If you must place your aging parent into a nursing home in Delaware, you hope the staff takes great care of your loved one. Unfortunately, nursing home staff may financially exploit your mother or father.
AARP provides warning signs of financial elder abuse. Learn when you may need to intervene to protect your parent’s financial health.
Mysterious financial transactions
If you have access to your mother’s or father’s financial accounts, you may notice odd transactions. When you ask about strange withdrawals or purchases that your parent cannot remember, it may be that someone working at the nursing home has illegal access to your parent’s accounts. Nursing home residents diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, dementia or a similar condition often become targets of such exploitation.
A lack of visitors
If you live outside of Delaware, you may not visit your loved one as much as you would like, and your parent may experience isolation and loneliness if friends and family do not visit. A lack of human connection can turn older adults into victims. Someone at the nursing home may target residents who do not receive visitors and look for ways to prey on the depression and eagerness a lack of human contact can bring. Besides staff, another resident may prey on your parent’s isolation.
Opportunistic relatives
Rather than nursing home staff or other residents, your relatives may abuse your mother’s or father’s finances. Family members with a criminal past, a history of drug use, mental or physical impairment or financial troubles may take advantage of your loved one. Look for sudden changes in lifestyle from such relatives. Financial abuse could be at the root of this person’s shift in fortune.