NORWICH — State Police are investigating allegations that the chairwoman of the Norwich Selectboard financially exploited a man who was cognitively impaired.
When Bill Clauson, a well-known Upper Valley lawyer who died at 81 in July from Alzheimer’s and Lewy body dementia, moved in to Mary Layton’s home in Norwich in 2016 he had more than $200,000 in savings, according to his family.
But in 2024, when Layton returned Clauson to the Hanover home where he and his wife raised their six children, he had less than $1,400 and needed around-the-clock care, the family says.
“My dad was a victim of financial abuse,” Laura Clauson, Clauson’s eldest daughter, said in an interview. “He helped a lot of people, and at the end of his life, nobody helped him.”
Laura Clauson reported her allegations of financial exploitation to Vermont’s Adult Protective Services on June 27. A few weeks later, Adult Protective Services alerted Laura they had taken the complaint to the police.
The Vermont State Police are “looking into” the allegations, Det. Sgt. Kelsey Knapp said in a phone interview earlier this month. Knapp declined to share any further details about the investigation.
Layton denied exploiting Clauson financially. She acknowledged that she knew he would need costly care at the end of his life, but she didn’t think it was her responsibility to prevent him from spending on trips together and other expenses.
“I absolutely followed his heart and what he wanted to do,” she said in an interview this month.
‘Something had changed’
It was about 25 years ago when Helen Clauson started seeing a shift in behavior in her husband, Bill, that in hindsight she attributes to the early stages of his long cognitive decline.
“I noticed a real personality change,” Helen Clauson said. “So did his colleagues in the office. When it was happening, I never imagined anything could be happening to his brain.”
Instead of being patient and kind, Bill Clauson became angered easily and started staying out late with other women, she said.
By 2002, Helen Clauson had asked her husband to leave the home they shared on Greensboro Road, and he moved to a condominium in Lebanon.
George Spaneas worked with Clauson at his law firm from 1999 to 2011.
In an interview this month, Spaneas said he didn’t notice a significant change in Clauson’s personality in the office, but “there was general consensus that something had changed in Bill,” he said.
“He didn’t seem to remember things as well as when I first started working there,” Spaneas said.
In 2011, Clauson received a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment following comprehensive neuropsychological testing at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, according to medical records provided to the Valley News by Clauson’s family.
Clauson continued to work as a trial lawyer until 2013, when the state suspended his law license for six months over a conflict of interest violation involving clients in a domestic assault case.
“Once he was suspended, he didn’t have the cognitive ability to get unsuspended,” Laura Clauson said.
Her father never worked again.
‘An agreement from the start’
Clauson and Layton met through an online dating site in 2015, Layton said. When Clauson moved in with her in 2016, Layton’s name was added to Clauson’s Mascoma Bank account.
In the next three years, $107,000 in Social Security checks and $222,000 from Clauson’s retirement account were deposited into the joint account.
“Our finances were co-mingled and that was an agreement at the start,” Layton said in an interview.
In 2017, doctors tentatively diagnosed Clauson with dementia or Alzheimer’s based on his functional decline and cognitive symptoms. After his death, a brain autopsy confirmed he had Alzheimer’s and Lewy body dementia.
In 2018, Layton wrote herself checks from the joint account totaling over $66,000. Clauson signed another $70,000 in checks to Layton over the next two years.
From 2022 to 2024, $89,000 worth of Clauson’s roughly $4,000 monthly social security checks were transferred to Layton’s personal checking account.
“After about the first four years, he couldn’t manage the accounts himself so that’s why,” Layton said.
The money went to living expenses, travel and improvements to the Norwich home the couple shared, including installing railings on the stairwell to help Clauson get around, Layton said.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Clauson spent close to $80,000 taking Layton on cruises, according to invoices and bank statements Clauson’s family provided to the Valley News.
“He said: ‘Keep scheduling these trips’,” Layton said in the interview. “Over and over again. He just wanted to travel and have some fun before he got worse, so I went along with it.”
In December of 2023, Layton wrote an email to Clauson’s family saying she no longer had the time nor the money to care for Clauson. She also told them about Clauson’s own financial situation.
“I am profoundly shocked to understand from you that my 80-year-old father with Alzheimer’s has $1,383.76 to his name,” Laura Clauson wrote to Layton. “I am deeply upset that this is the situation we find ourselves in and will always struggle to comprehend how this has been allowed to happen.”
A question of consent
Vermont law 13 V.S.A 1380 defines financial exploitation as willfully using, withholding, transferring, or disposing of funds or property of a vulnerable adult, without legal authority for wrongful profit or advantage or through the use of undue influence, harassment, duress or fraud.
“It’s when someone uses their relationship or position of power to get something they’re not entitled to,” John Gordon, director of Vermont’s Adult Protective Services, or APS, said in a phone interview. “If I’m willing to give you $20 but then my memory starts to fail and five minutes later I give you $20 again, that’s willingly but the person doesn’t understand the capacity.”
It’s very difficult for investigators to determine whether someone gave away their money willingly or not after the fact, Gordon said.
The agency uses medical records to see when the alleged victim would’ve had decision-making capacity, looks for changes in spending patterns and has frank conversations with the alleged perpetrator and victim, if possible, to try and determine whether “the alleged victim wouldn’t have given away their money if they were in a better mental frame of mind,” Gordon said.
Nationally, elder financial exploitation is on the rise. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, reported that in 2023 individuals aged 60 and older suffered losses exceeding $3.4 billion due to fraud, an 11% increase from the previous year.
Being “very deliberate and careful” when choosing a power of attorney and who has access to one’s bank accounts are two good initial steps in combating financial exploitation, Gordon said.
To report suspected abuse of a vulnerable adult go to: https://dlp.vermont.gov/aps/make-aps-report.
End of life care
In July 2024, Clauson moved back in with his wife on Greensboro Road.
Helen Clauson, who never divorced her husband and was a stay-at-home mom until she became a property manager in 1991, said she “got to really know what it means for better or worse, in sickness and in health,” while she cared for Clauson in his final year of life. “For me, the vows meant something. I took them seriously.”
Layton did not attempt to see Clauson or speak with him again.
“That was just the end right there,” Layton said.
Three of the Clausons’ children returned to their family home in Hanover to care for their father at the end of his life. Laura Clauson returned from England with her husband and 11-year-old son; Sean Clauson moved back in from Hawaii; and Ryan Clauson moved in from Lebanon.
“The family has had to sacrifice careers and personal time to provide the care he requires —a burden that could have been significantly reduced if Ms. Layton had preserved even a portion of his substantial income and savings for his anticipated care needs,” Laura Clauson wrote in her complaint to APS.
After Clauson’s death on July 31, the family struggled to pay for all of the necessary arrangements.
“We’ve had borrow money from my brother to get my dad a headstone,” Laura Clauson said.
The Clauson family is hopeful that the investigation will shed light on the situation.
“This is my father speaking, but I believe in the process,” Laura Clauson said. “… I want recognition that Dad was a victim of financial abuse and I hope reporting it might help someone else.”