AN INCREASING number of elderly Canberrans are asking for housing assistance after being cheated out of their homes by adult children.
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Financial abuse of elders is a growing concern for welfare advocates and financial advisers.
Council on the Ageing executive director Paul Flint said an increasing number of elderly parents were being forced to find new accommodation in their twilight years, after having stumped up the cash to help their children buy houses, with the agreement they would live there with them.
''It's an area of financial abuse of older people and there's an increasing amount of it,'' he said.
''There is a trend of children that actually bring their parents to Canberra and live in the house with them and there's financial issues around that about the parents helping them purchase the house and pay bills and when there's financial pressure the relationship can break down and you have to unravel all the finances behind it all.
''That is when the older person comes to us needing accommodation.''
CARE financial services director Carmel Franklin said adult children's business ventures going bust were also costing elderly parents their homes.
''We do have situations were there's been pressure on parents to take out a mortgage on their own property to prop up a business venture for a child,'' she said.
''If the younger person cannot pay their debt then the older person risks losing their home.
''We will look at the contract and whether they understood what they were signing and if they were the guarantor or co-borrower.
''[We help] people cope with the fact they are going to lose their home. And we're in a situation of trying to have them take responsibility for the selling of the home rather than the creditors ... Often they are dealing with the impact of losing the home and also the relationship with their children.''
Ms Franklin said she believed it was because the adult children did not make contingency plans and simply expected things to work out.
Mr Flint said some adult children had difficulty distinguishing in their own minds between what belonged to them and what would come to them in an inheritance later.
''They can end up sharing the costs of renting and the household electricity, water, food, and especially if rent goes up they are digging more and more into the parents' finances or income and it starts to consume all the parents' resources,'' he said.
''The relationships fall apart and they need a new place to live ... and that's when they come to us.
''We are seeing one each month.''
National Information Centre on Retirement and Investments said it was alarmed by the use of reverse mortgages by elderly people.
''You can have the kids saying 'I really need access to money - let's access it from of the inheritance early','' said a spokesman.
''We sometimes get the reverse - the parents want to have the reverse mortgages for themselves to do something with it and the kids want to stop parents from 'spending their inheritance''.
''It's taking away the options seniors have,'' he said.