A Potential Family Problem That Awaits the Rich and the Poor Alike

The allegations of neglect involving Brooke Astor, while unproven, are a reminder that the very rich are not that different in one respect: money can go only so far in protecting them from the adversities of old age.

Whether it takes the form of neglect, physical or emotional abuse, or financial exploitation, elder mistreatment is an emerging problem as the population ages, experts say. If the allegations are true, Mrs. Astor, who is 104, would fit the profile of the average victim: a woman, more often than not white, and among the oldest of the old. Indeed, advocates for the elderly said yesterday the accusations were an example of a problem that has been largely hidden, particularly when, as in this case, they involve another family member.

“This is one case I hope to use to focus attention on a national issue that we don’t like to think about or talk about in polite conversation,” said Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican, who said he did not know the facts of Mrs. Astor’s care. He has sponsored legislation to address the fact that “elder abuse, neglect and exploitation have no boundaries, and cross all racial, social class, gender and geographic lines.”

The broad outlines of Mrs. Astor’s failing health and the concerns about her care suggest that neither money nor family can necessarily insulate the elderly from the vicissitudes of aging.

She lost control over her everyday affairs, faded from view and has been largely confined to her Park Avenue apartment for the last few years. There her care is overseen by her only child, Anthony Marshall, and her grandson Philip Marshall charges that her living conditions are bad enough to cause him to seek to have his father replaced as his grandmother’s guardian.

Lorraine V. K. Coyle, a Bronx lawyer who specializes in cases involving the elderly, said the allegations suggest that no one is secure from mistreatment. “It makes me tremble,” she said. “What does it mean for people who don’t have those assets?”

Richard J. Bonnie, director of the University of Virginia’s Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy and the chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel on elder abuse, said, “Whatever the motivation, one of the big problems of elder mistreatment is neglect.

He added that there was a danger “of everyday exploitation when people are not able to protect themselves and their own property.” Speaking generally, he said, “We’re looking at the worst side of human nature.”

Mrs. Astor, who married into money and then gave much of it away to good causes, never had to worry about her financial security once she got old.

“We gave a quarter of a million to the Animal Medical Center to care for pets of the elderly poor,” she recalled in an interview years ago. “It’s a wonderful place. When I’m sick, that’s where I want them to take me.”

Now, according to court papers, she has been deprived of the company of her own dogs, which have been confined to the pantry. Old and sick, she still lives at home, but apparently not in the style to which she had become accustomed as a society leader and philanthropist — the style, presumably, to which she intended to stay accustomed until she died.

In an affidavit, Philip Marshall says his father has skimped on medical care, cosmetics, clothing and other amenities for Mrs. Astor.

Anthony Marshall said he had no comment on the case when he was reached last night.

The consensus among people who study elder abuse is that one way or another, up to 5 percent of elderly people are mistreated. Some are victims of self-neglect.

“The greatest perpetrators of elder abuse are family members,” said Bob Blancato, national coordinator of the Elder Justice Coalition. “The rich and powerful are as helpless and vulnerable as anyone else.”

Professor Bonnie described abuse of the elderly as “a kind of hidden problem, in all the settings in which it occurs, maybe even more so than child abuse is.”

He pointed out that institutional care had come under greater scrutiny in recent years, but that mistreatment of the elderly in the home presented a problem since it was not within regulatory oversight. Even well-intentioned relatives may be preoccupied with other burdens or not skilled in recognizing problems, he said. “And nobody’s looking over their shoulders.”

Financial exploitation, he said, “is most likely to occur when you have a sizable estate when the temptation for self-dealing may be greater because they’re concerned that the assets are going to be lost and not inherited.”

Another expert, Dr. Gregory J. Paveza of the University of South Florida, said that often when family members have been selected as legal guardians, “the court’s oversight is cursory at best.” The guardian, he said, “has absolute control over your life.”

If Mrs. Astor had not planned sufficiently for her final years, she had for her death. After she gave the family home of her husband, Vincent Astor, in Rhinebeck, N.Y., to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York as a home for the aged, she decided to move his grave to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which overlooks the Hudson in Westchester County.

“The grave is one down from Nelson Rockefeller’s,” she said in a 1984 interview. “I’m going to be buried there, and there’s plenty of room for Tony.”