Free The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom by Suze Orman

money, what’s left of it, to go to Annie and William. Not a penny to that son of mine who wouldn’t even come to his own father’s funeral.
    This story is dramatic—and it gets worse. But I’ve seen many cases like this. Money can tear apart families, even families that were closer to begin with than this one, faster than anything else.
    I met Annie and Sarah because they were referred by a friend who thought they needed some financial help, and I was deeply relieved that they came when they did. Time was of the essence. I opened all the Florida statements that they had filed away, and they were stunned to find out that Sarah’s assets added up to more than $3 million. They had no idea. I noticed something else: many, many trades of stocks and bonds had been going on in her account. How could Sarah have known this, when she didn’t even open the statements or mail that came from the brokerage house? A few calls to the broker later and we found out that it was Peter who was trading the account. The broker figured it was okay because Peter was Sarah’s son. This was no excuse and his actions could have cost that broker his job, but Sarah felt that Harry had liked him and that was good enough. Even so, we convinced her to transfer the entire account to a reputable broker here in California, where she lived. She also worked with an estate and trust lawyer, Janet, an associate of mine I have come to trust by watching how she has worked with other clients in the past, to make decisions about how to best protect her estate.
    We put together her revocable living trust and began transferring her assets into it. The assets would remain in her name throughout the rest of her life, then would pass directly to Annie. Because of Sarah’s age and frail health, we also gave Annie
durable power of attorney for health care
, which is covered later in this chapter. Because the estate was large, and because we all felt that Peter would do whatever he could to claim whatever he could, we took an additional precautionary step. We videotaped Sarah talking about the trust, expressing what she wanted to have happen to her estate when she was gone. As we went through the process, Sarah decided in the end that she wanted to leave Peter $10,000. Although frail, Sarah knew exactly what she wanted and what she was doing, and the video reflected that.
    Everything went fine for about four years, but as Sarah’shealth continued to weaken, she decided she wanted Annie to step in as the new trustee of the trust. This meant that Annie would be the one who could decide what was to happen with the money in the accounts, write checks against them, and generally oversee everything. They came back to my office, and it was an easy process to change the name of the trustee from Sarah to Annie. Janet then wrote all the institutions that held Sarah’s money informing them that Annie was the new trustee.
    About two weeks later Peter called to say that he was coming to visit Sarah; this was a first, and it made Annie very nervous. Still, she agreed to join her brother at her mother’s condo for dinner the night he was due to arrive. When she got to Sarah’s condo, however, the locks had been changed. After meeting with the super and calling a locksmith, Annie gained entry and found her mother gone, her suitcase gone, her checkbook gone—and the pills she needed to take every day still on the night table. Five days later the authorities found her in a hospital in Florida. She had collapsed from dehydration and starvation.
    Annie and William, in a panic, flew to Florida to bring Sarah home, and her story emerged slowly. Peter had taken his mother to the bank and tried to close out her account—but wasn’t able to, since Annie was now the trustee of her mother’s trust. He was able, however, to clean out her safety-deposit box of quite a lot of cash that Sarah liked to keep there just in case. Then he flew her to Florida, made her sign another power of