Is there a complaint or legal action the family can file or do we need an attorney? The person acting as my step fathers POA (his son) recently cleaned out the folks joint bank account of all monies - all their savings - and stopped paying the bills for my mother. How do we retrieve her monies to support her care? 40+ years of marriage with two established families of children - his 5 adult children have said to us they hate and will not care for our mother due to events that happened 40+ years ago when their father divorced their mother and married ours. We did not know of this hatred or that they would remove all the monies both parents saved and cut my mother off completely as soon as they had the chance. What can we do? HELP
In the interim, contact all the creditors and explain that there's a temporary financial crunch, w/o going into detail about the reason why. There's no point in saying or writing anything that might come back to bite you if you can't prove the accusations.
Ask for payment plans, and indicate that the family is addressing the situation but ask for leniency and cooperation until funds can be identified to make payments. Are these unpaid creditors primarily household related - utilities, mortgage payments, etc., or are there credit cards involved?
Any documentation you have on the events, as well as a copy of the POA, would be helpful to the police.
Be aware though that some police departments might not want to get involved in family affairs, and might refer you to an attorney. I've seen that happen on other issues.
Are there any assets, financial or otherwise, still left? If so, I think the first order of business in this case would be to get an injunction against the son to prevent any further depletion of assets.
Given the issue of proof (as opposed to something like a PPO when someone has been physically harassing someone else and the aggrieved person can apply directly for a PPO), I think you might want to consider consulting an attorney, probably in the elder law practice area.
He/she might be able to get an injunction stopping the son from further depletion of the accounts quicker and easier than a family member could. And he/she should know what documentation would specifically be needed to support issuance of an injunction, or restraining order.
I'm not sure about whether funds your mother saved, presumably co-mingled with your father's funds, would be treated the same way as his funds, given that she was their stepmother. It might be, e.g., that there's a different level of fraud since the son confiscated money from someone other than his father. I'm just speculating on this though. I don't have specific legal knowledge on the difference in sources of the funds, or whether this occurred in a state with community property laws.
How long a period has it been since this began? How did you find out about it? Do you have documentation on the 5 adult siblings' attitude toward your mother, and does it support the son's alleged justification for confiscating the funds?
What's your stepfather's position on what happened? Has your stepfather taken any action against the son?