Phony "Elder Abuse" Attorneys, And The Real Agenda!
The end of life has many challenges, and we don't know how, or when our parents will leave us. It can be fast, or a long goodbye. The personality of the person is magnified ten times in dementia cases like Alzheimers. However, we families usually stick together, fighting, arguing, and trying to make the chaos work, so our parent is loved through the process. Then we enter the last stage of the game, and we can't hold it together anymore, so it's time for assisted living, a nursing home or a live-in caretaker. The parent can't pretend it's alright; then the opportunist steps in to make the end a disaster, it takes only one jealous or vindictive family member, who wants to strip the one chosen to be legal representative of their power. They call daily planting evil seeds in the fragile mind of the parent, or begin an association with an attorney, who gathers financial information from the one who feels slighted.
It's emotionally hard, for people who have a parent with dementia; paranoid delusions or even cancer to cope. Finances are not something they should have to worry about protecting, if their parents have prepared for that time of life. Nowadays there is so much greed out there, it all has to be protected ahead of time. A general durable power of attorney isn't enough anymore. There are trusts and other documents, but attorneys are learning how to break into it all, and raid the savings. It is going to take a group of concerned citizens to bring this to the lawmakers, and have some strict guidelines, before family members have to turn their loved one's future over to a strange legal parasite.
When a person is coming down that last stretch of life, and death is on the horizon, in some form or other the vultures come. We see those black birds circling in the south over dead animals, and we call them buzzards, cause they eat the last pieces of flesh from the roadkill. The buzzards can be jealous family members, who didn't like how the Will was made, or a greedy lawyer who saw a financial opportunity. There are those attorneys, who claim to protect the older family members through 'elder law', when actually only a few really do that, very few.
It's become easier than ambulance chasing, because the money is just lying there for the taking. We need new laws that make it harder for attorney opportunists, by requiring that medical records be reviewed, tests be made for competency to make changes to durable powers of attorney, and at least two or three witnesses be used, before an attorney can challenge what the parent chose as a caretaker, or take over a families finances, or take guardianship of the elderly. Families must fight back, and seek Congress's help in tightening laws that allow this type of fleecing, through claims that they are protecting, when there is not any real abuse at all. Please read the website below, and sign the petition for better laws.
Most of those vultures want the money for themselves, through big charges for paying a few bills. Why work hard, when you can rip off families, whose sweat has saved a nestegg for the grandchildren. Law Firms just let grandma or grandpa's paranoid delusions and dementia beliefs give them an excuse to forbid them to see the daughter or son, while getting the right to pay their bills, and skim large sums off for that new boat or lake lot. Whole court systems are set up to have the "newly declared incompetents" placed under a friend's (attorney) guardianship, and of course no one in the family is qualified to pay those bills, it wouldn't be right. Years of savings drained in just a few months, while the family is restricted from even visiting their loved one, it keeps the truth from getting out about the actual time the legal thief spent milking your parent's savings. What do they care, as Medicaid will pick up the tab, when it's all gone.
These lawyers and groups all pat each other on the back, and speak about their charity work, and how many patients they have protected. No one talks about what they charged the poor suckers! Many are tied in with doctors or PAs who treat Alzheimers, and then they can refer the ones, who are having delusions and suspicions about their children or caretakers. It doesn't take hardly anything to destroy a family already dealing with those type of dementias. After all the accusations and feeding into their parents fears and suspicions, it is almost a relief for the child to be done with it emotionally, even if the money was taken.
The attorney who claims to have developed a 'rapport' with Grandma, who has Alzheimers and paranoid delusions, is either insane, lying, or planning one helluva heist of Grandma's funds. I used to be suspicious of DSS, but at least the money is going for Grandma's care, and not for the new million dollar house at the lake, or a Mercedes. You can check the tax bills in your county, under the attorney's name and see what cars, houses and lots they have amassed doing such grand work.
The parent can't remember taking your name off the bank account, and thinks the woman at the bank is lying. Then another jealous family member gets her to a lawyer, under the guise of help, and Grandma signs a paper relieving the trusted family member, who has spent several years trying to take care of a person with a dementia disease, of their ability to handle their parents affairs anymore. The parent can't remember all the work, travel, gas and time the child has spent trying to help them. The lawyer takes away the heirs ability to visit, because Grandma or Grandpa have delusions, and in one swift move of a pen, the lawyer opportunists gets control. They don't want anyone to find out what is really going on, so they forbid the children to visit, it wouldn't be good to upset the parent.
The cocktail parties and meetings with awards would astound your Grandpa, if he were alive, as he amassed the money, working 10 hours a day, which is paying for those lavish events. Grandpa wanted to take care of the woman who cooked, cleaned, and changed the diapers of their five children, and ten grandchildren. He wanted those bright young grandchildren to go to college without debt. Grandpa never expected, in Grandma's Alzheimers, some lawyer would be using his money as an allowance, to their spoiled neurotic child....a drug addicted teenager, or to a trophy wife, who doesn't need another pair of Italian shoes. Or to a female attorney with too many lake lots, and not enough sense.
This is where the American Dream goes at the end of life for 20% of the elderly, into the pockets of greedy opportunists lawyers, who claim to be helping your parent with the 'elder abuse' going on in the family. Nine times out of ten the actual abuse is being done by the attorney, and it's the caretaker and family members, who get fleeced of their inheritance! Grandma/Grandpa are confused, and hurt because their child no longer visits, and doesn't remember any of the circumstances that caused them to be banned from coming. Many don't even know the papers they are signing, and what that is going to mean to them, and their heirs. In their distorted, diseased view they are still protecting their nestegg, but it is being stolen with each conversation with the attorney. The bloodsuckers are charging that parent for every minute spent talking, and overcharging for every bill paid, while pretending to care.
If this happens to you or someone you know, then please report it to the Alzheimer's Association, Bar Association, Your Congressman/woman, and DSS. Do NOT take this sitting down, and be sure to sign the petition going to congress at Care.com. Send your story to them, and publish it on websites for others to read, and remember that new laws will stop some of the real abuse to family relationships, and help others to keep the monies earned by hard work and protect their parents intentions, when they were in their right minds. We do want to stop real 'elder abuse', that is happening in nursing homes, and families, but there is something else going on that needs to be stopped as well....opportunist attorneys!
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