Elder financial abuse may result from intentional deception promoted under the guise of "seminar," sometimes with a "free lunch" included.
"Living Trust Seminars" are commercially organized to encourage invitations from unsuspecting seniors to allow trained sales people into the home. Sales can and do result in reverse mortgages and costly annuities depleting life saving from seniors and their heirs. This, the first in a series, we visit with Attorney Prescott Cole with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform on elder financial abuse.
Attorney & Counselor Barry Vogel, Host and Producer; Christina Aanestad, Assistant Producer. Ukiah, California www.radiocurious.org
A will is a legal document that one prepares to identify what should be done with property after the writer has died. In recent years a document called a living trust has come into fashion that if it fits a persons needs and is done properly it would achieve the same purpose. Occasionally so called “free seminars,” are advertised living trusts. Some of the gatherings are calculated to be more than instructional. Rather they are calculated to sell the attendees, mostly senior citizens, a living trust a surprisingly low price, as well as reverse mortgages and annuities.
Prescott Cole, an attorney working with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, based in San Francisco, California is our guest on this edition of Radio Curious, in the first of two discussions on financial elder abuse. In this program we will discuss living trust seminars, how they are organized and what some of their goals are.
I spoke with Prescott Cole from his office in San Franciso on May 27, 2011 and began our conversation by asking him to describe a living trust seminar.
The website for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform is canhr.org. This interview was recorded on May 27, 2011
The book that Prescott Cole recommends is the “Bartimaes Trilogy,” by Jonathan Stroud.
