This is the first in a series of eight Background Briefs funded by the U.S. Justice Department's Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) and produced by the National Center for State Courts and its partners for the purpose of assessing the scope of conservator exploitation and its impact on the victims.
This component of the project, which was developed by the Virginia Tech Center for Gerontology, compiled descriptions of recent conservator exploitation cases that received media attention, with an analysis of nine cases to show the dynamics, processes, and impacts of conservator exploitation on victims and their families. One key finding was that more media attention was given to exploitation by professional conservators compared to exploitation by conservators who were family members. This may be because professional exploitation cases usually involved multiple people under the conservator's care, and the aggregated dollar amount was typically high. A second key finding was that in many cases of exploitation, the estate was plundered prior to detection of the problem itself or before authorities with the power to intervene were notified. A third key finding was that family members affected by their relative's exploitation were often aggrieved, which resulted in the mobilization of families in advocating for systemic change.