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Dad and His Two Sons: Where Did the Money Go?

By Carolyn L. Rosenblatt, R.N., elder law attorney, mediator, AgingParents.com

Imagine this: two sons agreed to keep Dad’s inheritance in the bank for safekeeping. He’s a disabled vet. He has trouble handling money and trusts his adult sons to help him, and watch over the funds. Sons promptly spend whatever they want, select a neighbors dad as their “financial adviser” to invest the rest of the money, and no surprise, it’s all soon gone.

Dad is now living in poverty. Sons are going to school, or working, having a good time and seem to be entirely disinterested in their father’s fate.

Is this about greed? Of course. Is it about a sense of entitlement by the sons to do whatever they wanted with Dad’s money? Yep. What have we come to when we think of a parent as a “throwaway” person who does not deserve our concern and care? The sons seemed to have no idea of a duty to their father to be sure he would not struggle in poverty.

This situation is real. The Dad called us at AgingParents.com in hope of mediating the case with his sons. Our jobs as mediators are to remain neutral, to suggest solutions, to help the parties work out a plan to resolve the conflict. Dad wanted the sons to pay him back for what they had taken, buying new cars, traveling and having a grand old time. They didn’t have his permission to deplete the funds.

The sons did not care to really participate in problem- solving with their Dad. They met, but would not offer any cooperation with trying to fix the situation. Dad didn’t want to sue them and he generally gave up. It was quite sad. The best we could do was to get them all to agree to keep talking and to work on re-establishing their relationships.

This is an example of financial elder abuse. It came about as a result of many factors. First, Dad made a dumb decision to just give all the money to his sons, in their early 20’s. What was he expecting? Neither had proven themselves to be particularly skilled or wise about handling money, much less Dad’s money. He might have put it in a trust and had a qualified trustee manage it for him. Yes, it would have cost fees to do that but the trustee has a legal duty to do what is right for the person who owns the trust.

Another factor in the financial abuse was the opportunity it gave the sons, who obviously did not understand that the funds weren’t for their own enjoyment. Communication was either lacking or poor. Nothing was ever put in writing.

A third factor was that the sons chose an unqualified “advisor” to invest the money for them. They knew him but did not educate themselves about his qualifications nor his track record. He made very poor choices and lost the remaining money on bad investments. Dad would have been better off with a conservative investment in bonds or other low-risk choice. An experienced and qualified financial adviser is a must when a large sum of money is at stake for any elder.

We think this is a somewhat unusual situation. Yes there will always be greedy kids. However, we see many honorable, loving, trustworthy adult children stepping up to do the right thing with an aging parent’s money. We encourage, acknowledge, and applaud those adult children. For many of us in the caregiver role, handling an aging parent’s funds is one of the caregiver’s jobs. If you are spending your hours at night or on weekends watching over your aging parent’s accounting, paying bills, minding the books,, we respect what you’re doing. The time it takes, the attention you give it is an act of caring. You are truly honoring your loved ones and are making the world a better place.

©2010, AgingParents.com.

When Siblings Are Stuck in Disagreement

Carolyn L. Rosenblatt, R.N., B.S.N., Attorney
Aging Parents.com

This is a case study of a real situation, though the names and details are changed to protect confidentiality.

Two sisters are arguing and in extended conflict about the care of their mother. One sibling, a middle aged woman we’ll call Nellie, lives at mom’s home with mom, and doesn’t work. She takes care of mom, but not very well. The other sister, whom we’ll call Mary, is worried about Nellie’s unstable mental health, and that she isn’t bathing mom properly or watching her closely enough. Mom has dementia. She’s declining slowly, and can’t be left alone.

Nellie has access to two of mom’s bank accounts, even though she does not have power of attorney over mom.
Nellie is very emotionally unstable.

Mary tried to mediate the conflict with Nellie, and Nellie did appear at mediation. Nellie made all sorts of agreements, such as having a professional caregiver come in several hours a week, to check on mom and help out. Then, she refused to sign the “settlement agreement” document, and went back on her word with everything she said she would do.

Nellie wants money, and isn’t satisfied with mom’s income supporting her. She wants to get paid, too.

Mary has the durable power of attorney for finances. What can Mary do now?

Because Mary has the right to control mom’s finances, she can take Nellie off the bank accounts, except for the amount required for monthly living expenses. If Nellie wants more money, Mary can see to it that she will only receive it if she complies with the things she agreed to do at mediation.

Mary has a legal right to control all the bank accounts, and a duty to protect her mom from Nellie raiding the bank accounts for extras she doesn’t actually need. Nellie spends money on herself from mom’s bank accounts.

If Mary can get over her fear of Nellie, and do what her job as power of attorney requires of her, she will be better off. Mom will be taken care of by someone besides Nellie, and Mary will then have “eyes and ears” in mom’s home to help her keep mom safe. Nellie can continue to help care for mom for as long as she is able to help, but Nellie needs an extra hand with bathing mom, and other chores.

This is an ongoing conflict for which control over the mom’s money is key to keeping things stable. Mary is upset, but is able to do what has to be done. She doesn’t want to upset her sister, who is not stable to start with, but is at least able to provide some help for mom. The compromise is somewhat under duress for Nellie, but is workable, even if Nellie isn’t totally happy with it. Mary is a responsible person, and is on the right track.
© 2009, AgingParents.com
Post #10

The thing about this kind of mediation practice is that, invariably, emotions are high. The dispute may not be about money, but sometimes it is. Money is emotional for lots of people. We find that families in dispute about their parents or other loved ones often fall back into patterns of behavior they have been in with each other since childhood. As immature as it seems, the players can’t seem to break the patterns. Some have observed that siblings even assume the same places around a table at mediation that they had at the family dinner table growing up. Talk about being stuck!

We find that for mediation to be successful for anyone, whether an elder is in the mix or not, one must be willing to give up one’s position, or to be able to view a problem from someone else’s point of view. Why this is so difficult seems to be rooted in the emotional attachment siblings, or others have to their Positions. (I’m right, I know I’m right, and I don’t care what you say!)

So, if one wants to mediate a dispute and has any hope of success, one has to come into the mediation willing to have some flexibility about the problem at hand. If one expects all the changing to be done by the person(s) on the other side of the dispute, it is a sure-fire way to fail at mediation.

Mediators work with participants to try to help them see things from each other’s point of view, but no one can force a person to compromise. A mediation is helped by participants who work at making “a deal”, whether it’s about money or about control, or a place to live, or whatever. Siblings fighting about their elders have a choice about whether to make their best effort to work it out, or to spend their time trying to make each other wrong. Likewise with the elders themselves. Some are just plain difficult, and compromise is not something they want to explore.

People have many reasons for holding onto their positions in family conflicts. Sometimes there are old resentments dating back to childhood. One mother who said she didn’t trust her son to manage her money wouldn’t give a reason until pressed. Her son was a responsible businessman, and likely could have done the job. He managed his own money responsibly, as reported by all and agreed to by the mom. As it turned out, he had gotten black oil on a favorite embroidered towel she had when he was a little boy, and that was her basis for not trusting him.

She was not about to give up her position. She had a very difficult time in her life, and though she made agreements at mediation, she spent a lot of time afterwards, we were told, undermining that to which she had agreed.

She’s a good example of a person who wasn’t likely to succeed at growing old gracefully. She also wasted thousands of dollars on attorneys, courts and got minimal value out of mediation. However, most of the time, mediation does work. People make agreements, they figure the way out of the mess. And sometimes it doesn’t, about 20% of the time. These are some of the reasons why it sometimes doesn’t work.

To learn more about how to handle family disputes, see How to Handle Family Conflicts About Elders, Vol. 7, The Boomer’s Guide to Aging Parents, available at http://www.AgingParents.com/familyconflict.