Paul Winkler: You got something. Cause I always have something. This is one for you. I’m going to throw this one at you. Because it was sad. And having your law background, I think you’d find this interesting in a kind of a sad way.
A Case of Elder Abuse
I signed my home over to my daughter temporarily to protect it during my divorce. Now I’m 69 and living in an RV, can I file for elder abuse?
Anne Sawasky: Yeah. You know, things like that happen really more often than not. And I think most of the time it’s with a relative. So like in this case, it’s a child. And I mean, I guess the answer to that is yeah.
Paul Winkler: Well, before getting in the answer, let’s give what happened. Cause that’s what I think really is brutal. So basically what happened, this lady, the market property market was crashing and what happened is she goes, Oh, you know what? I’m going to add my daughters to the deed to my home. And that way I won’t lose my home in a foreclosure during a divorce. And if something happens to me, my daughters can keep the home. She says, and what happens is it’s just gonna be a temporary fix.
And what happens when we finally sell the home, both my daughters said that they would sign off the deed and you know, it’s all cool. You know, it’s my daughters that could go wrong. Right. My daughter allowed me to use her income to qualify for the loan modification. So that way she wouldn’t go lose a home for the foreclosure. Right. Because she was going through a divorce. Like I said, of course her credit after the divorce would be lower because you know, before the divorce, she had her husband’s income and I’m making it up here that probably her credit wasn’t quite as stellar as her husband maybe.
Because she didn’t have the income history. Yeah, exactly. You know, so what happens is she goes in, you know, signs on her daughter and uses her income to qualify for the loan modification. And she said, she made all the payments though, you know? So she makes all the payments on the property and she gets to move forward to 2019. And she says the eldest daughter, I get $760,000 for the sales, a sale of two homes that were given to her by her deceased, former mother-in-law and just daughters.
Not necessarily great with money, and we have bad, pretty bad credit. And what happens is she has all this money, but no one would rent to her because of her bad credit. Yeah. So what she does is says, Hey, I’m going to stay in the home because guess what? It’s mine. So she stays in the home is the deal. And then mom goes out and purchase an RV. She travels. And then she decides that, Hey, what’s going to happen is we’re going to all agree that she would repay the money.
She loaned me for the RV, from the sale of the home. And then when she gets back, a younger daughter makes good on her claim and says, you know, “here mom, here’s, here’s your part of the house back.” The one that’s not necessarily as financially responsible. I’m going to keep this house, you know, and the daughter refuses to move out of the home. The sister quickly claims her portion back to mom, but the eldest is refusing to do so. She’s on the deed.
I’m 69 living in an RV. Can I file for elder abuse now?
What’s the Problem?
Paul Winkler: Because I’ve been doing this long. You know, you find this out when people think, Hey, you know what, I’m going to do this because if I do this and you know, it could be something totally different. You go and hand a piece of property over to a kid because you want to get it out because you want to qualify for Medicaid or something like that. And then all of a sudden the kid gets sued for something. And then the property is attached and your property is gone. You all lose the house. I mean, they’re just things that you don’t even think about that can happen. That hits you when you do things like this.
And then, you know, the answer that they gave the person they were writing to says, you know, you’re opening yourself up to a whole lot of trouble. Lots of legal costs. If you file a case against your daughter for elder abuse, you go and quickly claim the deed to your home, your daughters, before the divorce to shield it from any claims that would not be looked upon kindly by the court and your strategy, however flawed speaks volumes on your cognitive abilities and motivations, if not your judgment in doing so. And it was harsh.
It was a partial answer.
Anne: That’s a harsh answer. And I think a lot, there’s a lot of truth to that, but I think there’s also a lot of truth to the fact that she’s not got the benefit of her home either. Right? And so let me put it this way. I wouldn’t have recommended she do what she did for all of the reasons you discussed.
Paul Winkler: Well, and I think that there’s a point here. And I think the point that’s being well made is so often what happens as people get older. I mean, you hate to talk about it, but you know, sometimes the ability to think through things is a little bit more flawed as you get older because of the fact that you have lost some cognitive abilities. Number one, number two, here’s the thing. Studies show that as people get older, their cognitive abilities decline, but their confidence in their cognitive abilities actually goes up.
And you gotta realize that that is, that’s a really bad combination right there.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she did put herself at risk by putting her on the deed. And that’s why, you know, when I was an attorney, I always would try to talk them into not doing that unless, I mean, you really need to look at that seriously to make sure it’s the right thing to do. And it’s probably, you know, and in that case, there should have been another agreement at minimum that, you know, I will have the right to buy it back or whatever. And it should have not, should have been in tenants in common and not joint because that way she could actually sell it. Because if you had a tenant in common, she could say fine, you can stay there, but I’m selling my part. So good luck with whoever buys it. I don’t think she would be quite as happy, but you can always file a claim to report elder abuse. And it’s possible the state could view that as elder abuse because the mother is not having the benefit of her home. And I think that’s a pretty big deal for somebody who’s elderly.
Paul Winkler: Well, I’ve had, I’ve had folks on from the state before and it would be really interesting to hear, you know, because we’ve talked about this very topic before Arlene,
Arlene Brown: It’s a financial, it’s a financial abuse. Yeah. I think it’s a type of financial abuse. Now they can report actually in administration for community living. And it has a national center for elder abuse because elder abuse comes in different different flavors, and Tennessee has a tennessee.tn.gov. There’s right on their site. There, you can look up under the commission of aging and disability, report elder abuse.
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Look for Advice
Paul Winkler: Yeah. And I had somebody from that agency, I guess it was a couple of years ago that was on here on the radio show with me. And that was really, really eye opening. And she was great. So you don’t want to just give up if you feel like you’ve been taken advantage of. But I thought it was just interesting to see how this was answered, but just the point, well made a lot of times it’s like, Arlene, you said earlier many times women don’t look for advice and they don’t even go it.
Arlene: Yeah. That would be a very important time to get advice. And because if you had someone, if you had to find someone other than that, she could have, or he could have advice against doing that.
Anne: Right. Right. And you know, and the thing about it is with, with the elderly too, they, you, you read that actually what you read, I’m that person who analyzed it said, Oh, well, that’s a really good argument that you’re not, you don’t have mental ability to make decisions right now. That is always a danger with the elderly as well. So I don’t think it’s necessarily that she didn’t have mental ability. I think that she probably made a bad decision.
Yes. The danger is that that’s the argument someone’s gonna make against it. And that’s, as we get older, we have to be aware of that as well. So that’s all the more reason to go make sure that you’re getting some assistance. So you don’t make mistakes like that. Cause they sometimes can go against you and elderly, elder abuse won’t stop until somebody reports or says something.
Paul Winkler: And a lot of people won’t report it because they’re embarrassed. And the reality of it is, sometimes you just have to realize that getting over the embarrassment is a good thing because you enable people to continue patterns of behavior like that. If you don’t stop them at some point, and maybe you’re the one that stops them from doing something like that to somebody else. Right. I know it’s hard with daughters, but okay.
Anne: You know, no one wants to believe their children are going to take advantage of them. And unfortunately I think it’s like 40% of the time.
Arlene: Yeah. You know, children, people would say, people would say, it’s not about the money actually. It’s about the money.
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