I am the daughter who takes care of mom primarily after my father passed in 2011. She has always had a close relationship with MY daughter, and that is very nice. What is not very nice is that my mother cannot afford her house any longer, because she is constantly giving my almost 30 y/o money for car repairs, pays her insurance monthly and phone, her parking tickets, etc etc. My daughter unfortunately is a narcissist and because I do not agree with her tactics she has "ruled" that I am no longer to interact with her. This gives her free reign to drain my mother's bank accounts... while I do everything I can on my end to help my mom understand WHY she is always $1000 behind a month. Is there any valuable advise that someone can share?
Taking advantage of elders is very common, and what's described here is exactly what's going on. When someone is on the verge of homelessness because of someone else taking advantage of them, this is definitely an extreme case where intervention is absolutely necessary, and a representative payee would definitely be very helpful in this particular type of matter. Look at the situation again. If they don't ever is coming up short by $1000 every month, this should tell you that something is definitely very wrong, especially if the elder is on the verge of homelessness, hello!Yes, something definitely needs to be done about this because there is definitely a huge problem if the elder can no longer afford her home and she's struggling. The Op explained the situation that someone is taking financial advantage of the elder, and others on this thread have expressed their own experience with this very same kind of problem due to their experience and observations.
Let's get another thing straight:
Narcissist is more than just a psychological term. Those who don't know about how narcissistic operate really need to do their homework because narcissist really do take advantage of others out of selfish greed, I personally new one. It doesn't matter whether or not the OP responds, maybe the person is busy trying to take care of matters regarding this situation. Remember this is a family problem. We don't know the situation of the OP, we shouldn't judge because we don't know the whole situation which is true
What you may end up wanting to do if she happens to work is call her boss and tell her boss what she's doing. Explain that the employee is taking advantage of an elderly person and not using their own wages to support themselves. The boss will call her into the office and have a talk with her and it would help if you were there as well because you can be there to explain everything you've seen. It would also help to take along any witnesses. I'm not sure any boss would keep an employee who would stoop that low, especially if this employee happens to handle money. I can tell you that no reputable company will want a dishonest employee (if this person happens to be working). Again, it is very possible to stop an enabler, don't let anyone tell you it's not because it's very possible if proper steps are taken.
Now if the daughter happens to be on Social Security herself, you can report her to Social Security because she's taking money from another recipient but she's not entitled to, and she can get in big trouble for what she's doing from your description. This would go under the category of gaining unreported income, and they can cut her benefits or even stop them. Depending on the severity of the situation, she can even be banned from receiving public assistance depending on the discretion of the government. If the elder is getting federal benefits and most likely she is, federal benefits is something to not mess with because the government will definitely crack down hard on anyone taking benefits they are not entitled to. This can land people in jail for a very long time. That kind of record can haunt people for the rest of their lives for messing with the government's money. Knowing something and not reporting it makes people just as bad as the one committing the crime. It's up to the citizens to report suspicious activity and even step into intervene and stop it if necessary.
If it happens to be that this person is not entitled to benefits and she's not working, it's time to tell her to get a job and it's time to intervene and put a stop to her leeching off of the elderly person because the elderly person cannot afford to be supporting someone else, especially if she's not yet on Medicaid and will need to apply for it. I don't know all the rules of Medicaid for myself, I've been on it since childhood when I was rescued from an abusive home.
Another thing that would help is probably putting the elder's extra money into a trust so that the leech cannot access a dime of it. Taking steps to dry up the leech's money source and push her out of the nest and force her to take responsibility (unless she happens to find another victim).
* Explain that she's elderly and being financially abused or exploited and she's on the verge of facing homelessness because someone is either stealing her money or swindling/scamming her out of it.
If you have all of the information including her date of birth, as well as her name of course and definitely her Social Security number, address, and possibly banking information if she gets direct deposit. If you have all of the vital information on this person, definitely give Social Security a call right away, do it immediately.
Another thing that would help instead of a bank account alone would be to have her Social Security moved to a special card you can use at the ATMs or even at the checkout. Money can be taken off the card and put into the bank account for her bills while the rest stays on the card. If you make it a rule not to carry cash at all, it will be near impossible to get anything from any of you including the person being financially abused as you're describing. I think I mentioned this before but be very wary if this other person taking advantage of the elderly happens to be on her bank account as a joint owner. This is really not a good idea if this happens to be the case. You really don't want this elderly person losing her home especially if she's lived there a very long time. If she's been otherwise good with paying her bills, it's time to nip the problem in the bud. What you need to do is find out when this other person is showing up at the elder's home but this will take some private surveillance on your part. As soon as this person goes in the door, miraculously show up at the same moment she walks in the door or a few seconds after. Another thing you can do is if you're helping this elder at all is to call the phone provider when she's out on an outing and change her phone number through her provider. You can do this if you happen to gain any type of position where you're helping her with her bills. You'll definitely need a few pieces of vital information including the account number, phone number, and her pin number if the provider requires her to provide one for her account. Accounts are sometimes given pin numbers. For instance, if the phone happens to be through frontier, each account has a pin number. Getting a hold of that will definitely give you the power to have the number changed so the leech who may also be calling her won't be able to communicate with her by phone. The only way she could communicate with her is either by email which you can have disabled or deactivated, or by just coming over. When she comes over, you can be waiting somewhere around the corner but somewhere you can watch the elder's home. Another thing you can do is to hire a neighbor and explain what's going on if they don't already know. Explain to a nearby neighbor the situation and give all the details about the leech and the situation. Hire that neighbor to watch the elders home especially if the neighbor happens to live right across the street. Have them contact you right away or see if they'll show up as soon as this leech comes over to the elders home. You can also give APS a call and make a report. Make a report each and every time the leech shows up at the elders home. If possible, try to get video and audio surveillance inside the elder's home. It's possible to be able to watch inside the home if you have the right hardware and software. It's kind of call the nanny cam to some degree. This can help if the elder is also prone to falling. If you can catch video and record suspicious activity in any of the rooms of the elder's home, you can turn that into not only police, but also the APS. There are systems out there that help with elder monitoring, you may very well want
what I'm wondering is how is mom funding her $1000 shortfall every month; does she have money to cover it or is she in debt? that sounds like my husband, who I admit I was wondering about - turned out he'd gotten 7 credit cards he just kept playing with till it all fell apart and we're now under a debt management plan; that was to deal with son #2 on my part (son #1 is mine only) - new husband - who grew up with this so both had hard time learning as teen-agers - youngest has done somewhat better, wanting to do on his own when he truly can't yet - anyway #2's is a bind and pretty sure all credit cards are cut off so he can't look to dad anymore but like was said about knowing how much you have he has somewhat idea of how much got from dad but don't plan to go into that for covering his usual and normal expenses he's gotten behind on even though I know why
wonder if this daughter works?
When you say she can't afford her house, do you have evidence of this or do you fear that? I'm guessing that her home should be paid off and she is responsible for the taxes, utilities and maintenance.
Where are the other family members? Is there anyone who can talk to your mom who she would listen to? If not, consulting an attorney or removing yourself are the only options. Maybe your mom enjoys the codependent relationship? Some people do like to baby others. If she wants to die penniless, it's her right.
I personally feel like there is an undisclosed dynamic between the 3 of you which you're not mentioning that is the root of the issue.
If the OP continues to provide an increasing level of care without attempting to resolve this abuse, who's the enabler then?
But BnnK54 can you tell us - how did you deal? That would be seriously useful to hear about.
Not everyone who takes advantage of elders is necessarily a narcissist, but narcissists are notorious for draining people financially dry by squeezing out of their victims every cent they can possibly get.
*Special tip
If a narcissist knows how much money someone has, they'll stop at nothing to get every dime. If they know how much money you have, believe me when I say they'll stop at nothing to get it all. This happened with a friend of mine who happens to be this man's girlfriend. He took financial advantage of her and no one knew what was really going on until he was finally evicted from her home because she threw him out. That's when all the hidden truth came out and all was revealed. The narcissist would even put the joint bank account in the negative just for a pack of smokes at the end of the month. He always watched the online banking to see when the checks would route because they got direct deposit. He would stay up all night until the money showed on the online banking page, he told me himself what time the checks route. I'm sure he had sleepless nights when the checks didn't show up on that page at all until the bank opened at 9 AM. Narcissists are often money hungry from what I noticed and experienced.
The narcissist may not listen when you confront her, and there's no easy way to confront I narcissist or to talk any sense into them but to confront the problem. If someone doesn't stop the narcissist from draining this bank account, you're very right about the elder being rendered homeless and having nowhere to live but under a bridge in a cardboard box.
What I have to tell you is really going to hurt but sometimes the truth really hurts.
The narcissist in your life doesn't care about you or her victim. The narcissist only wants what they want, and they don't care who they hurt in the process of getting what they want or getting their way. The narcissist I once knew was also married to another woman. Something inside told me it wouldn't last a year and that something turned out to be right. I don't know what happened but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he was trying to financially drain his wife. It wasn't until much later than I heard he was trying to gain access to her bank account after the split. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he was taking advantage of her. Because he always spent himself broke on smokes, he didn't even have the money for a divorce. When his mom was gone, he lived off his girlfriend. This financially broke the bank as I described earlier, and to worsen matters even more, he was on her bank account. Please consider removing the narcissist off your mom's account in any way possible. You're smart enough to bring this sad situation to a happy ending
Be very wary if this person's name happens to be on your mom's account, this will give her free reign to drain that bank account. You can stop this from happening by taking over your mom's financial affairs. What you can do is speak to the bank about suspected elder abuse and see if you can find a paper trail somewhere or some kind of digital records where the money went. You can take what's left of your mom's money and put it into a new bank account, but leave the old bank account empty if you can't take the other name off of it. One way to empty the bank account as a last resort if you can't transfer the money to a new account is to go to the ATM and withdraw all of it. You can even do this at the window of the walk up teller. Withdraw as much as you can from the ATM, and whatever the ATM won't give you (if you have to take it out in certain amounts) you can always go into a walk up teller and get the rest.
Next, see a personal banker either at that bank or another bank and open a new account and deposit the money. See if you can put your name on the account as POA. That way, you can monitor the account.
When you open the new account, tell the bank what you told us here, and explain the situation and tell them you suspect elder fraud or abuse. Tell them who it is, named them specifically and block them from accessing the new account.
How to prevent future fraud or abuse:
Hold onto the check books and the debit card. That way, the narcissist won't have any access to the bank account and cannot get the card or the checks away from the elder. You can also opt out of having any checks for the account since many places no longer accept personal checks. We really don't need checks anymore anyway when you have debit. Our bank actually came out with a new type of card with a microchip as an added layer of security. This is where are you must type in your pin number, and without that pin, you can't use the card in some places that require you to insert it into the slot as opposed to swiping it and running it as credit.
As mentioned here, you could also have your mom's competency level evaluated. If she's know if she's incompetent, someone will need to take guardianship of her take over all of her affairs so that no one can ever take advantage of her again.
What you should do now:
Have a family meeting about the problem. This should be done in a nonjudgmental way while confronting the issue. It would be a good idea to get the family in on watching over the elder. One thing you want to do is see if anyone else has also been taken advantage of financially. This is where you can help others who were also taken advantage of to put a stop to the enablement because this is exactly what's going on from your description. As long as she enables bad behavior it will continue until the purse strings are pulled tightly shut.
Now, someone needs to personally addressed the narcissist about paying her own way in this world. If she's going to park illegally, she's going to have to pay her own fines. If she's going to have a vehicle, she needs to stand on her own 2 feet and pay her own insurance and repairs. If she's going to drive around an old piece of junk that's always breaking down, she's going to have to pay for it herself. You mentioned the narcissist is 30 years old. That's plenty old enough to stand on one's own 2 feet and take responsibility. I can see grandma helping the granddaughter once in a while, but the granddaughter should never be a living off of grandma. There's an old saying about kids being spoiled because no one will spank grandma. This line is not meant to be taken literally because you don't want to literally spank her. The line is just meant as an awareness thing. I can understand is grandparents want to spoil the grandkids rotten like they may have spoiled their own kids when they were little. This grandkid is 30 years old, a grown adult who should've long since been independent enough to not even need help from her grandparents. The grandparents are most likely on a fixed income, and we don't know how much money they have in savings. Anyway, even if they have money in savings, this should n
My children are all around that age. I don't pretend that I like everything they do, or every choice they make, of course not. But I can't imagine taking their exploitation of a grandparent lying down, if they were ever to do such a thing.
I'm not suggesting that the OP should prevent the granddaughter seeing the grandmother at all, and I agree that the older lady has a perfect right to see whom she pleases and to do as she pleases with her own money, assuming that she is competent. But the OP describes herself as her mother's main carer for five years. That must count for something. Not least, it implies the OP's gradual assumption of responsibility for her mother's welfare over a significant period of time. To suggest that she can safely sit back and say oh woe is me but what can I do... I don't think it's a good bet. I think she would be implicated in the financial abuse if she allows it to continue unchallenged.
So challenge it. Loudly.
If your Mother is competent, then all you can do is point this out to her. Try having a heart to heart talk with her and explain your fears for her financial future, emphasizing your concern and love for her. Let her know you are there for her and you can lighten her burden. Many Senior people do not like to make financial decisions and would like someone they can trust handle their affairs. Tell her you could work up a budget together, and she can see how much she has come in and how much going out, and how much she has to "throw away".