Old People + Will Changes = Estate Battles

Daily news stories report on the trial of Anthony Marshall, charged with bullying his mother, Brooke Astor, into making will changes that could eventually benefit the daughter-in-law she disliked. Similar estate battles are not unknown, as John Eligon reports in this New York Times roundup.

Can or should more be done to protect people in their twilight years – to shield them from avaricious caregivers or greedy relatives? (The protection, in these cases, is really for the beneficiaries named when the elderly person was still functioning on all cylinders.)