Chris

Following my post yesterday about stepchildren being suddenly written out of longstanding Wills by a step-parent after the death of the child's birth parent, despite longstanding agreements to honour the deceased's wishes, it was so sad to read how many of you who have been affected by this. My main advice would be to encourage your parents to put their assets into a trust with you as beneficiary and your step-parent given a life interest, so you eventually get your rightful inheritance that your deceased birth parent wanted. Unfortunately, my mum always refused to do this as she trusted my stepdad. This brings me on to another subject along the same lines that I'd be interested to hear from you about. And that is manipulation of the elderly. I'm not going to go into the finer details of what happened with my stepdad but, briefly, after mum's death, he sold the house and bought a retirement apartment near me so I could care for him. Which I did for 4 years. The apartments had a building manager. Over the next year, the building manager and her husband started to inveigle their way into my stepdad's life by getting him involved in religion and promising him if he complied, he'd see mum again in the afterlife. They also kept buying him sweet treats which he loved. And taking him to hospital appointments without telling me, as I used to take him. One day, while getting his council tax bill out to pay, next to it in the drawer was a draft codicil leaving everything to the building manager and her husband. I asked him whether he'd executed the original and, luckily, he told me his solicitor had refused to allow this due to concerns over my stepdad's mental capacity. He'd recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and vascular dementia. There was also a note in the drawer from the Building Manager telling my stepdad what to say to the solicitor. I instigated a complaint to the management company of the building who suspended the manager pending an investigation. I also contacted Safeguarding at Social Services. To cut a long story short, the manager returned to her job after a couple of months with strict instructions from her employer to not form personal relationships with the residents but stick to managing the building. Social Services were all but useless. And you know the rest, a niece then suddenly came out of the woodwork after an absence of about 40 years, and took over his life, moved him away from me to an unknown location while I was in the Cotswolds for 4 days and didn't even tell me when he died. I found out by chance a year later. And I'm not alone in my experience above. My best friend, who was carer for her uncle, found him writing large cheques out to a paid cleaner. And an estate agent we both knew from work was in hospital at death's door and my best friend went to visit. The estate agent's carer was there getting the estate agent to sign a Transfer Deed transferring the agent's house to the foreign carer. My friend just about managed to stop a nurse witnessing the signatures on the document. And, of course, the foreign carer disappeared into the ether. Now I'm telling you this so you can be very aware of how commonplace this manipulation of the elderly is. And nobody seems to do anything about it. This may have happened to a loved one of yours and, if so, hopefully the perpetrator was caught. But from my experiences, they just seem to get away with it. 😡