What Happened
Our client had been designated as the successor co-power of attorney and co-trustee of his elderly mother’s revocable trust, alongside his brother, to be effective when she became incapacitated and unable to manage her own affairs.
The trust was designed to ensure that their mother’s care and living expenses were properly funded and that her home and other assets were maintained. Unfortunately, this arrangement quickly fell apart when our client’s sibling hid their mother’s incapacitated condition from her family, refused to provide her with medical care, and used her incapacity to exert control over their mother’s finances and assets, including trust assets.
The brother, who was living in their mother’s home and claimed to be caring for her, began transferring and withdrawing money from the trust and her personal accounts to himself. After fully depleting her bank accounts, causing automatic payments to be returned for insufficient funds, he failed to pay her mortgage and other bills.
As the financial situation worsened, so did their mother’s living conditions. The brother, who had assumed day-to-day oversight of her home, was neglecting even her most basic needs. The house had fallen into disrepair, becoming unsanitary, cluttered and unsafe for an elderly woman with limited mobility. Even more concerning, the mortgage had gone unpaid for months, and the home was on the brink of foreclosure, with an auction date looming.
An emergency hospital visit, initiated by a concerned family member, revealed that the brother had actively prevented his mother from obtaining medical care, had misrepresented her mental and physical health condition to the family, and had been using his position of power over his mother as her caregiver for years.
Our client was horrified to discover that not only was his mother’s health and comfort neglected, but the family’s most significant asset, her home, was also on the verge of being lost due to his brother’s taking of her personal and trust assets and mismanagement.
Despite repeated oral and written requests for transparency and cooperation, his brother stonewalled every inquiry. Over a short period of time, it was evident he was both failing to care for their mother and subjecting her to financial elder abuse.
With this new knowledge, our client took steps to immediately step in, knowing that if his mother had lost capacity, which he needed to verify with her medical professionals, then he needed to act as the co-trustee and co-power of attorney.
Faced with a rapidly deteriorating situation, our client turned to Keystone for help.
How Keystone Was Able to Help
Keystone immediately recognized that swift intervention was needed to protect the trust’s assets, stop the brother’s financial abuse and ensure the mother’s physical safety.
The firm began by having the client obtain a neuropsychological evaluation of his mother performed by a qualified medical professional. Our client learned that his mother had not only lost her ability to manage her personal, financial, and medical affairs, and was also suffering from severe dementia with additional neurological disorders, but that her condition was significantly advanced and she had likely been incapacitated for years.
Next, the firm had the client formally accept his duties as trustee and power of attorney and promptly sent his brother a formal demand that he immediately execute documents declining to act as his mother’s co-trustee and co-power of attorney.
When the brother failed to comply, Keystone successfully filed an emergency petition in probate court seeking to suspend his powers as co-trustee and co-power of attorney, and to appoint our client as sole trustee and power of attorney to stabilize the situation and protect his mother.
At the same time, Keystone worked with the mortgage lender to prevent further foreclosure proceedings and worked with a skilled nursing facility to ensure their mother would not be evicted, while our client worked as quickly as possible to obtain cash assets for the trust. Thereafter, Keystone worked with the client to hire professionals to evict the brother from the home and sell the home on the open market to ensure an optimal price.
The proceeds from the sale were used to pay for their mother to remain in an appropriate care facility, provide for her ongoing needs and pay her significant outstanding medical bills.
Simultaneously, Keystone issued numerous subpoenas which uncovered the extent of the brother’s theft of their mother’s personal and trust assets. Keystone then sought and obtained the brother’s permanent removal as co-trustee and co-power of attorney and obtained a significant surcharge judgment against the brother.
Thanks to Keystone’s prompt and strategic intervention, the mother’s living conditions drastically improved, and the trust’s financial integrity was restored. Most importantly, our client obtained the ability to manage his mother’s affairs transparently and responsibly — ensuring that her remaining time was lived in safety, dignity and peace.
