Illegal Use Of POA To Rip Off Homes, Other Assets Of The Elderly & Vulnerable Now Tougher To Pull Off In NYS ... Hopefully

In New York City, Time Magazine reports:

• Misappropriation of an elderly person's assets by someone legally authorized to oversee them may now be a lot tougher to pull off in the State of New York. New legislation that went into effect Sept. 1 — in the form of a radically changed power-of-attorney (POA) document — couldn't have come at a better time. "Financial abuse is one of the fastest growing areas of elder abuse," says Andrea Lowenthal, an elder-law and estate-planning attorney in New York.

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• In [some] instances, a health-care aide or housekeeper with ulterior motives might procure a POA and persuade a gullible senior to sign it. The signature of the principal was basically all that mattered then. Now things are different.

For more, see New Legal Protections for the Elderly. FinancialAbuseOfElderlyAlpha