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Predatory Marriage is a term that comes from Canada originally. It is usually defined as when a younger person moves into a caring role with an older person who lacks mental capacity to understand, and subsequently marries them. Because a marriage revokes a Will, the predator then inherits the first £270,000 of the estate.
Horrific to think this is happening and if it happens there is nothing family can do to prevent the predator inheriting. There is a large piece about it actually happening in a family in the latest Neighbourhood watch new letter.
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Awful. I wonder at what point such a marriage is defined as predatory.
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Maybe when there is close family and he (or I suppose) she has nothing to do with family, in the one that happened used as example, it was a male married an elderly lady who lived in a house in the grounds of daughter and family, married in secret I think she was developing altzimers but registrars are not trained in recognising this illness.nehen she died he had her buried in an unmarked grave and there was nothing the family could do either before death with the funeral or when he inherited all her money. I think a bill had been prepared but ran out of time to control this.
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What a sad situation.
I realise that the lady was an adult and so could make her own decisions, but she was obviously very vulnerable.
I wonder how bad things would have to be for the marriage to be declared void and so be annulled because both parties could not be said to be capable of making rational judgements?
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It happened to the widower of a woman I worked with and who I was very fond of, although I only met her husband once, very briefly.
They were English, she was born in the 1920s, died in 1997 of cancer of the liver, very quick death.
It was only at the cancer diagnosis that she admitted that her OH had been and still was a severe alcoholic. That quickly became apparent to the nursing staff, and I found myself in the very strange role of being told by them that they would only deal with me re information on her treatment, etc.
I was called to the hospital one evening because she was dying, spent all night by her bedside, giving her permission to let go, had to leave about 9 am in the morning, and she died about 3 hours later. I did my duty by her which was giving the hospital permission to release her body to her widower.
After several weeks, he somehow got in contact with Social Services, who sent a young-ish lady to help him out. This began as her going in to clean on 1 or 2 days a week, then moving on to more time spent there with the stated intent of helping him stop drinking.
She gradually moved in, beginning by taking writing materials over so that she had something to do while sitting with him, she wrote letters "home". Any friends who called were told he was doing well.
Within 3 months of the wife's death I got news from one of his neighbours that she had married him. I'm not sure what the neighbour expected me to do!
Within another couple of months, she had moved him out of the house to live in her place on the other side of the city, where he knew no-one, she stopped him going back to his old favourite restaurant, and gradually stopped all his contact with anyone from his old life .............. unless he managed to get on the phone while she was out with her friends. He did that a couple of times to a woman who had been their cleaner for over 45 years, and would cry over the phone.
The old house was sold, along with all the belongings, etc.
He died about 1 year later.
He was in his 70s, she was a Filipino in her mid-30s.
She got everything.
The problem with that one was that they had no relations over here, none in England so far as I know, never had children, and what friends were left after she died were driven away.
But don't think that it is a Canada problem ............ elderly English widowers or divorced men are just as susceptible to this. It's even easier now than it was back in 1997. They go on FB or any other web site, meet and chat with this nice woman in the Philippines, Malaysia or wherever, "fall in love", and go to the country, get married (often illegally or bigamously on the part of the woman), and then get fleeced of everything they own, which is used to support the woman's family.
I'm on an expat site where tale after tale like that is reported, the man never ever believes that he is being fleeced and taken in every which way.
The men are not necessarily vulnerable in any way other than being elderly, lonely and getting conned.
The DM has stories of women getting fleeced and conned in much the same way!
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North American / European / British men who go on websites where they can find women in the Philippines, Malaysia or whatever are not actually looking to chat, let alone fall in love.
They are engaging in one of the most insidious forms of human trafficking: the mail-order bride industry.
The women they marry are under their control for the years it takes them to formalize their permanent resident status and ultimately get citizenship: one step out of line, and the sponsor husband withdraws the sponsorship. In those "relationships", there is commonly physical and/or sexual abuse in addition to the psychological abuse of control. (In Canada, at least -- I can't speak for other jurisdictions, a woman subjected to this kind of abuse can apply to remain in the country on humanitarian grounds if the sponsorship is withdrawn.)
Yeah yeah, some are just poor lonely boys. Funny how they gravitate to Asian women, who are widely fetishized as sex/domestic servants. Normal, decent men who want to chat and fall in love don't use this method.
The recent murders in the US speak to the racist misogyny that Asian women are subject to in Western countries.
Do some Asian women (and Russian and Eastern European ...... and plain old North American / British / Western European women) seek out men to financially exploit? You betcha. Of course, any woman who has never worked a day since marrying might want to look in a mirror. Most women in the countries in question are just looking for what most women anywhere who marry have wanted: financial security.
Are there rotten people in every ethnicity and class and country? Fer sure. I find it odd that anyone would suggest that any form of evil is associated wtih (caused by? inherent in?) any particular place of origin, skin colour, etc.
BTW, today, at least, anyone who is aware of a situation of elder abuse -- whether financial, physical or psychological -- can contact a protective authority that will investigate. That old man could very well have been rescued and his assets preserved, if the fact situation was sometime in the last couple of decades.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/family-social-supports/seniors/health-safety/protection-from-elder-abuse-and-neglect
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Joonie ...................
to answer your last paragraph
It happened 25 years ago.
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