As your parents get older, they may not be as capable of keeping up with technology and all the new scams that each technological advance may create. The elderly frequently fall victim to fraud related to identity theft and their financial assets, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reporting that there were 88,262 fraud complaints filed by victims aged 60 or older in 2022. The reported fraud resulted in $3.1 billion in losses, up 82% from 2021. There are many things you can do to assist your senior parents in protecting both their identity and their assets. If you have questions or need help protecting your parents from scams or fraud, or protecting their assets with a comprehensive estate plan, consider speaking with one of our experienced Minnesota or Florida estate planning attorneys. Call Roulet Law Firm, P.A. in our Florida office at 941-909-4644 or in our Minnesota office at 763-420-5087 to schedule a consultation and learn more.
Begin With an Open Conversation
The first step in protecting senior parents and their identities and financial assets is to have an open conversation with them. Choose a time and comfortable setting that allows everyone to be relaxed. Include other relatives such as siblings, if needed, but avoid making parents feel cornered or ambushed. This discussion should focus on the essentials: legal documents, offers of support, and safety and security. Individuals should review and make sure they fully understand their parents’ current financial situation, insurance policies, retirement savings, and estate plans.
If the individual’s parents are open to it in this discussion, or in a future discussion, the topics of end-of-life wishes, future health and wellbeing should also be discussed. These discussions should be had before any urgent medical issues have arisen. Though individuals may feel a sense of urgency to get their parents to discuss these matters, they should also remember that these may be difficult topics for their parents to think about. Individuals should be gentle in their approach and avoid pressuring their parents to discuss these matters more deeply.
Organize Their Documents
After discussing matters with their parents, individuals should work together with them to gather all their essential legal and financial documents. This should include bank and credit card statements, tax returns, insurance and mortgage documents, trusts, wills, medical directives, and powers of attorney. These documents should be organized by type, date, and relevance. Store the documents in a safe, accessible location, and ideally, in a lockable, waterproof, and fireproof safe. Having both paper and digital copies of all documents is also a good idea.
Once the documents have been organized, filed, and safely stored, they should be reviewed and updated as needed. Updated documents should be shared with relevant relatives, caregivers, and any legal or financial advisors the individual’s parents may have. These should be trusted people in the individual’s senior parents’ lives. Additionally, if any of the people entrusted with this information prove untrustworthy or otherwise no longer need or want access, move the documents or revoke access to ensure that the documents remain secure.
Create a Financial Plan
Once the legal and financial documents have been organized, it will be easier to create a comprehensive financial plan for senior parents that includes budgeting, retirement income projections, and account and tax information. While creating this plan, it is important to assess their financial needs, income sources, assets, liabilities, and expenses to ensure the budget is accurate, flexible and meets all their needs. If the individual’s parents already have a financial advisor, asking to attend their next meeting may help the individual get a better understanding of their parents’ existing financial plan.
Individuals should work with their parents to track income and expenses and ensure their parents do not overspend. If their income and budget are limited, exploring Social Security Administration options to ensure that they are receiving all benefits they may be entitled to may be beneficial. Older adults may be eligible to apply for Social Security retirement benefits, disability benefits, survivor benefits, or benefits from a former spouse.
Assess Their Insurance Coverage
Insurance coverage can be a critical component of elderly people’s financial assets and estate plans. Insurance can also be the one thing standing between a parent’s comfortable retirement and falling into poverty from one accident or health crisis. Individuals should go over their parents’ existing insurance policies, including health, long-term care, life, automobile, and homeowners’ policies.
Ensure Ample Insurance Coverage
Individuals will want to ensure that their parents have ample coverage to:
- Protect against unexpected medical expenses with health and long-term care insurance
- Provide for loved ones when they pass with life insurance
- Protect against both legitimate and fraudulent claims of injuries or accidents with homeowners’ and automobile insurance
Without enough coverage, parents may be forced to take from their assets to cover health expenses or leave their loved ones to pay for their final expenses. Additionally, if they do not have enough coverage, they could be sued for homeowners’ or motor vehicle accident claims.
Discuss Possible Futures
If an individual’s parents do not have long-term care insurance, depending on the size of their estate, it may be worth looking into to cover any potential futures in which their parents need long-term care. This may require speaking with multiple providers and discussing any existing medical conditions.
With or without long-term care insurance, individuals and their parents may also find it beneficial to discuss and research home healthcare services, and to tour assisted living facilities or nursing homes. This will allow the parents to have some input into the type of care and even the specific facility they would like to be moved to if it becomes necessary. This will also allow for adjustments to the financial plans and budget if required to allow the parents the kind of care or the facility they would prefer.
Create or Update Estate Planning Documents
Another important step to protecting senior parents and their financial assets is creating or reviewing their estate plans. This should include documents such as their will, any trusts, medical directives, and powers of attorney. These documents should be updated as needed. Roulet Law Firm, P.A. recommends reviewing and updating estate plans every three to five years.
Individuals should keep notarized copies of their parents’ estate plans as a backup in case their parents’ copies get misplaced. Additionally, they should ensure that their parents’ wishes are clearly defined and all decision-makers and beneficiaries are properly designated to eliminate any doubt or confusion after they pass. If the parents are uncertain about something or need assistance with making these decisions, they may want to consult with an estate and elder law planning attorney for unbiased legal advice that may help clarify their options and to protect their home and life savings from long-term care and nursing home costs.
Scam & Fraud Prevention Steps
Familiarity with their senior parents’ financial assets and estate plans can help an individual spot inconsistencies and inaccuracies. But seeing those means finding a problem after it has already happened. Most people want to help protect their parents from falling victim to a scam or fraud before it happens. There are several things that individuals can do to help their parents be aware and avoid giving away information or assets under fraudulent circumstances.
Secure Their Devices
Laptops, tablets, and cell phones all provide internet access and the ability to check bank accounts, investment accounts, and other financial assets. They also allow those who are not very tech-savvy to store passwords and other sensitive information in notes. Individuals can assist their parents in protecting themselves by ensuring that all anti-virus, anti-spam, and spyware detection programs are up-to-date and turned on.
Encourage Strong Passwords and PINs
As people grow older, sometimes they also grow more forgetful. They often want to simplify things and make them easier to remember, and one way they might do so is by using the same password and PINs for multiple purposes. Encouraging them to instead use strong, unique passwords and PINs for each individual website and account will help protect them against hackers. Relieve their anxiety or frustration at forgetting passwords and PINs by helping them use a password manager, which can also assist them in generating strong passwords. Consider also teaching them to use 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) for an extra layer of protection.
Individuals should also remind senior parents not to check any financial assets such as bank accounts while using public wireless networks. While hotels, restaurants, and even supermarkets provide wi-fi as a convenience to their customers, this convenience is often at the price of extremely reduced privacy controls to allow for the ease of connection. The reduced privacy means that it is much easier for hackers and scammers to access this sensitive information through these public networks. Remind parents to only use their phones, tablets, and laptops to check finances when they are connected to a secure private network at their own home or the home or office of someone they know they can trust.
Monitor Credit Scores and Reports
Scammers and identity thieves often open credit card and other financial accounts in their victim’s names. They do not use the victim’s address for the bills or statements, though, which means the victim may never know about the new accounts if they do not pay attention. Individuals should either encourage their parents to monitor their own credit scores and reports or monitor their parents’ scores and reports for them. Checking once a month or every other month is typically sufficient for most people, but if the person’s personal information has been compromised in a data breach or their information was given to a scammer, checking more frequently may help catch fraudulent activity and dispute it more quickly.
Additionally, if personal information has been provided to a scammer, USA.gov recommends contacting the three credit bureaus to put a “freeze” on the parent’s credit. By freezing their credit, no new credit cards or loans can be taken in their name without their specific authorization to unfreeze the credit.
Educate Parents About Scams
One of the best methods of prevention is education. Individuals can help their parents avoid being victims of scams and fraud by ensuring their parents are aware of the different types of scams that someone may try to use on them. The National Council on Aging has found the top five scams that make up 65% of the complaints that the FBI’s IC3 received in 2022, which are:
- Government impersonation
- Sweepstakes and lottery
- Robocalls and phone scams
- Computer tech support
- Grandparent scams
While these may be responsible for the bulk of complaints made about fraud among the elderly, it is important to warn senior parents about other types of scams, such as phishing emails, links that appear legitimate but lead to fraudulent websites, and people who may come to the door selling fake products or collecting donations for nonexistent charities or for charities that they do not actually volunteer for.
Additionally, in some cases, the fraud may qualify as elder financial exploitation or abuse, according to Justice.gov. Both Florida and Minnesota have laws to protect elders from this type of abuse. If individuals believe their parents may have been victims of financial exploitation or abuse, they should consider seeking legal advice regarding how to proceed.
Block and Prevent Scammers
Individuals may also want to add their parents’ names and phone numbers to do-not-call registries. They can also help their parents learn how to block scammers’ phone numbers after one has called them. If the parents struggle to do so themselves, individuals may want to check their parents’ phones once a week or once a month and block the scammers themselves.
If a parent’s information has been exposed in a data breach, individuals may want to help them change their phone number and then add the new number to the do-not-call registries. This can help avoid many of the scam calls they might otherwise receive.
Install a Security System
Installing a security system in the home of senior parents may seem intrusive, and it should only be done with the parents’ consent or if the individual has legal authority to make decisions on behalf of their parents. However, this security system can serve two purposes in protecting parents. First, it will allow the individual to monitor their parents’ physical safety by providing cameras to see if they have fallen or are otherwise in need of assistance, and various call buttons and remotes that would allow them to press a button when they need assistance.
The second purpose a security system serves is to allow the individual and their parents be alerted if someone attempts to break in and steal any valuables. Depending on the security system, it may even be possible to protect specific spaces or items in the home so that if anyone approaches those spaces or items, the individual or their parents would be alerted.
How Can an Estate Planning Attorney Assist You in Protecting Your Senior Parents’ Financial Assets?
Many adults are currently in the stage of life where you are attempting to launch your own children into adulthood while simultaneously trying to help your parents navigate a world that is becoming foreign to them with new technology that they do not understand and may not want to learn. This means you are often stressed and busy while trying to protect both a younger and older generation. Fortunately, protecting your senior parents and their financial assets does not have to be a difficult or time-consuming task. If you need assistance in helping your aging parents avoid scams, protecting their assets in a trust or other aspects of estate planning, our experienced Minnesota and Florida estate planning attorneys may be able to assist you. Contact Roulet Law Firm, P.A. in our Florida office at 941-909-4644 or in our Minnesota office at 763-420-5087 for a consultation to learn more about seniors and scams. Or you can fill out the contact form on this page and a member of our team will reach out to schedule a consultation.
If you are not yet ready to schedule a consultation and would like additional information on how to protect your home and life savings from long-term care and nursing home costs, or about estate planning, we have some additional resources for you:
