With age comes experience, and experience can make a person wise. Many adults who have decades of lived experience understand the world better than young people just starting out in life.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that older adults always make the best, most informed decisions. Older adults may struggle to adapt to changing social norms and new technology. Cognitive decline and loneliness can combine to leave them particularly vulnerable to certain types of misconduct.
Certain opportunistic criminals intentionally engage in fraud that targets older adults. Major financial losses related to fraudulent activity or a failure to recognize attempts at fraud could be a warning sign that an elder loved one might benefit from a conservatorship.
What kinds of fraud target older adults?
There are several types of fraudulent schemes that seek to take advantage of older adults. Some older adults fall victim to benefits-related schemes. Fraudsters may send official-looking letters or emails. They might call an individual directly. They can convince older adults to share private information, including their birth dates and Social Security numbers, by insisting that they are about to lose Medicare or Social Security retirement benefits.
There are also fraud schemes that trick older adults into investing their funds in ways that are not beneficial for them. Finally, there are also confidence schemes. People use real-life relationships or digital technology to create a false sense of intimacy. They then leverage that relationship and try to trick older adults into sharing or giving away their resources.
Older adults who are vulnerable to this kind of misconduct may not recognize the bad intentions of others until it is too late. Family members who have witnessed a loved one lose important resources to fraudulent activity or who have identified a fraud attempt targeting a loved one may need to step up and seek conservatorship to protect their vulnerable family member from other schemes in the future.
A conservatorship can help preserve resources that might otherwise be vulnerable if left in the control of someone with declining mental acuity. Taking action to preserve resources can help ensure that an elder loved one has the assets they need for their comfort and safety later in life.