Daniel Gross, an eighty-six-year-old resident of New York, went to a Connecticut hospital for treatment of leg problems and ended up, as a result of a conservator’s appointment, a locked ward of a nursing home where he unnecessarily remained for almost ten months. During that time, Gross charges that his assets were dissipated:
Connecticut Conservatorship
How Can This Happen?
Maydelle Trambarulo's expected 30 to 60 stay in Connecticut lasted over three years:
Losing Control: Bringing Maydelle Home
Fox 5 Investigates: Guardian Abuse
Judith Desautell was forced into a nursing home, and her house was sold to pay for it. Her things were thrown out, her cat was taken to the pound and only 10 garbage bags of her belongings were kept—a haphazard collection of clothes (no shoes, no coats), a dead plant and some material scraps: Losing Control
If you are elderly and you are driving through or visiting relatives in Connecticut and become sick, Official Connecticut wants to rip you and your heirs off:
It is unsafe for Americans to live or even drive through Connecticut
The as-yet unsuccessful push to substantially reform the state's Probate Court system in the past has been propelled by studies showing parts of it to be inefficient, inequitable and, in some cases, unprofessional:
Probate woes becoming expensive, too
A phalanx of court-appointed lawyers — acting on her behalf and on her dime — is fighting 88 year old Rose Quattro and desire to live her remaining days with her son. "Some criminals receive better treatment than Quattro":
Shameful Abuse Of Probate
Alarmed German authorities are asking for an investigation into how Margot Claus, a German Citizen, was taken from New York and moved to Connecticut. A probate court judge in February named a North Haven woman, Linda Eger, conservator of Claus' sizable estate:
Probate Abuses Yet Again
Death and taxes are said to be the two things in life that are inevitable but in Connecticut you can add going through the probate court system as well. The system is running out of money and if someone in your family dies in the near future, you will probably pay more because of it:
Calls to revamp probate system in state
When citizens of our state ask me about Connecticut probate, I give this simple advice: Try not to die in Connecticut:
The Scandal of Connecticut's Probate Courts
Connecticut Conservatorship
How Can This Happen?
Maydelle Trambarulo's expected 30 to 60 stay in Connecticut lasted over three years:
Losing Control: Bringing Maydelle Home
Fox 5 Investigates: Guardian Abuse
Judith Desautell was forced into a nursing home, and her house was sold to pay for it. Her things were thrown out, her cat was taken to the pound and only 10 garbage bags of her belongings were kept—a haphazard collection of clothes (no shoes, no coats), a dead plant and some material scraps: Losing Control
If you are elderly and you are driving through or visiting relatives in Connecticut and become sick, Official Connecticut wants to rip you and your heirs off:
It is unsafe for Americans to live or even drive through Connecticut
The as-yet unsuccessful push to substantially reform the state's Probate Court system in the past has been propelled by studies showing parts of it to be inefficient, inequitable and, in some cases, unprofessional:
Probate woes becoming expensive, too
A phalanx of court-appointed lawyers — acting on her behalf and on her dime — is fighting 88 year old Rose Quattro and desire to live her remaining days with her son. "Some criminals receive better treatment than Quattro":
Shameful Abuse Of Probate
Alarmed German authorities are asking for an investigation into how Margot Claus, a German Citizen, was taken from New York and moved to Connecticut. A probate court judge in February named a North Haven woman, Linda Eger, conservator of Claus' sizable estate:
Probate Abuses Yet Again
Death and taxes are said to be the two things in life that are inevitable but in Connecticut you can add going through the probate court system as well. The system is running out of money and if someone in your family dies in the near future, you will probably pay more because of it:
Calls to revamp probate system in state
When citizens of our state ask me about Connecticut probate, I give this simple advice: Try not to die in Connecticut:
The Scandal of Connecticut's Probate Courts
According to an article about Daniel Gross who was placed in a Connecticut conservatorship even though he had no legal connection to Connecticut, a Yale Law School professor had this to say:
"The probate system rewards the judges' pals."
"These courts are venal and disgraceful."
"These aren't real judges."
"These people have no training or background in the procedures and evidence appropriate to ventilating issues of liberty."
"The probate system rewards the judges' pals."
"These courts are venal and disgraceful."
"These aren't real judges."
"These people have no training or background in the procedures and evidence appropriate to ventilating issues of liberty."
The CT probate system (and elsewhere) is all about conflict of interest! The lawyers, conservators, guardian ad litem and ward's attorneys all use the ward's money to fight the ward's own family and to keep the ward under their control. There is ZERO incentive for them to do otherwise, as then they are out of a job. Court oversight is a joke. Any billing is rubberstamped by the judge. Believe me, the foxes are guarding the henhouse.
ReplyDeleteOur family spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of my parents' hard-earned money fighting to get our mother and our fathers' wife of 52 years out of a conservatorship in CT. The conservator went out and hired himself not one, but TWO high-priced lawyers to fight Mom's family to keep her in Corrupticut, AFTER a Superior Court judge and probate court judge both ruled she could leave. This is a sick, sick system.
I fled Connecticut years ago, when I became aware of corrupt court practices! There was a judge - Kinsella - up there removed from the bench for this type of abuse years ago, but he was still allowed to practice law!
ReplyDeleteI hope you do this type of disclosure for every other state. The world needs to know what guardianship/conservatorship is really about - patronage and payola - instead of "protect and conserve"!
You know and I know that if we (the individual family members or strangers on the street) were taking people over and locking them up against their will, and started drugging them, and keeping them from people, taking their personal and real property, and useing it for ourselves, or as the courts like to say, "for a service we are performing for the ward", that we would be charged with extortion, and would spend time in jail. Connectucut Probate and all other Probate judges in the country I have a question. If you as judges are supposed to protect people from this type of abuse they why the hell do you and your court appointed attorneys and guardians get to do it? All of you, judges, attorneys, and guardians took oaths, and are supposed to be bonded (and most of the time the judges approve that the bonds are dropped durring the course of the guardianship), to PROTECT AND PRESERVE against these things, to uphold the laws, to see to it that when these elderly, and disabled people are being abused to keep them from abuse, and to keep them and their estates safe.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that in every guardianship case that a person has money and a home and a family, when the guardianship starts, has NOTHING a BIG FAT ZERO when it ends.
I know that the judge and guardians, and all attorneys involved think that they themselves are God. My famiily lived together helping one another, my husband live with his parents all his life, after we met and married we (my husband, kids, myself, and my in-laws) lived on the same land together, doing what familys do for each other, we helped with everything for them so that my in-laws could enjoy life. We were there for them in case of emergencies, in case one of the fell or needed anything at all. We the family were told by the "gods" point blank "How do we not know that the ____s would not have kicked ya'll out". My husband has lived with his parents all his life (40 years).
There are so many conflicts of intrest in the guardianship racket, on the courts part. They hire friends, ex's, realatives, and all these people ABUSE the wards, they accuse the family and friends of the same things they are doing. What they accuse the family of is all lies, so that yall can take and do these things.
I call all of this INJUSTICE, and it HAS TO STOP!!!!
Connecticut is not the only state with a broken, ineffective and corrupt Guardianship system.
ReplyDeleteThere are national problems with the guardianship system that was turned into the guardianship racket by those who are connected, who benefit and profit.
This is a national disgrace and a disaster, because these greedy well-connected folks have their eyes on us.
The Guardians, in most conservator cases, are a total stranger to the at risk Wards; the Guardians control their Wards' lives and all of their property and assets and the Guardians are failing in their duties.
And, while acting as agents of the courts, fulfilling their fiduciary duties in their positions "of trust", the Guardians have the most to gain and the Wards have the most to lose.
The Guardianship laws, state by state and county by county, by design allow the Guardians, who most often spend all of their Wards' assets, leaving the Ward's impoverished with no alternative but to apply for public aid, assistance which is us, the taxpayers.
The Ward, the so called "protected person" is not protected from harm. Instead, the Ward is at the mercy of a stranger, who doesn't know him/her. The system by design leaves the Ward, with no voice, no choice, no rights and no assets. This abuse of power is allowed in a "free" society?
Is this inhumane, cruel treatment something that I or any sane person would want for myself? For my Mother? My Father? Or, for any member of my family or for you? NO!
Guardianships, Conservatorships have evolved into the new Gold Rush with well-connected persons, staking their claims until the last speck of gold is seized and removed for their own personal profit, while the Ward is isolated and over-medicated.
This is uncivilized and outrageous abuse of power and it must STOP now.
The system is broken -- judges know it and yet rather than come to the forefront and try to fix it, they stand together in a mass designed to hide the problem -- them.
ReplyDeleteAnd when a journalist dares to expose them, they get out their gorilla glue and really stick together.
They could be doing the right thing -- work together to fix the failing system.
The (in)justice system will never regain credibility until someone cleans it up and takes out the trash.
Judges have a choice --- be part of the clean up, or be the trash!
So how does one fight back to save their elderly parent from this abuse? Every time I advocate for my mother's rights. I am restricted from visiting her. I've backed off just to be able to see her now.
ReplyDelete