I m concerned about my uncle s well being and want to report my cousin s treatment of him.?

Question

I just moved back to PA where I grew up, and where most of my family has always lived. My cousin has Power of Attorney for my uncle "Skip" but doesn t live there so my uncle is alone at 80. I knew from phone calls that Skip has dementia, but thought he was being well cared for.

My first day home I visited Skip and called my cousin to tell him the house needs an exterminator badly, and that the electric bill needed to be paid because they disconnected it while I was there. My cousin admitted that Skip s savings (almost a million dollars) are gone and made up some nonsense about how it was spent on Skip, but his monthly SSI covers the bills and he doesn t spend any money.  I turned on his electric, got an exterminator, and I have things set up easier for him. I stop there every morning to prep his meals for the day, but I work and don t want him alone.

He doesn t want to leave his house, and I believe the state will supply a home health aid since he no longer can afford one. His son won t look into that, I think he doesn t want to draw attention to the finances. I m a single female and I don t feel comfortable reporting anybody. Any advice on how to bypass his POA and request a nurse? Is there anybody helpful I can get involved that will let me remain anonymous? I don t know what avenue to take.

Anonymous · Answer

Wow.  He's lucky to have you.

First, there is nothing you can do to bypass the POA . This means there's no point calling medicaid or SS, because you'd only get very general info.   By general, I mean things you'll find on their websites.

After that, you have a couple options, but you wouldn't be able to remain anonymous.  Can I ask why this is important to you?  For example, you can report elderly abuse anonymously, but if he never has visitors, would your cousin figure out who called?  Also, you want to think through what happens to your uncle if they do report abuse or neglect.  Usually, this means your uncle ends up in a state run nursing home (breeding ground for even more abuse).

Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is the missing $1 million. This money wasn't a gift to your cousin.  It still belonged to your uncle, but your cousin had control of it.  I can't think of any way he could have gone through all this without some misappropriation of funds occurring.   Have you considered talking to an attorney about this?   The initial visit would be confidential, of course.

But if you can recover some or most of this $1 million, that is a game changer.  By then, you'd have POA.  So if he's still functioning ok on his own, you could hire a home health aide to do whatever seems best:  "babysit" overnight, babysit during the day, etc.  If his dementia has been diagnosed by a physician, this can start to deteriorate very rapidly.   So the bulk of that money could be used to get him into a nicer nursing home or assisted living community.

So unless you have a very good reason for not wanting your cousin to know (and this is possible), if I were you, I'd be trying to get some of that money back.  There's something very wrong here.

Pearl L · Answer

not sure if you knew this but rnedicaid will pay people to look after farnily rnernbers so if you decide to do that you wont have to work

Anonymous · Answer

Contact your local social services. See what can be done and how to proceed. If there is proof of money theft, contact the police.

Anonymous · Answer

Pennsylvania's department of jobs and family services (or whatever it is called there) has someone to report elderly abuse to.

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I m concerned about my uncle s well being and want to report my cousin s treatment of him.?

4 Answers