On World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (WEAAD), here at Steene Law, we will be focussing on financial abuse.
What is financial abuse?
Financial abuse is when a person who has been entrusted to look after the assets of another person defrauds or steals from them.
The most common scenario is where the person who has been entrusted has become an Attorney under an Enduring or Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA).
Most Lasting Powers are to manage another person’s property and financial affairs. The law requires that an Attorney looks after their affairs in the best interests of the person who has lost mental capacity.
When might financial abuse occur?
Unfortunately, we find that very often when somebody has been appointed an Attorney and the person who has appointed them has lost capacity, large sums of money are withdrawn.
We are told by the Attorney when challenged examples such as “we needed to buy a car to take mum to hospital appointments” and our favourite, “mum always wanted the best so we bought the top of the range”.
Sometimes the consequences of the Attorney abusing their trust is that the Local Authority will consider that money taken from the person who has lost mental capacity is a deliberate deprivation and as a result they will cease paying care home fees.
This may result in the person having to move from the care home in which they have become settled.
Why might financial abuse happen to loved ones?
Financial abuse often occurs because the elderly are an easy target and no one could imagine that a relative (nephews being the most frequent perpetrator) would possibly act in the way they have.
When challenged, it is our experience that rather than admit that they have taken money from the person’s account, they seek to justify their actions by saying that the person whose has often lost mental capacity has gifted them money and/or property or they were “just getting their inheritance early”.
We are often instructed by co-Attorneys who find themselves having to sue brothers, sisters and other family members who are abusing the trust placed in them.
Identifying financial abuse
We have identified certain characteristics to look out for and would urge anybody who is a co-Attorney to seek advice if any of the following have happened:
- Valuable assets such as art or jewellery disappear
- Money is given to the person who may be at home or in a care home and the money disappears
- Regular cash withdrawals from cash dispenser machines
- Property being transferred from the name of the elderly/vulnerable person to the Attorney either for no value or an obvious under value
- Lump sum withdrawals from the elderly or vulnerable person’s bank account and when challenged the answer is “mum wanted to pay (insert name) university tuition fees”
- Additional names added to bank accounts
Should you find any of these actions happening, then this is financial abuse. This form of abuse is classified as Elder Abuse and needs to be dealt with because the person whose money is being taken often will not even be aware of it and will almost certainly not know how to deal with it.