A "contract" where one party is clearly not of "sound mind" is supposed to be null and void according to basic principles of contract law[0]. Tricking an elderly person with dementia or a mentally handicapped person into selling their house for half of its fair market value is reasonably characterized as "theft" or "attempted theft".

The fact that a company is able to get away with stealing homes from elderly people who have dementia without these contracts being quickly voided as obviously fraudulent is all the evidence you need that the legal system is currently badly broken. These are not hard cases for a judge or a juror to consider.

[0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/sound_mind_and_memory

> "Propublica reveals homeowners with advanced dementia who signed their shaky signatures to transfer their homes for a fraction of their market value. They show how Homevestor targets neighborhoods struck by hurricanes, or whose owners are recently divorced, or sick. One whistleblower tells of how the company uses the surveillance advertising industry to locate elderly people who've broken a hip: "a 60-day countdown to death — and, possibly, a deal.""

Indeed, they entered into the contract of their own volition.

There is a nuclear waste disposal site next to aboriginal villages on Orchid Island off the coast of Taiwan because someone handed a contract to a Chinese-illiterate person and said, "sign this and we will build a cannery and help your local economy, trust us."

What do you call volition without symmetrical information? What happens when other people's livelihoods rely on your volition? Should vulnerable people deserve additional protections?

Your comment suggests that _anyone_ has volition enough to decide whether to sign these contracts or not, and I don't see how that's the case here.

In fact the op doesn’t even go as far as to discriminate on context!

So no matter what, if you signed on the dotted line, you’re liable case closed.

No contract has ever been signed with perfectly symmetrical information. So if that's the standard then no human being has ever had volition.

If you mean there's some maximum acceptable threshold of asymmetrical information then the obvious rejoinder is who gets to decide what that threshold is?

(And, philosophically, how is that decided when any possible deciders, or combination of deciders, are themselves asymmetrically informed?)

They're talking about buying houses from people who are suffering, bombarding them with advertising, and finally people who lack the mental capacity to know what they signed (the provided example in the blog, but there are far more in the original propublica article, is an elderly man who was incapable of writing their own name or naming the month of the year).

But even setting that aside, I'm sure you're also absolutely fine with every "Terms and Conditions" you sign up to every time you create a free account online. So if as parodied in the South Park episode, Apple shows up to your house and insists you join their Human Centipad because it was right there in the terms and conditions you signed up to when buying an iPhone, you will happily have your mouth sown to someone else's backside because you agreed to a contract.

If there's enough fine print to require 3+ hours of reading for someone with high-schools level comprehension... then it can easily hide exploitive terms.

For seniors with dwindling mental capacity the situation is even more dire.

If you haven't understood (or even read) what they are telling you to sign you shouldn't sign. What you can't do is sign and then complain about what you signed. That's ridiculous, and the courts agree.

I'm pleased to report that the courts don't agree here in Australia. I was taught this story at university - apologies in advance if I've butchered some of the details.

As I remember it, there was a famous case decades ago where a bank manager visited the home of an elderly Polish couple. The couple had a mortgage with the bank, and the bank wanted to renegotiate the terms of their mortgage. Only the wife was home, and she barely spoke any English. She understood that the man in the suit from the bank wanted them to sign some paperwork, so she did. As a co-signatory of the mortgage, her signature was enough.

The couple eventually lost their home as a result, and the case went through the courts. Eventually the high court (equivalent of the supreme court in the USA) sided with the couple. They said that because the bank has more money and skill, they have more power in a negotiation like this. As a result, they bear proportionately more responsibility during contract negotiations. In this case, it was their responsibility as the powerful party to make sure the borrowers actually understood the terms they were signing.

We basically only have 6 banks in Australia because of things like this. Its very difficult and expensive to open a new bank in australia because of regulatory requirements. But my impression is that the banks here are extremely careful when it comes to interacting with unsophisticated investors. They (reasonably) assume the courts will rule against them if they do anything that doesn't pass the pub test.

(I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.)

Many of these people have dementia. It's not a fair negotiation.

Contracts signed by mentally incompetent people are generally invalid. So this article isn't about that. Therefore, when the article says the courts accept the contracts as valid they can't be talking about the contracts signed by the infirm, but the article conflates both things maliciously.

Of course it does. This "story" apparently is sourced from Propublica: rabble-rousing by deliberately and maliciously conflating things is their entire shtick. Not worth arguing about though; just ignore and move on.

I would suggest that you read the ProPublica article that is the source of the claim, which details a years-long legal battle that then ensued, before you continue.

It's not as cut and dry as you would like it to be. The following is literally about a "contract signed by the infirm":

>After David learned of the contract, he explained to Evans that his mother had dementia and tried to cancel the sale. Instead of walking away, Evans dug in, recording a notice on the property’s title that essentially prevented a sale to anyone else, which forced the Casanova family into a years-long battle to keep the home. Along the way, Evans disputed that Casanova showed signs of impairment during their interactions.

Not disputing this is fucked up shit, but it's unfortunate there's not a super clear explanation of where the legal system is failing here.

In general, it seems like a huge problem that people who probably are not capable of signing contracts can in fact sign them and have no real recourse for dealing with it. Seems like a good spot for a safety net.

There is a very long history of courts having people declared mentally incompetent to enable all sorts of abuse. Being cautious in cases like this is entirely reasonable, even when it's painful.

Sure, but I'm wondering if we can come up with a way to solve this problem.

Convenient link to the original:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35901056

Which part did abvaw not understand?

That's what makes this so brilliant, isn't it?

The buyer has the signature on paper and can proceed with taking the house.

The person who just sold their house _could_ contest it in court... except that they're not mentally competent so by definition they won't be able to mount a defense (i.e., realize that they just got scammed, hire a lawyer, put together a strategy, etc, etc). Brilliant!

If the elderly, mentally incompetent person has _someone_else_ in their life who notices this early and jumps in to clock a lot of hours to stop this from happening, then sure - everything will be fine.

If not, well, the bad guys win.

These scams prey upon seniors who are legally able to enter contracts but do not have the mental state to know what they are doing. Many of them are too scared or embarrassed to get help afterward as they fear they’ll be a bother or have what’s left taken away.

The lesson here is to marry someone much younger so you have someone to take care of you in your twilight years. Also good to have lots of kids and raise them right. Statistically at least one of them will be able to take care of you.

The linked examples literally contain cases where the signer had diagnosed dementia or was tricked in an extremely dubious way (e.g “oh this is the exact same contract as last time just sign it”). And the contracts were upheld.

Idk if it warrants a story beyond “existing laws not being upheld in some cases”, meaning I don’t know how much these cases apply to the whole market or most courts, but it looks like there are a fair number of seriously messed up contract scams getting through in this industry.

> Contracts signed by mentally incompetent people are generally invalid.

Yes, that's why the houses are considered stolen.

How anyone these days can have any faith in the legal system and not see the ways the courts favor money over justice is beyond me.

The buyers do not approach those who have been legally deemed incompetent. As you say, such a sale would not be valid. But then again, can the isolated mentally incompetent even bring such cases to court? Vulnerable people who break a hip and can't afford surgery also don't deserve to lose their homes, especially not at a fraction of market value. There are clear gaps in the system which these buyers are exploiting and which you are repeatedly and willfully excusing. There's a chapter in the Bible about this type of behavior involving whips, overturned tables and an angry Jesus.

Your needlessly ridged, hyper literal view of the world is going to be problematic eventually. (lol ask me how I know. )

Making an unfair offer to someone, after lying and/or gaslighting them when they're desperate or vulnerable, and THEN working incredibly hard to prevent them from undoing or recovering from a mistake. Might not meet your strict definition of stealing (still possibly fraud which would count as theft), it's clearly deep into the ethics of stealing.

Which is the authors point.

The thesis isn't a legal one "these people have committed the crime of theft". It's an ethical one, what these people are doing is equivalent to stealing; and a just society would prevent them from getting away with this asshattery.

I'd hope that it is a legal thesis, because it doesn't seem like current law would allow this. The problem may be more in implementation details.

The article linked in the post contains several separate stories, including ones where the victim was seemingly given a separate contract to sign than the one they had originally read (or was told, under pressure, that a contract was different from what it actually contained).

The law has a concept for that: deed or title theft. "Stealing" is the appropriate colloquial descriptor.

> "In August 2020, Evans pleaded guilty to two felony counts of attempted grand theft of real property."

It's literally stealing.

To some people; coming to a shared agreement and transferring money: stealing

Shoplifting: not stealing.

Interesting that you felt the need to hide behind an alt to express this view.

It's called predatory acquisition.

And it's specifically designed to look "fair" and hence more palatable to the overly credulous.

Is this the most empathetic response you could think of?

Flippantly commenting about something without bothering to read what's being discussed is such a weird way to comment.

much of the claim for “freedom” rests on the ability to trick others into situations of consent that usually don’t benefit the consenting party.

Isn't that exactly how the the greatest acts of stealing are performed?

Umm no, it's how capitalism works as protected under the rule of law in civilized societies.

The revolutionary film Soy Cuba also features this completely bogus line of thinking. The farmer sells over his land because he's broke then goes insane when he's evicted by the "mean capitalist" to whom he sold the farm. Somehow this forms the basis for the revolutionary spirit. People completely miss this. They just see evil capitalists under every stone.

they see evil capitalists under every stone because under a amoral economic system and a high enough number of “capitalists” resorting to mischievous ways to turn a buck that’s a precautionary principle