{"id":1422,"date":"2023-08-25T10:00:12","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T10:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/?p=1422"},"modified":"2023-08-25T10:00:12","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T10:00:12","slug":"caregiver-gets-to-keep-ira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/?p=1422","title":{"rendered":"Caregiver Gets to Keep IRA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent decision by the Michigan Court of Appeals in the case\u00a0<em>In re Cederquist Revocable Trust<\/em>, a caregiver hired to care for an elderly man was allowed to keep\u00a0his IRA after he died, because he had\u00a0made her the primary beneficiary of the account before he passed.<\/p>\n<p>The decedent\u2019s children alleged that the caregiver used undue influence to get their father to name her the beneficiary of his IRA, but the court disagreed.\u00a0\u00a0It found that the caregiver did not\u00a0<em>unduly influence<\/em>\u00a0the decedent to name her the primary beneficiary of his retirement account because there was no evidence she made any\u00a0<em>misrepresentations<\/em>\u00a0that \u201cpoisoned the decedent\u2019s mind\u201d.\u00a0 Interestingly, the court did\u00a0acknowledge that there was evidence that\u00a0the caregiver had \u201cschemed\u201d to turn the decedent against his children and that his relationship with them deteriorated after\u00a0she began caring for him.\u00a0 But the court held that the \u201cmere poisoning of decedent\u2019s mind in this case is insufficient; there must also be evidence that Rowan made\u00a0<i>misrepresentations\u00a0<\/i>that poisoned decedent\u2019s mind\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The court seems to be saying that as long as\u00a0a caregiver doesn\u2019t lie and make misrepresentations about\u00a0an elderly person\u2019s family, influencing them to name the caregiver the beneficiary of assets will be upheld.\u00a0 This case is a demonstration of the court balancing\u00a0 a person\u2019s right to exercise free will when deciding how to dispose of his or her\u00a0assets upon death, and the interests of the family and the public of protecting vulnerable adults from being taken advantage of or compelled to give their assets to someone.<\/p>\n<p>What actions can a family take to protect against\u00a0a caregiver that would scheme and poison an elderly parent against\u00a0his or her\u00a0family?\u00a0 Stay involved in\u00a0your elderly parent\u2019s\u00a0life.\u00a0 If you are\u00a0around regularly, you will be better able to detect this type of\u00a0behavior and curtail the relationship before any damage is done.<\/p>\n<p>If you think someone unduly influenced a parent or loved one to change their estate plan or caused your parent to change their estate plan when they lacked the\u00a0mental capacity to do so,\u00a0call me so we can evaluate your facts in greater detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent decision by the Michigan Court of Appeals in the case\u00a0In re Cederquist Revocable Trust, a caregiver hired<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buyers-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1424,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions\/1424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buyerslaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}