Father-in-law is smitten with a lady who has a history of preying on elderly people. Need advice.

I have been thinking about this some more for the last couple of hours. It’s a really tricky situation. Hardly anyone likes their parent getting into a new marriage, and the courts are quite protective of their right to ‘make bad choices’. And no-one of any age reacts well to being told that their new beloved is ‘no good’

I have written this approach out as a script for a meeting with FIL, and I think it is self-explanatory. See what you think:

Dad, we need to have a very difficult conversation. Please let us explain, and see if we can work out a solution with you. You probably know that we more or less broke ourselves to come and look after you. We wanted to do it, but we didn’t realise just how vulnerable we had made our own financial position. We certainly didn’t do all this because of any inheritance from you, that wasn’t the point at all, but we did expect that eventually you would leave us enough to make up for the way we affected our own finances by quitting work and closing the business.

We have been really worried by the rumours we have heard about X and a history of moving in on people at the end of their lives and ending up with things working in their favour financially. We don’t know if this is all true, and to some extent it doesn’t matter. It does happen, and it could happen with someone else anyway – we have heard some really frightening stories. We would be happy if you found someone whose company you enjoyed, but we are worried about the financial side of things from our own point of view. We are too old ourselves to start again to build up our own finances for our own retirement. We didn’t realise how vulnerable we had made ourselves. Now we are getting told that we should have done all sorts of things to make sure that we were protected – set up a family trust or whatever – but it never occurred to us that it would be necessary.

Can we talk about how we can solve this? We know that you have needed us, and that you wouldn’t want to hurt us, but we need to feel more secure that we feel at the moment. What can we do? Have you got any ideas? …..Could we visit your lawyer again, the one who prepared your will, and see if there is any way that this can be sorted out?

PS the irrevocable family trust is a good idea

You seem very certain that you do not have and are not likely to be able to get any control over your father in law's decisions.

But you and your husband do have control over your own decisions. If your FIL will not give you the authorities you need to support the responsibilities you have been willing to take on towards him, you can reverse the decision you made to quit your jobs and close down your business. I should do that.

The thing is. You made the decisions you made based on an understanding that you would be compensated for the care you gave him. But an understanding isn't even a verbal contract, and famously a verbal contract is not worth the paper it's not written on.

Give your FIL a further opportunity to sort out this mess and reach a firm agreement with you about how you are to be reimbursed, and what authority he will give you to safeguard his financial wellbeing. If he won't take it, if he chooses differently, accept it and get back to your own lives.

If I may say so delicately, and this may be especially difficult for your husband, it may be that this lady's flattery and attention are worth every penny from your FIL's point of view. I'm sure I wouldn't like it either, if it were my loved one, but isn't that up to him?

As for the lady herself, the alleged villainess of the piece, do you have any direct contact with her at all?

A friend went through this years ago with her dad after her mom passed away. She and her siblings hired a detective and found the woman indeed made her living off of elderly widowers, sometimes marrying the ones she thought would be a quick fix to her pocketbook. The family made available two victims of her affection. He broke things off with the woman the same day. My friend said he must have suspected it but didn't care, just as you said, until his money entered into the picture. It isn't that you begrudge him enjoying his life. It's that he can find himself destitute and unable to pay to live out that life comfortably. Perhaps do some further digging, and maybe it is time to meet with a financial advisor to show him what he has left to get him to the end of his life. The rest will be up to him.

Can you get in touch with the families who you say have been affected in the past by this woman and her late husband? Putting them in touch with your FIL might help. Organising a confrontation between her and them, in your FILs presence, might be the most effective way of opening his eyes. Even getting some information might help. They may have walked away from a criminal action because it was too late for it to matter. Seeing it happening all over again might be enough to get them to take it further.

In your last answer, you say that your father “is a very self centered person and she “makes him feel good “. You will have to stress that this is making you feel bad and he is inflicting it on you – make him feel bad about what he is doing and has done. Don’t try to tell him that she is bad and he has to get rid of her out of his life. Just fix the money. Say that it will ‘prove to him that she really cares for him, and all the rumours are lies’. If money is all she is after, she will then get rid of herself.

Unless you can get somewhere with a civil case or a criminal case for fraud, the law or any other agency isn’t going to fix your problem. Your only option is to make it ‘nice’ for your father. You can say (and it’s true) that if he won’t make your financial situation a bit safer for you, you will probably have to quit care and get back to earning money for your own retirement. Perhaps that will help. This is about money risks, not whether you disapprove of his new girlfriend.

Call your county clerk's office and see if they have an elder care center or family law center they can refer you to. Become a client so you can recieve their services, explain you need a couple of consults to solve a tricky financial abuse situation where you need to know your options. Sometimes these services are free to the community.

These folks will have seen EVERYTHING possible and will probably be able to tell you how other caregivers in your area have dealt with a predatory person.

Then, stay as warm and friendly as possible with the the predator and your dad so you can collect evidence and make it obvious you are collecting evidence of the predatory behavior and accidentally leave the law center business card out.

I was so glad to make the acquaintance of the staff at our relevant elder law center, the people were cut and dry and extremely effective. Ours is not politically correct and openly worked to help us fix a bad situation. They laid out several different legal options, one of which involved Family Court, which would not be public record if pursued so no names in the newspaper. That option was used as enough of a threat to stop the predatory situation before it turned out of control.

A successful predator knows when they prey is too powerful to deal with and slinks away to find another victim.

This happened to my husband's stepfather when he was in a care center. The female "elder visitor" that had been visting him and his wife, my husband's mother, in their home. When he went to the care center,  she continued to visit him. She never made any attempt to take his wife to see him. One day we received a call from the care center that an attorney had been to see him and he had agreed to give the attorney a fairly large sum of money that was in escrow at the home, and they thought we should know. My husband went to the attorney and demanded he give him the money, that his step-father could neither read nor write anything except numbers and his name. A short time later we discovered that his will had been rewritten and because the man was unable to read or write, we contacted the attorney who held his first will and they rewrote it. My husband was able to take it to his step-father and with two witnesses read it to him and he signed it. After he died we discovered he had changed the beneficiaries on his John Deere Life insurance to this elder visitor and his sister in Wisconsin. His living wife was left with nothing except bills for the funeral service. His sister did agree to turn over her share of insurance payment to the funeral home, but the "elder visitor" never did answer our requests.
She had to help him make these changes as he could not read nor write and could not have contacted the attorney or the insurance people on his own.

A lesson learned.

I have a girlfriend who went through something like this. The difference was they were in their 90's I think. She said you have to call APS, the the police and get an attorney. It will probably wreck your relationship with him. If he is of sound mind, he can change his will, and do anything he wants.

I sort of agree with MargaretMcKen, there is probably nothing you can do if he is enamored with her. She could even be having sex with him.

You are in a hard situation and my heart goes out to you. Sometimes people can be such fools. As the saying goes, "No fool like an old fool".

Explain or what is APS? Answer to one lady’s ?. Yes she is having sex or attempting to. She helped him with an appointment to urologist. We found the Viagra in his gun safe. We had an appointment with a neurologist, which she persuaded him to not go by telling him that we were trying to have the dr say he is crazy so we can control all his affairs and take over his $. When the fact is, she is the one doing the controlling. We’re just trying to keep him from making a terrible mistake. One of the first responders here seemed to think its all about the $. Sure there is some $ involved. But it’s not about the $. We are going to take care of his needs regardless. But it makes me sick to my stomach to watch this happen and that there is nothing anyone can do about it. All the elder abuse laws require a crime to be committed before they will investigate or prosecute. The fact that she has done this before should be evident enough. But the law says she has committed no crime. We are not giving up, but it certainly is hard to understand why no one that can help, will not help.
Thanks for your response

All else aside. He is single, what is wrong with him having sex? Good for him if he can still get it up at 87. No wonder she makes him feel good. My husband makes me feel good too and I try to do the same for him. Good luck on making him believe he needs to stop his sex life.