My brother and I were POA for my father before he passed. He never revealed to me the contents of his accounts, only verbal statements. He was in possession of his debit/bank card to pay his bill's and buy groceries. After my father passed, through inquiry I found out that he had created an online account in my father's name months ago. He had been transferring money from his savings into checking, using it for personal use, withdrawing hundreds of dollars at a time and after confronting him, he continued well after he had been buried. I was however, able to put a stop on the card after I made the bank aware. The elder lawyer doesn't want to deal with it now that this has come to light. What do I do now?
Are you 100% sure your brother had transferred funds from his Dad's account over to his account and used it all for himself? Or was he transferring from savings to checking to pay Dad's bills?
Has your Dad's Will gone into Probate yet? Some States require this to be done if the estate is over a certain amount. Thus, the Elder Law Attorney would still need to be involved.
Unfortunately, there was no will. I have in possession 2 years of bank transactions showing how consistent my father was and where the money started to disappear even AFTER he passed away. Bills were being paid and money was being withdrawn in cities and a State where my father didn't live, let alone could even drive to.
If in fact your father's estate needs to go through Probate, the Probate office will select someone, either you or your brother to represent your father estate. The Probate office will let you or your brother what needs to be done. Bank statements will need to be provided from your father's account. If there is any mis-direction of funds, Probate will sniff it out.
After being confronted, he rambled about being out of work for 2 weeks, said he was sorry... but, continued to withdraw, transfer and make purchases after the apology.
So, basically, he knew perfectly well that he was taking money that did not belong to him, and justified this in his own mind through necessity. Being out of work, the money right there, he helped himself. And then continued to need money because he didn't have work, and continued to abuse his position of trust, in spite of your having brought the problem to his attention.
So. What you do is Add Up. You have the bank statements, you can identify the withdrawals, you list them - amounts and dates - and you determine a total of money he has misappropriated.
You then present this to him as a statement and ask him when he plans to return the money he has "borrowed" to the estate.
Was his being out of work related to pressures arising from your father's care? You might want to cut him some slack on that point.
But the key thing is to clarify how much he has taken and therefore how much he owes (bearing in mind that a proportion of the debt he owes, in effect, to himself).
Now that he is no longer caregiving and life is returning to normal, presumably he will be able to pick up where he left off. Good; but he still owes what he took. It isn't right to let him off the hook, but see if you can get anywhere by giving him options rather than involving external enforcers. For now, anyway.
Were you and your brother the only beneficiaries of your father's estate, or are other people affected too?