Keeping accountability among family members

I was not caring for my mother directly my brother was, he went on a holiday with his wife so I stepped into the caring role while he was away. While I was there I decided to help my mum clean out her handbag. That is when I noticed that she had a pile of bank statements and I could see that someone had been withdrawing thousands of dollars of her money, I went along to the local bank with her to question this and to my shock discovered it was my brother who had been made a signatory to her account.  It was a thousand dollars here and a thousand dollars there but totaling nearly $40,000 dollars.  I can’t tell you how I felt I just remember thinking this is elder abuse!

I spoke to my other siblings as soon as I could and together we approached the Legal Services Commission, this is a free service and they give you initially an hour of their time to advise you. It is so hard to deal with this kind of thing within your own family especially when it is a crime that is exploitative, capitalistic and purely opportunistic. This service was amazing and advised us on steps we could take to re-gain some control for my mother.

This was a total shock to the family and did change my relationship to my brother. I guess the hard lesson for me to have learnt is that we trust our family members to do the right thing, and we hope that they do the right thing but we need each other to keep each other accountable.