Stories like mine happen more often than we'd like to believe. Combine aging parents with sibling alienation, powers of attorney, bank accounts, allegations of undue influence, and you may well find yourself in a situation in which you are blocked from speaking or seeing your mom or dad, and when they die, you may find that you have been disinherited.

In My Mother's Other Daughter, I recount the events that tore my family apart. It started with the death of my father and the slow decline that followed of my elderly mother. My sister and I, who hadn't really gotten along in years, became increasingly at odds in how to communicate about my mother's condition and how best to care for her. I'd been sidelined for years from assisting her in her healthcare by my debilitating OCD, a condition that manifested itself in a fear of contamination from all things medical. While I was able to seeing my mother at her home, my condition prevented me from visiting her during hospital stays. During the entire last summer of her life, I was blocked from seeing or even communicating with her, and after she died, I found out I had been written out of her will.

Not having access and being denied access to a parent is one of the biggest red flags of financial exploitation.

There are sons and daughters all over the country like me, who are prevented by reasons of geography, jobs, children, and myriad other circumstances from being able to help and assist their aging parents. Their siblings, or other caregivers, may well be taking advantage of their absence with lies and deceit. In sharing my story, I truly hope others will become aware of what can happen, and take the steps necessary to protect their parents and themselves from the heartbreak from being cut out of a parent's life, and the potential for huge legal bills fighting to get what is rightly theirs. All this may occur when money, greed, and frailty are intertwined.