What is Financial Mishandling and Abuse?
Often the elderly or vulnerable lean on family members in their later years to provide them with financial support and assistance. A Power of Attorney can be made to formally grant another person access to their bank accounts so the relative can manage their money for them and make sure all of their bills are paid on time. Alternatively, informal arrangements are often made where a relative is made a signatory to someone’s bank account or is given their bank card and PIN number to access their cash for them.
Unfortunately, this trust can be broken by those closest to us. Money can be misappropriated (or to put it into common language, stolen) by an attorney or a relative with access to their money.
The situation might come to light during the person’s lifetime by a concerned relative but more often, it comes to light after the person’s death when their financial affairs are being investigated as part of the administration of their estate. It often presents itself in large sums of money being withdrawn from a bank account or small withdrawals over a lengthy period of time, and the elderly or vulnerable person’s bank accounts and investments have been significantly depleted or there is nothing left for other relatives to inherit.
How we can help
If you are facing making a claim for Financial Mishandling or Abuse, you will certainly need legal and financial guidance to ensure the matter is resolved. Our expert team of Specialist Solicitors are very experienced in this specific type of proceedings. Find out more by reading some recent case studies.
What are examples of Financial Mishandling and Abuse?
This can take many forms including the following most common circumstances
• Someone using a person’s money for their own purposes without having the person’s consent i.e., helping themselves to their money.
• Elaborate spending of someone’s money to supposedly benefit them but really it only benefits the other person such as buying expensive holidays, cars, electrical items.
• Manipulating someone to gift them large sums of money especially when they cannot really afford to give away sums of that size.
• A non-family member getting close to an elderly person befriending them with the intention of manipulating them to take control of their assets.
What can be done about financial mishandling and abuse?
This depends on when concerns are first raised about the what has taken place
If the elderly or vulnerable person is still alive, Jordans Solicitors private client team can help by assisting you make an application to the Court of Protection for a deputyship order to put you legally in charge of that person’s financial affairs so you can stop the financial abuse from happening.
If there is already a Lasting Power of Attorney in place of a deputyship order and if you are concerned the attorney or deputy is abusing their position, we can advise you about challenging their authority to stop the financial abuse from continuing.
If the financial abuse has come to light after your relative has died, we can assist you by investigating whether financial abuse has occurred and if it has, taking action to recover the monies stolen from your relatives.
If you have been accused of financial abuse, we can assist you to defend those claims.
Financial Mishandling and Abuse
If you need to claim or defend Financial Mishandling or Abuse, then call our team on 033 0300 1103. We offer an initial, FREE consultation during which you can explain your situation and we can advise you about how best to proceed. And for an inital, set fee we can carry out preliminary investigations on your behalf to establish whether the process is likely to succeed.