Grandma w/dementia drops hints about finances, but I have no power! Not sure if I should engage with it or not?

Well phooey, now I've finally gone and hurt someone's feelings, and Margarets, please believe me, I did not mean to. I plead guilty to making the leap from your describing Mom as a fearsome person who hurts people who don't let her have her way, to your being afraid, or to put it another way, I've conflated fear with loathing. And I'm sorry!

If it helps any, fear under these circumstances would not be any sort of accusation or moral failing, more along the lines of what has been called " the gift of fear". There is always a time for getting out and not looking back. Quite a few folks think this may be that time. But, you are asking, and possibly by asking, suggesting you don't feel entirely right about it. You would like to escape a bad situation that you had NO hand in creating.

The question becomes, are you *obligated* to do anything else, before, after, or during your getting this all behind you? There are several possible answers and ultimately only you know enough of the details to finally make the decision. First, it may be important to distance yourself for the very behavior you loathe in your family; in other words by being consistent with the way they treated others, are you going to find you are acting too much like them for your own comfort? Second, can you realistically expect any possibility to being of actual help? Lets compare your grandmothers situation to someone in a vehicle in a ditch by the side of a road. They were the passenger, the driver is long gone, they are not in immediate danger but can't get out on their own. For a stranger in that situation, you'd possibly just call 911 and keep driving, for fear of it being a trap. For someone you recognized and cared about, you might do more if you safely and reasonably could. Unless you are a mandated reporter of traffic accidents or had done something that caused the wreck, you would not be legally obligated in most states. The other factor here through is that you are the only person who knows about the wreck, and likely the only person who ever will.

You cared enough to write, and you are hurting enough to need to write...again the last thing I wanted to do was increase your hurt in any way. I don't think it will necessarily be easy, but I do believe you will figure out and do the things that will leave you feeling you have done right and without regrets as you go on to build yourself a future free from the cruelty and uncaring that have infected the rest of the family

One more comment, Margarets: Your concern about cost and hassles is legitimate, but there are resources that may not cost you a dime. You can contact your county Legal Aide Services which you probably financially qualify for, and I think that once they start the investigation, it will be out of your hands, so hopefully no hassles, and you can concentrate on grad school and your future. Please check out some of the information on this site under the Money & Legal tab to learn more about available resources.

Margarets: We all understand you are in a difficult position. However, in defense of Vstefans (in spite of her perception that you and Gma are afraid of your Mom), I think her advice is good. It looks like you are leaning toward the "do nothing" scenario which could be strengthened by just walking away. Not to be rude, but your situation of family dynamics is one that I would walk away from and not look back. In addition, you are aware of an unlawful and gross transgression of duties being committed by your Mom, and so far have done nothing about it. This is a tough one, but I would also lean toward reporting the situation just because it is exploitation of the elderly and nothing to do with anybodys feelings of loyalty/affection or lack thereof. After leaving it in the hands of the authorities, I would then "walk away". You are young and have your life ahead of you. How much does it mean to maintain family ties when they are toxic - do you really need that? To my way of thinking, I would rather start fresh and build a healthy life for myself. I know you really want to stop talking and start doing, and we are giving you all the support and encouragement we can.

@vstefans, "you are afraid of Mom", "if you had been brave enough" - not OK to jump to those conclusions. Nothing in my posts suggest FEAR on my part, but a reluctance to take on the costs and hassle and headache, to get sucked into the dysfunctional family vortex. Especially not when I start grad school in a month.

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I'm starting to come around to the "do nothing, refer grandma back to mom" approach. Engaging with it is *already* too draining - obviously, as I keep posting freakouts - and that's *without* lawyers etc involved. And my heart isn't it, I know I'll keep wanting to say to my grandmother stuff like "this is more than you ever did for me you know" which of course is horrible and not something I would actually say, but it would be there.

Just to give everyone an example of how cold-hearted my family can be: when my sister - definitely the family Scapegoat and the target for the worst abuse - was 19, pregnant, broke and alone, my family did *absolutely nothing* to help her. Not a dime, not a word of support. NOTHING. This at a time when my grandfather had over $500K in net worth. So, if I do nothing, it's 100% consistent the example they set.

You and Gram are both afraid of Mom.

It looks very much like Mom is robbing Gram blind and failing to live up to trustee duties in any sense of the word.

You want to be safe, and it is tempting to walk away, but you know this is a bad situation and being mad at Grandpa for setting it up wrong is a very legitimate emotion, but stopping there helps no one. There is no guarantee APS will make it better, but they might, and you are already estranged and have no inheritance at stake. If you gather as much evidence as you can find, and go to APS with it, or to the court overseeing the trusteeship, you may be able to help, and if your best effort fails, you go back to plan A and walk away, but without regrets or wondering what would have happened if you had been brave enough to face your Mom's wrath.

Your mom has already taken out more from your grandparents estate than we ever had in ours total. At the very least, mom will have to make an accounting of what she has done, will know someone is watching, and the will and trust documents are supposed to be public and you will be able to find out what they actually say.

This may be up there with the hardest things you have ever had to do...but if you want anything left for Gram's care it will have to be done. I once knew of someone who died too young and her grown daughter actually ran off with her FUNERAL money some how, and we never even had a proper service to even say goodbye...so if you are not exaggerating, it is worth trying to take action. And, please let us support you and let us know how it goes if you can.

If you don't have POA and you won't report the abuse by your mother, you've really got to get away from the situation. There's just nothing you can do and the stress and anxiety could end up ruining even the relationship you have with your grandmother. Grandma can't make any changes that will hold up in court, since she has dementia, and your mom is currently legally in charge of her and her finances. Unless you can get the courts to find her guilty of abuse, she's the one holding all the cards. Sorry...wish I could give you a different answer but that's how it is. You need to tell Grandma this too, and hopefully that will convince her to quit asking you to help in her round about way.

Margarets,
If I had written the post from OnceHated, my point would have been to give you the chance to let go of some bitterness over an inheritance, because bitterness only makes you feel bad. I can see how you would take it the way you did, but I don't think it was intended as a criticism.

I get what you are saying about how you are stuck with problems caused by people who have never helped you, but only hurt you. Why should you do anything for them when it will only cause you more heartbreak? I see a few options for you.

If you want to, make an anonymous complaint of elder abuse, as suggested.

If you want to, cut off all contact with these people. None of them will enrich your life or give you any joy or support.

If you want to, tell your grandmother that she needs to talk directly to your mother if she is worried. I think they call it triangling when two people "gossip" about a third. Your grandmother is putting you in an impossible position. Tell her that anything she says to you will be reported directly to your mother, because you don't want to be in the middle.

One powerful thing to do would be, in the presence of both of them, to say, "Mother, Gran is telling me that she is worried about her money. She tells me that she doesn't know where it is going. I don't either. Can you explain things to her so that she won't worry?" Gran says that she isn't worried at all. You reply that that's not what you've been telling me. Your mother says that of course everything is in order. You reply that in that case, why doesn't she bring over bank statements and the checkbook just so Gran can look at them and feel better.

That's probably way too risky for you to do, but if you can include other relatives in the discussion, then maybe no one will be killed.

At the very least, try to pull back as much as you can. There is no good solution, unless it's a bottle of wine to take your mind off things.

I agree with agingconsultant that people, like ME, do wish they had stepped in sooner, or known HOW to do that, regarding finances. I just witnessed my dad's trust money get cut in half in the past few years and there wasn't anything I could do about it at the time. Even though you don't know HOW to step in, and its causing you great anxiety, maybe you can talk to an Elder Atty for free, a consultation, and run your scenario by them. Get a professional's input about what can be done. But do something, because you're already being tortured by watching all this financial destruction go down in front of you... so its not as though you can really just turn your back now, can you?

Thanks sunflo. Unfortunately the bulk of the money is (from what I've heard) in a trust, and my mother is the trustee. My grandmother can't simply withdraw it and transfer it to me. My mother has total control. On the plus side, being a trustee means that my mother is supposed to manage the money for my grandmother's benefit, keep proper records and so on. There is no grey area about that. The tricky bit is that her actions as trustee only get reviewed by court order. It's not an automatic thing. If no one ever checks, my mother could get away with a lot. Getting a court order for a review involves a lawyer etc and my grandmother can't do that on her own. So that's where I would come in, to help with that.

That's the just the legal side. There is also the emotional fallout. I will be Enemy #1 and my mother can be very nasty. (There's a whole sordid story about how she retaliated against her second husband's daughter for a transgression, and turned the siblings, nieces & nephews against her as well. Which is really saying something because she was the Other Woman who broke up their parents' marriage.)

I have only bad options!

Good luck to you, dysfunctional family games and drama are something that can ruin your life. The money isn't worth it.

I was reading through this post, margarets, reading your newer posts within the thread that all seemed to be escalating in your cry for help... and I had no clue how to help you. Then I saw the post about reporting the suspicion of Financial Abuse to your local Elder Abuse agency... YES! This IS what you need to do.

I don't know what state you live in, but my state has a Department of Aging. I think most states do. That Dept has local enforcement/investigative arms... in my case its the local Catholic Charities Elder Care office. With a little bit of research online, perhaps you can come up with who is your local office for Elder Abuse issues? Then you can go through the steps of making a report with them. I think that is the best way to get the matter looked into without you having to make already difficult relationships even worse. Good luck!

If your grandmother is that concerned; and she trusts you; you could set up a savings account under your name and grandma could transfer a large chunk of her funds to you. If she ever needs the money for a particular reason or should she go to NH or AL, you can always give the funds back via paying the monthly cost or whatever.

This way, the large portion is out of grandmas account and protected. Your mom can't get ahold of it in anyway and she will have limited funds going forward to be spending from. If she gets angry, there is nothing she can do about other than take you to court and those lawyer and court costs will be on her not you or grandma.

So that is what I would suggest. If mom, demands money -- then you can ask her to provide a receipt or estimate and you will consider writing a check or transferring funds but essentially this will finally stop her "carte blanche".

@Oncehated - Really? Of all the stuff I posted, you focused on the disinheritance, because in your family that's how it was done? So what if your family does things a certain way, families are DIFFERENT. I haven't even touched on what indications or promises my grandfather may have made to me while he was alive or what has happened with other relatives' estates.

It's a bit much for someone to say by their actions "I haven't left you a dime, but can you run interference to protect this other person that I did leave money to? at whatever emotional or temporal cost to yourself?" It's like I've been handed a bill that I have to pay in anxiety & stress while others are getting literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I feel your remark is insensitive, and off-topic.

Personally, in my family and my friends families, even the ones that had grandparents who were quite well off, money was not left to grandchildren, just to children. I think you should stop being mad at your grandfather unless other grandchildren were left money, but not you. And really, even then, the money belongs to them, they can leave it or not leave it, to whoever they want.

Don't mean to be negative, dysfunctional families can be a nightmare if you let them. I see my own as little as possible and work hard to not get involved in their family games.

A few weeks ago I asked an open question on this site: what would you do differently if you had it to do over again? One of the most common responses was that people wished they had stepped in sooner regarding finances.

I'm nowhere near the level of dysfunction your family is at but we've had our problems with people taking advantage financially for years and now that my mother in law is bedridden after a stroke, they act like none of it happened and they're completely trustworthy.
The way I see it, if you don't want to be the rescuer you have two choices: completely cutoff contact with that part of the family and clean your hands of all involvement OR make an anonymous tip to the local adult protective services and continue on as you are and hope for resolution that protects your grandmother.
For your own peace of mind, a decision will need to be made soon. It isn't healthy to continue the cycle indefinitely.
Good luck. Remember to do what's best for you and that you can live with too.

Argh. That should have been "However, these same people NEVER offered support re: my mother's mistreatment of me."

Woke up early this morning, realizing that this is the second time in two years that a family member has come running to me for support because my mother has started mistreating them. However, these same people were NEVER offered support re: my mother's mistreatment of me. In July 2010 I had a very ugly scene with my grandparents when I tried to tell them some of the history. This was back when I thought they didn't know what had happened and if they did, they would validate and support me. Instead they yelled at me, told me I was ungrateful and refused to listen. They also let slip a few remarks that made it clear that they did have some idea what was going on. So even at the time, when my sister & I were kids, they knowingly left us to fend for ourselves.

As you can imagine, remembering this only makes me angrier! NOW I'm supposed to be the rescuer? It's classic parentification. I know that engaging with this only opens the door to more abuse. If I take official action, my mother will use it to badmouth me even more to extended family members. As in: "How dare she question MY behaviour? You see what a spiteful daughter she is!"

I really really really HATE that these dysfunctional losers are putting this toxic slush on me. God knows I had to learn to shut up and pretend everything is OK no matter how badly I was getting hurt in the family. Why can't they do the same!!!!

Seems if you sit back and do nothing and your mom drains your grandmother's assets dry, you'll be so angry with your mother that you'll never speak to her again. So what have you to lose turning her in for financial abuse of an elder. You can at least talk to someone at your government area on aging to get options of what you can do. This shouldn't cost you anything. At least you'll have the peace of mind that you did the best you could.

Then all you can do after that is to be a loving granddaughter to your grandmother, let her know that you've done all you could, but that now it's out of your hands and it's best if you don't discuss her dealings with your mom and her finances, as it will just make you both feel bad.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm feeling really drained by it all just at the moment. I will visit my grandmother again next weekend and if she brings up this issue again, I'll try to get her to say definitely what she wants from me, other than a listening ear. However, I predict that she will back down when my mother starts pushing back. She wants to be able to deflect my mother's wrath onto me, to make ME the troublemaker. It would fit the dysfunctional pattern in my family. I may try to get a video recording of my grandmother expressing her concerns and wishes (with her full knowledge, of course) so that I don't get accused of improper influence or whatever.

The other tricky bit is that the process for requiring my mother to provide an accounting involves a lawyer, court forms, etc etc etc. I.e. at a minimum it will likely cost a few thousand dollars. Frankly, no way am I going to pay for that myself. So I'll have to get my grandmother to put up the money first.

On top of all this, I start graduate school in September. I will have zero free time or energy to deal with this, and there will be literally ZERO reward even if I succeed in protecting my grandmother, other than "doing the right thing".

Ugh... I hate all this. I feel sick.

Ps. If grandma is mentally competent, hasn't been declared otherwise by physician, she can go to bank and freeze her accounts while she has everything investigated. Maybe she should withdraw enough cash to get by for 60-90 days while this is looked into.

Go to bank with your grandmother and have her add you to all her accounts and remove mom and any others. Second, report to adult protective services for investigation. Also contact an elder law attorney (local senior center should be able to provide some names) and call one. They usually give a free phone consult.

You will have to obtain some bank statements going back to grandfathers death and prove where large sums have been withdrawn.

Lastly, I'm not a legal expert, but if your mom is executor of trust for grandmother, she still has to have good accounting records and receipts for what she has spent and proof that it went to care and or support of grandmother. The house modifications would also have to be proven with receipts. And unless the dr has ordered grandma to a skilled care facility, she should have gone to moms since that was the plan and your mom fixed the house. I'm not saying, grandma should go to moms as that doesn't seem like a good situation. But your mom better be able to account for the expenses incurred so far and that ALL of it has benefitted grandma. If not, let attorney file in court to have mom removed and you or an independent body set up as the new trustee.

Good luck.

I agree with Jinx... Report your mother.. NOW...

Report your mother for financial elder abuse to Adult Protective Services. It sounds to me like your grandmother is asking for your help as much as she is able to do.

It isn't fair that you have to deal with it. The grownups eff up the world, and the kids have to clean up after them. You wouldn't keep posting if you could ignore the situation. In the end, you will act, so go ahead and do it now before things get any worse.

I'm so sorry you have to deal with this.

This is a criminal offense... You need to get your GM to the bank and take your Mom's name off her account...Call the police if you need to...

Bumping! I'm still stressed. I talked to my grandmother last night, advised her to talk to a lawyer, tried to explain to her what PoA involves (she doesn't seem to realize how far-reaching it is), and so on. She probably won't do any of that because she doesn't really know what to do and is afraid to antagonize my mother. She even says "what if she turns against me?"

The whole thing is HUGE mess. I'm worried for my grandmother but also very resentful. When my mother's dodgy behaviour was directed at my sister & me, my grandparents did nothing to protect us. Now that it's directed at my grandmother, do I owe her protection?

It's classic family dysfunction: side with the abuser, marginalize/silence the target of the abuse, right up until the target is YOU, then act shocked & outraged and turn to the previous target for help.

Right now I don't feel like being the rescuer. Or more precisely, I'm not doing it unless my grandmother is 100% on board, i.e. pays the legal bills, backs me up on any actions that I take on her behalf. Which she won't do. But she won't shut up about the situation either. I've now spent more time, in two months, listening and advising her on how to deal with my mother, than she ever spent doing the same for me in 45 years. My emotions are all over the place. Thanks Grandpa!

To give you an idea of what my mother is like with money: she once had to borrow money from me, when I was a student and she was earning over $100k, because she had run up her company credit card with personal expenses and didn't have enough of her own cash to cover it. I actually had to chase her to get that money back (this kind of thing is part of why we are estranged now). She has pretty much always had problems with spending and credit, has nothing saved for her retirement, yet lives lavishly. Red flags all over the place!

Help!!!!!! I just had another conversation with my grandmother. She told me stories of cheques going missing, even out of her dresser drawers, after my mother has visited. She mentioned how my mother is broke (which is true) and said things like "I don't like a cheat" and a bunch of stuff. This all happened right away, as soon as I called, without any prompting from me. Pretty much every conversation I have with my grandmother is like this. I've told my grandmother that she MUST demand an explanation from my mother, a copy of the will, etc. I don't know if she actually will though, as we've had that conversation before. I flat out told my grandmother that there is very little I can do so she must act. But she has dementia and never learned about financial stuff in the first place. WHAT DO I DO??? Sit back and let my grandmother get shafted? Tell her to stop talking to me about all this? It's stressing me out!

Also I'm REALLY angry with my grandfather for not arranging his affairs better than this.

That's the thing - I don't think my grandmother would ever outright ask me to get involved. She is reluctant to even ask my mother basic questions. I think her frequent mentioning of problems IS her way of sort-of asking, but in a way that doesn't commit her to anything, so it's not her fault if drama ensues. It's classic triangulation.

Unless your Grandmother ask you to get involved, it is best to stay out of it. I can't imagine how difficult this must be for you. I pray your Mother will take good care of your Grandmother. Best wishes!