Financial elder abuse the focus of Wednesday CFPB forum in Cleveland

Financial elder abuse the focus of Wednesday CFPB forum in Cleveland


elder abuseJuly 23, 2012

By: John Michael Spinelli0 Email.Get Government alerts!

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The Cleveland CFPB forum, "Financial Protection for Older Adults," runs from 1 to 4:30 p.m. July 25 at the Hilton Garden Inn on Carnegie Ave. It includes sessions on reverse mortgages, medical fraud and financial exploitation.Related topics

•elder abuse•financial exploitation•guardianships•Richard Cordray•Mickey Rooney.Advertisement

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, now run by former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, will hold a forum in Cleveland Wednesday, where the agency's head of the Office of Older Americans will headline an event focused on the growing industry of opportunity many see in financially exploiting the nation's elderly.





Hubert "Skip" Humphrey III will give the keynote speech at a free forum on financial abuse and the elderly at the Hilton Garden Inn on Carnegie Ave.





Under the direction of the U.S. Administration on Aging, The National Center on Elder Abuse reports that accurate national statistics about how many older Americans are being neglected, exploited and abused are extremely difficult to gather, according to the Jacksonville Times-Union. The newspaper said that the varying state definitions of elder abuse, the lack of a uniform reporting system and the fact that it is often a hidden problem hinder national efforts to provide precise numbers.





One expert said the Cleveland forum will explore ways that the professionals who come into contact with senior citizens can help protect them. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld as constitutional the Affordable Care Act, which enables the Elder Justice Act contained in it to unfold into action, President of the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging, Richard Browdie, says "it's a good time to put bankers, social workers, financial planners and lawyers together to talk about the financial exploitation of seniors," the Cleveland Plain Dealer (CPD) reported.





For others, though, they see the professionals who do come into contact with senior citizens, sometime through guardianship arrangements blessed by judges, as the problem, not the solution. Long-time elder abuse advocate Tom Fields of Mentor asks, why does everyone assume the incapacitated can tell they’re being swindled? "When will somebody other than us get that, such as the lawyers and the doctors and the notaries and all the rest who choose to believe this doesn’t' exist?"





A new study done by researchers at USC's Davis School of Gerontology has found that Latino elders suffer high rates of abuse but their mistreatment goes largely unreported. More than 40 percent of the Spanish-speaking elders sampled by the researchers had been abused or neglected in the last year, yet fewer than 2 percent reported abuse to authorities.





Many cases demonstrate the need for legal reforms to discourage the financial exploitation of individuals with severe cognitive impairment at the time they execute wills, trusts, POAs (Power of Attorney), deeds, mortgages and other important legal/financial documents, Field's notes, adding that adherance to a simple 5-step protocol will do much to "discourage the ruinous litigation which often results under such circumstances."





Here's Field's 5-step protocol:





STEP 1: Use a CHECKLIST to identify situations which involve individuals with severe cognitive impairment and so require the rest of the protocol to be followed.





STEP 2: Have an independent examiner ask the transferor OPEN-ENDED questions to learn what business, if any, he wants or expects to conduct at this time.





STEP 3: Have an independent examiner ask the transferor to provide details about what he expects the document to include.





STEP 4: Have an independent examiner ask the transferor questions which others might reasonably want to ask if they were present, including questions about the transferor's understanding of the suspicions that his signing the document might raise and the transferor's ability to address those suspicions.





STEP 5: Have an independent examiner explore potential conflicts between the transferor's expectations and the content of the document.





Fields has presented his protocol and information to the Elder Abuse Commission in the Office of Ohio Attorney General, led by Mike DeWine. He says, "At the very least, I believe this forum needs to (1) feature the ABC News video and report and (2) make clear the distinction between efforts to protect older adults with “mild” cognitive impairment and efforts like that focused upon here to protect older adults with “severe” cognitive impairment.





Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld as constitutional the Affordable Care Act, which enables the Elder Justice Act contained in it to unfold into action, President of the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging, Richard Browdie, says "it's a good time to put bankers, social workers, financial planners and lawyers together to talk about the financial exploitation of seniors," the Cleveland Plain Dealer (CPD) reported.





"Older Americans face many financial challenges as they age," the homepage of the Office of Older Americans says. "They have opportunities to travel, explore new fields of work or hobbies, or spend time with family and friends. But often scam artists or bad advice take away these opportunities."





Seniors want and need information and tools to navigate safely through financial challenges, and OOA is well-designed and well-resourced to supplying it.





Elder abuse generally falls into three categories – domestic, institutional and self-abuse. Domestic abuse refers to maltreatment caused by someone with a special relationship with the elder such as a spouse, a sibling, a child, a friend or a caregiver. Institutional abuse refers to that which occurs in residential facilities like nursing homes, group homes and varieties of care facilities where the abuse is usually perpetrated by people who have a contractual obligation to provide for elders. It's often prosecuted in different ways by different people, regardless of whether they are family or friends, who through intention or ignorance go awry, or through malice aforethought by unscrupulous strangers whose mission is to prey successfully on unsuspecting elders who can be bamboozle into signing away their money, investments, homes and other assets, maybe even their lives, at a time when they are at their least competent.





Elder abuse advocates point to a 3-minute video aired by ABC News as the kind of treatment that needs to be stopped, and that judges and other in the judicial system who can prevent it are often the very enablers who pave the way for it to happen. For this and other reasons, some critics argue the Elder Justice Act and the Elder Abuse Victims Act don't have enough teeth to really take a bite out of the problem by effectively and reliably preventing crimes like the one portrayed in the ABC News video.





Mickey Rooney, the iconic American child actor who won fame and fortune over many decades, starring in such great movies like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Requiem for a Heavyweight, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World and many more, is starring in what may be his last great role, that of a financially abused elder.





The idea that a homegrown star of Rooney's Hollywood caliber could be taken advantage of by a family member might seem far fetched, but that's exactly what happened. NBC Los Angeles reported recently that Rooney attended a conservatorship hearing tied to his allegations that he has been emotionally, verbally and financially abused by his stepson, Christopher Aber and his wife, Christina, who have been accused of "depriving Rooney of 'food and medications, and prohibited him from leaving his house.'"





Other efforts at tackling the subject are afoot, too. "Last Will and Embezzlement," a movie that takes a crack at the topic of financial elder abuse, features Rooney and his saga. Movie tagline: "If it can happen to Mickey Rooney, it can happen to anybody."





Browdie of the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging told the Plain Dealer, "Because the financial marketplace has become more complicated, the intervention is more complicated." The goal, he said, is to devise better, more proactive strategies for keeping seniors and their money safe. "It isn't a scam until somebody says yes."





The U.S. Administration on Aging offers these statistics on elder abuse overall:





• In 2003, there were approximately, 381,430 reports of elder abuse, neglect and exploitation made to some Adult Protective Services programs.





• Some estimate that only one in 14 cases of elder abuse comes to the attention of authorities.





Many agree that reforms in long-term care are needed, but with so little attention focused on it due in large part to under-reporting, abusing the elderly, financially and otherwise, may be a crime that pays off. Other concerns include understaffing at many assisted living and nursing homes and the increased harm that comes from politicians who continue to want to wield a budget ax on these same facilities.






http://www.examiner.com/article/financial-elder-abuse-the-focus-of-wednesday-cfpb-forum-cleveland?cid=rss