Financial Elder Abuse: Protection and Prevention

Financial Elder Abuse

Financial elder abuse happens in mass numbers and the consequences are increasingly more and more severe. Recent studies show that 1 in 10 elders is abused, and that figure climbs to 1 in 2 elders when the senior suffers from dementia. Financially speaking, the estimated yearly damage from financial elder abuse is close to $3 billion. And that is most likely a conservative estimate, as many cases of financial elder abuse or never reported.

Ways to Prevent Financial Elder Abuse

Protecting our senior community members has now become more important than ever. Below are some suggestions to help prevent abuse of yourself or your loved one.

Check in on the senior often. If you start to see new relationships developing, start asking questions. Isolation or inabilities to contact the senior easily are signs of undue influence from an outside party.

Be in touch with the caregiver. If they start to talk about being exhausted and at their wits end, think about giving them a break. Stress is one of the main motivators behind elder abuse.

Always be mindful of the dangers of financial elder abuse. Work with the elder’s bank to create a safe space. You can set limits for transactions on the credit cards or accounts used daily and then create a separate, more secure account for the larger transactions. Not to mention, think about asking someone without access to the senior’s account to check statements. They can give an unbiased look and potentially detect and determine fraud much easier than an individual with an agenda. There are also websites that you can pay to check statements daily, and they can be as affordable as $8.00 per month.

Begin helping the senior opt out of any mailed or emailed solicitation. Often, these types of advertisements are geared toward collecting large sums of money from elders and other generous populations. Educate the senior on not answering calls from numbers that he or she does not know, as scammers also like to dial up seniors to ask for money over the phone as well.

In the End

There is no perfect way to protect seniors, but this list is a good start. We at Evans Law Firm in San Francisco feel passionately about keeping our elders safe from financial elder abuse scams, and we know that it happens all too often.

Contact Us

If you or a loved one has suffered from financial elder abuse in San Francisco County or in any California county, contact the Evans Law Firm elder attorneys at (415) 441-8669, or by email at info@evanslaw.com. Our attorneys have experience with complex financial contracts and large insurance companies. We can help guide your case through a jury trial or toward an equitable settlement. We handle cases involving physical and financial elder abuse, qui tam and whistleblower law, nursing home abuse, whole life insurance and universal life insurance, and indexed, variable, and fixed annuities.