General

Grandma was now safe. She was no longer living in an unheated, barely-sanitary home. She was receiving her medications and was able to see all of her family, not just Willy. But the story was not quite over.

There were procedures to follow with the local Office of Aging in order to bring Grandma home. The office in both McKean County and Cumberland County had to be involved in bringing Grandma home. The family was now able to see her, if they wanted to make the many-hour trip.

The hope of the family was to assess all of the expense of the […]

We have a client who is facing a dilemma that can best be described as heart wrenching. I’ll call her Wilma (not her real name). Wilma is a widow. She is retired with a reasonable income from her late husband’s military pension. She owns her own modest home, and does not have any large debts, just a few small credit card balances. And she has some cash in the bank, though less than $100,000. She has no living family members.

Wilma doesn’t have a Power of Attorney, Health Care Advanced Directives, Living Will, or Last Will & Testament in place. She […]

I hung up the phone with Reba and called the local police department where Willy lived. By chance, the sergeant answered the phone — the same sergeant with whom I had been communicating all along. I explained to him the details of that morning’s phone call and the predictable reaction of the family members upon hearing this terrible pronouncement. The sergeant’s response startled me.

“I’m not going to send anyone up there,” his gruff voice sounding like an impersonation of a gangster from a 1940’s movie. “You’re not?” I responded. “No,” he said slowly. “I’m gonna go up there myself.” He […]

We wanted to get Mom out of Willy’s house, as it was late in the fall and the house had no central heat.  We realized that Willy was holding mom against her will, but it was lining up as a “he said, she said” family fight that no one wanted to get in the middle of. It appears that Willy wanted to keep mom there with him so that he could take mom to the bank from time to time in order for her to get money out of her own account, treating her like a human ATM card.

We contacted […]