The warning all parents must read before helping their adult child buy a home, as told by a mother who lost everything to her selfish son – and how to protect yourself TODAY

Nothing can prepare you for a 76-year-old grandmother telling you her life is not worth living, that she would be ‘better off dead’.

You might assume she is suffering from a terrible illness that makes death seem like a release from the relentless pain of day-to-day life.

But this is not the case for the woman I am speaking to – Mary*, who did not want her real name published. Physically, she is fine – but she has lost the will to live because of a silent epidemic that is sweeping our suburbs: elder abuse.

One in six Australians over the age of 65 has experienced abuse in the last year, yet it’s rarely discussed. 

Mary’s suffering began as a girl when she was taken from her Indigenous parents and placed into the foster care system, where she was repeatedly raped and abused.

In 2022, she was awarded $140,000 compensation from the Australian Government. That redress payment should have kept her in relative comfort for the rest of her life.

But the money was stolen from her by her son, who used it to buy a home for himself and his family. She describes the theft as yet another trauma to add to her lifelong catalogue of indignities.

Today, the former solicitor is homeless, heartbroken and lost in legal limbo.

Mary’s ordeal began when her second son, Greg*, 46, was living in Melbourne in 2022 at the height of the lockdowns and wanted to move across the country to the relative freedom of Perth.

There was just one problem: Greg had no job and couldn’t afford to buy or rent in Perth. He and his partner Coleen* were not willing to move somewhere cheaper.

So, Greg came up with a solution and pitched it to his mother: ‘Move in with us and help us pay the rent.’

Greg, Coleen and their children packed up their lives and joined Mary on the west coast.

They crammed themselves into a small rental until Greg found a job and began looking to buy a place for his family, but their home loan applications were rejected by bank after bank.

It was about this time Mary made a proposition to her son that she would live to regret: she suggested putting her compensation payment towards a house deposit and they would then all move in together, under the same roof.

While the property would be in her son’s name, they reached an agreement – or so she thought – that she would be able to live there because she had paid the deposit.

‘We discussed it and I said, “Well, I’ve got the $140,000 and I’ll need somewhere to live. I’ll put that into the property”,’ Mary said.

But one month later, after putting in an offer and buying a place, Mary said she ‘was literally kicked out on my a***’.

Looking back, the signs she was being exploited were apparent before buying a home was ever on the table.

Mary felt like she was ‘more or less a nanny’ for the family of four, routinely picking up after them, running errands, doing their washing and driving around the children.

But, like in so many cases of elder abuse, the pieces didn’t fall together until it was too late. 

Mary will never forget the day she realised what was happening to her. It was Sunday, June 12, 2022.

‘I was told we needed to have a discussion. We’d just bought the property so it could have been anything. We were meant to move in the following Friday morning,’ Mary said.

‘I was told I was not allowed to touch their stuff.

‘I said, “What stuff are you talking about? What is it I’ve done that you don’t want me to do? If you just tell me then I won’t do it. Is it the ironing?”‘

Whenever Mary tried to ask for clarification, she was criticised for being ‘argumentative’ and not given a straight answer. The conversation went in circles for two hours and it became gradually obvious to Mary that her son and his family would be moving into the new home – and had no intention of sharing it with her.

‘I was hysterical by the end of it – crying and everything,’ she said. ‘I said, “Look, I can’t do this anymore”.

‘So I went up to my bedroom, which I shared with my granddaughter. My daughter-in-law followed me up the stairs, nagging.

‘Because I shared that room with my granddaughter, there was no way I could shut and lock the door.’

Unable to resolve the worsening conflict, Mary decided to give the family some space. She grabbed her essentials – ‘my medication, some undies, bits and pieces’ – and left the rental.

‘I parked outside the city in a rest stop. I had nowhere else to go,’ she said.

‘I stayed there Sunday night and Monday night and then I went back on Tuesday morning thinking, “We’ve got to sort this out, this is ridiculous”.’

She soon realised her son and his partner hadn’t used the time apart to cool off. They were more hostile than ever, in fact, and told Mary to leave.

‘I was basically told to get my stuff and get out,’ she said.

‘I grabbed what I could fit in my little car and left. My older son took a trailer and picked up the rest of my stuff on Thursday. 

‘They (Greg and Coleen) moved into the new house on Friday.’

Despite having spent her professional life as a solicitor, Mary said she ‘never thought’ to include her name in any of the home documents.

Despite paying the deposit, she isn’t the legal owner and there is little she can do. She has never been allowed inside the home that her compensation payout partially paid for. She doesn’t believe she will ever see that money again. 

‘I realise now how stupid I was but that particular son I trusted with my life,’ she said.

‘I was a solicitor. I hate to admit it, but that just shows you the faith I had in that child. It never, ever dawned on me that I would be in this position.’

Now, Mary feels the government is letting her down once again – in more ways than one.

As Greg and Coleen are preventing Mary from seeing her grandchildren, she needs a Section 60I Certificate before their dispute can proceed to court. Under Australian law, this certificate proves the two parties attempted mediation before going to court.

However, Greg and Coleen are blocking the process by repeatedly agreeing to mediation but refusing to set a date to meet. This has left Mary in legal limbo because she cannot prove they have agreed to or rejected mediation.

‘That process has been dragging on now for over two years,’ Mary said.

‘They can say, “Oh, yes, we’ll do it but our life is so busy and, you know, we just haven’t got time”, or, “We’ll get to you when we’ve got free time”.

‘There’s no cut off date. It’s not going to happen.

‘I feel like saying, “Thank you, government. You are going to wait until I drop dead and then you’ve no more problem”.’ 

Now she has lost everything to financial elder abuse, Mary is weathering the aftermath alone.

‘Obviously when you get to my age, most of your friends have dropped off. My really close friends have all dropped off,’ she said.

‘People really don’t understand how you feel, the hurt that you feel inside. It’s very isolating.

‘I’ve tried to find a support group because I thought I can’t be the only one in this position.

‘There are people who are worse off than me. Where do they go? What do they do? There’s nothing.’

The Australian Elder Abuse Conference was held earlier this year in Adelaide. Mary said the results of the summit were borderline insulting.

‘I rang up this national national elder abuse hotline. You know what they said to me? “We can send you the information about what it is”,’ she said.

‘All they can do is send me the information to tell me that what I’m living is actually elder abuse. What good is that to me?’

When Mary previously expressed a need for a government-backed support group for victims of elder abuse, she was told to speak to a counsellor.

‘There are these counsellors for elderly people who are being abused – but nobody does anything about stopping it, except make pamphlets,’ she said.  

Mary is now calling on the Australian government to focus on two key things: 1) start more support groups, and 2) reform the law around dispute resolution so that grandparents aren’t blocked from seeing their grandchildren.

‘I’ve worked for years and I paid taxes and here it is: I’m in a situation where I can’t get any help from anybody,’ she said.

‘There needs to be some sort of cut-off date for dispute resolution. Say, six months, otherwise the other party can go straight to court.

‘Every time I turn on the TV there’s someone arguing for money for different things.

‘I think, “Why is it that these older people who’ve been paying taxes all their lives aren’t up there, you know? Why is it we’re not hearing about them?”‘

With the lack of support available, Mary is convinced she will die before she sees her grandchildren or money again. She suspects this is the outcome her son wants.

‘Why the hell don’t they just give us a needle and put us down like dogs,’ she said.

‘Why put me through all this? If this is all I’ve got to look forward to, I’d rather be dead.

‘But I’m not going to kill myself now, I’m too angry. If I die now, they win.’

Mary relies on her pension to survive. Thankfully she has a kinder older son, who we will call J, who allows her to live with him as she can’t afford her own rental. 

‘He keeps me busy doing bits and pieces. I’ve been handy and he’s happy about that,’ she said.

‘But I’m always thinking in the back of my mind – even though it’s comfortable here – he could wake up one day and decide to do to me what my other son did.

‘You don’t trust anymore. You lose faith in everybody. I’ve got nowhere where I belong or where I can feel safe.’

In a final act of cruelty, Greg and Coleen have now moved back to Victoria with their children. Instead of letting Mary live in the Perth home she helped pay for, they are renting it out.

‘They’re pulling in $900 a week in rent and I’m still out here on my a***,’ Mary said.

In the last two years, Mary has often thought of giving up her fight to get her $140,000 back – if only to be able to see her grandchildren again.

But she believes it’s important to take a stand against her abusive son – not just for herself, but for all the other victims she has met since 2022. 

‘People just can’t believe it but this is what’s happening,’ Mary said. 

Data collected by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in July, 2024, found an average of one in six Australians over the age of 65, some 598,000, had experienced elder abuse in the past year.

Of those, 471,300 experienced psychological abuse, 115,500 were neglected, 83,800 experienced financial abuse, 71,900 were physically abused, and 39,500 experienced sexual abuse.

Pauline Floate from Beananging Kwuurt Institute (BKI), an Aboriginal not-for-profit community group based on the former site of the notorious Sister Kate’s children’s home, said her organisation has provided support to roughly 100 elderly people in the last 18 months.

‘Unfortunately, abuse amongst our elders is quite common,’ she said.

‘Most people think of elder abuse as physical or financial but there’s also so many people who are pushed out of their homes by their children. 

‘They think they rule the roost and will push their mothers and fathers into garages, sheds or even on the street.

‘Others will become their parents’ legal carers just to claim checks or steal their money.’

Pauline revealed many of the older people who seek her help are starving because their children have taken everything from them

‘I feed them on Wednesdays and Thursdays, sometimes it’s 20 people, sometimes more,’ she said.

‘For some of our people, it’s the only really healthy food they get in a week.’

Older Australians in distressing situations can call 1800 ELDERHelp (1800 353 374) for information and advice on elder abuse.