Compliance Blog

Written by Victoria Daka, Regulatory Compliance Counsel

On August 17, 2015, the CFPB launched the Virginia state-specific guides titled as Managing Someone Else's Money guides, to help financial caregivers specifically in the state of Virginia. The release of this guide comes after the CFPB's 2013 issuance of the general Managing Someone Else's Money guides and marks the second phase of the CFPB's Office of Older Americans initiative to assist financial caregivers. Like the previous guides, the Virginia state-specific guides include four booklets to help financial caregivers. The four booklets are on the topics of: 1) agents under powers of attorney; 2) court-appointed guardians; 3) trustees; and 4) government fiduciaries (Social Security representative payees and VA fiduciaries). The CFPB indicates that the guides are intended to help financial caregivers in the following three ways:

The guides help you to be a financial caregiver in three ways:

• They walk you through your duties and give you tips on Virginia laws and procedures.
• They tell you how to watch out for scams and financial exploitation, and what to do if your loved one is a victim.
• They tell you where you can go for help from agencies and service providers in Virginia and elsewhere.

While the CFPB has only released this financial caregiver guide for the state of Virginia, the CFPB plans to release similar guides for those states with a high concentration of seniors, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon.

The Virginia state-specific financial caregiver guides are available online here. The general financial caregiver guides are available online here.