DEAR JONATHAN: I am a widow. About a year ago, I updated my estate planning documents naming one of my sons as my agent under my financial durable power of attorney, as well as my trustee under my trust. Although I am still fully capable of carrying out those functions, I am no longer very mobile and I thought it would be easier to let my son take care of my finances and managing my assets.

Unfortunately, this has turned out to be a bad idea because my son is not being transparent in his purported activities on my behalf and I suspect that he is stealing from me. Since I no longer receive bank statements, I called my bank to check on my balances and was shocked to find out one of my accounts had been reduced to approximately half of its value since my son started acting for me.

I asked the bank to send me a copy of all of my statements for my various accounts and when I received them I saw that several large checks had been written from that account over the past several months, and I know those checks were not written for bills that had to be paid. When I questioned my son about this, he told me not to worry and that he was handling everything properly. I know that he isn’t and I no longer trust him. What can I do?

Jonathan Says: You should immediately see an attorney and prepare a new durable power of attorney for financial matters naming someone that you trust to act as your agent and revoke the current power of attorney you have naming your son as your agent. You should then contact all of your financial institutions and advise them that you have revoked the power of attorney naming your son as your agent and you should also provide them with a copy of your newly executed power of attorney.

You should also amend your trust removing your son as trustee and appoint someone else in his place or, if you are up to it, put yourself back in as the trustee, or perhaps as a co-trustee, so you can manage or at least be involved in managing your own affairs for the time being.

If you have named your son in a fiduciary capacity on any of your other documents, such as your last will and testament or health care durable power of attorney, you should also update those documents by removing him and replacing him with somebody you trust.

Finally, you should advise your son that you have removed him as your agent and as your trustee, and that he is to cease acting on your behalf immediately. You should also demand that he return all documents he has in his possession which name him as your fiduciary, including the durable power of attorney and trust which name him as your agent and trustee, respectively, as well as any other documents where you have named him as a fiduciary.

Further, you should demand a complete accounting from him, making him account for every expenditure he has made and every check he has written on your accounts since he began acting on your behalf. If you find that he has in fact written any inappropriate checks, you should demand that he reimburse you for the monies he has misappropriated from your accounts. If he refuses to comply, you should advise him that you will seek restitution through civil litigation if necessary, and if his actions rise to the level of criminality, that you will also file a complaint with the local police department. Since he is your son, you may consider this to be harsh, but if he was misappropriating your money that is a civil offense and possibly a criminal offense, as well as a serious betrayal of the trust you put in him.

Good luck.

Jonathan J. David is a shareholder in the law firm of Foster, Swift, Collins & Smith, PC, 1700 East Beltline, N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49525.

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