Elder abuse takes on many different shapes and forms…it can happen in many different ways. However, one of the most despicable ways is when a person entrusted to help an elderly person uses their trust to gain access to financial account information. The “trusted” person then commits abuse by managing an elderly person's accounts for his or her own benefit.
However, even when this financial abuse is discovered or suspected, it is not always easy to put a quick end to it through the legal system. Therefore, the abuse continues for longer than it should. Unfortunately, this may not be a quick fix so the sooner it can be discovered the better chance someone has of being able to at least minimize it prior to stopping it.
To fix this problem, some New Hampshire legislators think they have come up with a solution as Seacoast Online reports in "House bill would help elder victims of financial abuse."
To give you a quick summary of what their solution is, the idea is to create a fast track for disabled people and the elderly to get legal relief…similar to how victims of domestic violence can get almost immediate protective orders. While some elderly victims currently qualify for domestic violence protective orders, it certainly is happening for all that are being abused.
While all states have some sort of process, it varies from state to state. As in the case of a domestic violence victim, they can get a quick protective order from a judge for immediate relief. Giving the same level of protection to victims of elder abuse would speed up the process greatly and shorten the time for recovery. It would also help to minimize the severity of the financial abuse and could potentially save the victim large amounts of money.
If you would like to learn more about many other ways to help stop elder abuse, just let us know and we can share with you some additional resources and point you in the direction of some great information. We can also help you better understand how to legally protect your elderly loved ones by putting some safeguard plans in place that can help prevent this from ever happening. Solving it before it happens is always the best alternative.