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Comment by intralizee | Hacker News Reader

The problem is not going to be solved by elder education. The mind decays to a state where education doesn't matter in the long run. Manipulation tactics with consistency will win when dealing with an elder person who is not the same person everyday because simple things have become a chore. Basically the responsibility should never be on a person above 60. People need to demand responsibility in full by banks & phone carriers. The young generation don't necessarily have a moral duty in this because the current generation is getting shit on by the previous. If anything I doubt anyone cares unless they have greed for inheritance or love their "own" family members.

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I think one solution people have come up with is to have older family members put money into "trust" in which they are the beneficiaries. Presumably having this setup, while it costs money, prevents someone who is loosing thier faculties from being able to be scammed as they don't have direct access to all their money.

Going after the scammers would also be helpful, as I haven't seen much enforcement.

Speaking as an older person, a relative bringing that up would raise red flags for me ;)

It’s very sound financial advice. It’s especially valuable for married couples where the risks essentially double.

Diminishing mental capacity is a very real issue. You might feel this is extremely unlikely, but you only need to fail once.

Well, setting up the trust could itself be the fail.

Consider one of the examples in TFA. Philip Marshall sought guardianship of his grandmother, Brooke Astor. To protect her from his father, Anthony Marshall. Sure, Anthony Marshall eventually went to jail. But I can easily imagine a version where Philip Marshall was the villain.

Sure, this stuff is not without risk. But, personally I would rather go through this stuff as for example a mentally sound 70 year old and then just not worry about it.

It’s like keeping 20k in a checking account. It’s a good idea to have cash on hand and safer than keeping such money at home, but plenty of people had that money stolen via electronic transfer. Choosing which risks to take and how much effort you’re willing to spend avoiding those risks is just part of life.

PS: My Mothers financial adviser put it like this: “Do you trust your kids? If you do then you can simply things, but if you don’t their are other steps you can take.” Personally, I don’t nessisarily trust my future self to make great choices all the time, but if you do then don’t worry about this stuff.

> Personally, I don’t nessisarily trust my future self to make great choices all the time, but if you do then don’t worry about this stuff.

I get that. It's a tough problem. What I wonder is whether my future self might make choices that seem bad now, and would seem bad to a guardian, but might make sense for me then. Or at least, would be what I wanted to do, then.

I am betting that I won't become more trusting as I get older. Or at least, that's not been the pattern, so far.

A trust is very important for retaining an inheritance for heirs if you're ever placed in a nursing home. If you're in a home, Medicaid will require you to spend almost all of your assets down before it will pay for nursing home care (Medicare does not pay for nursing homes). You can avoid this by placing your assets in a trust. You must do this at least 5 years before entering a nursing home or Medicaid can go after sheltered assets.

https://info.legalzoom.com/shelter-assets-nursing-home-care-...

A better option is to buy long term care insurance.

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