The famed astronaut filed a suit in Florida that accuses his two children and a business associate of elder exploitation, fraud, and for slander about his mental wellness
Famed astronaut Buzz Aldrin is suing two of his children and a business partner for elder exploitation and fraud, while also accusing them of ‘slander’ for suggesting Aldrin has dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Aldrin, who is known for being the second man to walk on the moon, says that his son Andrew and daughter Janice have been using his legacy and acclaim, as well as funds from a private company they oversee, ‘for their own self-dealing and enrichment’.
Aldrin filed a suit in Florida, which showed that Andrew has taken almost half a million dollars from his father’s personal account in the last two years alone, according to The Guardian.
The two children - who are adults now - deny the allegations and said in a statement that they were ‘deeply disappointed and saddened by the unjustified lawsuit that has been brought against us individually and against the foundation that we have built together as a family to carry on Dad’s legacy for generations to come’.
Andrew and Janice had applied for co-guardianship over their father, citing that he was in ‘cognitive decline’. Aldrin will undergo a competency exam on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to his lawyers. ‘Nobody is going to come close to thinking I should be under a guardianship,’ Aldrin said in an interview last week, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Not only does the suit take aim at the two children for reasons previously stated, but Aldrin also accuses the pair of forbidding him to remarry and of having ‘undermined, bullied and defamed’ all of his personal romantic relationships.
Christina Korp, who is also an administrator in both the for-profit and non-profit Aldrin organisations, is named in the suit. Korp is a board member of the Buzz Aldrin Space Foundation and vice-president of marketing at Buzz Aldrin Enterprises.
Elder abuse is cited as a crucial allegation in both sides of the legal fight. Aldrin’s children, via the Aldrin Foundation, have suggested that his legal action against them are caused by an unnamed third party, not their father, who may be trying to exploit him.
After Aldrin sent a tweet claiming that Korp had been terminated, Jeff Carr, a spokesman for the Aldrin Foundation, said in a statement: ‘We are not sure who is responsible for the tweet regarding Christina but we are confident Buzz did not write this.’
Carr continued by expressing ‘concern for Buzz’s potential vulnerability to manipulation by other parties seeking to gain access and control of Foundation and personal resources’.