It’s bad enough to be elderly and alone. It’s worse when those who are supposed to take care of you fleece you instead. Oregon has the opportunity to make fleecing more difficult with the passage of House Bill 2221.

If the measure is approved, Oregon will tighten the rules surrounding those who have power of attorney and thus can make financial and other decisions for someone else. The measure would:

• Require two witnesses to the signing of a power of attorney document, which must be notarized. Currently, neither is necessary.

• Hold the person who has the power of attorney liable for losses caused by misuse of the power.

• Require that person to keep good records of what financial decisions were made and how money was spent, and give others the right to ask a judge to review those records.

Financial abuse of the elderly is a problem. One large law firm in Georgia estimated that it would cost the county’s seniors nearly $3 billion in 2014, and the problem is growing as the size of the elderly population grows.

It happens in part because as many as a third of all elderly live alone, in part by the growing number of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease, and in part because as we age our brains change, making it more difficult to read other people accurately. Women are more likely to be victims than men.

Not only is financial elder abuse expensive, but it’s also all too common: One in six Americans over the age of 65 already has suffered from some form of financial abuse.

Some of it comes from strangers, but relatives can also be abusers. A Forest Grove attorney was sentenced to more than three years in prison in 2013 because he had improperly taken more than $80,000 from his mother and mother-in-law.

The House measure will not end the financial abuse of the elderly, of course. But the bill will make financial abuse more difficult and in doing so, protect at least some elderly Oregonians from the problem. It’s worth the effort.