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| Sen. Colby Coash Photo courtesy of Unicameral Information Office |
Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln sponsored LB 920, creating the Office of Public Guardian with the judiciary branch of state government.
The law gives Nebraska courts authority to appoint public guardians from the office, an option courts didn’t have before, leading to the alleged abuse of the system by Judith Widener of Scottsbluff.
A state audit raised questions about the spending of Judith Widener of Scottsbluff and led to criminal charges being filed against her for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands from many of the more than 600 people whom she served as guardian.
According to the auditor’s office, “Widener masked her alleged embezzlement through a complex array of credit cards and over 40 bank accounts containing more than $600,000.”
The Scottsbluff Star-Herald reported Widener, who is 70, was formally charged with theft by taking, a felony. Widener ran Safe Haven Inc., a company claiming to be an online debt and credit counseling firm. The company handled accounts of persons appointed legal guardians to handle the financial affairs of the elderly or disabled.
Coash says a lack of options led to the alleged abuse.
“And when they couldn’t find anybody, people like Judy Widener got appointed,” Coash tells Nebraska Radio Network. “Now the court has a different option and I think that’s going to go a long ways to protecting vulnerable people.”
Full Article & Source:
Creation of public guardianship office should address problems disclosed by audit
What was Widener's history before she was appointed? Did she pass a CORI check?
ReplyDeleteWill the public guardian be screened that way?
Maaaaaybe.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe the Nebraska public guardianship program will turn out like the Virginia Public Guardian and Conservator Program did, where Jewish Family Service of Tidewater and Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia, with around 800 elderly and disabled clients, cover up and hide their misdeeds, even refusing to turn over public financial records of their spending of OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY to incapacitated people, to their lawyers, and to their family members.
Jewish Family Service of Tidewater repeatedly denied one family member's request for annual accountings, failing to point out that these accountings were public records and available from the Circuit Court Clerk's Office.
Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia went even farther, conspiring with a corrupt Associate City Attorney, Christianna Dougherty-Cunningham, and a corrupt Deputy City Attorney, Christopher Boynton, representing the ever-crooked Virginia Beach Department of Human Services, and a corrupt guardian ad litem "for" an incapacitated elderly lady, Colleen T. Dickerson, to hide financial records. The Virginia Beach Department of Human Services even FILED SUIT to prevent the attorney and client from obtaining THE CLIENT'S OWN FINANCIAL RECORDS.
Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia failed to file the required initial accounting in time, and did not request an extension. The Commissioner of Accounts did nothing until the elderly lady's attorney called to inquire about the whereabouts of the required accounting.
Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia refused to answer interrogatories and requests for production of these required financial records on various totally specious grounds. When the judge ruled against Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia and the agency finally coughed up the missing records after a hard-fought, completely illegal and unnecessary battle, Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia conspicuously left out the records of one account with Navy Federal Credit Union. When questioned in person in court, the head of the Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia guardianship program made a false excuse to deflect attention from that particular account, claiming it had been closed.
Months later, when the required records of the Navy Federal Credit Union account finally emerged in a court file, the reason for this clearcut fraud became apparent: the account showed thirteen bounced checks in a single month.
What did the Commissioner of Accounts do? Approve the account, with no apparent comment in the public record.
What did the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services do? Continue to deploy the Public Guardianship Program Coordinator, Janet James, Esquire, to make eloquent, rosy speeches about all the good accomplished by these public guardianship programs, while ignoring her clear ethical responsibility to put a stop to this unethical nonsense.
In Virginia, if you have a question about your family member's care or your family member's finances, or your client's care or finances, or even about your OWN care or finances in a public guardianship case, the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services will not even return your phone call unless a high-ranking politician intervenes to make DARS do its JOB. DARS will then provide you with varying degrees of nonsensical pablum about how there's nothing DARS can do about it, and it's all "confidential" anyway. (Still waiting for an explanation of how a CLIENT'S finances can be "confidential" from the CLIENT.)
Then, DARS will hang up the phone, scurry off to another conference or out-of-touch meeting, and award a plaque to some irrelevant person.
And Janet James, Esquire is reportedly HELPING Nebraska design its public guardianship system. So hang on, folks, it's going to be a wild ride.
It will help, but it won't cure it.
ReplyDeleteAbolish Guardianship it is just a money making scam for the predators and the states
ReplyDeleteGuardianship is a necessary and important law; it must not be abolished!
ReplyDeleteLegislators are responsible for fixing it by making stronger law to stop the takings and to punish those who use their powers to abuse and exploit the vulnerable.
We have really good laws in Virginia.
ReplyDeletePublic agencies, public guardianship programs like Jewish Family Service of Tidewater and Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia, and the tiny handful of corrupt attorneys and guardian ad litem who have a monopoly on these cases, just thumb their noses at the law, and get away with it, with the help of the Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services and the Virginia Public Guardian and Conservator Advisory Board.