A friend read the last post and called to ask whether the potential clients who had been victimized were of a particular nationality. My response is that fraud and cheating by relatives knows no ethnic, color, nationality or socio-economic boundaries. In other words, the people ripping others represent a wide spectrum of people, and do not discriminate in terms of who the victims are.
The caller wanted to know who these people were. Unfortunately, attorney-client considerations prevent me from discussing any specifics. The friend could not believe that people would take from their own relatives, in particular, parents or uncles and aunts.
Sadly, the persons involved in victimizing others, in particular, the elderly, are often relatively well-to-do. It seems that the richer they are, the more likely they are to handle larger amounts of money.
Some of those involved are established business-people. Their involvement, and conduct, has frankly, shocked me. In some cases, it is too late to recover funds, as the person who have the money now claim that it has been spent, and they do not have the funds to repay it.
The best solution is, to simply avoid the problem entirely. If you don’t trust the relatives to take title, and thus, have access to your assets, you will not have to worry about losing them. For bank accounts, do not put a relative on as a co-account holder, particularly one a one-signature withdrawal basis, where no countersignature is required. “Joint tenant” accounts, where the survivor of the account holders after the death of one, allows any account holder, unless restrictions are imposed, to withdraw any part (including the whole thing) of the account at any time.
Jointly held real estate is harder to transfer. However, any interest in property may be transferred, even though half of a property, does not necessarily give the half-owner control over it. Thus, many people will not buy partial interests. In any case, again, why take the risk?
The easiest and safest way, don’t put a relative on title to any asset unless you have a good estate planning reason and you can otherwise protect yourself so that the asset or the support it will provide you is not lost.
