CalSTRS not helpful

If you become the conservator or have (power of attorney) POA for a person who is getting a California Teacher's pension (CalSTRS), you may find them horribly unhelpful.

It Takes A Month Or 3 To Change Direct Deposit

On one level being slow and hard to reach in some way could protect members from abuse. But it made it very difficult when Mike, who became conservator for his mother Carol, was trying to get her pension to go into a conservatorship account, as opposed to a compromised account. Sonya, the daughter who had financially abused the mother Carol, had closed the account Carol had and where her pension was being deposited, and opened a new account. As far as I can tell Sonya did not inform CalSTRS and there was some confusion of where the pension was going. When Mike became conservator there was some problem getting CalSTRS to recognize him as conservator.

Once they finally recognized Mike as the conservator of Carol who was a member of CalSTRS, they told him they needed a whole pay period before they could have the direct deposit going into the new account. Mike turned into the paperwork and waited for a month for the pension payment to appear so he could pay for his mother's care. Unfortunately, CalSTRS did not feel a rush to tell him that there was something missing in his paperwork. So when the date when her pension was to appear passed, he had to inquire with the bank then CalSTRS and discovered that there was missing information and had to wait another month for the pension payment.

CalSTRS Assumes Members Will Always Be Independent

Mike's interactions with CalSTRS when he needed to inquire about something was like pulling teeth. My heart goes out to any caregiver of a CalSTRS member. It seemed CalSTRS only frame of reference might have been the POA. When I inquired on my husband's behalf, because the whole trying to care for his mother thing was overwhelming, I didn't get anything other than an automated response.... if that.

The website is only for members. Not caregivers acting on their behalf. We asked. They will not allow for the conservator to take over.

When you look at the CalSTRS website the only thing they have about abuse, which Carol was a victim of, it is only about members abusing CalSTRS, as if members can only be perpetrators not victims.

So it appears that CalSTRS has the mindset that members will be fully mentally functional and independent. So it becomes part of the nightmare when a child of a member or a caregiver who comes in blind has to try to figure out where to start.

CalSTRS Not Helpful

We found CalSTRS not particularly helpful. Maybe in all the encounters with CalSTRS maybe one person tried to be helpful and understand my husband's situation in trying to care for his mom 3000 miles away. I'm sure if he were in California it would have been a little less stressful.

Lastly, let me end with a positive. Those CalSTRS payments were very generous. Carol's pension was a little less than my take home pay as a full time Federal worker, and more than what my husband makes per month. That amount of money was very helpful in making it possible to stretch out what was left to pay for better end of life care for Carol.

Very Conservative Conservatorship- Or sort of how it should have been done June-July 2016

Looking at the conservatorship account and the spending there, it is a complete swing of the pendulum from spending like a crazy person to barely spending at all.

Below is the JPG. Click for a larger image

 Instead of republishing the bank statements, which are somewhere, I just exported the data, removed some identifying information and put it in an Excel spreadsheet.

In two months, there are seven transactions. Under Sonya she would have had seven transactions in about 2 days. To be slightly fair June was sort of a wash because Mike, the son of the victim, was still having trouble communicating to the bank. Earlier that month he had to beg the staff to send a check on Carol, his mother and the victim, to Kirkwood Villa to pay for the June rent. July was also messy as CalSTRs weren't sending Carol's pension to the new account yet.

A lot you don't see here is the money Mike and I spent in regards to Carol from our own accounts. We'd already dipped into our savings for about $7000 for a retainer fee for the lawyers to make the conservatorship happen. When Mike did get access to his mother's funds, or what little was left after Sonya devoured their mother's retirement savings, he had to deal with the first health crises of his conservatorship, trying to get diabetes medicine to his mother who just lost her Medicare prescription parts. We were very willing to spend our own money to try to get her the medication she needed.

So let's review July 2016

July 1st there is a withdrawal of $3,300 via check #101. That was for Carol's stay at Kirkwood Villa. July 7th, there was a transfer of $3085.98 from one of Carol's accounts. I will guess it is from the frozen account that Sonya, prior to the freeze had access. It looks like it is the CalSTRs pension money. I do remember we were very anxious about transferring that as quickly as possible so Sonya would not be able to get her hands on any more of Carol's money. July 31st the bank charged a service fee of $6 and provided a dividend of zilch.

Because Mike wanted to make sure he was following the rules, he barely spent any money. By 2017 he learned to spend a little bit more, splurging for a nurse/companion to take Carol out on day trips and to the doctor, so she wouldn't be stuck inside all week. The problem was that Carol's pension of about $3000 a month did not cover her stay at Kirkwood Villa which was $3300 a month, about a $300 a month difference. This doesn't even begin to cover her medical bills. Going back to the $10,000 Sonya took for Child Support, that could have covered the deficit for several years. Thankfully, Sonya did not get all the savings, there was still a little something left in the investment account and there was this pesky other investment that we couldn't figure out what the heck it was. Thankfully, neither could Sonya.

This was more of the right way. Funds under the conservatorship were spent to care for Carol. Finds should not to cover Uber trips for teenagers or supplies for the POA's business ventures.

Steal from your mother to pay child support April-May 2016 part 3

Please see parts 1 and 2.
So I confronted Sonya with this image.

In it I asked, "Why is a 73 year old woman living in a senior home paying child support??" and "Did Carole get to ride in the Ubers? Did she make calls to people in prison? She paid for it. And moving money isn't fooling anyone. If you can prove that the money isn't fooling anyone. If you can prove that the money you spent on yourself and your kids is from money you made and not just spending down your mother's retirement, I'll eat crow. You squandered your mother's retirement nest egg. Her health has suffered as a result, When she dies, part of it will be your fault."

Up until then I had held my tongue, and just said there was a rift between brother and sister. I had mentioned this to Kay and maybe Mike1, Sonya's sons. But as I said, I was on parental leave with Mike2 and maybe had too much time on my hands. Mike2 was a 3 month old at this time so, I was running on no sleep so I was weak. However, my sense of justice is still annoyed that she was able to get away with doing this to the woman who raised her.

Anyway, this was her answer:

I'm going to try to translate this into Standard English.  I'm also going to comment:

"Well finally some communication and yes, I see your point. Now I am able to explain these things. I will show my bank statement for US Bank that shows that $10,000 from child support was levied out of the account and I got $8,500 from my tax return, that was paid to them, so ultimately, $1,500 was her money."

Okay, I'm a Humanities major so I don't do math all that well, but this is BS. If she had her own bank account why wasn't she using that for the medical weed and the cigarettes? I doubt such an account exists. Regardless of how much Sonya got from her tax return, the $10,000 was all Carol's money, not $1,500. Sonya should not have been mixing her own spending with her mother's account. She abused her role as POA.

"and I will talk about me moving and breaking the lease in 14 days from March 2016 when he had the conservatorship freeze the accounts. I had days to pay the rent or quit. I was left destitute having to move with the kids and there was no explanation as the what the Hell was going on."

She decides to switch the topic. She also has mistaken me for her brother Mike, and thinks I can be guilt tripped. She has since discovered she can't manipulate me, and has asked Mike to keep me out of the loop and asked me never to contact her. The situation she is talking about here is something I like to point out to Mike to show him there was nothing he could have done to stop his sister from becoming the POA and ruining their mother's life. The lease for the house she rented for their mother was supposed to end either in late March or April. Sonya got it in her head that she could continue to rent the place. Mike asked her to let the lease end, and of course, she ignored him. There was no reason why Carol, the mother and real victim here, should have had to pay for a house that was in better condition than the place she was living in, and pay for the room where Carol was living. 

During this time the Santa Clara Adult Protective services social workers were probably telling her that the accounts were frozen in March and April. Looking at the bank statements, it doesn't matter because there are more than 6 pages of spending for those months. And the credit union, which I'll call the bank for simplicity's sake, did not freeze the account until the 1st of June. And Mike didn't get any sort of conservatorship powers until May, and even then a lot of places kind of ignored it.

Another thing, and I'll get back to Sonya's screed, once Carol was out of the three bedroom house Sonya should have realized that the end was near and she'd have to put on her big girl pants and support herself.

"The District Attorney for Adult Protective Services came to my house to interview me and potentially arrest me for the claims made my anonymous people of financial abuse."

Hi, I'm Mike's wife and this blog is about how Sonya abused her mother. I gather the bank and later the social workers at Kaiser tipped them off. Sadly, nobody arrested Sonya.

"The District Attorney after the interview and a detailed investigation of that very Alliance account with a fine tooth comb, said there is absolutely no proof of these crimes and found me innocent on all charges and closed the case. So the law says I did not do that."

What stopped the investigation was Mike becoming the conservator in order to save his sister from going to jail. Mike is horribly loyal, sometimes for the wrong reasons, and that's why it has been so frustratingly hard for me to get him to file charges. To my knowledge she was never brought to court so no one has found her innocent.

"The freeze was lifted and I was left being homeless and ultimately having to find a home."

Sonya had used money on May 16, 2016 to get a U-haul for $330. So no freeze then.

"My business was on the brink. I had just opened the doors not even a month , which was going to pay all the money back, but unfortunately Michael chose to read without question and make me out to be this bad person. I have an answer to all these and it's all very long, involved and many intricate details..."

And all BS. 

"I will not accept that I spent all my mom's savings, that's absolute bullsh!t. And he has no idea of how it is to be on the frontlines to care for her, my 3 kids, and 6 student interns, as well as a plethora of clients to be shut down at a screeching halt. There was more to the story than the account and I was never asked or talked to or concerned with an alternative route so we would all be ok."

Denial, denial denial, then me, me, me. Obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate. One of those 3 kids is a grown man in college. As far as never being asked, Mike could never get a word in, so he never had an opportunity to ask and even if he did, Sonya would probably lie to him, like she did about the child support.

"My mom was forced to short sell her house in three days by Gene only getting about $500,000.00 when her house was worth $700-$800,000. Then she was forced to move into a senior community costing $7000 a month for two years. Anyway he can blame me, but how cowardly of him, when he didn't lift a finger to actually care for her a day in his life. As for him saying it will be my fault for her death, I will say the same about him."

According to Redfin.com, on December 5th the house was listed for sale for $545,000, it was under contract on the 11th and sold January 15, 2014 for $552,000. It's kind of hard for me to find comps for that area for 2014 in 2018. Yes, now houses are going for $700-$800K, but I did manage to find another house in the area selling in January 2016 for $625K. The house across the street sold in the Summer of 2010 for $350K. Carol and Gene had to sell because they kept falling in the driveway and having to call 911 to pick them up. Gene was a double amputee with a big a$$ truck. Because they were married the house belonged to both of them. Doesn't matter that it was Sonya and Mike's childhood home. The kids did not own the house.

Carol and Gene had to move into a senior community for their health. There was the constant falling because they were on a steep hill. Carol had worsening Parkinson's in addition to her Diabetes Type 1. Gene was also diabetic, with anger management issues. Senior care costs money. Sonya had complained about the last place Carol lived, nickle and diming their mother. No that was for services rendered! But all Sonya probably could see was money she wrongfully thought was hers slipping away. 

Then she ends with another guilt bomb. The family dynamics at play here did not lend themselves to Mike doing more for his mother until the conservatorship. While Carol was married to Gene, Mike could just call his mother and have annual visits. Gene was a miserable old bastard and very untrusting. Carol was vague. Mike and Carol's phone and in person conversations (that I witnessed) had the depth of a thimble. Sonya and Gene hated each other. Mike tries to be the peacemaker, he didn't care for Gene but usually tried to be nice to him. Mike also respected the fact that his mother was married to Gene and there are things in a marriage that make the wishes of the adult children secondary. Gene had only been dead a month before Sonya became their mother's POA.

"I have more to say but I'm too heated and will message back when I find my documentation. Until then I'm not going to accept his irrational judgements against me period."

Never got any documentation... probably because there is none. Yes, these claims that we have with hundred's of pages of bank statements, the court investigator's report, and conflicting messages, all irrational.... This is why I fear for N Kim's (the little girl) safety. I want to reach out to her father because a woman who would deny the facts in front of her when presented would also be in denial if one of her loser boyfriends harmed that little girl. I will sleep on in. Next month, if I feel this way, I will.

"I did my best I could without having much opportunity to work and make an income. Even the law pays a family member to care for family, but because she was a teacher and didn't pay into Social Security, she was not eligible for those types of services. How was I supposed to care full time with no income."

She could have left well enough alone, and allowed Carol to stay at the Atria. But no, she decided to take her mother out of the hands of professionals and DIY it. There might be a program that provides some money for family members who care for other family members. That was probably though MediCal. Because of the generous pension Carol had, I don't know if she would have qualified. I was under the impression that it was Medi-Cal or Medicare that was providing the nurse who came in to care Carol... before Sonya threw her son across the room and frightened the nurse away.

Did Sonya do her best? Maybe the best that a chronically unemployed chronic enthusiast with anger management and other mental health issues who dropped out of school could manage. But even if she wasn't a crazy stoner high school drop out, the way she saw her mother, and brother as ATMs that she could use, would have resulted in the same way. We thought it was mismanagement, it was greed.

"The Uber stuff was Mike1 using the card to get himself to school and basketball practice everyday. So yes, I agree that was bad. But I also had faith all would work out because my business was already making a return."

Well one thing she admits not being good.

Why the heck did Mike1 have access to Carol's account? I don't blame the teen, he's a minor. Sonya gave him access. 

So there we have it. Sonya only admits letting her teenage son have access to his grandmother's money was bad. But stealing her mother's money for child support and other things, she's in complete denial. There is no point confronting her with this unless I can convince (she's not the only one in the family who plays the denial game) her brother, to file charges. She cannot repay what she stole. Sonya has a negative net worth. She is no good at making money. Last we heard, she was homeless. I highly suspect Carol was providing Sonya with financial help well before the sale of the house and the moves to senior housing. The spigot has been turned off and Sonya is now forced with having to figure out how to live after burning (no, exploding) all her bridges.

Steal from your mother to pay child support April-May 2016 part 2

Please see part one.

In an effort to keep this simple I am not going to reprint the a couple year's worth of Facebook messages. I will sum them up because Sonya's messages to her brother are lengthy. Also at a point Mike, the brother of Sonya and the son of the victim Carol, stops communicating via Facebook and I'm the one managing his Facebook page.

Mike became conservator of his mother in the Summer of 2016 and began the difficult task of trying to care for her 3000 miles away. July 15, 2016 Sonya sent a short message asking for help with rent. This was a month after she was cut off from her mother's funds. Mike responded that day that we could not help her as we were dipping into our savings to deal with Carol's various health crises, part of which was caused by Sonya not making sure Medicare and Kaiser were paid. By that time we had dipped into savings to pay for lawyers and a bond, along with the other things Carol needed. December 2016, Mike sent a FB message to Sonya asking her to see their mother. Apparently, she had their mother hang out with some of Sonya's friends from DC.

August 8, 2017 Mike sent a FB message telling Sonya he was taking their mom out of California to care for her. Sonya hadn't been visiting their mother on any regular basis, and as usual Sonya's phone number had changed and Mike had no way of reaching her. Mike contacted Sonya's ex who gave a number but we're not sure if it was valid. August came and went and Mike brought Carol to live at Independence Court in Hyattsville, MD. Mike visited at least once or twice a week.

October 15, 2017 Sonya contacted Mike via FB messenger asking for money on behalf of her son Mike1. By this time Mike was fully aware of the lies Sonya had told and did not trust this. Mike did not respond so this was followed by a long rant from Sonya trying to send Mike on another guilt trip. This was followed by three audio recordings of Sonya, Mike1 and Rocci, where Sonya claimed Rocci was verbally abusing the teenage son Mike1. I only listened to two of the recordings. Everyone is horrible. She then sends another message telling Mike never to contact her or her kids.

By December 2017 Mike gave up on FB because our friends can get too political. I updated it from time to time to keep the people at Mike's church updated with Carol's health so they could pray for them. That's when I caught a message Sonya sent, all apologetic and sweet. I responded, letting her know it was me, and I'd pass it on to Mike. She did not care for me acting as a filter between her and her brother and mother. That same day, mean nasty Sonya was back. She set off my own mean streak, so in between updating her about her mom's health, I also egged her on. I'm going to blame being bored and being stuck home with a new baby (Mike2). So here is the exchange.

 Later

In part 3 I'll go over this last part.

May 2016- The end of Sonya's spending party

It wasn't until June 1st when the bank, credit union actually, finally, finally, cut Sonya off from her mother's accounts. The conservatorship wasn't wine and roses for Mike, the brother of Sonya and the son of Carol. But what it did do was end Sonya's POA over Carol, allow Mike to talk to the bank, and in the beginning get some limited access to the money in those accounts. There was a lot of back and forth with the bank in June and it was all painfully slow, and add the fact that this (finances, Medicare, elder care, the legal stuff) was not in Mike's wheelhouse.

Despite knowing the end was near, Sonya kept spending the money, her mother's money as if it were hers, which it was not, all though May 2016.

To see a better image, click the individual picture.

March 2016- Token amounts, an accidental MF'er and theories

In March $16,216.12 was spent. Sonya, since it appears she hadn't gotten her mother Carol's CalSTRs pension to direct deposit into this new account Sonya created at the end of December 2015, is the only one depositing.  She covered about 10% of that month's spending. Little matter, because this account had Carol's money in it and Sonya was spending, squandering, her mother's retirement fund with purchases and charges that had nothing to do with the care of her mother.  Of that $16K, $3300 (check #107) went to cover Carol's care at Kirkwood Villa, one of the cheapest place to dump and old woman in San Jose. But all those other charges, wasting away her mother's money and making a bad situation worse.

When Sonya closed the account in December and opened up a new one in her mother's name, it messed up a few reoccurring charges that later came to bite Mike (Carol's son & Sonya's brother) in the butt when he became their mother's conservator. Besides screwing up the CalSTRs pension, it also ended the payments to Medicare. Most people on social security, it seems, have their monthly payment taken out of their SS payments. Because Carol was on a pension and did not have SS payments her monthly Medicare payments came out of the account Sonya closed, for whatever reason. After 6 months of no payments, or as soon as Mike became the conservator in June, Carol, the diabetic with Parkinson's lost her medicare, particularly the parts that cover prescriptions and doctors visits. That was the first of many crises. Kaiser Permanente wasn't getting paid for their Medicare parts either. This endangered their mother's health. For about a week Carol was fcuked, because Mike had no clue of how to get insulin to his mom from the opposite side of the country with no Medicare. Sonya had fcuked over her mother, she thus was a motherfcuker.

At the time Mike was unaware of this in March. He thought, he believed his sister was trying to do right by their mother. He even bought her BS excuses of why she was leasing or whatever a luxury SUV. I can't find any texts from this month that are a complete sentence. But it was in this month we looked up Sonya's cosmetology license. We discovered her license was suspended due to "Family Support". She lied about that to her brother, said it was a mistake. He, wanting to make up for all the years he doubted her and other baggage issues, chose to believe her blatant lies. Folks, this is family and you'd rather believe a lie than know you're related to a horrible human being.

 

So theories...

Looking at the March 2016 bank statement, it looks as if Sonya might have given access to the account to her teenage son, that would explain all the Uber rides and iTunes purchases. That's one theory. Another theory is that Sonya was mentally delusional and believed that this was her account, with her money.

February 2016- Sonya only contributed a token amount

So take a look at the end of the February statement.

In the short month of February Sonya managed to make 139 withdrawals and only one deposit. The withdrawals totaled up to $15,288.90, which the measly $663.00 that was contributed to the account, does not even begin to cover.

Here's a little something that is helpful to know. Carol (the mother and the victim of eldercare abuse by Sonya) has a very generous teacher's pension from CalSTRS, that was about $3k a month. Back on December 28, 2015, Sonya, for whatever reason, closed the account that CalSTRS was depositing funds into, moved the roughly $60K that was in there from Carol's retirement fund into a new account. CalSTRS takes at least one whole month to make direct deposit changes. So this month, as well as January and March, allow us to see what measly token amounts Sonya was depositing into her mother's account. For February it was about 4% of what was spent. As far as I could tell there was one charge and one check that actually went to the care of Carol. There was a February 3rd payment to Kaiser, Carol's health care provider/insurance for $345.00 (please go back to the February 2016 post, page 1) and check #104 for $3300 that was the monthly rent for Kirkwood Villa the elderly boarding house where Kaiser dumped Carol because she could not return to the 3 bedroom house she and Sonya were renting. Check #102 for $3850 was covering the rent for that house.

Sonya had told her brother Mike that she was supporting their mother with her work. Here we see it was all lies. This was barely a fig leaf of support.

January 2016- Sonya goes to Hawaii with Carol's money!

Sonya, the POA for Carol, her adoptive mother, took a little trip to the island state of Hawaii in January 2016. 

Why not? 

Carol was either in the hospital or rotting in Kirkwood Villa, which I called old people prison. Apparently Sonya's two minor children were with their biological father, maybe. We have no clue, because that situation is so messed up, I don't even want to bother. Maybe she went with her loser boyfriend, maybe not, I don't know. When you're 3000 miles away and the family member in question only calls to yell at you, and lie to you (didn't find that out until later) you really don't know what is actually going on. So, Sonya took a little vacation, but she did not take a vacation from financially abusing her mother.

 

 I'll take a guess that the January 12th Hawaiian Ticket is a luggage fee, I have no idea. But I did notice 3375 Koapaka Street appears again on January 13th, but instead of saying San Jose it is for Honolulu, HI. I should note that Carol did not go to Hawaii. Anyway, maybe Sonya might have realized there would be a paper trail or she didn't want to use Carol's debit card in Hawaii, so on the 13th she took out $1000 of spending money at 200 Hamakua Drive, in Hawaii. Clever, we'll never catch on.

 

From what I can tell she was still in Hawaii on the 18th, maybe. On the 16th she spent $44.64 at Pho My. Who makes up these restaurant names? What did she run out of the $1000 she withdrew on the 13th? Considering Sonya's spending habits, that could be a possibility. On the 18th there is that Hawaiian Ticket, this time for $60, and Lahaina Chicken for $18.51 This is followed by an iTunes charge. Gotta have some tunes or a cool app for the plane ride back to San Jose, CA and stealing more of your mother's money.

August 2015-Moving Money Around

This post is just about two other accounts on the bank statement that I'd been ignoring. Why did I ignore these? Because there was no movement and not a lot in them. However, in August it appears there is a little money shuffling going on. I'll come back to this thing in 2016, but in August there is some noticeable shuffling.

 So there is something that looks like a savings account, "Share Account Suffix 0". For the past several months there was $25 just sitting in this account minding its own business and then between the 13th and 14th there is a flurry activity. On the 13th $3350.77 is transferred from the main account #9, and then $93.82 from account #2. Maybe that was to cover the $50 Legal Order (Levy/Subpoena) that day. I have my suspicions of what that was about.

During this time, even before this time, Sonya Henry and Rocci were/are (still) in a custody battle regarding Sonya's two minor children, Mike 1 and N Kim. The couple had never married. Also we (Mike & I) had assumed that Sonya had custody of the two children, which would explain why she "needed" a three bedroom house to care for Carol, the woman whose retirement money was funding her lifestyle. Later, in 2016 we discovered she did not have full custody.

Anyway, back to the accounts.

So the next day on the 14th $93.82 is returned to account #2 and $3300.77 is returned to account #9, minus the $50. I have no idea what that is all about and why that was needed. Maybe she was expecting an expense higher than $3K?

 Account #2 is a Money Market account. So the $93.82 that had been sitting in this account was taken out and moved over to account #0, and back over to account #2.

Next post I'll go over account #9 for August 2015.

Maybe it was a sense of entitlement

Why did Sonya financially abuse her mother Carol?

Well she did care for her mother for 10 months and caring for someone with the various ailments along with mobility issues is hard... and probably should be left to the professionals. Sonya was ill suited for the task. To be fair her brother also stinks when it comes to handling finances and we assumed she was just as bad regarding her mother's finances. No, when we finally saw the bank statements, this wasn't a matter of being disorganized or failing to seek out the best price for services (her brother's problem). No this was downright theft. Beyond the theft, she also brought the chaos of her life (the pot smoking, the child custody, the fornication, etc) into her mother's life which probably undermined her health.

As I mentioned, caring for someone is hard and Sonya, with her various faults, was ill suited for the job. Once she realized how hard caring for Carol was she might have had it in her head that she earned or deserved her mother's money. One story she has said is that she (Sonya) sacrificed her career to care for her mother. As far as I can tell, Sonya has never had a stable job. She is a licensed cosmetologist, but doesn't seem to stay at one salon or place for more than a year, if that. She said that she wanted to get her business off the ground so she could support her mother. That's the story. That's the myth. Instead it was an excuse to take more money out of her mother's retirement to pursue a pipe dream. I have a cousin ( a licensed barber) who started in the back room of his rented house doing hair and now (despite being out of it for a couple of years due to an accident) has his own shop in his own building. Sonya seemed to me more talk than real work and action.

So in her head she thought she gave up this great career to be nursemaid. She didn't have to. She could have let her mother stay in the assisted living place ( or find a cheaper one) and visit her since they lived in the same city of San Jose, CA. But no, she couldn't leave well enough alone. She could not let her mother live in peace among other old people.

So what did her mother get for her money? Well she got a rental that was a significant upgrade for her daughter and the house was nicer than the house Carol once owned. She got about six months of what we can only guess as good quality time with her daughter and granddaughter. Then it went downhill. Sonya brought in a live in boyfriend. Sonya scared away the visiting nurse by throwing her 15 year old son, Mike 1, across the room (she has anger management issues). The nurse reported this to Child Protective Services. as she is required to do so when witnessing any sort of abuse. The nurse did not return citing fear. Sometime in late 2015 Carol was on the phone with her son, my husband, Mike and asked to get out of there. In December 2015, Carol extracted herself from the house, and Adult Protective Services got involved. I'll talk about the continued financial elder abuse after Carol and Sonya we no longer living together, but let me get through August-Decemeber 2015 statements first.

So now Carol is dead. Her ashes sit on my bookshelf in a nice wood box. Sonya won't talk to me and has asked her brother not to involve me. Fine. However, Mike did mention that she believes she is entitled to whatever is left. I've reminded him she already stole her inheritance.  She'll be getting about $4000 from CalSTers, her half of the death benefit, as she was named as a beneficiary, and her brother sent her a scan of the paperwork he got from CalSTers. (Me: Facepalm... Mike is too nice of a nice guy) 

June 2015- Still taking out more than she puts in

At some point I'll post a Facebook messenger exchange I had with Sonya where she asked me if I was trying to have her arrested. I told her that I couldn't have her arrested, but her brother could. I just need to convince him to file charges and despite words to the contrary (sigh) he hasn't done so. So this and the other posts are me laying out what wrong Sonya did to their mother so maybe, just maybe, if I catch him at just the right moment, I can convince him to file charges against his sister.

Okay, so June.

June saw 57 withdrawals of $7,554.68 and 3 deposits of 4691.76. Two of those deposits came from Carol, the elderly victim, and one from Sonya.

Now as a reminder to those of you playing at home, as the POA Sonya was not supposed to mix her expenses with her mother's, however that was the first thing she did. So June is like the other months where she spent her mother's money on herself and her wants.

So looking at the list of checks, check #2519 jumps out at me. Now the place where they are living, the rent was paid 6 months in advance, so what is this check for $3000 for? Well, some time back I got Mike (the son and conservator) to request from the bank a few copies of checks. But since checks are like a quarter a pop, I had to pick and choose. I chose this one and it is for Fremont GMC - Cadillac, written on May 7, 2015, signed by someone who does not have Parkinson's. Now I haven't owned a car in decades, and the family car was bought used, bought off Carol by Mike, and currently has over 130K miles on it. So we have no idea how buying a car works theses days, what we do know is that Sonya did lease a Cadillac saying it was for mom! Seriously?

Okay lets get to the month.

Let's start with Carol's pension as a deposit, followed by a $520.83 shopping trip to Wal-Mart and some gas from a Chevron station. Next we get a deposit of $1240, probably from Sonya, so she can convince herself she's not blowing away all her mother's money. I remember she would tell her brother that she was contributing to mom's care. HA! It is difficult to believe that these purchases are for Carol's (mom's) care, since they do no reflect spending patterns prior to Sonya getting access to the account, nor the time when her brother Mike became conservator. Mike has a stable job and his own bank accounts and doesn't need to steal money from their mother.

The deposit is followed by an $60 cash withdrawal, and some more constant shopping, dining and other purchases. The AGI*TMO INS Deductible caught my eye as maybe this was some odd insurance for Carol, the 70/71 year old diabetic with Parkinson's. Nope it is cell phone insurance.

Going to the next page, there is more insurance. The June 8th United Healthcare is possibly for Carol, maybe a left over for her deceased husband of $20.98. Then there is a $230.88 charge from Mercury Insurance..... I'm betting that's car insurance. Carol don't drive.

Instead of pointing out all the charges and purchases that were not likely for Carol, such as the fast food, restaurant, 7-11 (this place appears often), and gas purchases, let's look at what might be for Carol and why. Walgreen's has a pharmacy, so maybe that was for Carol, but then again, Walgreen's and CVS, which appears sells quickie mart things too like 7-11. Besides, it would have been better to buy Carol's drugs from Kaiser, where she was a member. All you can get from Kaiser is health care and energy bars. Bummer.

So more of the same, but wait, what is this June 23rd charge I see?

It's for something called The Little Gym. Well is Carol getting the physical therapy and exercise she needs? No! This is a children's playground, not something for a frail old woman.

Well at least Medicare got paid. But that seems like an automatic payment, and nothing that Sonya had to do.

April 15-30, 2015: What not to do as an elderly person's POA

Okay quick recap. My sister in law, Sonya became the POA for my mother in law, Carol, who was 71 at the time and in an assisted living facility. Sonya believed she could care for her mother better than the professionals and got control of her mother's bank account, with disastrous results. Sonya being a person with little self control, poor financial habits, and what looks to me like a serious Wal-Mart addiction or at least a shopping addiction, gutted her mother's retirement fund, leaving the old woman broke and in an elderly rooming house. The son and brother of the women, Mike, my husband was forced to become the conservator, discovered it was near impossible to care for his mother 3000 miles away and moved her to the DC area, where she died. This blog is to document and show how Sonya ruined her mother one shopping trip at a time.

 

Okay, April 15th has six transactions. The insurance premiums the the only obvious one for Carol. Yes there is a Safeway expense for $102.35, but there was a Safeway expense the day before, on the 14th, mentioned in another post.  A few days later on the 18th there is another transaction for Safeway. Sonya is buying a lot of food for what really should be for one person. Carol's money should be used for Carol, not to feed her grandkids.

There is a transaction for every day except the 19th, apparently Sonya let the debit card cool off that day before she put it to work again. The 20th she's buying beauty supplies for work at Cosmoprof. Once again, this is money that should have been used for Carol, not Sonya's business.Thankfully Carol's medicare premiums got paid (see CMS Medicare).

 

On the 22nd there is another transaction from Safeway for $218.83. I seriously doubt that was all for Carol. And there is a T-Mobile payment, the second in the month of April. To her son's knowledge, Carol did not have a cell phone. This might be evidence of Sonya paying to keep up her son. So the only thing that appears to be clearly for Carol is the $15 spent on the 21st at Kaiser.

 

In the first April blog post I complained about supposedly Sonya's Wal-Mart shopping addition. Well it looks like she decide to go a tad upscale to Nordstrom. "No cheap clothes for us kids! I got your grandma's money and we're going uptown!" I could imagine her saying as there are three transactions for Norstrom on the 24th.

There is one deposit, for $300 on the 30th, I will assume that's Sonya chipping in . All in total there where 5 deposits for April 2015. In an earlier blog post, three of those are from Carol's resources totaling $39,451.76, compared to Sonya's $700, a little less than 2% of what was deposited. That little 1.74% she added to her mother's account lent a scant 'truth' to the lie she told her brother that she was adding her money to her mother's upkeep.

 

Baseline- Carol and Gene January 2015

Well the reason why I'm detailing what happened called up her brother's work number yesterday and released a little crazy on him. She didn't go all out cray-cray. I've seen her do that and that is why she does not have her brother's cell phone number.
Anyway...

 

Once again this is from a two page statement showing the activity in Carol's and her 2nd husband's bank account. They were spending more than what the Pershing brokerage disbursements and Carol's teacher's pension was bringing in in December and November. However, they still had funds somewhere in savings or investment accounts to draw upon to cover the difference. There were 5 withdrawals less than a thousand dollars, 4 deposits a tad under $7K and two checks. We can see a transfer from another account on 1/7/2015 of $500. The payments from this account covered insurance and medicare and something AT & T was providing.

Once again, I believe a lot of their day to day shopping and needs were done via another account, credit maybe, or Gene's account that I am not privy to or don't have copies of. During the conservatorship scramble, we discovered a credit card account that had a couple of thousand owed on it. We're sure there is another out there, but they are both dead and not going to get anything.

What we don't see in this statement is the hospitalization of Carol and Gene. They both had health emergencies and were hospitalized. There is a lot I don't know because Carol was incapacitated at the time and Gene was uncooperative and at times wanted nothing to do with his wife's children. His relationship with the local adult child, Sonya was hostile. There were moments where it seemed that they would patch up and make up and rally for the sake of Carol, but no. Gene died a bitter angry man whose only known family were his hospitalized wife and her adult children.

After February 2015, in March the spending patterns change, drastically. I'm probably not going to post February 2015 because it is more of the same and looks similar to December and January.

Baseline- Elderly people spending patterns

To better appreciate the harm done by the daughter Sonya, to her mother Carol, you need to look at Carol's spending patterns prior to her daughter gaining power of attorney and the ability to use her mother like an ATM. Now this is just one account, this does not show the credit card account that Carol had, and had used for Christmas gifts and spending. No, this just shows some basic spending, so we will take a deep dive and look at how Carol and her husband Gene used the account.

 

The account in December begins with $40,170.41. There are 2 deposits, these are from Carol's teacher's pension and disbursements from the couple's Pershing Brokerage account. The deposits total $3600.17. There are 12 withdrawals, one for a television dish and a few premiums, including Medicare. Because this is an older generation, Carol being in her early 70s and Gene in his late 60s, they are check writers. Checks #2369 and #2376 are over $5K and I will assume this is for their housing. Gene and Carol were diabetics, Gene being worse off being a double amputee, so he was in need of greater care. Knowing how much was paid for Carol's later care in the DC area, $5K a month for 2 people with serious health care needs seems like a bargain.

Almost a year prior to this, Carol and Gene sold their home (her home, she shared it with her 1st husband and their children Mike & Sonya). It is unknown how much was still owed on the house, given American's habits to refinance and take cash, every few years, tapping the equity. At the best they might have had $500K somewhere from the sale, but more than likely they may have had $400K, that was placed in several accounts, including the Pershing brokerage account that provided about $700 a month in income.

Compared to later bank statements that I will explore later in this blog, the account is lightly active. Things come in, things go out. There are no grocery, clothing, or restaurant expenses for the debit card. I will assume those were done via the credit card, which have statements, I cannot locate at this time. The majority of the activity is by check and without copies of the cancelled checks, and those cost something like $.25 a pop from the bank, I can only assume what they may be for.

Conservatorship is too hard

So my spouse is on the other side of the country to retrieve his mother and bring her to the East Coast to live near us. The place is no Riderwood, but it is better than where she is now. Riderwood is a $7K plus a month retirement home, it is beautiful and we know a couple who live there. Where mom is going is 1/2 the price and a little shabbier, older, and smaller.

After attempting to care for his mother long distance for a little over a year, we decided to engage in the nuclear option of bringing her closer to us because the power of conservatorship is mixed and sometimes a weakness.

In order to legally take her out of California we had to go through the courts. If it weren't for the conservatorship we would have had her on a plane earlier. Yes, you have to ask the state permission to relocate your relative if you are their conservator.

The other problem was that some places did not really acknowledge the conservatorship, like Medicare and Social Security. The conservatorship was issued by the state, Medicare and SS are federal programs and they have their own forms, which seem to require an elderly person to sign....WTF?

The bank also was no help. Supposedly my husband was made temporary conservator in May but could not stop his sister from continuing to drain their mother's accounts, including $20K that we were hoping to use to move her to better care facilities. The bank dragged their feet, and she had enough time to inflict more damage. Why? Because he had to spend time proving to the bank that he had the legal authority to do so.

The pension also dragged on too.

Conservatorship is not a magic wand.

Why file charges

We have told several people about the financial elder abuse my mother in law (MIL) suffered at the hands of my sister in law (SIL). Roundabout SIL stole $100K. We have the bank statements and a few check images. My dear husband (DH) is still trying to clean up the mess with credit cards and unpaid medical bills. A few have said let it go and don't file charges against SIL, but there are a few reasons why we should that have little to do with revenge or trying to hold SIL accountable.

1. Medicare clawback- MIL still has some assets that were not easily liquidated by SIL we want to protect those and ourselves from a noncaring state or federal government. We've all suffered enough, I don't want this to bite us in the butt if MIL dies in the next 5 years and we need to use Medicare for nursing care because they'll want their money back and so far the stolen money is a "gift".

2. Establish MIL as a victim. We will need to rely on some resources because the cost of nursing home care is more than what my husband makes in salary.

3. Taxes. Yeah they weren't filed because the SIL didn't. There are tax consequences of SIL's actions that MIL will have to bear.

4. CYA- We need to show that we weren't party to SIL's actions. Which includes her failure to pay MIL's medical bills which put MIL in a situation where MIL (who has diabetes & Parkinsons)  was denied care. SIL nearly killed MIL because we could not get the meds MIL needed due to the loss of Medicare.

We don't care if SIL never sees the inside of a jail cell. We know she can't repay what she stole. We just need to protect ourselves and MIL going forward.

Lies, Lies, Lies

This was written 7/22/16. I will post this later when I am free to do so.

We know what we know from the bank statements. I requested 2 years back, so I could see Mom's spending habits prior to sister in law (SIL) taking over Mom's care. What I saw was crazy spending under SIL's care for things obviously not for Mom. There is so much I could write about on that but this is about the lies.

Last night I decided to grab DH's phone to look at the text messages between him and his sister. He had to resort to text messages because her phone calls to him had devolved into one sided diatribes about how the world was against her. He could never get a word in, so he texted. The texts are a lot of her texting one message after another of the same crap about how the world was against her and how he was an awful person. I did a "dramatic" reading of the texts, with occasional commentary, on where the texts clashed with reality, or we talked about what we now know to be lies.

She lied about the $10,000. In her texts she said she had no clue what that $10,000 withdrawal was about. The statements show that the money was taken out of one account in April when DH was just getting the lawyer. It was transferred to another account that had Mom's name on it and from that account Child Support Collections took the money in May. In her texts she plays dumb. SIL wrote that she had no clue why the money was taken out.

That $10K will probably be the straw that will convince DH to file some sort of charges against SIL, maybe. He keeps changing his mind, but reminding him of it gets him steamed.

I should mention all of this year, Mom was not living in the same house as SIL, but Mom's money was paying for SIL's housing as well as her own, totaling over $6000 a month just for rent. Someone else was taking care of the day to day needs of Mom so beyond paying her rent there was no legit reason for SIL spending Mom's money.

There were the texts when SIL was asking DH for money, well 1/2 his paycheck. Looking at the bank statements and her texts, we are so glad we did not give her one red cent. That's when we all were going by Adult Protective Service's lie that  the accounts were frozen. But that's for another post.

During my reading of the texts I reminded DH that he did not know then what he knows now. Reading the past few months back to him made him realize his sister played him like a fiddle with the guilt trips based on lies. She could because she apparently knows her brother, who is a pushover. He felt guilty for judging her in the past and wanted to make up for it by giving her the benefit of the doubt and defending her against Adult Protective Services. He's still torn. He loves his sister, but he is hurt by her betrayal and boldface lies to him and Mom.

From January to June SIL managed to spend down over $60,000 of Mom's money, leaving her with barely enough to cover her care. She covered it up with lies. Lies, lies, lies.

The Fantasy vs The Nightmare

Here was the fantasy:

Sister in law Sonya (SIL) would care for Mom (my mother in law) over in California and DH would offer moral support back on the east coast. Mom was living in a care facility, her 3rd one since she and her 2nd husband (not SIL or DH's dad) sold the house where DH & SIL grew up. By this last care facility, her husband died and SIL was complaining the facility nickeled and dimed Mom and she could care for Mom better and cheaper.

We were in CA to see Mom and SIL had us as witnesses as she became the Power of Attorney and other things for Mom. We all thought the general idea was great, it would be an opportunity for for SIL and Mom to reconnect (2nd hubby made their relationship difficult, he'd threatened to shoot her) and maybe save some money. Because of the 2 minor grandkids SIL used Mom's money to rent a 3bdrm house in a nice neighborhood. SIL's plan was to take care of all of Mom's needs, raise the kids, and maybe set up a small business to help support Mom.

The fantasy lasted, oh six months. Then about 3 months later became a nightmare, and Mom despite mobility issues, ran away. No one knows how she managed that.

Between the fantasy and the nightmare:

Caring for old people is hard. Being in the middle of child care and senior care is harder. Throw on trying to start up a business and apparently not having a single brain cell for legit business is another thing altogether. Add to it self control issues on the part of the care taker and there is a disaster waiting to happen.
I'm going to try to be nice, but this is the view from the east coast. SIL did not have the personality, nor the head to care for Mom or her finances for any length of time. If SIL did manage to start a business I doubt it would have lasted very long before declaring bankruptcy. Her work life were a lot of side gigs and working for someone for a year or less. The medical marijuana probably didn't help, well it helped confirm my belief it is a drug for people who don't plan on accomplishing anything. Oh and then there was the new boyfriend who moved in. Yeah.
Oh and then there was the incident involving SIL and her son. Let's just say the home care aide for Mom ran away and never returned.

By December full nightmare was reached. SIL completely failed with her brick & mortar business idea. SIL has no job. SIL has a deadbeat live in boyfriend in the same house as Mom and maybe the kids. There is some child custody something or other going on between SIL and her ex. Mom has called DH to ask him to get her out of there. Probably knowing DH is not going to anything, Mom runs away, enter Adult Protective Services.  Oh, and SIL boyfriend punches her in the face.

In January DH starts getting calls from Adult Protective Services (APS), asking questions at first. Later they began making accusations against SIL, saying she was spending all of Mom's money and wasn't helping their mom. In the new year, there was still 3-4 months left on the lease on the house where SIL was to care for Mom. SIL was living in the house, Mom wasn't. By late March APS were calling DH every other day with accusations and demands that he do something. And thus began our nightmare of trying to care for Mom, on the other side of the country with little or no legal recognition or real assistance to do the things that need to be done.

Is middle class-ness an entitlement?

We are dealing with a family problem of a retired relative slowly going downhill mentally and physically. Having to deal with this from the other side of the country is hard, stupidly time consuming, and expensive. This post is not about our beloved (& difficult) senior citizen, but another relative who has leaned on the elderly relative for financial support.

I'm not going to go into the details of the elder's (Mom's) challenges, but just to explore a philosophical question of are any of us entitled to live a middle class life? I lean to the side of 'no', but live in an area where various activists don't seem to agree.

In Thomas J. Stanley's Millionaire Next Door books, particularly Millionaire Women Next Door and Millionaire Mind he mentions "Economic Outpatient Care." Economic Outpatient Care (EOC) is pretty much older adults still supporting their nueronormative/non-disabled adult children on a regular basis. EOC does not do the parent or adult child any favors.

Mom and her money are currently unavailable to EOC kid, and EOC kid logically asked us to fill in the gap since we are in the process of taking over Mom's finances. The quick answer was no.

The slow answer is no. We get that EOC kid was a SAHM (stay at home mom) who in the past few years has separated from her ex and now has to figure out how to live on her own. Yeah, that's bad, but it really isn't our job to keep her in the lifestyle of which she has gotten accustomed. Divorce is expensive for both parties, avoid when possible.

Keeping her in the life she's grown accustomed is not our job as siblings nor our job as a society. The middle class is a spot you earn. Yes, as a society we should clothe the naked, feed the hungry, house the homeless (local government have been sucking at this for decades), and care for the sick and disabled. But should it allow you to stay at home with your minor children for 18 years, in a 'nice' neighborhood, in 'nice' housing, with great schools? In addition, should shopping trips to non-discount stores to clothe the SAHM & kids be funded on someone else's dime? If that dime is called alimony, yes.

But she didn't get any alimony. So SAHM needs to get a job. Preferably one that is 40 hours a week, all year round. Yes, child care costs money. Mom can't pay that for you. We won't pay that. She needs a full time middle class job, to pay for the car, the clothes, the apartment, life. Welfare will get her a subsidized housing, food stamps, medicaid/ Obamacare?, maybe the odd voucher, but not the lifestyle she wants.

So in conclusion, don't get dependent on your parents, one day they will get old and a sibling will have to care for them and won't give you more money. And as a Catholic I need to add, don't get divorced if you can help it. Don't get divorced if you are economically dependent on your husband and there is no abuse.

You don't know what you know till you get it in writing

DH had to deal with Mom's bank again.
Earlier this week DH emailed his contact at the bank regarding some other problem. Today he got a call from the bank from another person, not his contact person. This person, last week, alerted us to a liability we were completely unaware of, let's call her C3. We'd (really DH) been working with our #1 contact (C1) and a secondary contact (C2) for the past 2 months. Lots of back and forth calls and more recently, back and forth emails.
Well C3 comes out of the blue about a liability that C1 & C2 completely failed to mentioned the existence of in the past 2 months.  When we found out about this liability, DH emailed C1 and later at my insistence, called customer service. Unfortunately, the problem or getting some concrete info was above customer service and their manager's pay grade. C3 calls again wanting DH to do something about the liability to find out C1 and C2 are out of the office for the week. Also C3 claims that DH was informed of the liability last month.
Uh, no.
The problem with the numerous phone calls is and has been whatever information is transmitted about Mom's accounts or whatever is whatever DH happens to scribble down or happens to remember from the conversation. The only thing we know is he got a call or he made a call, the contents of the call are unknown unless the NSA would like to provide us with a copy. There is nothing in writing; nothing in email that alerted us to the existence of the liability. Well nothing until DH decided to write the bank about it this weekend.
SIL (sister in law) left a mess when she decided she was done with the care of Mom. Well the whole plan to care for Mom was a disaster from the start, but that is just my opinion. When Adult Protective Services got involved you have to wonder what went wrong (Mom running away from SIL). However we really don't know what went wrong because we have to go on what people are telling us and the story keeps changing, even from the same people. I'm trying to impress upon DH he needs to get it in writing, whatever anyone is saying, get it in writing, because it can change next week.