We recently had the marriage annulled legally after a little over a year and paid her a large sum of money to leave his home. (of course, he is clueless...) Now I want to go after her and expose her.....I want everyone (anyone) to hear of the scheme she put my family through for the last 2 years.....meeting him on match.com, promising things to him if he would marry her...using her presence and sexuality and love and attention as a tool to get him to do what she wanted...Trying to convince him that his children were stealing his money...This is all after my father just lost his wife of 30 years only 7 months prior...I have 2 years worth of documentation, lawyers fees, bank statements, credit card records, personal statements, witnesses, to show her motive, manipulation and scheming....how do i make her pay? Even the cops, who were called at least 20 times to the home in the last year, knew what was going on and could not help us ..The courts said that he had free will and he was allowed to be driven to the courthouse by her and get married....Even though he never even knew they were married...Can't she be arrested for elder fraud? Any ideas???
dad was seen in september 2013, and joined 5 different dating services in October.....lots of credit paper trails on these and other "actions" (warning signs) that he was on a downward slide.....he had one credit card which he was able to type the numbers in and order things (and dating services) online...One time I had to have over 2000.00 dollars worth of "computer tech support" removed from his card because they signed him up remotely; he had called them (in a foriegn country) because he could not remember his email password and kept getting logged out.....so yes, there is a paper trail; yes, he had already been seen by a neurologist and had an initial diagnosis, but was still attempting to be independent...the months of september through december 2013 were the beginning of this saga, when we started to put the various "pieces of evidence" about his condition together, and started taking action...the woman met him online through match.com in late January 2014. She married him in May, 2014.
I think you should write to:
1. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who sits on the Senate's Special Committee on Aging Going back to local police appears to have been useless.
2. Dennis M. Lormel, Section Chief of Financial Crimes, FBI Criminal Investigation Division, FBI Headquarters, 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001.
3. Copy ("cc") all of your elected officials including your police chief from the town you live in on up to your Senators on your letters to the Aging Committee and FBI. Also copy your dad's primary care physician who diagnosed the Alzheimer's.
Prepare your letter and attach all of your 2 years worth of documentation. In your letter, walk them through your 2 years of anguish and explain the attachments as succinctly as possible. Use a highlighter to draw attention to the most important facts in your supporting documentation.
Send your letters certified mail return receipt requested so that you know they were received. Given the volume of mail they probably receive, give them 60 days to reply. Make sure you give them your telephone number and email address so they can contact you. After 60 days if you hear nothing, send a follow-up letter requesting the courtesy of a reply. You need not copy all elected officials on follow-up letters.
Nothing is going to change nationally if people are working piecemeal locally. We need to help legislators figure something out so that people like your father don't get married when they don't know what is going on. Caregivers are stressed enough and scamming elders is such a disgusting crime and affects families everywhere. I hope you can help start a national discussion.
Does dcf and the county where I live...palm beach county florida have any responsibility in "not helping us?"
We filed for help, had 3 guardian ad litums make an assessment in our favor, and they still did not help us protect our father....
By the way, yes, I had been helping pay the bills (since they were starting to be found all over the house unpaid, prior to the marriage, and we were able , especially once winning guardianship, of handling the money.
So, to be clear, we were allowed to handle the money, pay the bills, provide all of the comforts and take care of the home, burt not allowed to see or be with or father for a year. Nice, huh? And yes she is litigious...and has a bit of a past...which puts me in a position to have a suit against me i would assume....it just seems unbelieveable that with all of this, I would have no leg to stand on...
As to your being the injured party and suing her on your own behalf, I think you're asking a question that really turns on documenting the injuries you suffered (i.e., depression, anxiety etc. pursuant to doctor's reports), but I honestly don't know what the standards of proof are in a situation like this.
The question is really whether or not you can convince an attorney to take your case. And the best thing you can do is start interviewing litigators, especially those who are very aggressive, to see if someone will handle the case for you.
I think the question of proof and evidence are best posed to an attorney, as I said, a very aggressive attorney who wants to take the case all the way to trial and won't settle for nuisance value.
But since you write that she's used the law to her advantage, expect a countersuit against you.
I left out much of the saga....
After this woman 50 to my fathers 80, set out to weave her way into his life, she systematically turned him against his children. We tried to take the matters into our own hands...she was trying to get him to change his POA and will and trust...my brother was named as the go to person for all of this...she was manipulating my father to get this all changed. It started first as just asking for money....First she asked him for money for a car..we actually had cameras set up for his safety at his home...we watched her tell him to go inside and get the check which he had forgotten...yes we have this recorded...from there it was lavish dinners, outings, and constant eating out, 1000 dollars a week in restaurant bills, on his credit card....she would not come to the inside of the house because of the cameras...she eventually manipulated him enough, where he asked us to remove the cameras because she did not like them...when we did not do this..he literally cut every wire and smashed every camera...its all recorded...after that we were not able to watch him to see if he left the stove on, or went outside in his underwear, as he had been doing. This was her manipulation of him...once he got rid of the cameras, it was only a few weeks before they were married. She drove him without our knowledge to the courthouse and she married him. He had already been diagnosed several months prior, in the early stages of alzheimers....he did not ever remember from that day forward, that they were married. She had signs hanging all over the house to remind him everyday.
We spent the next 4 months petitioning for guardianship, which my brother won. We had 3 court appointment people document that he was in need of care, and had the disease. So it helped my brother win the guardianship, but it did not stop there.....While it gave us control over much, his daily life, his credit card, his home, which we were told she now got half of because they were married, this was what we dealt with....and the credit card....she signed his name all over town as she used his credit card....everywhere I went to investigate, they knew what was going on...restaurants, stores, etc....but they would not help us.... she abused the spending for close to a year for lavish dinners, drinking, shopping, shopping for her son, etc, at one point she convinced him to buy her a wedding ring, etc, etc.......she also moved her son into our fathers home. He was there with them for 4 months. (they lived off of my father, using his credit card, which we were paying.) I could never understand how this 19 year old bot could be accepting of his mothers actions...but he must have been fine since he was living in a beautiful house, had food, a credit card, and no responsibilities..he even left college to stay there during this time....And all of this time, we could do nothing....
As we attempted to control her spending, she started with lawyers, trying to petition for a change in the guardianship...lawyers, lawyers, lawyers..everytime she did not get her way, she would find a new lawyer to take her case. We were constantly defending ourselves, and our right to take care of our father....
When we went to the house, she would call the police and incite our father to the point where she would whisper to him that we were stealing his money and to kick us out..He would become incensed and violent....She egged him on to violence and elevated blood pressure. She would manipulate him and convince him that we were going to put him away. Remember, he had no clue about anything....whatever she told him, he believed....No less than 5 times, I had to be escorted off of the property by the police. We called dcf, the local police, and we kept hearing that she was his wife. She has rights.... If any one of his children came, the police were called. This went on for 9 months.
My fathers health declined, and as guardian, my brother was able to get daily in-home health care. She manipulated the nurses, and whenever they told us what she was doing or went against her, she made trouble for the nursing staff as well. This has been going on for the last year.
As my fathers health was declining, I guess she started to see that it wasn't much fun any more. She found a new lawyer to try and get us to pay her to leave. Through lawyers, this was what eventually got her out.
I will have to reread the documents, but I personally am not named in them.
I want to know if I personally can sue her, not on my father's behalf, but as the injured party? I want to publicly expose her for the pain, suffering, and grief she has caused to our family..she kept us away from our father for almost a year...My father is much worse now...I believe that ultimately her actions contributed to his health decline....She also kept his grandchildren from seeing him...for almost a year, my father had no contact with anyone from his family...and I live with my children just 10 miles from his home....my children grew up there.... but this woman and the health care workers were his only companionship......he was robbed of the joy of having his family be with him as he fell further into the throws of the disease.
Now she is gone , we had to pay a hefty sum for her to leave, and my father is only a shell of his former self.
He has NEVER once mentioned her name..he has never once asked for her.
I want to sue her for what she put me through....not for money, for shaming and exposing her. Is this possible? I did read of a few cases related to elder fraud related to marriage under false pretense where the person was charged, and fined, and had to pay back money spent during the fraudulent marriage.... I will find a way to expose her...just want to know if i have any grounds such as mental anguish, etc.... Thank you for listening....
No lawyer here, but it sounds as if your dad is in no way competent and you would have a case of elder fraud. But you said THE COURTS SAID HE HAS FREE WILL etc. A court has ruled on the issue already? I am in total sympathy with you situation but a little clarification on the current status of things.
If he wasn't aware he was married, that's supportive of his inability to understand what was happening.
Was the court action to annul the marriage? I was wondering why the "courts" said that he had free will" - what was their involvement if not in the annulment?
As to personally pursuing her through litigation, you might as a family have grounds for alleging extreme mental duress (a civil matter), but you do need legal standing to sue if you're suing on his behalf. Has your father been determined to be unable to make legal and financial decisions for himself? What grounds did you use for the annulment?
Are any of your family named in a DPOA that would give you authority to sue on your father's behalf? I think it would be hard to allege mental duress for him if he's not sure what happened.
Did you recover all the funds possible? If not, there might be grounds to sue for recovery of that money, with interest of course.
The two major issues I see are (1) if you're suing on behalf of your father, as I assume he won't join in the suit, and whether or not you have legal standing to do this on his behalf, and (2) specific grounds, specific assets to be attached, and whether or not this woman actually has any assets at all - i.e., what do you hope to gain - money? exposure?
One issue of which you need to be cautious is that of libel, since you'll be making written accusations, which might be considered "public" once a suit is filed. She could turn around and countersue, so that's something you should discuss with any attorney you select.
Do you know if she's done this before? Has your attorney subpoenaed records from Match.com to see if she's been a predator there beyond going after your father? If you can develop a pattern, you have a better chance of sustaining a lawsuit.
Being frank, what do you hope to recover, or prove, beyond exposing her? I'm not in disagreement at all; I'd love to see scammers exposed - I'd even love to see a website exposing people who try to scam elders!
Just make sure that you have a specific goal in mind, especially if she's vicious and can turn around and come after you for libel, and/or countersue for something like that or for character defamation.
Have you taken precautions to protect your father? Gotten an injunction or PPO to keep her away from him?
This is when a criminal history record comes into play - she's could be a serial scammer and predator.
There are probably some issues I'm missing, so hopefully others will point those out.