By Nancy Rommelmann
Eugene Wu recently started his fourth year as a patient of Cliffside Rehabilitation in Queens, New York. He has little hope of ever leaving. Minimally conscious, nonverbal, and quadriplegic since suffering a brain injury, the 47-year-old former IT worker is seen only by staff and his court-appointed guardian.
Until mid-2025, Eugene was visited almost-daily by family members. Court-imposed restrictions now prevent Eugene’s family members from seeing him at all, angering his sister Amy, who complains that he receives substandard medical care.
Why Eugene finds himself trapped and isolated is a complicated tale of years of acrimonious court battles. It involves distressed family members whose efforts to help their loved one may not have always been in Eugene’s best interests, according to court records. Disputes within the family over Eugene’s guardianship and the handling of his assets are what led to his court-ordered removal from his sister Amy’s care and his placement in the nursing home. Her subsequent interference in her brother’s care in the nursing home later prompted the restrictions on family visits.
The saga of the Wu family adds another and often-ignored dimension to the deepening crisis in the U.S. guardianship legal system – which authorizes the courts to appoint individuals to make decisions for those found unable to handle their own affairs. While critics and reformers have long advocated for systemic changes to remedy abuses that make it difficult for families to be heard and wards to escape guardianship, Wu’s case adds a layer of complexity: the growing number of cases in which the actions of families can compound problems.
Experts say the “silver tsunami” of aging boomers is already overwhelming a guardianship system that must decide a rising number of legal questions against the backdrop of emotionally charged family dynamics.
Some families petition the court to end what they see as mistakes or abuses by the court-appointed guardian, while others bring their own internal conflicts and troublesome behavior into the proceedings, which often doesn’t end well for them, says Heidi Isenhart, an elder law attorney who focuses on guardianship and estate planning.
“When the matriarch or patriarch of the family is reaching an end, everybody jockeys for a different position,” said Isenhart. “That’s why people will do things that they wouldn’t imagine. Combine that with greed and emotional baggage, of what they believe they should have gotten. That’s a recipe for disaster.”
Guardianship on the Rise
In New York State, there are approximately 28,600 people under guardianship, according to a 2025 City University of New York Law Review report. Though no organization tracks the number of cases in the U.S. – guardianship is decided in probate court, and stats are broken down by city or county – the National Center for State Courts estimates the number to be 1.5 million people. In the last decade, the figure has jumped 32%, according to a 2026 National Guardian Statistics report.
Many people benefit from guardianship, which occurs when a judge assigns someone to make important decisions for a person unable to care for themselves. Guardianship can be of the person, of their property, or both. Subject to judicial oversight, a guardian can choose to sell a ward’s home and assets, decide where a ward will live, pick doctors and facilities to provide treatment, and hire health aides, house cleaners, hairdressers and dog walkers – all paid from the ward’s estate.
Reformers say independent guardians can be part of the problem with the system, which they can abuse to their own benefit. Despite being granted extensive authority, guardians don’t need to have special qualifications and receive little training. In New York, a guardian must be over 18, have no felony convictions, and take a two-hour online course.
The compensation can be substantial. While family and friends who serve as guardians often waive payment, professional guardians in New York earn between $50 and $150 an hour, according to County Portal Law. Guardians who are also attorneys can earn up to $500 an hour. Amy Wu said she received no compensation for caring for her brother.
Once accredited, a guardian can file in court to be the legal guardian of an alleged incapacitated person, subject to approval by a judge as well as a court evaluator. Under most circumstances, the evaluator will interview the incapacitated person, though this step can be skipped or truncated if the person is considered too incapacitated to speak, as was the case with Eugene Wu.
Eugene Under Guardianship
After Eugene became incapacitated, a court appointed his sister Amy Wu, a retired attorney, to be his guardian. She coordinated his complicated medical needs, including the use of a tracheotomy tube and 24/7 at-home care, in an apartment near her own in New York City. All of it was paid for by Medicaid and family funds, according to court records.
“There was some hope that he would heal so that he could communicate with us,” said Amy, and that early on, her brother “could smile a little bit.”
The family squabbling over Eugene, however, started in 2022 as Amy engaged in a series of financial transactions related to an apartment Eugene owned in San Francisco. She transferred some of his assets into a special needs trust and took out a promissory note and a mortgage to fund his care and reimburse herself for money she had spent to help him, according to court records.
Later, when Amy sought to sell her brother’s apartment and put the bulk of the money in a trust, Eugene’s mother, Shirley Wu, objected. In a letter to the court, reflecting a mother’s boundless hope, she wrote that “once Eugene gets better he would love to go back to his apartment.” Shirley also requested that she become his guardian.
In the letter, Shirley added that she and her husband had funded Eugene’s care for an unspecified amount of money and had not received proper accounting from her daughter. “Where did [Amy] spent [sic] it?” Shirley wrote. “We have a hard feeling and don’t know what to do.”
The letter triggered a lengthy legal process that would put Eugene in the nursing home. Faced with family disputes over money and guardianship, the court intervened to protect Eugene’s interests and began an examination of the financial issues.
“To say this is a very complicated and sad case is an understatement,” wrote New York Supreme Court Judge Phaedra Perry, who later accused Amy Wu of “double-dealing” following the court-ordered review. Amy has denied any wrongdoing and agreed to vacate the promissory note.
In 2023, Amy agreed to temporarily give up her guardianship while the examination was underway, and two weeks later, the court gave the job permanently to Judah Samet, who is CEO of Allied Community Support Services, a nonprofit, according to his LinkedIn page. Other Allied employees include Samet’s father, Morris, as treasurer, and his mother, Sarah, as secretary and director, according to court records and Philanthropy.org.
Although the website for Samet’s group is light on details, Cause IQ, which collects data on nonprofits, reports that in 2024 Allied provided guardianship services and mental health support for 350 incapacitated individuals.
Samet and his organization have also faced legal complaints, according to court records. One ongoing case involves a medical doctor petitioning a federal court to have Samet removed as guardian of her 90-year-old mother for banning family members from seeing her. Samet told the court he has yet to be paid for representing Eugene, and there are no public records showing whether he has received compensation. Samet did not respond to a request for an interview.
After taking over Eugene’s guardianship, Samet visited the Manhattan apartment where Eugene had been under Medicaid-approved care for nearly two years. Amy says she thought the visit went well. “He said the place was amazingly well put together,” she recalled Samet telling her, though he also warned: “You know this can’t continue.”
According to Amy, Samet said the care did not meet the government standards that legal guardianship required, including specially trained nurses. In court, Samet estimated the cost would be $9,450 a week at the low end, or about four times what the family had been spending.
Eugene’s Nursing Home Experience
The relationship between Amy and Samet soon became contentious. In a series of emails, she insisted on input as to where Eugene would be relocated to get the care he needed. Samet reminded her that she was no longer his guardian. When Amy found out Eugene was being moved to the Cliffside nursing home, she started calling the facility to inquire about their services. Samet told her all communications needed to go through his group and warned her to stop meddling. “Next step, I file for a restraining order,” he told her in an email.
The family’s loss of control of Eugene’s care prompted his mother to change her mind, asking the court to restore Amy’s guardianship. “My daughter Amy, she good girl, she love [Eugene], she get too much pressure,” Shirley told Judge Perry through an interpreter. “We can do the withdrawn, okay.”
“No, I’m sorry. I will not do that,” Judge Perry responded.
The nursing home became the next stage for the battle over Eugene. Amy and Shirley often stayed 12 hours at a time at his bedside and, according to staff, sometimes interfered with his care. A March 2025 email to Samet from a Cliffside administrator cited “multiple complaints about the Wu family,” including harassing medical personnel and bringing in multiple humidifiers against health regulations.
Samet responded by having Amy sign an eight-point stipulation forbidding her from interfering with Eugene’s care at Cliffside, warning that any infraction would result in her being banned from seeing her brother. Amy countered that she only pressured staff at Cliffside because of the poor care they provided her brother, including leaving Eugene in his own waste, ignoring his respiratory distress, and not properly hooking up his IV.
During a visit in April 2026, Amy noticed a red bump on her brother’s face. Concerned that nursing home staff were not attending to it, she called 911, resulting in Eugene being moved to a hospital, according to court records. In response, Samet said this was not the sister’s call to make, nor was it necessary. Records show that the rash was treated with antibiotics and was not the medical crisis Amy had made it out to be.
In court, Amy insisted her 911 call was necessary and that she “was not interfering with [Eugene’s] care.” Judge Perry disagreed, asserting that Amy was being deliberately obtuse about the rules and that she had “been unhappy with Allied from the time they came on... unhappy that someone outside of you was guardian.”
Following Amy’s intrusions into Eugene’s care, Samet banned the family from seeing him. Nevertheless, she reapplied twice for guardianship of Eugene, a move Samet and the court had little patience for. “They have done zero steps at all to accomplish any degree of this,” said Samet in June, referring to the preparations they needed to make for Eugene to return home.
Judge Perry went further, stating that the struggle over Eugene had become a “vexatious litigation,” without merit and with the intention to harass Samet personally and the guardianship system as a whole.
Amy insisted this is not the case. “My brother needs someone to sign his papers and do stuff. I just want it to be a family member,” she said. “They want to isolate the ward, and especially me because I’m a pain in the ass.”
Push for Reform
Guardianship reformers say many of the problems in New York State stem from the poor implementation of a 1993 law, Article 81. The CUNY Law Review says the law, “intended as a last-resort protection for individuals unable to manage their personal or financial affairs, has become a default intervention that too often strips people of autonomy and dignity.” While Article 81 requires courts to explore and prioritize less restrictive alternatives before imposing a court-ordered guardian, legal experts say this does not happen often enough because judges find blanket restrictions more expedient.
“In my view, 80 percent or more of all adult guardianships are completely unnecessary,” said Rick Black, who founded the Center for Estate Administration Reform (CEAR) after fighting a battle for the release of his father-in-law from a guardianship system that paid itself $1.2 million over two years. “How the system works is that once you’re in that environment, you can’t get out,” said Black, who estimated that less than 1% of patients leave guardianship before they die.
Reports of neglect, abuse, and fraud within the guardianship system prompted New York State Attorney General Letitia James in 2025 to launch an investigation into half a dozen court-appointed guardianship organizations. The investigation, being handled by the AG’s Charities Bureau, has yet to provide a final report.
Following James’ lead, a task force appointed in 2025 by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a Master Plan for Aging that includes recommendations to reform Article 81 guardianship and provide $15 million a year in support for non-profit organizations tasked with improving guardianship oversight and funding. The plan remains in committee.
Tanya Hobson-Williams, a Brooklyn-based attorney specializing in elder law and guardianship, said that fraud and theft are on the rise. “There are cases where a guardian has absconded with funds and you can’t find the guardian anymore,” she said. “I’ve had quite a few cases of deed theft and guardianship.”
According to the New York Unified Court System, contesting or ending a guardianship can take several months, depending on court congestion and the complexity of a case. In Brooklyn, there’s a backlog of hundreds of cases in a state that has 31 probate judges for 28,600 people under guardianship, or 923 wards per judge.
“I’ve spoken with the judges and they are seeing more and more cases being filed in all the counties” in New York City, said Hobson-Williams. “As a result, the Office of Court Administration has been reassigning judges from regular Supreme Court to guardianship to help alleviate some of the backlog. Many of those judges don’t have experience in guardianship, and as a result things are not happening as [quickly as] they should.”
Meanwhile, Amy Wu’s struggle to see her brother hit a new wall when, amid her failed petitions for guardianship, the court ordered she be allowed to see Eugene only when supervised by a caregiver from a home care agency. Wu told the court said she couldn’t afford to hire such a caregiver and that she didn’t need supervised visits. The court disagreed, and Samet called Amy “a liar.”
As Amy continues to blame the system rather than anything she has done for the seemingly endless loop of guardianship proceedings, it’s Eugene who pays the price. Reflecting on the last time she saw him, on May 1, she said one of the few things he’d been able to do when under her care was now lost to him.
“He used to smile,” she said. “He doesn’t smile anymore.”
Full Article & Source:
One Family’s Fraught Journey in the Guardianship System
