Financial Abuse And Undue Influence

Case 1: Elder Abuse By Neighbors

An elderly widow with no local family was persuaded to transfer title to her home to her neighbors, who then left her at an assisted living facility and disappeared. We filed a lawsuit and recorded a Notice of Pendency of Action against the property, preventing the abusers from selling the property or taking out a loan against it. After several months of litigation, we successfully recovered the home on behalf of the elderly widow.

Case 2: Undue Influence Over Assets

Our client was the granddaughter of an elderly woman with dementia. During the grandmother’s lifetime, she executed multiple Wills, all of which left her home to her granddaughter. Unfortunately, the granddaughter’s own mother – and the daughter of the grandmother – had other plans. Several years after admitting her mother to a dementia facility and verifying that her mother lacked capacity to make her own decisions regarding her assets, the daughter had her own mother, who was then in her mid-90’s, sign title to her home over to her. The daughter then sold the home and kept the proceeds, effectively disinheriting her own daughter from the grandmother’s estate. Using California’s strong statutes against financial elder abuse, we successfully recovered well over twice the value of the home that was taken.

Case 3: Undue Influence Among Siblings

We represented several children of an elderly gentleman who suffered from advanced dementia. After being diagnosed with dementia, the gentleman curiously signed over title to his home to one of his children, despite providing in his Will that he wanted each of his children to inherit an equal share of his estate. The child who took title to the home then proceeded to spend well over $250,000 of the gentleman’s money on herself and her own family.

The final straw for my clients occurred, however, when they found out that the bad child had named herself as beneficiary of the elder’s financial accounts shortly before his death. Because of the egregious behavior involved, we successfully obtained a prejudgment writ of possession, preventing the bad child from spending or hiding assets which had been wrongfully taken, and eventually obtained a hard-fought recovery for our clients.