Continuing with the topic of a new law relating to elder abuse that criminalizes elderly financial exploitation, which is not limited to an incapacitated person, here are some of the most common ways in which people exploit the elderly:
- Using a financial attorney as a license to steal.
- Treating joint accounts as your own even though you are only on the account for estate planning purposes.
- Using another person’s ATM card and/or checks for one’s own benefit.
- Threatening victim to get money.
- Refusing to obtain needed medical care for the elderly person so that assets will continue to be available for abuser.
- With respect to caregiver, keeping the change from errands, falsifying time sheets, spending time on the phone instead of doing what they are paid to do, etc.
There is a new law relating to elder abuse that criminalizes elderly financial exploitation…this law is not limited to an incapacitated person.
- Makes it a crime for fiduciaries who knowingly, or recklessly for their own profit or advantage, deprive or take real or personal property of an elderly, disabled or impaired adult for the benefit of someone other than the adult.
- Makes it a crime for a person through the use of undue harassment, duress, force, compulsion or coercion acquires possession or control of an interest in real or personal property of an elderly, disabled or impaired adult, or establishes a relationship with a fiduciary obligation to an elderly, disabled or impaired adult that gives the person control or interest in real or personal property or other financial resources.
- Prior to this statutory change, unless the incident involved an obvious crime, like a forged check, the police often considered reports of financial exploitation to be family or civil matters allowing the perpetrators to continue the exploitation without fear of criminal liability, which as you can imagine was very frustrating.
