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Removing abusive family from a home
Ranlin
Oh goshRegistered User regular
Oh goshRegistered User regular
I'm not entirely sure which details are relevant and which are not, so I'm just going to try to be thorough.
My grandfather, who I'll call Rick, was recently diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, and has been on oxygen for a few months now. As it was getting to be difficult to take care of himself, since he lives alone in the house he owns in Washington state, he asked his son (my uncle, who we'll call Carl) to move in (with his wife as well) and look after him. In exchange, Rick changed his will to give the house to Carl outright instead of trying to split everything equally between his two children. Since this was still early enough that he wasn't on oxygen full time, Rick also wanted to go visit family on the east coast. Carl, who had agreed to move in, didn't actually bother to move until the day grandpa was supposed to leave, but he ended up missing the flight.
But at least Rick had Carl/daughter in law to look after him now, even if they tried to avoid having to actually do anything by waiting for him to leave for that 2 month visit. Unfortunately, pretty quickly they started to do questionable things. They opened all the windows (literally every window in the house), and began harassing him every day to take showers, insulting and yelling at him about it frequently every day. Rick spent pretty much all day every day hidden under a blanket, so eventually he outright asked Carl if he was trying to get him sick with pneumonia or something, and got a dead stare back before he just walked off. They also pressured him into running on the treadmill most days, when he gets out of breath walking 30 feet to the bathroom and back. These were the two major events Rick ended up telling us about, but it sounded like there were other things as well. In less life threatening areas, they had started moving Rick's furniture onto the back deck, uncovered and in the pacific northwest rain, and moved some of theirs in. They took his TV out of the living room where he spent his days and put it in their bedroom.
We didn't find out about any of this until a couple weeks ago, when my brother called Rick's house to invite him to an event and Carl's daughter answered, saying she had dropped Rick off at the hospital a few days prior. During that time, they told nobody else in the family, and hadn't once gone to visit him or even call to see how he was doing. It wasn't until we showed up to check on Rick that he started telling anybody about what had been going on, though his nurses had strong suspicions based on how he was dumped at the door and never checked up on, so when Rick started telling them about it too they put him in touch with a social worker.
Since then, he has opted to go into at home hospice care, so the hospital social worker no longer has direct contact with him, but for obvious reasons didn't want him returning to his house while Carl was still there; Rick wanted him gone too, for obvious reasons. But that's the point where things have gotten difficult for us. The hospital social worker had contacted a lawyer who would help out for free (everyone seemed happy to finally have an instance of elderly abuse with an elder who was fully clear mentally, so they could much more easily help). In the short term, Rick has been staying with my wife's family (since our house is in no way capable of safely housing him at the moment), but that can't go on for long. The social worker and the lawyer were going to have Carl evicted, with a restraining order in place, and inspect the household to see if there was any evidence they could work with, including missing property, signs of animal mistreatment (Rick has a cat and dog there), or what have you. The lawyer has been dragging her feet since she evidently has a full caseload of paying clients, which is fair enough, but she wasn't saying that until after a week passed when she did know he only had a temporary housing solution, she was just ducking our attempts to contact her.
So enough time has passed that we (myself, my wife, and my mother [Rick's daughter]) need to see about getting Carl out of Rick's house ourselves, but looking around I see a lot of *possibilities.* For example, I'm not sure what their status is, exactly, since they don't pay rent, nor anything at all that I'm aware of, I'm fairly certain Rick has everything payed automatically from his bank account. But, when Carl+wife did move in they let their apartment (of like 30+ years) go, and I guess had the implied verbal agreement to live their in exchange for looking after Rick, which they weren't actually doing. So I'm not sure if they can be removed as trespassers? Evicted (which is a 72 hour notice I think?) or some other method that can require 30 days notice. Is there any legal issue with turning off power and water? Is there any likely agency to contact about this? Or is it pretty clearly muddy enough we need to somehow find a way to get a lawyer going on it quickly?
I know this isn't any official advice or counsel or anything, I'm just asking for suggestions/direction or any big road blocks to look out for or important things I may be overlooking, since maybe it's more simple than I think (hey, I can hope right) and we don't exactly have a lot of resources to throw at a lawyer just yet.
Boy I hope that's clear enough, my head is killing me.
edit: borrowed some names to help with clarity, hope it helps.
My grandfather, who I'll call Rick, was recently diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, and has been on oxygen for a few months now. As it was getting to be difficult to take care of himself, since he lives alone in the house he owns in Washington state, he asked his son (my uncle, who we'll call Carl) to move in (with his wife as well) and look after him. In exchange, Rick changed his will to give the house to Carl outright instead of trying to split everything equally between his two children. Since this was still early enough that he wasn't on oxygen full time, Rick also wanted to go visit family on the east coast. Carl, who had agreed to move in, didn't actually bother to move until the day grandpa was supposed to leave, but he ended up missing the flight.
But at least Rick had Carl/daughter in law to look after him now, even if they tried to avoid having to actually do anything by waiting for him to leave for that 2 month visit. Unfortunately, pretty quickly they started to do questionable things. They opened all the windows (literally every window in the house), and began harassing him every day to take showers, insulting and yelling at him about it frequently every day. Rick spent pretty much all day every day hidden under a blanket, so eventually he outright asked Carl if he was trying to get him sick with pneumonia or something, and got a dead stare back before he just walked off. They also pressured him into running on the treadmill most days, when he gets out of breath walking 30 feet to the bathroom and back. These were the two major events Rick ended up telling us about, but it sounded like there were other things as well. In less life threatening areas, they had started moving Rick's furniture onto the back deck, uncovered and in the pacific northwest rain, and moved some of theirs in. They took his TV out of the living room where he spent his days and put it in their bedroom.
We didn't find out about any of this until a couple weeks ago, when my brother called Rick's house to invite him to an event and Carl's daughter answered, saying she had dropped Rick off at the hospital a few days prior. During that time, they told nobody else in the family, and hadn't once gone to visit him or even call to see how he was doing. It wasn't until we showed up to check on Rick that he started telling anybody about what had been going on, though his nurses had strong suspicions based on how he was dumped at the door and never checked up on, so when Rick started telling them about it too they put him in touch with a social worker.
Since then, he has opted to go into at home hospice care, so the hospital social worker no longer has direct contact with him, but for obvious reasons didn't want him returning to his house while Carl was still there; Rick wanted him gone too, for obvious reasons. But that's the point where things have gotten difficult for us. The hospital social worker had contacted a lawyer who would help out for free (everyone seemed happy to finally have an instance of elderly abuse with an elder who was fully clear mentally, so they could much more easily help). In the short term, Rick has been staying with my wife's family (since our house is in no way capable of safely housing him at the moment), but that can't go on for long. The social worker and the lawyer were going to have Carl evicted, with a restraining order in place, and inspect the household to see if there was any evidence they could work with, including missing property, signs of animal mistreatment (Rick has a cat and dog there), or what have you. The lawyer has been dragging her feet since she evidently has a full caseload of paying clients, which is fair enough, but she wasn't saying that until after a week passed when she did know he only had a temporary housing solution, she was just ducking our attempts to contact her.
So enough time has passed that we (myself, my wife, and my mother [Rick's daughter]) need to see about getting Carl out of Rick's house ourselves, but looking around I see a lot of *possibilities.* For example, I'm not sure what their status is, exactly, since they don't pay rent, nor anything at all that I'm aware of, I'm fairly certain Rick has everything payed automatically from his bank account. But, when Carl+wife did move in they let their apartment (of like 30+ years) go, and I guess had the implied verbal agreement to live their in exchange for looking after Rick, which they weren't actually doing. So I'm not sure if they can be removed as trespassers? Evicted (which is a 72 hour notice I think?) or some other method that can require 30 days notice. Is there any legal issue with turning off power and water? Is there any likely agency to contact about this? Or is it pretty clearly muddy enough we need to somehow find a way to get a lawyer going on it quickly?
I know this isn't any official advice or counsel or anything, I'm just asking for suggestions/direction or any big road blocks to look out for or important things I may be overlooking, since maybe it's more simple than I think (hey, I can hope right) and we don't exactly have a lot of resources to throw at a lawyer just yet.
Boy I hope that's clear enough, my head is killing me.
edit: borrowed some names to help with clarity, hope it helps.
Ranlin on
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A lot can happen, especially for older people, in a very short period of time. If this drags on or something terrible happens, you may end up out of a lot more money than just a lawyer, if only because you are the only ones willing to step up and pay for things that need paying.
You're pretty much in a holding pattern until you can get the advice of a lawyer on when/if you should do things like turn off the water and power. There are a whole host of legal issues that come into play for things like this which you will most likely need to be walked through in detail.
The best thing you can do now is focus on making sure that your grandfather is doing well (both physically and emotionally), and that you are continuing to move forward with steps such as getting a lawyer, following through with his/her advice, etc. etc. etc.
Also, just a heads up, your post is pretty hard to read. You might want to replace relationships ("my uncle") with actual names, because you tend to jump back and forth between perspectives and relationships in the same thought. It's not really important, but just thought I'd give you the feedback given you probably wrote this in a fit of venting.
Make them Pay!
I'm not sure they've done anything unequivocally illegal here. Don't get me wrong, they're giant assholes but I don't know if there is anything here a DA would be willing to press charges on.
Out of the House!
I'm unsure how long they've been there but there will be all kinds of anti-eviction protections that are gonna make this horrible and lengthy.
Evil never prospers!
What you might do is get Rick to change his will. Though honestly this would probably be my lowest priority and doesn't fix anything though I suppose it might give him a nice warm feeling briefly.
Uh....Hospice?
Er...the way I've seen that word used for this sort of thing is that the patient is beyond any curing and the only help we can offer is to ease their pain as they finally slip away from life. Was that the right word here? Did you mean just in home care (which is also a hallmark of Hospice care but a little different.)
Bottom Line
Sell house to whoever for whatever he can get, rent apartment/senior living facility for him with proceeds? This is easier if he really isn't expected to survive long but short and long term he needs to be somewhere safe and it sounds like his house is not it for some time. If he really needs constant care you're probably either looking at a non-asshole member of the family stepping up or constant nursing care (so basically nursing home.)
They'll advise you to where to go next. It's going to be expensive, and lengthy (like a year) to get this person out.
First things first, the will needs to be changed. That's not just feel good, that's proper because if your grandpa goes, uncle is going to get the house, and you should want to prevent that anyways. The house is probably going to get wrecked once this guy gets wind of what's going on. Be prepared for that. What I would suggest is go get some pictures of the current state of the house, maybe get the local sheriff involved. Call the non-emergency line and explain what you think is going to happen, you just want a witness and some protection. This way when he does start ripping down walls and shitting and pissing everywhere, you can sue him.
But definitely get in touch with a lawyer that deals with estate like this.
I might call adult protective services, and see what other options are available to you to deal with this situation. They may have a hotline to the sheriff and local court to caretakers evicted on signs of abuse (you may need a doctor's note that agrees there was some form of abuse going on there). It's a lot easier when a patient is mentally alert, like devoutly said.
As for long term care of your grandpa, hospice is out, that's for mostly end of life patients. There does exist nursing "resorts" I guess I'll call it where the people are housed in the condos and have nurses nearby for medical emergencies. Your grandpa seems like he's mostly functional and just needs help every now and then.
You might want to consult with a visiting nurse too, if he wants to stay at his home (which is sometimes a good thing, it helps them mentally to be "home.") Having your grandpa involved in the process is probably important, too. He should know what's going on and be able to give his opinion.
But you definitely need to get the toxic people out, ASAP.
So if that holds true, hooray.
Before asking for guidance here we had been trying to stay out of this part of things, so I'll be keeping all this in mind and jumping on things if it doesn't look like he's following through on anything, but between Carl having large anger issues and the potential for this to drag out far longer than Rick will live, I'd certainly prefer to give this opportunity first.
As for the term hospice being used, the term they're using is in home hospice care, wherein the nurses are always available to call, but only show up a couple days a week, the rest of the time he is cared for by whomever else (us). He's irreversibly dying from it, and has months remaining (though he looks so incredibly much better now that we're taking care of him than before, he looked like he would be dead within the week when we first say him in the hospital). He fairly firmly said no to everything but wanting to go home. He's been involved in every step along the way, and made all of the actual decisions for it, we've just been trying to enact those wishes.
If this is the case, it's probably a good idea to get that changed again, unless he somehow still wants Carl to benefit.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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