More and more of us are helping to care for or coordinate care for parents, grandparents or other relatives and friends. The challenge of moving mom or dad into a nursing home or other care facility is huge. Once care is in place, you want to trust that no one is abusing them physically or financially.
Unfortunately, abuse does sometimes occur in nursing facilities at the hands of staff members, residents or visiting family members. While abusive behavior manifests in many ways, financial abuse is particularly devious and subtle.
Examples of elder financial abuse
If your loved one shows signs of weakening mental faculties, they may become the target of malicious individuals in the nursing home that might try to extract money or financial information from them. One study showed that family members are more likely to be culprits of scamming older adults rather than nurses or strangers. However, any caretaker who spends a lot of time with the vulnerable could use their access and influence to prey on their weakness.
Common tactics include:
- Requesting vulnerable elders to provide account information or to write seemingly unnecessary checks.
- Stealing checks and forging signatures to cash them in.
- Identity theft like using the victim’s credit history to take out loans or credit cards.
- Investment scams
- Persuading the elderly to put property deeds in the abuser’s name
Without valuable financial protections like estate plans, powers of attorney and revocable trusts, a nursing home resident can be especially vulnerable to bad actors.
Your options when nursing home abuse occurs
It is important to check in with your aging loved one to ask about signs of suspicious behavior around them. If it seems that hostile individuals are defrauding your family member, or that strange activity is occurring within their financial accounts, then you should take the right follow-up steps. Report the incident to the nursing home administration and consider contacting Adult Protective Services as well.
While we cannot eliminate every risk our loved ones may face, we can take (or encourage them to take) proactive steps to significantly reduce their exposure to financial exploitation. A comprehensive estate plan is a powerful defense against elder financial abuse. These documents not only protect your family member’s financial security but also preserve the legacy they’ve worked so hard to build.