Scams & Protection

Someone Is Taking Money From My Parent With Dementia

I put a video doorbell on my mom's front door and turned the chime off on purpose, so she wouldn't hear it ring or answer it. I'd see whoever was standing there on my phone.

I set it up against people working the neighborhood door to door. Nobody ever did. What it caught instead were the people who were meant to be there, including a caregiver paid for a shift she never worked. The one you brace for at the door is rarely the one who costs you anything. It's someone with a reason to be there and your parent's trust.

How do I know if someone is taking advantage of my parent with dementia?

You usually see it in the relationship before you see it in the money. A new person becomes central very fast, and your parent starts describing them the way people describe family.

Then the door starts closing. Calls go unreturned, visits are always bad timing, and somewhere in there you hear that her family doesn't understand her the way this person does. Isolation isn't a side effect. It's the method. A parent with nobody else to ask has only one person left to believe.

The money signs come second, and they're quieter than people expect. Withdrawals that fall into a pattern. A card with a new name on it. Paperwork done in a hurry. Your parent will defend this person, sometimes fiercely. That isn't evidence against you. It's the most ordinary feature of it.

Why won't the bank just reverse it like fraud?

Because on paper, the money left with your parent's permission. That's the wall families hit, usually after weeks of phone calls.

A stranger who breaks into an account has committed fraud, and there's a real process for chasing that. But someone your parent writes checks to, or hands a card to, is authorized, in the only sense a fraud department can act on. The deception happened upstream, inside the relationship.

So the fraud line is often the wrong first door. Not because nothing is wrong, but because what's wrong isn't authorization. It's influence, and whether your parent could weigh a decision at all. Different question, different machinery.

What matters more, the withdrawals or the paperwork?

The paperwork, nearly always. The withdrawals are the smaller number, and the ones you can see.

Money leaving an account leaves a trail and has a ceiling. A form moves the whole account in an afternoon. A beneficiary line on a retirement account or a life policy. A payable-on-death form at a bank. A name added to a deed, or to an account as a joint owner. One signature, no fee, and nothing appears to happen. The balance is identical the next morning.

Those designations also sit outside the will. A will only governs what's left after everything with a named beneficiary or a surviving co-owner has already gone, so a parent's will can be untouched, perfectly correct, and control almost nothing she owns. Which is why watching the will is watching the wrong document.

Ask each institution, in writing, who's named on the account today. They'll answer.

What should I do first?

Get visibility before you get into a confrontation.

Going at the person directly is the instinct, and it reliably backfires. Warn them and the transfers speed up, the ring around your parent tightens, and you've spent the two things you needed: the records, and your access to her.

So do the quiet work first. Get the mail redirected to you, then rebuild the list of what accounts exist. Read back a year or two of statements and write down dates and amounts. The pattern tells the story: the same round number every week is a different fact than one large check. Ask who's named as beneficiary. And don't move money into your own account to protect it, however reasonable that feels. That's how a protective adult child ends up defending their own withdrawals later.

That sequence is most of what the full guide is, honestly. Not clever moves. An order.

Who do I report this to?

Adult protective services in the county where your parent lives, and your parent's bank. Both are free, and neither one asks you to arrive with proof.

Every state runs an adult protective services agency. Reports are confidential, and finding out whether something happened is what the investigation is for, so a suspicion is enough to make the call. If you can't find the local number, the national Eldercare Locator will route you. If your parent is in a facility, the ombudsman covers it too.

The bank is the one families underuse. Ask for someone above the teller line and say the actual words: I believe my parent is being financially exploited. Banks and brokerages have their own authority now to slow or hold a payment they believe is exploitation, and protection for reporting it. But they have to notice it first, and being told is faster. While you're there, ask about naming a trusted contact.

After that, a lawyer who handles elder financial abuse specifically, not the family's usual attorney. Where money was taken outright, it's also a police matter.

What if the person taking the money holds the power of attorney?

Then they have a duty, not ownership, and it's enforceable.

An agent under a power of attorney spends someone else's money for that person's benefit. They can be made to account for it, item by item, and removed. That takes a lawyer and usually a court, which is why this is the hardest version and the one where waiting costs most. The record you'd need is the same one described above, so start it either way.

And if the finger is pointed the other way, at you, that one has its own post.

Frequently asked questions

Can you get back money a parent with dementia gave away?

Sometimes. A gift made by someone who couldn't understand what they were doing, or who was pressured by a person they had come to depend on, can be challenged and sometimes unwound. It isn't automatic and it usually takes a lawyer. What decides it is the condition your parent was in, not the fact that they signed.

Should I confront the person who is taking money from my parent?

Not first. A warning tends to speed the transfers up and tighten the circle around your parent, and you lose the two things you need most: the records and your own access to them. Gather statements, get the mail redirected, find out who is named on the accounts, and report it. Confrontation comes after that.

Is it still elder financial abuse if my parent says they wanted to give the money?

It can be. Wanting to give something and being able to freely decide to give it are two different questions, and dementia sits right on top of the second one. A parent defending the person taking from them is describing how they feel, which is genuine, and not a verdict on whether the transfer was theirs to make.

This isn't legal or financial advice — it's a plain-language account of how this plays out in real families, written from managing my own mom's finances since her diagnosis. What counts as exploitation, who is required to report it, how adult protective services handles a report, what a bank or brokerage may do about a suspicious payment, and what it takes to unwind a gift or remove an agent all vary by state and by institution, and they change over time. Talk to an elder-law attorney licensed where your parent lives, and to your parent's own bank, before acting on any of it.