Was I Disinherited or Did Someone Steal My Parents’ Assets?
The death of a parent is a traumatic experience. Working through the grief process is challenging no matter how prepared someone may be for that day to arrive. When someone learns that their parent was the victim of financial abuse by someone they trusted, the trauma takes on a whole new dimension. Whether the abuser was a family member, caregiver, friend, professional advisor, or other person who had access or influence, the surviving family members may struggle with what to do.
But what can be done? The victim of elder financial abuse has passed away and is no longer here to tell us what he or she intended. Are there any remedies available to the surviving family members that stood to inherit the wealth that the deceased worked so hard during life to accumulate?
A. Financial Abuse Takes Many Forms in Today’s High-tech World
Most people incorrectly assume that contesting a will is the primary solution to address elder financial abuse and inheritance disputes. While changes made to a last will and testament towards the end of an elderly person’s life certainly may give rise to legitimate will contests, this remedy typically will only resolve a fraction of the cases involving elder financial abuse.
The reason for this is that in today’s world, fewer asset transfers at death are governed by a will. In the past few decades, there has been an explosion of alternative wealth transfer tools available to people such as:
- Assets owned jointly with rights of survivorship
- Payable on death (“POD”) / transferrable on death (“TOD”) designations
- Death beneficiary designations
- Living trusts created and funded during the parent’s lifetime
- Lifetime gifts or other transfers made before the parent’s death
In each of these instances, the parent’s last will and testament will not control the disposition of the assets. Instead, the pre-death designations of those assets will determine who will receive those assets.
Armed with this knowledge, the wrongdoer that gains the parent’s trust and confidence can exert influence on the parent to bypass an existing will and cause much, if not all, of the parent’s assets to the wrongdoer. The wrongdoer is added as a joint owner, with rights of survivorship, on the parent’s accounts under the ruse that the wrongdoer can “help” the parent with their finances by “being on the account” as a cheap and inexpensive way to avoid having a power of attorney instrument prepared for the parent. Unfortunately, financial institutions are ill-prepared to counteract this very common form of abuse.
With nearly all financial institutions offering online access to accounts, the tech-savvy wrongdoer who is added to the parent’s accounts now can accomplish online transfers of some or all of the parent’s funds to the wrongdoer’s own account or change beneficiary designations online.
B. Old-School Financial Abuse.
A person need not be tech-savvy to commit financial abuse of an elderly person. In fact, many financial abusers will prey more openly upon the elderly victims by various methods. That may include isolating the victim from their family members and friends, speaking poorly of family members, or fabricating financial problems or other challenges that the wrongdoer is experiencing to try and influence the victim into executing beneficiary changes, gifts, or other estate planning changes.
By engaging in these tactics, the elderly victim is thus influenced to perform the act that causes changes to an otherwise orderly estate plan. Inexperienced financial or legal professionals may not be able to pick up subtle cues as to the existence of undue influence or financial abuse and thus assist the influenced victim in making these changes that benefit the financial abuser.
C. What Can Be Bone and How Can Plakas Mannos Help?
Ohio law provides surviving family members and beneficiaries with remedies when elder financial abuse is suspected. Following the death of the parent-victim, Ohio probate courts have jurisdiction and expertise to determine whether an individual committed fraud, undue influence, coercion, or took advantage of a person’s cognitive deficits.
Plakas Mannos has extensive experience representing individuals and families whose loved one was affected by elder financial abuser. Based upon that experience, our attorneys have been appointed by courts to serve as independent investigators, fiduciaries, and guardians to investigate financial abuse and take action to rectify it. If you suspect that a family member was the victim of elder financial abuse, contact Plakas Mannos.
About the Author
David Dingwell is a partner at Plakas Mannos where he provides probate, estate, and trust administration and planning services, as well as ethics and professional conduct advisory services.
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