By the time someone calls about a parent being financially exploited, money is usually already gone. The question is whether more is about to leave and what can stop it.
Jill on what happens when an exploitation call comes in:
The first 48 hours matter because financial exploitation tends to escalate. The person doing it — a girlfriend, a romance scammer, a caregiver, a relative — knows they have a window. Once anyone with authority shows up, the window closes. So they accelerate. Wires get larger. New accounts get opened. Property gets transferred. Beneficiary designations get changed.
What we do in those 48 hours depends on the facts.
If the parent has capacity and is willing to act, the cleanest move is for the parent to revoke whatever authority the bad actor has, change the locks, freeze the accounts, and update the beneficiary designations themselves. No court involvement. No guardianship. The parent is exercising their own rights.
If the parent has capacity but won’t act — because they’ve been manipulated, because they’re embarrassed, because they’re in love with the person draining the account — the legal options narrow significantly. An adult with capacity is allowed to make bad decisions. Florida’s Adult Protective Services can investigate, but if the parent refuses services, there’s a limit to what anyone can do.
If the parent doesn’t have capacity, that’s where guardianship comes in. An emergency temporary guardianship under §744.3031 can be filed within 24 hours of the right facts. The petition has to specify the imminent danger. If the court agrees, the temporary guardian gets authority to freeze accounts, reverse pending wires where the bank will cooperate, and stop the bleeding while the longer incapacity proceeding plays out.
The bank’s cooperation matters more than people think. Some banks have robust elder financial abuse protocols and will hold suspicious wires on their own. Some don’t. The difference between “we’ll hold the wire pending court order” and “the wire went through this morning” is sometimes the difference between recovering the money and not.
The harder reality: most exploitation cases don’t end with the money coming back. Wires sent overseas usually don’t come back. Property signed over usually doesn’t come back. The goal of moving fast isn’t undoing what’s already done. It’s preventing what hasn’t happened yet.
If you suspect an elderly parent is being exploited, the call shouldn’t wait for confirmation. By the time you have proof, more is gone.