The son of a 91-year-old nursing home magnate is charging in new legal filings that his father has been robbed of “tens of millions” in assets and is suffering “abuse” at the hands of his wife. According to the claims, the future of his father’s $3 billion (revenue) nursing home chain, the country’s largest private chain of elderly care facilities, is also in jeopardy.
Aubrey Preston, 65, whose father Forrest Preston founded Life Care Centers of America in 1970, filed a 28-page complaint against Preston’s wife and her siblings on Oct. 29 in Bradley County, Tennessee, accusing them of violating the state’s Adult Protection Act by “civilly aiding and abetting one another to misappropriate Forrest’s assets.” In a connected petition, Aubrey asked the court to make him his father’s conservator, putting him in charge of his father’s finances. Forrest Preston is worth some $1.4 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates.
The younger Preston alleges that his father, who is still CEO and owner of Clevand, Tennessee-based Life Care Centers, is suffering from dementia and “other cognitive deficits that make him unable to manage his own resources, carry out the activities of daily living, or protect himself from neglect, hazardous or abusive situations without assistance from others.”
Specifically, Aubrey alleges that his father is suffering “abuse” and “financial exploitation” at the hands of his wife of six years, Kim Phuong Nguyen Preston, who is 36 years his junior. In the claims, the younger Preston also expresses concern that his father plans to hand ownership of his company, along with the CEO title, to Kim, whom he argues has “no experience in the field.” According to its website, Life Care Centers currently operates or manages over 200 nursing, rehabilitation, Alzheimer’s and senior living campuses in 27 U.S. states.
“In his prime, Forrest dominated Life Care and its affiliates, and he successfully managed his responsibilities to tens of thousands of patients and employees for decades. But his disabilities have opened the door for Kim and her family to dangerously disrupt operations and drain cash and assets,” Aubrey alleges in the petition.
Reached by phone on Tuesday afternoon, Forrest Preston told Forbes that he does not want to respond publicly to allegations made in the filing. “This is the beginning. What you have is the........