took 6 thousand dollars cash and opened a joint account in his name and my mother-in-law's name. Then, they funneled money from the mother-in-law's account to this other account. That's how they got the money. They made it look like my mother-in-law had been there in person for this, but she had dementia at the time and never left the hospital.

"They took all of her retirement checks, almost $300 a month, for at least the last year of her life—that's just how far back I looked into. They took all of her social security. If I had to guess how much money they took, I would say just under $20,000. They also took everything from inside the house.

"One thing I remember is that when this first started, we didn't know anything about living trusts so we sought legal advice. The attorney told us, 'While you're here asking questions, they are cleaning out your mother-in-law's bank accounts. We never would have guessed it at the time, but he was right. That's exactly what they did."