World's 2nd Richest Woman Placed Under Guardianship

Liliane Bettencourt, the heiress to the L'Oreal cosmetics fortune, has recently been found to be mentally incapable of managing her affairs by a French judge. This decision now grants control of all of her finances to her daughter and two grandsons. Her daughter has been fighting in court for years to protect her mother from being further victimized and financially exploited. Apparently, she had been exploited up to an amount close to a billion dollars by a photographer close to her who she even named as her sole beneficiary to her estate and life insurance policies in a new will. A will that would surely have been written while suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The reasons that the judge saw fit to place her affairs under the guardianship of her family members.

Even the second richest woman in the world is not immune from the mental declinations of age and the vultures that will prey upon the elderly during times of mental incapacitation.

For more information about guardianships and whether that may be a correct course of action to take for your family, you should consult a professional Estate Planning Attorney.

*This blog entry was not written by an Attorney and should not be constituted as professional legal advice.