Daughter Of Now-Deceased, Dementia-Suffering Couple Claim Court-Appointed Lawyer Made Easy Pickings Of Parents

In London, England, the Daily Mail reports:

• An elderly, frail couple were charged a swingeing £44,400 by lawyers who handled their simple finances for four years when they were no longer capable of looking after themselves. Their case exposes a gaping loophole in the legal system, which leaves the elderly at the mercy of greedy solicitors who, relatives fear, can charge what they liked, while the family is powerless to intervene.

• Feliks and Rosemary Zakrzewski developed Alzheimer's disease in 2005. They went to live with their daughter Antoinette Tricker and her family in Suffolk. But because there was no Power of Attorney set up allowing her to act for them, the Court of Protection appointed a solicitor as their receiver to take charge of their financial affairs.

• The family was then helpless because the solicitor is answerable only to their client - in this case, a couple with Alzheimer's - who did not understand what was happening.

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• In the Zakrzewskis' case, the solicitor's first act was to take away their savings book, leaving them with only £100 each as spending money for four months. Mrs Tricker, 58, says: 'The loss of independence nearly drove my father over the edge. He took to offering his asthma nebuliser to passing strangers to raise cash.'

• Meanwhile, for handling their simple affairs, the solicitor ran up charges of nearly £19,000 in just ten months, charging £200 an hour, while giving Mrs Tricker just £70 a week to pay for her parents' living costs. All they had were their savings and a flat in Dorset to sell.

• Guidance on Court of Protection costs states that general management costs are 'unlikely to exceed' £3,000 a year. Since Mrs Tricker was not the client, her complaints to the solicitor and requests to see the bill could be ignored, while her parents' estate was being drained. [...] Her father died in 2007 aged 88 and her mother died last year aged 89.

For more, see Lawyers charged frail Alzheimer's couple £44,400.