It took 16 years for this son to win the legal battle against a predatory caregiver

A man in New Zealand named Leslie Willis installed a baby monitor in his aging father's room to help him keep an eye on his dad, who was sick with cancer. The things he heard through the monitor raised his suspicions about his father's caregiver, Pamela Thompson.

Leslie then searched his father's home and among other things, found a will in which his father was going to leave his entire estate to the caregiver. When Leslie asked his father about this, his father became upset because that will did not reflect his true wishes. The father went to his lawyer and changed the will back to his previous plan of leaving all to his son.

That wasn't all, though. Leslie also found out that his father had bought $50,000 worth of bonds and put them in joint names with the caregiver. Ms. Thompson claimed that she and the father had a close friendship and he wanted to give her this money, even though she had only worked with this family for a few months.

After the father's death, the mess ended up in court, as you no doubt would expect. Leslie claimed that the caregiver had unduly influenced his vulnerable father. The court battle over the $50,000 bonds took 16 years to resolve. Yes, 16 years! Eventually Leslie won the battle but what a horrible ordeal he went through thanks to one greedy person who tried to take advantage of a sick, old man. Fortunately the father had time to make a new will or that would probably still be in court as well.

It's not always a caregiver who tries to take advantage. It could be a friend, neighbour, or someone in the family. This case should serve as an example of how vulnerable our aging parents can be to opportunistic folks.

If you'd like to read more about this story, click here to see a blog post from the blog called The Sibling Fight (one of my favourite blogs to read) or click here to read the newspaper story that appeared in www.stuff.co.nz .