Vultures Preying on the Elderly

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m pitting all the parasites and vultures who are trying to pick the bones of my father’s estate even before he’s dead.

Real estate brokers, lawyers, old age homes, nursing homes, memory care facilities, rehabilitation facilities, all of them, they’re vultures.

But especially the brokers and lawers.

They know, those pieces of shit, that he doesn’t have that much money. The lawyers know this especially, because they are (or were, until I fired this particular firm) handing some matters for him that involve knowledge of his financial situation.

I see an elderly, incompetent man in need of care. They see what they believe to be a pile of money, and with a bit of effort, they think they can get their hands on some of it. As much as possible.

The lawers are the worst. One firm in particular. I won’t name it here (although I will be naming it, and the lawyers who “worked” on my father’s matter) in great detail to the Departmental Disciplinary Committee for the First Department (the local authority for disciplinary matters).

Tip: If you’re a lawyer, and you handle a very simple matter for an elderly person, which mostly involves getting some forms signed, when you download those forms from the internet, don’t forget to delete all the [insert name here] and [his/her] and [he/she] variables before you present it to the client. And don’t follow up with a bill for ten thousand fucking dollars (seriously – at this lawyer’s billing rate, that’s 28 hours of work, which did not happen), hoping he’s so incompetent he won’t notice, but will pay the bill anyway.

And don’t blow me (the son, who has power of attorney) off if you’re representing the old man in the sale of his home. It’s no fucking excuse that you agreed to a flat rate for that transaction that you now think was too low. Too fucking bad. I happen to know that you are ethically obliged to represent your client just as zealously for that amout as you would for ten times that amount. And I shouldn’t have to field calls from other parties to the transaction telling me what I have to do and what fees I have to pay and what papers I need to produce. You’re the fucking lawyer. That’s your job.

And real estate brokers, at least here in New York, are thieves anyway. I don’t think this broker was after my father’s money, in particular, any more than anyone else’s, but she’s a thief. 6%, of slightly over one million dollars, for what was maybe twelve hours of work. Nice! But having your pals at the staging furniture company (from whom she absolutely got a kickback – I checked, and she did) deliver some broken-down, hideous shit that was about the same quality as what I could have picked up on the sidewalk in New York for free is just adding insult to injury. And, of course, there’s a three-month minimum. Some of the chairs that were delivered were so broken down they weren’t safe to sit on. And to hand on the walls, a couple of dingy Warhol reproductions? Sure, they looked fine in the photos. But in the real world? They looked like the junk they were. I could have purchased actual decent furniture, kept it for myself after the sale, and it would have been cheaper.

[Insert name here] in-patient rehab facility in New York? Their physical therapists did nice work. Absolutely. Their administration was a nightmare. They refused to communicate with me, even though I have my father’s health care proxy. They kept pushing and pushing him for a DNR order, to the point where he started to freak out. And, even though, upon admission, we went over the costs and what was covered by Medicare, they kept coming back with demands for more money that had to be paid right away, in cash. Well, by credit card.

Fuck them all. In a decent society, they’d all be hanging from lampposts. Fortunately for them, we don’t live in a decent society.

2

I’m curious about this point. In discussions about end of life planning, I’ve brought up the concern that seniors will be pushed to choose DNR, and have typically been told that that would not be a problem, that the problem is people NOT being allowed to make the choice. Does your father have any kind of end-of-life directive in place, such as one that says that he does want to be revived?

I’m sorry that you’re going through all of this and having to deal with such unscrupulous people.

3

This place very, very much wanted him to have a DNR order. At that point, he did not. On his very first day (night, really) there, as they were trasnsferring him from the ambulette that brought him there to his bed, they started hounding him for the order. And I mean *hounding *him. My brother and I, who were accompanying him, had to literally throw the supervising nurse, who was doing the hounding, out of the room.

Fucking bitch.

4

I am very glad for your father that you and your brother are there for him.

Pity all us folks who are soon to be in those situations who have no-one to speak for us, no-one we trust to be disinterested and honest. I’m sometimes tempted to spend all my money now, or give it away, so that people like that can’t get their hands on it.

5

Follow-up: In my experience, over the past few years, here in New York City, exactly the opposite is true. To varying degrees, every health care institution pushes for a DNR. My father has been hospitalized several times over the past few years (culminating in hospitalization last December from which he never returned home – he now lives in a residential “memory care” facility), and, once it’s determined that a patient will be admitted, the pressure for a DNR begins even before the patient is seen by a staff physician.

That pressure is, however, mild compared to the pressure exerted on my father upon arrival at the in-patient rehab place, though. That wasn’t pressure, that was an outright attempt at coercion.

He didn’t, then. He does now, and it goes into detail about the circumstances in which he would or would not want to be revived.

Thanks. He’ll be okay. He’s got people watching out for him. I’ve learned a lot about this whole thing in the last few years, and what happens to old and confused people who don’t have someone looking out for them is absolutely terrifying. There really is a whole class of people out there who make a lot of money by preying on old people.

6

Thanks for the reply. I may be citing this thread in future discussions about end-of-life decisions.

7

I find it helpful to remember that the whole of the health care delivery industry, including all of the various flavors of nursing homes, have an underlying philosophy that when they see an elderly person enter, they assume that that person will leave in a pine box. To be fair, they develop this attitude from experience. But, it colors how they interact with the patient and family members. Certainly they provide sometimes heroic measures of medical care, but, y’know, underneath it all is the feeling of inevitability. And some care givers are better than others at navigating the interpersonal interactions with all of the interested parties, and some are worse.

At its ugliest, it’s move-them-in and move-them-out and the longer they stick around the more they cost us. Hence the push for DNR in its various forms.

8

Can I go off on a slight tangent, on the subject of greedy lawyers?

Five years ago, 9/12/14, my father was killed by an inattentive driver while on his motorcycle. He was 85 years old. This was a Friday afternoon, so while there was news about the accident, his name wasn’t released to the media until the coroner saw him officially, Monday morning. Just over 24 hours later family was gathered at my mom’s house, and a Fed Ex truck pulls up, with a package marked “legal documents” It was from a firm of lawyers in a town over two hours away, and the documents was a book titled “Winning a lawsuit with dignity” They didn’t give a shit about my dad, only about the money they might make. I wrote them an ugly reply(scum of the earth was on phrase I used) and the book got recycled. Asshole ambulance chasers.

9

The actual care delivered to my father, by physicians, physical therapists and nurses (with a glaring exception involving two nurses at Beth Israel hospital, which may be the subject of another pitting later) was quite good.

It was administrators who behaved like greeding thieving shits.

And, especially, lawyers. Not that they had anything to do with the health care situation.

But lawyers. Fuck lawyers. Fuck the slimy, cheating, greedy shits who were retained to “help” my father.

Lawyers are in an extraordinary position of trust. Nobody except maybe physicians has as much power over a client/patient/whatever.

And lawyers like these (I mean you, Dave) are the reason people hate and distrust lawyers.

10

Yes. Ambulance chasers are a particularly low form of life. I met quite a few of them in the emergency room after my own motorcyle accident (and I’m sorry about your father’s accident, that’s terrible).

But I don’t think they’re as low as the lawyers who seek to get control over elderly people’s affairs, through guardianships or powers of attorney, and rob them. Or just cheat them through billing unreasonably.

I mean, I’d rather sit down and have dinner with a pimp. Really.

11

Saintly Loser, I actually agree with you. Even about having dinner!:stuck_out_tongue: It’s just that at that time I wanted so badly to lash out at someone, and that law firm was a perfect target. I mentioned, back then, my dad’s death in a thread on the Dope, and quite a number of folks had interesting and innovative suggestions on what to do with the book. That made me feel better.

12

what was the story a couple of years ago where an elderly couple had their house taken from them by a lawyer who got power of attorney, forced them into a a retirement home, sold off all of their belongings before a family member could intervene?

I tried to google but didn’t find anything.

13

I believe you are remembering the guardianship scandal. There is a very good (but very harrowing) story from The New Yorker.

14

That article is demonstrating how Nevada (and probably other states) are literally sponsoring state-sanctioned elder abuse. This is the kind of thing that leads people not to trust the government and to resist giving the government more power to “take care” of them.

This pisses me off, and I myself work for a state government agency.

15

I remember that story. I believe that in New York it’s a bit tougher to outright steal someone’s home like that than it is in Nevada.

But, to be sure, just for protection, a while back my father executed a nomination of guardian, which means that if he ever is adjudicated incompetenent and has a guardian appolnted, he will have chosen that guardian in advance, and it’s me.

16

I remember that, as I said above.

There are a bunch of scams that are routinely run on the elderly:

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/ny-duberry-maddiwar-deed-fraud-claim-house-20190715-iefxt2yzlbfbxkc3iinaguwdly-story.html

Or the much-advertised reverse mortgages, which are also pretty scammy.

17

Yes. And it (rightfully) leads people not to trust the legal profession, either.

18

My father has been ill and I’ve been staying with him. Which means I end up watching his TV shows, which are the type of shows old people watch.

And the commercials are disgraceful. At least half of them are designed to scare old people into buying their product. Some of them literally tell old people they will die a painful death if they don’t buy their product.

19

yep that was it.

20

Yep. I mean, those alert things are a good idea – we got one for my father when he was still in his home – but a lot of the advertising is simply terrorism.

Our experience with the medical alert system is actually almost comical. It served its purpose a couple of times – once he fell out of bed, and another time he fell in the bathroom – but as his dementia progressed, he starting thinking it was the best way to call me. So he’d hit the button when there was no emergency, and the whole response system would kick in. Not good. That’s when it became clear that he had fairly advanced dementia. Up until then we thought he was just getting a bit forgetful.