Extreme circumstances. The possibility of someone taking advantage of being in the driver's seat may never be a consideration but money can effect people in ways never thought of. A couple of incidents within my own family circle involving people who were considered upstanding brought that lesson home. One couple had been saving to buy a house for years, the wife contributing her earnings every payday and never questioning how their finances were being handled. Every time she'd find a house she thought she'd like, the husband found some reason to pass it by. One night, she received a call from police that he had a heart attack and died at a racetrack. When they opened the trunk of his car, thousands of dollars in losing tickets were found that he had saved. The joint savings account that the wife thought they had was closed. He had forged her name to do it.
There had been no suspicion that he had a gambling problem, he covered his tracks that well.
Another couple, the wife contributing all her salary too (both these women had high paying jobs). She never questioned the investments that he made, primarily real estate. They lost a child and she had a nervous breakdown but recovered. In the meantime, hubby found a shoulder to cry on. They wound up in divorce court. When it came time to split up their assets, he tried to hide investments that she knew he had made. It took over ten years before they finally settled. The only thing she did get was the house but adding insult to injury, he had ran up credit cards buying things for the girlfriend and she had to pay off half of them because he was still living with her at the time.
My father-in-law was living with someone as a boarder and friend in another state which he didn't want to leave. He was a very generous person and would buy groceries, take her out to dinner etc. We realized that he was becoming more and more burdensome and told her that if he became too much..call us and we'd come for him. We never questioned his generosity to her thinking she deserved it. On a visit to us, he mentioned going somewhere with her and spending $1000 and that concerned us. She was handling his finances for him. Realizing we needed to pay closer attention, a joint checking account was opened with my husband and the statements were to be sent to us. The first two statements came in with nothing amiss, a balance of about $30,000. The third came in showing a 0 balance.
Calling the bank, it was determined that the account had been closed and the balance transferred to a passbook account. Contacting the woman, she claimed she knew nothing (she had to drive him to the bank) Further inquiry to his lawyer brought out that she had been declared his guardian. Since we were on record with the lawyer as being his family and we had never been contacted, we knew for sure that something fishy was going on. It took a trip to the other state and the threat of police being called in to get her to surrender the passbook. It also turned out that the lawyer was her cousin. We brought my father-in-law home with us.
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