Family fraud over social security pension.

[Tennessee2014]

I live in Tennessee and my Mother in law who is 84 years old is living with myself and my husband. We have been involved in a family dispute which has lead to my sister in law using my Mother in laws private information to gain access to her Social Security online account. She changed the bank account online to her own private bank account and my mother in laws Social Security check this month went into that account instead of my Mother in laws account. The reason my mother in law is living with us is because we discovered her daughter was taking a large portion of her money every month for some time without her knowledge or consent and placing it in a separate account, which my mother in law has no access too. All under the guise of "she might need it one day for medical expenses" when we questioned it. My mother in law could not even speak to her daughter directly about it and had to almost beg my sister in laws husband for her money, which he refused. We moved my mother in law into our home and my husband got her bank account set up so his sister could no longer have access to it. My husband's sister then knowing she could no longer gain access to her bank account decided to go online and change the bank account that way. This is a very complicated story, but to cut a long story short, my mother in law along with my husband went to the SS office and she had to sign some paperwork stating that her daughter has done this without her consent or knowledge, she had even changed the address to her own also. They made my husband designated payee. So hopefully she cannot do anything else from now on. My question is, what will happen to my husband's sister over this? The SS office has issued another payment straight away to go to my mother in law (still pending after 5 days now) will they wait until my husband's sister gives the money back? if she has it still (will they even ask for it back?). Will they prosecute my sister in law for this also? She is a Dr of Pharmacy and does not need the money and is in a position of trust. My mother in law is left penniless right now thanks to her and has urgent bills to pay. Which we cannot afford to pay all of ourselves. My mother in law is left extremely distressed over this and I for one hope some justice will be done over this.

 

[BL]

I don't know what will happen to her, but I hope she is prosecuted and made to reimburse to the monies.

On that note ,did anyone change her online soc. security information so she can not log into it?

Perhaps she should seek out help from an elderly agency , and contact the congress person of the district.

 

[Tennessee2014]

I don't know what will happen to her, but I hope she is prosecuted and made to reimburse to the monies.

On that note ,did anyone change her online soc. security information so she can not log into it?

Perhaps she should seek out help from an elderly agency , and contact the congress person of the district.

Yes the Social Security office has it set up now so no one except my husband can make changes to it in person or over the telephone. Even he cannot makes any changes online now. So we can rest with that worry at least. Thank you for your prompt reply!

 

[t74]

Does your local police/DA have a group dealing with elder abuse? In my area financial abuse will be investigated.

 

[commentator]

If I were you guys, I'd definitely want to have an attorney look at this. If your sister in law is a pharmacist (which is what I got, though you have an odd way of putting it, you have) but anyhow, if she is a professional person and has her own sufficient income and isn't a pill head or junkie of some kind, she probably has the means to hire legal counsel for herself and probably has already done so. And as for "putting the money away for possible future medical expenses" that could be stealing the money for her own use, and it could be some sort of weird plan related to putting aside money in a trust or something.

Intelligent well educated professional people don't generally just suddenly decide to steal from their moms or do something that could get them charged with a felony and their professional license taken away. They just have too much to lose.

And you say this happened in a real general way, as in "have the money come to her account." I suspect this is a much bigger story and more complicated than you are presenting here. Perhaps she didn't get her mother's cooperation, but from this whole post, it sounds as though your understanding of the situation is pretty vague and you and your mother need to figure out exactly what is going on before you start wondering when they're going to take your sister in law to jail and when mom will get her checks back. By the way, I hope those "urgent bills" she has to pay almost immediately are not your rent or your electric bill.

 

[Onderzoek]

These are not easy cases for SSA to solve.

If this happened with a stranger, it would probably be very straightforward for your MIL to tell SSA that she did not authorize the change in direct deposit and did not get her money and request a replacement check be issued. At that time, the US Treasury would get involved and investigate and possibly take the money back from the bank account. But this gets muddy if the money was first correctly sent to a bank account that belonged to your mother and then the sister took the money out of that account. Then it is not an SSA or Treasury issue; it is theft from a bank account and the bank would have to get involved. All of this may be hard to prove, especially if the MIL gave permission at some time for the sister to access her bank account. If it was a joint account, your MIL may not have much recourse at all.

Small claims court may be the right place to get relief, but you will need documents to prove what happened.

And, when your MIL was living with the sister, it would not be illegal for the sister to charge her some kind of room rent or share of living expenses. It would be correct for your husband, as payee to use some or none of her benefits as payment of room and board, but not all. And he needs to have a separate bank account for her money and should pay all bills by writing a check. None of this payment by cash which can't be tracked or proven.

Best place to start, IMO, is direct discussion with all parties, with maybe with a neutral person attending, because the sister will feel like she is being accused of theft, which is what you are really doing. If the MIL has some beginnings of memory loss or confusion, it may be even harder to get a true picture of what happened and when. Hopefully, everyone will agree that your MIL's money belongs to her and everyone will be honest and transparent about their role and their decisions. Unfortunately, when money is involved, many individuals think about themselves first.

Your MIL may not have much of an estate, but she may want to consider the theft of this money when she writes her will and take it out of the sister's share, or cut her out entirely.

It is so sad when adult children take advantage of their parents. Siblings won't always agree on what is best, but the right thing to do is to be honest and open about what they are doing. Just sad.

 

[commentator]

And sometimes, even intelligent professionals have rather bizarre ideas about how to "protect an elderly person's assets" as happened in my own family when my otherwise professional and competent brother got the idea that he needed to spend away or tuck away all my mother's assets as she began to exhibit some signs of dementia and it became apparent that she might need long term care so that (in his understanding) she would qualify for Medicaid and the government wouldn't "get everything she has." Did I mention he otherwise claims high integrity? But that was what started it with us, and it went on for years.

I agree that a total and professional record keeping and separation of Mother's assets from those of both sets of children involved here are very important.

And I bet my last nickel that unless a competent outside person such as an attorney or professional mediator is involved, it will be quite tricky for them to get past the dynamics of this family squabble. I have too often seen mothers (and fathers) who were in perfect accord with whichever of the kids they were standing closest to at the time, only to tell the other ones how horribly they had been treated later.

Often it seems older people have a horror of conflict which ends up causing more conflict than if they'd been more definite with all concerned and had hired a competent attorney to deal with their legal affairs, however small or large their assets may be.