THOUGHTS TO REMEMBER FOR EACH DAY

   Each day I know there will be at least one e-mail in my computer’s mailbox.  In the early hours of the morning the thought for each day is entered.  Today the thought is a short one but may take many years to learn the lesson anew and put it into practice it each day.  A parliamentary report was tabled last November, entitled “Not to be Forgotten: Care of Vulnerable Citizens.”   Elder abuse afflicts many of the elderly, when retirees can suffer from ill-treatment.  The greatest and fastest-growing form is not physical violence but is actually financial.  The parliamentarians’ likened financial elder abuse to a tsunami in its growth and scope.

   The view is endorsed by non-parliamentarians as well.  “I’ve seen elder abuse every day of my 17 years caring for older adults,” says Tammy Rankin of the Durham Network in Durham Region, just east of Toronto.  “I have not seen any abuse cases where money wasn’t the root cause.  It is absolutely an epidemic, the key questions for retirees are:  What can I do about it?   Whom can I trust?  What can I do to protect my own interests while ensuring that the needs of my deserving loved ones are also met?  “There are many schemers who want to part us from our savings.  News reports of financial abuse and fraud now have become a regular occurrence, and those are only the cases that are reported,” notes Jay Chalke, former public guardian and trustee of British Columbia. 

   New technology has in many ways made the work of the professional con artists much easier.  With the internet and instant wireless technology it is possible for criminals to find out about you in many ways and this has made their work much easier. Unfortunately, the parliamentary report also found that while criminals are increasingly targeting retirees, financial abuse can begin with Power of Attorney, abuse of joint bank accounts, and misuse of funds or property and fraud or forgery of documents and entrusting another person who banks for them.

   “You have an asset-rich older generation and a debt-ridden younger population struggling to make ends meet.  Relatives use the senior’s money for supplementing their own accounts, or they may use the money to invest in their home.  There are a lot of myths, like ‘That’s really my money, since I am going to inherit it anyway,’ and this is going to be the most significant issue in the next decade,” says Laura Watts, Canadian Center for Elder Law, Vancouver.  From ‘Not to be Forgotten.’