What Financial Advisors Should Know About You And Aging Parents

Those properly licensed people who help us manage wealth may not be fully informed about financial elder abuse. In exploring what their organizations do in this area, we have observed little training or inadequate training. ThinkAdvisor reports on a case involving a “court fight over a recently deceased grandmother’s $5 million IRA”, which, it states, “illustrates the need for advisors to be aware of potential financial manipulation and other elder abuse.”

Yes, being aware of such abuse is one thing. Knowing how to address it is quite another matter. The author of that article comments that it is hard to spot the red flags. We do not agree here at AgingParents.com and AgingAdvisor.com, where we advise families about how to solve problems with their aging loved ones. We created a red flag checklist for both spotting warning signs of diminished capacity and one for the warning signs of financial abuse. One needs to be aware of how abusers typically operate, even in families, and what action to take when you suspect abuse.