New Yorker Article "The Takeover Senior citizens are losing their assets…"

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I wanted to start a conversation about this article from the New Yorker that ADDMM shared with us in their “News You Can Use” mailing.

I’m copying the direct link to the article here in case some of you didn’t see it.

New Yorker Senior Citizens Losing Their Assets

It was quite a disturbing story about Senior Citizens being taken advantage of in certain communities by a system that seemed to allow for this kind of “takeover”.

My question is:

What do some of you think could be done to put preventative measures in place to prevent this from happening? Were there some legal measures (documents, agreements, POA’s, other,) that could have been put into place to prevent a total stranger from being the guardian against the rights of the family. I am not a lawyer and am just wondering if some of you have some thoughts as to preventative measures that could be built into a clients estate planning in their later years that could stop this type of situation from happening.

Thank you,

Alix Longfellow

[Anonymous]

Alix – Thank you for sharing this most troubling article. I am truly shaken by the rampant abuse and disregard. I too want to understand why a POA wouldn’t protect these victims.

Thanks,

Barb

[Anonymous]

I just did some Google searches related to this information — particularly if a POA supersedes a Guardianship or not. The answer seems to be: it depends. One dependency seems to be what state this is in. The law appears to differ by state, and so the article appears to be about victims in a state where guardianship is easy to obtain. Unless I missed it, I don’t recall the article indicating whether any of these people had a durable POA in place prior to the court-appointed guardian. The dates also seem to matter. If a POA is in place already, then it would seem that the court would recognize the POA (one statement indicated that it would need to be disclosed during guardianship proceedings). It also appears that the guardianship is also mostly for healthcare, and conservator is for financial. So it might be guardian vs healthcare POA and conservator vs financial POA. The durable POA might address both healthcare and finances, though.

It sounds like the best solution would be to contact an elder law attorney or estate attorney in the state(s) you are interested in and find out what the precedence rules are for that state for both healthcare/well-being and financial. It does appear that having the estate documents in place (healthcare, POA, Will, etc.) would make having a stranger suddenly be court-appointed guardian more difficult.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for starting this conversation. I was completely shocked when I read the article. I am not a lawyer so I have little to contribute but I am very interested in learning what can be done to protect our seniors from these types of actions. I am POA for property for several of my clients. It never occurred to me that this might not be enough to protect them.

[Anonymous]

As a followup, I asked an elder law attorney in my network about this. His input was that he suspected that these victims probably did not have POA documents in place. He encouraged having these estate documents in place.

[Anonymous]

Hi. I read this article when it came out, and it is scary. I asked my mother’s lawyer (in Florida) what steps we could take, and she advised getting statements from both her lawyer and doctor attesting that she is of sound mind and able to manage her affairs. Maybe revise it yearly. The lawyer also said it’s really not that easy to do a stealth guardianship as described in the article, unless some lawyers and judges are in on it.

I did find a website called National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse. They have an article about the New Yorker article in which they say to be sure the senior has a current Power of Attorney form and Healthcare Directive. Here is the article, there are many more useful items on the site:

http://nasga-stopguardianabuse.blogspot.com/2017/10/theres-legal-way-for-someone-to-take.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+NationalAssociationToStopGuardianAbuse+(National+Association+to+Stop+Guardian+Abuse)&m=1

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