When Family is the Abuser
As a home health therapist, I meet families with all kinds of stories, but this one struck me harder than most. Evelyn and her daughter Barbara’s pain echoed my own family’s experience with a harmful caregiver. Only this time, the caregiver wasn’t hired through an agency. It was Evelyn’s own son.
As I sat at their kitchen table to complete Evelyn’s Occupational Therapy evaluation, Barbara slowly began to unravel the truth behind their smiles. With each detail, the situation grew more troubling, more shocking, and sadly, all too real.
The following is my interpretation of their story.
* * *
Evelyn is an 84-year-old woman whose husband passed away several years ago, leaving her with enough savings to live comfortably and remain in the home they shared for decades.
She had always been close with her daughter, Barbara, who lives more than three hundred miles away. Even though Evelyn was still independent, healthy, driving, and managing her daily life, her son, Joe, moved in after their father’s death “to help out.” He has had Evelyn’s power of attorney since 2018, and at first, everything seemed harmless. He was good company. He kept up with the house, handled the yardwork, and paid the bills.
Trusting that her brother was taking good care of their mom, Barbara visited often and agreed to let him handle the medical appointments and finances as they had discussed as a family.
What she didn’t know was that Joe was slowly doing things behind the scenes. Acting as the “helpful” one, Evelyn’s son was quietly grooming her to take over her entire estate.
Every summer since Joe moved in, he would take time off from his caregiving duties to travel. During his break, Barbara would take their mom back to her home for an extended visit. On one of these visits, Evelyn decided she wanted to share some of her life savings with her kids. She withdrew $100,000 in cash from the bank and planned to divide the money between herself, her son, and her daughter to help with upcoming trips they each had planned.
Barbara started to notice that something wasn’t right. Beyond the $100,000, large sums were coming out of Evelyn’s account. She knew Joe had an ATM card linked to their mom’s account and that he was a co-signer. So, she started looking closely at the bank statements.
What she found was devastating: Joe wasn’t just accessing their mother’s money; he was legally allowed to take it. So, he did.
* * *
When Evelyn became ill and was hospitalized, the doctors told her children she would need 24-hour care once she returned home. Barbara immediately offered to stay with her, but this time Joe refused.
“Don’t come. I’ll take care of Mom,” he insisted.
So, Barbara stayed home but checked in with her mother often. At first, Joe seemed to be caring for her properly. Then he started disappearing in the evenings. Soon, he was gone for entire days at a time. His absences became a pattern, a troubling one.
One night, Evelyn called her daughter in tears. “Joe is packing up all his things and leaving!” she cried. Barbara could hear him shouting in the background. “Hang on, Mom. I’m coming up,” she said.
When Barbara arrived on Sunday, she discovered the full extent of the damage. Joe had drained Evelyn’s bank account and stolen the entire $100,000 in cash. Barbara immediately took her mother to the police. Officers told them to file the official complaint at the courthouse on Monday morning.
Before they left for the courthouse, Barbara secured the house as best she could, locking the deadbolts from the inside and placing a bar across the garage door. But when they returned that evening, the house told a different story. It was dark. The garage door was wide open and hanging off its hinges.
“So, we had to call 911,” Barbara explained. “I’m freaking out at this point. The garage door is open; my dog is hopefully inside. I don’t know if he’s barricaded himself in the house or what.”
Police flooded the neighborhood. Officers surrounded the home with guns drawn. Drones circled overhead. The SWAT team commander kicked in the front door. On the dust-covered garage door, Joe had written one final message with his finger: “F* you.”
The ordeal lasted more than an hour before police cleared the home and allowed Barbara and her mother back inside. In the end, there was little they could do. Joe still had power of attorney.
“Until you change the will and power of attorney,” they told her, “our hands are tied.”
* * *
Later, when Barbara began sorting through her mother’s bills, she found a disconnection notice from the gas company. Confused, she called to ask why. That’s when she learned the account had been transferred into her brother’s name three years earlier, shortly after their father died. He never told either one of them.
Piece by piece, Barbara realized that Joe hadn’t just taken advantage of their mother. He had been slowly positioning himself to take control of the house. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Barbara later learned that Joe had funneled the stolen money into a money market account, and once he heard the police were after him, he quietly moved it again. He had a routine: pocket their mother’s cash “for bills”, then pay her bills with his credit card. This created the illusion that he was using his money for her bills, when in reality, her money was vanishing.
* * *
Barbara and Evelyn needed to meet with an attorney to change the will and revoke Joe’s power of attorney. But with Evelyn’s bank account completely emptied, they had no money to hire one. Barbara had to put the legal fees on her credit card just to get the process started.
By this time, the police department had assigned a detective to their case. He visited the house several times to interview them, each time explaining that he had been unable to contact Joe. Evelyn, bewildered, told him, “I trust my daughter, but neither of us has any idea why my son would do this.” From what the detective shared, Barbara believed they were actively working to recover the stolen money.
During one of the detective’s visits, Barbara mentioned that the neighbors behind Evelyn’s house had been unusually involved. Evelyn often paid them to mow her lawn, but Barbara noticed Joe spending a lot of time there. Joe once told her, “If I need anything, I can get it from Eddie,” and Barbara knew he was referring to drugs. To protect her mother, Barbara installed cameras around the property to monitor for any illegal activity, and she never left her mother alone in the house.
After one interview, the detective went to his car, still parked in front of the house. At that moment, the neighbor and his wife walked over carrying several boxes filled with Evelyn’s belongings, including her purse and some of her medications that Joe had taken.
The detective questions them. They insisted Joe had been in Oklahoma for two weeks and couldn’t possibly have been the one who broke the garage door. Barbara knew immediately they were lying; her cameras had already disproven that.
With no progress and no remaining funds, Barbara felt defeated.
“Now there’s nowhere to turn,” she said. “No one is helping us get her money back. They start helping, then suddenly it’s too much. I found out the detective backed off the case because Joe claimed he was protecting Mom’s money, saying she wasn’t of sound mind and that he had power of attorney. I don’t even know if her case is still open anymore.”
* * *
After her husband died, Evelyn wanted to honor his legacy. He had spent years teaching and always dreamed of giving back to the school, so she asked Joe to help her set up a scholarship fund. Joe told her he would take care of everything.
A few weeks later, Joe told her, “I got it all set up. You’ll pay $6,000 a year to the school, and they’ll choose a child to receive it.”
But when Barbara later went through her mother’s checkbook, she immediately noticed a red flag. She found two check carbons, written two days apart, each for $6,000. She compared them with the bank statements.
Joe cashed both checks himself. The school received nothing.
Because it was summer break, Barbara had to spend days tracking down people who knew her father. Everyone confirmed the same thing: no scholarship had ever been set up, discussed, or requested.
“If my father knew this, he would be furious,” Barbara said. “Joe took all that money for himself. The only concrete evidence I have is those two check carbons, but when I reported it to the police, they told me, ‘We don’t handle this kind of case.’ Another dead end.”
* * *
To protect her mother’s home and prevent Joe from transferring the title, Barbara went to the courthouse with a copy of the new power of attorney. The staff assured her that filing it would safeguard the house from anyone trying to take ownership. To this day, she still can’t shake the worry; she isn’t entirely convinced her mother’s home is safe.
Her frustration continued to grow. “Every time I turn around, we’re having to spend more money,” Barbara said. “But Joe has it all.”
They needed to repair the roof, but the insurance payout was only $1,500, leaving a $4,000 deposit owed to the roofer, money Evelyn no longer had. Then they discovered the car keys were missing. Joe had taken those, too. They had to pay $150 for a tow truck just to get the car out of the garage, and another $560 to replace the stolen key.
“Everything is adding up fast,” Barbara said. “And all the money my mom should have… It’s gone.”
* * *
The last time Barbara brought her mother to stay at her home, an alarm notification jolted her awake at midnight. Evelyn’s house alarm was going off. Barbara opened the camera feed and froze. There was Joe, creeping around the property in the dark. When he spotted the front-door camera, he groaned, turned around, and walked away.
Barbara called the police yet again, but by the time officers arrived, Joe had vanished. After searching the property, the officers told her the next step was to file an eviction notice to keep him off the property.
But when Barbara contacted the Justice of the Peace, she was blindsided.
They told her she couldn’t file an eviction notice because, legally, Joe didn’t “live” there.
“He’s considered a caregiver,” they said. “And a caregiver cannot claim the home as their residence.”
It created an impossible Catch-22: She couldn’t evict him because he was a caregiver. She couldn’t file a protective order because there had been no physical violence. And still, he had her power of attorney.
“Now I find out none of this is going to work,” Barbara said. “How do we stop him? I’m scared. I don’t know what frame of mind he’s in. Maybe he won’t do something stupid, but who sneaks around a house at midnight? We’re back to square one. I don’t know how to protect us. It feels like we have no rights.”
And the obstacles keep piling up. Barbara and Evelyn consulted an attorney to update the will, but he didn’t handle criminal cases. He referred them to another attorney, one who required an $8,000 retainer just to begin. He told Barbara he could win the case, but it could take years, since most of what Joe stole was cash, and the investigation would be long and expensive.
“He told me, ‘I can put a stop to this, but it’s going to take all your money,’” Barbara said. “And I can’t even get the case started unless I come up with eight grand first.”
* * *
With her life savings gone, Evelyn has had to rebuild her nest egg from scratch, relying only on her Social Security and retirement income. For Barbara, it’s heartbreaking to watch.
“When Mom walks into a store now, she hesitates before buying even the smallest thing,” Barbara said. “She used to say, ‘I’m going to treat myself.’ Now she second-guesses everything. That’s not what my father wanted for her.”
Barbara believes the best solution is to sell her mother’s house and have Evelyn move into her home. Away from Joe’s reach, Evelyn could finally reclaim her life, travel again, visit her sister, and enjoy the freedom she once had.
If Evelyn leaves, Joe loses control, but will still have all the money.
* * *
Evelyn, torn by a mother’s love, struggles to blame her son entirely. One moment she’s angry and heartbroken, the next she’s wanting to defend him, clinging to the hope that the boy she raised is still somewhere inside the man who hurt her. The guilt, confusion, and grief pull her back and forth like a tide she can’t escape.
Meanwhile, Barbara has sacrificed her own life to keep her mother safe.
“At times I am completely drained,” she admitted. “I finally start to see a little light… and then Mom flips the breaker off and we’re starting all over again.”
Her voice trembles between love, frustration, and pure exhaustion, caught in a battle she never wanted but refuses to walk away from.
Unfortunately, this story currently lacks an ending.
Barbara and Evelyn are still trying to navigate this nightmare without the funds to pay for legal assistance.
Disclaimer: All content is provided for educational and informational purposes only and is based on my personal and professional experience as an occupational therapist. It is not intended as legal, medical, or financial advice. Names and details have been changed to protect privacy.
