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Legal

kathyreviewgirl
kathyreviewgirl Member Posts: 5
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in Caring For a Spouse or Partner

Husband with dementia lost all the money in Fidelity. I was never contacted.Do I have any recourse?

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  • jfkoc
    jfkoc Member Posts: 3,754
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    Who owned the account? Were you the agent in a DPOA?

  • harshedbuzz
    harshedbuzz Member Posts: 4,353
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    Ugh. I am so sorry.

    Any recourse you have will be dependent on how the account is owned/titled, whether you submitted/they accepted a POA on file and how he accessed the accounts. If you had the account "locked down" but your husband was able to access it online using a computer, my guess would be no.

    Dad managed to day-trade away $360K in the midstages of dementia before he forgot how to use his laptop. Passwords were saved to the device and there was no 2-step verification. A big chunk of that money was my mom's IRA which she had trusted him to manage. It's gone. He'd made some terrible investment decisions; when I took over what little was left I discovered that it was all invested in REITs that focused on shopping malls.

    That said, I did find an old CD worth almost $90K turned into the state treasurer's office.

    HB

  • kathyreviewgirl
    kathyreviewgirl Member Posts: 5
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    https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/223677#Comment_223677

    It was under his name. He had to retire because something was wrong with. They weren't able to diagnose right away because of covid. And he bought options and lost all the money. And was losing a ton everyday and Fidelity never reached out to see what's wrong

  • kathyreviewgirl
    kathyreviewgirl Member Posts: 5
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    He did the same. Options.

  • JJ401
    JJ401 Member Posts: 312
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    If it was in his name only, the brokerage most likely did not have a fiduciary duty to try to contact you. Legally, he had the right to trade as he wanted even if it was against brokerage advice.

  • trottingalong
    trottingalong Member Posts: 387
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    I’m guessing there’s not much you can do besides consult an attorney that can tell you if you have any recourse. Your name not being on the account may be a hurdle.

  • Joe C.
    Joe C. Member Posts: 944
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    I would try calling your state’s Attorney Generals office and ask if there is any recourse. Maybe not but it’s worth a try.

  • M1
    M1 Member Posts: 6,710
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    welcome to the forum and I am so so sorry, this is everyone’s worst nightmare. It may help to know that you are not alone. I do think it’s worth a legal consult. You need to have durable power of attorney for healthcare and finances, BUT he also needs to not have access to computers, credit and debit cards, and possibly even the telephone. These things can be very hard to enforce in the home environment. My partner was a sucker for every animal, fire, military, and police organization who called and mailed, and I had to hide the mail, cut off the ringers on the phones, and tear up checks that she wrote.

    I hope you have some recourse and can put a plan in place so that it doesn’t happen again.

Commonly Used Abbreviations


DH = Dear Husband
DW= Dear Wife, Darling Wife
LO = Loved One
ES = Early Stage
EO = Early Onset
FTD = Frontotemporal Dementia
VD = Vascular Dementia
MC = Memory Care
AL = Assisted Living
POA = Power of Attorney
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