Financial Abuse of the Elderly and Florida Probate Litigation

Are you and your Florida trust lawyer worried about your elderly Florida parents or relatives? Are you aware that, unfortunately, financial abuse of the elderly occurs in West Palm Beach? Has someone mis-used a power of attorney in Florida or taken a bank account in Boca Raton from your elderly relative or grandparent? Anyone involved in Florida probate litigation knows all too well the problems of financial abuse of the elderly.  A trustworthy Boca or Jupiter estate attorney can help to protect your loved ones.

Florida Probate Litigation and Financial Exploitation

• Probate litigation attorneys Delray Beach regularly deal with cases of elderly exploitation.
• If you are concerned that a relative or friend is being financially exploited, you should know that there are criminal laws in Florida that punish a person for financially exploiting the elderly.
• Financial exploitation is frowned upon to a great degree in Florida.
• In fact, the State Attorney’s Office and law enforcement have special economic crime units that can help discover and combat these crimes.
• A probate litigation lawyer West Palm Beach can tell you that there are also civil remedies under Florida Law that can be used to recover damages or properties that have been through financial exploitation.
• But the problem for some Florida estate lawyers is that, sometimes, a family member is the financial predator.
• Probate attorneys Palm Beach Gardens do their best to understand a client’s needs and, as they age, how their estate plan may or may not be changed or altered over time.
• Changing who inherits from your Delray Beach estate is just one way a financial abuser or predator can try to get your money.
• Sometimes, it is the financial abuser or financial predator who really caused the elderly client Florida senior citizen to go to a new Palm Beach estate lawyer and change his or her estate plan: in favor of the one who is doing the financial exploitation.

Franke v. State of Florida

• If you are involved in a case where there was misuse of an estate plan or misuse of durable power of attorney, you may want to read the Franke case. This was an appeal from Judge Levenson in Broward County, Florida and it went up to the Fourth DCA.
• The Fourth DCA is located in West Palm Beach, FL.
• This involved friends of over thirty years who supposedly had  a “mother/daughter-type” relationship.
• Click here to learn more about financial exploitation as it relates to wills, trusts, and estates in Florida