How to Stop Elderly Abuse of Parents by Adult Children
Learning how to stop elderly abuse that includes financial exploitation, power and control, elder care neglect, and emotional manipulation is a critical issue often hidden or not discussed within families. Elderly persons and family members often fail to stop elderly abuse. This occurs due to embarrassment or shame and a lack of recognition, knowledge, or intervention strategies to end the abuse.
Is Elderly Abuse Occurring in Your Family?
Common examples of elderly abuse in families include:
- Elderly parents with memory loss are more susceptible to elder abuse and neglect by adult children who influence their choices or make decisions for them.
- Elderly abuse can be more likely if an adult child is an agent under medical or financial power of attorney who is not upholding their duties and responsibilities.
- Adult children who accept the role of a medical or financial power of attorney agent or subsequently guardian and conservator without fully understanding the legal duties and responsibilities.
- Co-dependent relationships between elderly parents and adult children who depend on their parents for housing, financial, and emotional support.
As a result:
- Elderly parents with advancing memory cannot advocate for themselves when adult children commit financial exploitation or neglect their health and care needs.
- Parents can be shocked when a son or daughter steals money, refuses to take them to a doctor’s appointment, or restricts their daily activities. They may be too embarrassed to speak up or to tell anyone, in or outside the family, what is happening.
- Children who abuse power and control over an elderly parent’s activities can result in the parent feeling like a victim who cannot leave a situation where they may need the assistance of an adult child, even though they are experiencing financial, emotional, physical, or other types of elderly abuse or neglect.
- Parents who have enabled their children to remain dependent their entire lives may be enmeshed in caretaking behaviors.
This article helps older adults and family caregivers recognize the challenges of stopping elderly abuse and offers intervention strategies to end exploitation, abuse, or neglect.
Fear Can Prevent Confronting the Abuser
Adult children or siblings witnessing elder abuse or neglect can feel unprepared to intervene, especially when elderly parents recognize the problem but refuse to do anything about it.
Siblings who lack conflict resolution skills can avoid confronting a brother or sister who appears to be or is known to be taking advantage of an elderly parent.
In some cases, an elderly parent diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia may be self-neglecting yet be unable to recognize the fact that they are failing to perform hygiene tasks or manage their daily care needs.
Elder abuse and neglect are complicated topics to navigate when strong suspicions exist about the conduct of a family member or when self-neglect by a parent with memory loss is identified.
So if you are an adult child whose elderly parent needs care and your siblings are not being 1000% transparent, then it is time to start asking questions. The answers you receive may make intervention necessary to stop potential or currently occurring elder abuse.
An elderly parent may be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia and be unable to care for themselves, or they may refuse care. If you are the power of attorney agent with a provision for guardianship or conservatorship, this may be the next intervention strategy.
Elder Abuse and Neglect Scenarios
Let’s look at two additional examples of financial exploitation, elder abuse, and neglect that offer more background information on how these situations happen in families.
1 An adult child who exerts power and control that results in isolation, potential financial exploitation, and potential care neglect.
2 A parent and adult child who have a life-long co-dependent relationship, even though there is no reason that this child cannot work and live on their own.
A co-dependent relationship involves a person who takes on another’s responsibilities and makes excuses for their behaviors, believing that they are helping. Instead, the elderly parent enables an adult child’s inability to live independently or enables self-destructive behavior.
In a co-dependent relationship, an elderly parent allows themselves to be abused or neglected. They may continue to make excuses for their child’s irresponsible or harmful behavior.
Elderly Abuse and Neglect Most Often Happens in Families
I have more than twenty-five years of personal experience with elderly abuse and neglect-related scenarios as a professional fiduciary and business owner. It is common for family members in roles of power of attorney agent, guardian, conservator, trustee, or executor to breach their fiduciary duty, act in their own self-interest, exhibit undue influence or control, mismanage assets, or neglect their duty of care.
Most cases of elder abuse are an inside job. They happen in the family. Unfortunately, dealing with elder abuse is challenging because adult children and the elderly do not know
how to navigate conflict or identify intervention strategies.
The victim, usually the elderly parent, can fear making the abuser angry, especially if they depend on care from the child.
Some family members hesitate to make an elderly abuse and neglect report to adult protective services (APS) and the police, who can be helpful. There may also be hesitance to contact other government organizations due to fear of the unknown or a past negative interaction. Working with law firms and attorneys can also be overwhelming when there is a lack of understanding of how court systems work.
How to Stop Elderly Abuse: What to Do When Elderly Parents Enable Adult Children to be Their Abusers
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Pamela’s YouTube ChannelHow to Work Through Elderly Abuse Concerns
So, how do you go about asking questions and discussing potential elder abuse and neglect in your family? Specific to communication, consider approaching the family abuser first and then follow up with a family meeting.
There may be a natural tendency to verbally attack the abusive or neglectful family member. However, a verbal attack may not deliver the result you want. The discussion may go more smoothly if you focus on the facts and consequences, rather than the emotion.
The best-case scenario avoids the person with questionable behavior feeling attacked and reacting negatively. The goal is to support and protect an elderly parent.
Family discussions can be productive regardless of family members’ emotions, family history, or other baggage that may prevent complete transparency. Sometimes having a third-party navigate or mediate these conversations is helpful.
Damage From Keeping Family Secrets or Withholding Information
Family secrets or withholding information can create significant problems in family relationships. In this example, an adult child relocated a parent without discussing the move with the family. This is an example of a sibling response.
“My dear sister Mary, I wish you had talked to us before you moved Mom and Dad 1,000 miles away to live near you in Florida. All we knew was that mom and dad were coming to visit you for a weekend, and then we learned they had moved into an assisted living community and are staying there. The 1,000-mile distance makes it difficult for us to visit and maintain regular contact with Mom and Dad. Additionally, Mom and Dad told all of us, many times, that they wanted to live in their home and hometown for the rest of their lives. So, I am puzzled. Can you help me understand how this move happened without discussing this with everyone in the family?”Separating the issues from emotions in a family discussion may look like this:
- A one-thousand-mile travel distance to visit mom and dad
- Potential challenges with regular contact
- Concern about one sibling making decisions for elderly parents while not considering the short-and long-term consequences
- The move, rather than being discussed and planned with family involvement, was deliberately kept secret, which led to suspicion and mistrust
- Concern that Mom and Dad said they wanted to stay in their hometown rather than moving somewhere else
Moving a parent to a new city or location,
moving home to care for an elderly parent, or
moving an elderly parent to live with an adult child are all scenarios that benefit from family discussions. In many cases, the short and long-term consequences are not considered. Family caregivers may burn out and become unintentionally neglectful and abusive.
How Do Elder Abuse and Neglect Situations Begin in Families
Elder abuse and neglect situations can begin in families when adult children no longer live in the same city as their elderly parents, and the elderly parents need assistance.
One child becomes more involved than the others and feels that a parent needs more assistance than they are receiving. The elderly parent may have a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer’s.
Elderly parents may make unreasonable requests of their children to be their caregivers. Some parents want their children to uproot their lives and move back home to care for them. In many situations, this may be an impractical and
unreasonable expectation.This child might influence Mom or Dad to do things they would not normally do, like change legal documents, like financial and medical power of attorney, and perhaps even a will or a trust specifying who gets what.
This child then convinces Mom and Dad to move out of their home to another state and limits contact with siblings and other family members.
The actions and behaviors of this child are an example of potential elder abuse in a family if the elderly parents experience undue influence, emotional abuse,
manipulation, are isolated from other family members, and their daily actions and decisions are tightly controlled by the adult child who moved the elderly parent.
So, realizing that other family members might object to the move, the adult child made all the arrangements to move Mom and Dad under the guise of a weekend visit. This child intentionally lied to their siblings, and now wonders why everyone is so upset.
How to Stop Elder Abuse in Your Family
If you are witnessing or are the victim of elder abuse, how can you stop elder abuse in your family?
You can choose to ignore the potential elder abuser and do nothing, or confront the potential abuser and protect yourself and a loved one.
Beyond this, there are other intervention strategies, including contacting adult protective services, the police, the elder justice system, and family mediation, and hiring an attorney with experience in fiduciary litigation to assist.
It is vital to have thorough documentation to report elder abuse to APS and the police.
Specific to health, this can include a sibling who is a healthcare power of attorney agent refusing to take an elderly parent to the doctor, failing to assist with picking up and managing medications, ignoring health concerns or diagnoses, preventing contact or home visits by family members, or restricting or preventing family contact with loved ones in a nursing home, or care community.
Specific to financial exploitation, bank statements or other financial records showing irregular fund use and patterns different from the elderly parent’s past actions can help substantiate concerns of financial exploitation.
Why Elderly Parents Need an Advocate
If you decide to stop elder abuse in your family, you must be strong and mentally prepared to deal with potentially high-conflict situations.
In many situations, the abuser intends to drive away family members and isolate the parent. You must decide the actions you will take to protect a parent from abuse.
If your elderly parent is being controlled, potentially harmed, abused, or neglected, and cannot defend themselves, they need an advocate.
Will you be your parents’ advocate, or will you back down and let your sibling control your parents’ life?
If a parent has memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer’s, or another condition, the situation may be even more concerning. Your sibling may be ignoring your parents’ wishes regarding healthcare and financial matters by taking self-serving actions.
Breach of Fiduciary Duty Examples
If the exploitative, abusive, or neglectful sibling is your parents’ power of attorney agent, a guardian, or a conservator, this may be a more serious case of elder abuse related to a fiduciary breach of duty.
On the other hand, if you are in a fiduciary role and your siblings are questioning your actions, transparency and honesty are the best responses, especially if you are following your parents’ written directions.
Examples of a breach of fiduciary duty include:
- Failure to follow the principle of substituted judgment, which are the wishes an elderly parent expressed verbally or in writing before becoming mentally incapacitated
- Any conflict of interest that benefits the exploitative, abusive, or neglectful individual
- Financial misuse or failure to manage money
- Healthcare neglect or a lack of participation in daily care decisions
- Breaches of standards of care and duty of care to ensure elderly parents receive appropriate care
- If a home care agency or other provider, like an assisted living community or a nursing home, is involved and is contributing to divisive family tactics or neglecting care, then these organizations may also be said to contribute to elder abuse, isolation, control, and a breach of standards and duty of care.
How to Deal with Siblings Who Are Dependent on Elderly Parents
Scenario two involves a co-dependent relationship between an elderly parent and an adult child. In this situation, imagine that a brother lives with and depends on Mom and Dad for everything: a place to live, money for expenses, emotional support, healthcare costs, etc.
You know that Mom or Dad enabled this behavior by giving your sibling money and letting him live in the basement. However, you discover that your brother is stealing money from bank accounts and using Mom’s or Dad’s credit cards freely.
You are your parents’ financial power of attorney. You thought Mom or Dad was in control of their money; however, the situation with your brother raises significant concerns.
- An investigation into bank records reveals cash withdrawals from ATMs at multiple locations. You know that if Mom or Dad were to take out cash, they would go to the bank because they personally know the bank tellers.
- Expensive, non-essential, and frivolous items were purchased online or from stores where Mom or Dad never shopped.
You are angry at your brother, but Mom and Dad keep making excuses for him. In this situation, what can you do?
What you can do to stop elderly abuse in your family is to determine whether your parent is fully mentally capable of knowing what they are doing, or if they have early memory loss or advanced dementia.
If your parent still has their mental capabilities, I suggest a family discussion with everyone involved to support your brother getting a job, moving out of your parents’ basement, and becoming financially self-sustaining. As the health of your parents advances and they need more care, they will need their money to support themselves.
Eliminate Elderly Abuse by Gaining Agreement on Changes
Because your parents have enabled your brother, you may need to be the change-maker who comes up with a plan to move your brother out of their home.
And, depending on how difficult you might think this will be, you may want a legally written contract between your parents, your brother, and you, along with a timeline to make this happen. Roadblocks to eliminate elderly abuse can include:
- An elderly parent who fears losing a co-dependent relationship with a child because the parent is enmeshed in an unhealthy emotional connection and a lack of boundaries, which results in self-destructive behaviors
- The adult child is an expert at emotional manipulation, making the elderly parent feel guilty for the child’s failures.
- Fear of harm, abuse, or retribution by the abusive or neglectful child if assistance is withheld or the child is required to move out of the home.
Eventually, if nothing is done, an elderly parent may bail out a child too many times and finally realize that their desire to make excuses and help the adult child has created the problem or addiction.
Parent-child relationships are complex, especially when one child fails to achieve independence and the other children move out of the home and go on with their lives.
Helping Dependent Adult Children Can Result in Addictive Behavior
Sometimes, the only solution to stop elderly abuse and neglect is a parent setting firm boundaries and timelines. While no one wants to see a family member fail, sometimes saying no is the only way to help a family member find their path forward to succeed by stopping addictive behaviors.
- The dependent son or daughter is addicted to receiving help from an elderly parent, which results in elderly abuse and neglect.
- The elderly parent is addicted to being overly involved, overly helpful, and lacks boundaries.
Elder abuse that happens in families can be challenging to identify and solve.
An older adult or an elderly parent must be willing to stop the abuser by saying, “No more, it’s time for you to learn to take responsibility for your own needs, this behavior is not acceptable, or it’s time for you to seek support that I don’t have the skills to offer you.”
If your parents have dementia or Alzheimer’s and are declared incompetent by a court, and you are the guardian, conservator, or the power of attorney agent, then it is your responsibility to say no to elderly abuse.
If someone in your family is in this fiduciary role and is abusing their powers by exploiting, abusing, or neglecting your elderly parent, do not look the other way.
Be an elderly parent’s advocate and speak up and take action to stop the abuser.©2025 Pamela D. Wilson All Rights Reserved