Coping With Older Shareholders

An elderly shareholder in a Gramercy Park co-op is growing increasingly frail and forgetful. Recently, two small fires started in the apartment. Relatives hired a live-in caregiver, but the shareholder fired the caregiver. Now a fellow shareholder has posed this delicate question to the Ask Real Estate column in the New York Times: “How do we protect the building while respecting our neighbor’s privacy and independence?”

“This is never an easy situation,” says attorney Ron Sher of Himmelfarb & Sher. Nevertheless, he adds, “the board has a fiduciary duty to both protect the residents and safeguard the building.”

Sher advises boards to send a notice to the shareholder and, if possible, the family member, demanding an end to a dangerous condition. The board should also insist that the elderly resident stop using a stove with an open flame, if that was the source of the earlier fires.

Eventually the board could begin eviction proceedings, a harsh step that would get the family’s attention and might get Adult Protective Services involved. One thing a board cannot do, says attorney Howard Schechter of Schechter & Brucker, “is ignore the problem out of concern for the shareholder’s privacy or independence.”