A Port St. Lucie woman built years of trust with an aging, vulnerable man before she became his caregiver, then his power of attorney, then his health care surrogate. By the time anyone outside her house noticed a problem, one of his accounts had gone from more than one hundred thousand dollars to under five thousand, and a mortgage of more than six hundred thousand dollars sat on her home with his name attached as a co borrower he says he never knowingly agreed to.
Barbara Baumgarten, 60, was arrested this week on charges of grand theft from a person sixty five or older, exploitation of an elderly or disabled adult involving fifty thousand dollars or more, and neglect of an elderly or disabled adult. Port St. Lucie Police, the United States Marshals Task Force, and the Florida Department of Children and Families built the case after the eighty four year old victim was found injured in his home on March 18. He has significant cognitive decline and had grown dependent on Baumgarten for nearly everything. Investigators say she used that dependence to isolate him from his own family and to modify his estate documents in her favor.
Baumgarten is being held on three hundred thousand dollars bond. The victim has been removed from her care, placed under a temporary court ordered guardianship, and reunited with his family.
That last fact, the temporary guardianship, is worth understanding if you have an aging parent, a sibling with a disability, or a spouse whose memory is going. Florida built a legal tool for exactly this moment, and in this case it moved fast enough to get a vulnerable man out of a dangerous home before trial, before conviction, before even an arraignment.
How a power of attorney becomes a weapon
A power of attorney lets someone you trust act for you when you cannot act for yourself. It turns dangerous the moment the agent starts acting for themselves instead.
Florida law treats that conduct as exploitation, not a mere breach of contract. Section 825.103, Florida Statutes, defines exploitation of an elderly person or disabled adult to include an agent who breaches a fiduciary duty, who obtains property the person cannot knowingly consent to give away, who fails to use the person’s own income and assets for their own needs, or who fraudulently modifies a will, trust, or other testamentary document. When the value involved reaches fifty thousand dollars, exploitation becomes a first degree felony. The Port St. Lucie facts, as reported, sit squarely inside that definition.
The civil side runs on a separate, faster track than the criminal case. Section 709.2116, Florida Statutes, lets the principal, a guardian, a health care decision maker, a government agency, or any other interested person with a good faith belief that intervention is necessary petition a court to review an agent’s conduct. The court can construe the power of attorney, remove the agent, terminate the agent’s authority, and award attorney fees. A family does not need a police report to use this statute. They need a good faith belief and a judge willing to read the bank statements.
Florida’s answer when nobody else can act fast enough
A full guardianship proceeding can take weeks to litigate the way it should be litigated. Section 744.3031, Florida Statutes, lets a court appoint an emergency temporary guardian after a petition to determine incapacity has been filed, or even on the court’s own motion, when there appears to be imminent danger that a person’s health or safety will be seriously impaired, or that the person’s property is in danger of being wasted, misappropriated, or lost unless someone steps in right away.
The court must spell out exactly what the emergency guardian can and cannot do. The appointment lasts ninety days, or until a permanent guardian is appointed, whichever comes first, and a judge can extend it another ninety days if the emergency has not passed. That is almost certainly the mechanism that moved this victim out of a dangerous home while the criminal case works through the courts.
What a family can do before there is a police report
Most families never get an investigation to force the issue. What they get is a feeling that something is wrong with how Mom’s money is being handled, or that Dad signed something he does not remember signing.
Start with the power of attorney document itself. Find out who is named, whether there is a successor agent, and whether the document requires an accounting to anyone. If the current agent will not produce bank statements or explain a large transaction, that refusal alone is grounds to petition under section 709.2116. Proof of theft is not required to ask a judge to look.
If the danger looks immediate rather than merely suspicious, a physical safety issue, a mortgage being signed, an account being drained this week, an emergency temporary guardianship petition under section 744.3031 can put a neutral party in place within days.
The real lesson here is simple. A power of attorney with no oversight, no co agent, and no one checking the bank statements is an open door. Name a successor agent. Build an accounting requirement into the document itself. If something feels wrong, do not wait for a bond hearing to find out you were right.
General information, not legal advice. Every case is different.
The Law Offices of Travis R. Walker, P.A.
1100 SE Federal Highway, Stuart, Florida 34994
(772) 708 0952
www.TravisWalkerLaw.com
