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Seniors are vulnerable to financial elder abuse and are often victimized, but there’s a scarcity of government resources in Sacramento County and elsewhere in California to address the problem.

On May 21, 2019, the Sacramento County Bar Association’s Probate and Estate Planning Law Section presented a program entitled “Helping the Helpless: How You Can Help Adult Protective Services and District Attorney Protect Vulnerable Sacramentans.” The speakers were Debra Larson and Irene Chu, managers with Sacramento County Adult Protective Services, and Frederick Gotha, Deputy District Attorney who heads the Sacramento DA’s Elder Abuse Unit.

Their presentations indicated that our community would benefit if local authorities had greater staffing to combat the rising tide of financial elder abuse.

New conservatorship cases in Sacramento County Superior Court have risen sharply over the past three years.  Judge Steven M. Gevercer, who presides in Department 129 (the Probate Division), presented startling numbers at a March 21, 2017 lunch of the Sacramento County Bar Association’s Probate and Estate Planning Section.  The panelists, including the judge and veteran court staff, spoke on “Issues Arising in Conservatorship Cases.”

According to Judge Gevercer, in Fiscal Year 2014 (ending June 30, 2014), there were 238 new conservatorship cases filed in Sacramento.  The number rose to 287 new filings in Fiscal Year 2015 and 333 in Fiscal Year 2016.  This amounts to a whopping 40 percent increase in conservatorship cases over the most recent three years.

Inheritance fights are nothing new, nor is public fascination with them. Charles Dickens published Bleak House in 1853, satirizing the English legal system in the context of the fictional case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. More recently, John Grisham’s Sycamore Row, released in 2013, was at the top of the New York Times best seller list.

Are trust and estate disputes on the rise in California? I haven’t seen hard evidence on one side or the other, but it seems that a confluence of factors creates a rising tide.