When Anne discovered that her older brother had put their elderly mother in a nursing home, it was the dramatic climax of months of financial elder abuse that ended only with her mother’s death.
Talking about it on the phone from her home, she describes how her brother falsely claimed a carer’s allowance and other benefits before she became aware of the extent of the problem.
“I believe he had forged my mother’s signature and changed her will,” Anne says, explaining how she struggled through the courts in the hope of protecting her mother and the mother’s assets.
Anne says that just before her brother took their mother back to her unit, she told Anne she was frightened of him.
Anne was able to get a ruling which determined that my mother still had the capacity to manage her own affairs; howerver, by that time the brother had spent most of the mother’s money on gambling and alcohol. He then left her to die of neglect. The doctors told Anne that her mother had not had her medication in over two weeks and was suffering from malnutrition.
Elder abuse is happening around the world. There is a continuing growing trend of adult children abusing their elderly parents and taking their money and other assets. Don’t let this happen to you. Put your documents in place today.