With her mother, Mildred Willis, struggling with impending death of her father in 2010, Stacey Willis consulted with a Chicago attorney named Terrance Godbolt who suggested that to relieve some of the stress, Stacey take over temporary guardianship over her mother.
On October 18, 2010, Stacey Willis was named plenary guardian by the Cook County Superior Court.
“He gave me a brochure,” Stacey Willis told RebelPundit, and said she never knew that she’d be responsible for creating a detailed budget, financial plan, and be responsible for accounting for every dime she spent of her mother’s money.
Furthermore, Willis says, after filing all the proper forms for guardianship, Godbolt disappeared, stopped returning phone calls, and was otherwise unavailable to help her navigate the process.
A message to Godbolt’s office was left unreturned.
Willis said she had no idea that in Cook County there is a special office, the Cook County Public Guardian’s Office, which watches all guardianship cases like a hawk and is ready to step in whenever the office feels there is trouble.
That’s exactly what happened when the Cook County Public Guardian’s Office led by Robert Harris accused Stacey Willis of misspending $164,000 of her mother’s money. The office asked the probate judge, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Carolyn Quinn, to have Willis removed as her mother’s guardian and instead have the office appointed on December 17, 2012.
Willis said the charges against her are lies, citing the fact that her mother didn’t have anywhere close to $164,000 in liquid assets to misspend. Stacey Willis told RebelPundit that her mother had about $30,000 in cash at the start of the process along with a treasury bond worth about $22,000.
Full Article and Source:
How the Cook County Public Guardian Can Take Your Home
See Also:
In Retaliation for Downtown Protest, Cook County Public Guardian's Office Evicts Senior Citizens, Sets Family Belongings on Curb
Cook County Public Guardian's Office: About Us
Statement from Cook County Public Guardian's Office
Response from Mildred Willis' daughter, Stacey
There is no reason that a public guardianship program, or any of the attorneys or guardian ad litem "for" the incapacitated person, should be permitted to charge $250 per hour.
ReplyDeleteThe whole idea of public guardianship is that it's to be used only as a last resort, with a strong preference for other less restrictive alternatives.
Instead, public guardianship has become a feeding frenzy for sleazy, unethical lawyers.
In Virginia, Gregory M. Pomije, attorney for Jewish Family Service of Tidewater, recently attempted to bilk an incapacitated gentleman's dwindling special needs trust of $3774.15 for filing a three and a half page petition to substitute a family member as guardian. Pomije's months-long foot-dragging had not yet resulted in the appointment of a GAL or the scheduling of the case for hearing. Under the years-long "care" of JFS of Tidewater, this incapacitated gentleman had two missing front teeth and numerous unmet dental and medical needs. Yet Pomije deemed the (over)payment of HIS bill as this man's most pressing "special need."
$3774.15 for a three and a half page petition is $1078.33 per page.
Under Virginia law, Jewish Family Service of Tidewater has an affirmative duty to locate a suitable family member and to substitute guardianship, a less restrictive alternative than public guardianship.
Yet scores of people languish in neglectful placements while unethical attorneys like Pomije and JFS' hand-picked guardian ad litem, Colleen T. Dickerson, fool around, waste time, and obstruct much-needed court hearings with their escalating demands for more and more unearned attorneys' fees as the price of re-entry into the court system.
These people really do think it's funny. They make fun of their clients. They obstruct justice, routinely. And the Virginia courts reward this egregious misconduct with a virtual monopoly on guardianship cases, refusing to hear or understand the truth about these out of control programs and their suffering clients.
We need a $500 limit on attorneys' fees in each and every guardianship case, whether public or "private," NOW.
The whole damn system is so sick, it needs to be investigated and overhauled.
ReplyDeletePeople need to be aware that everything you have can be gone in the blink of eye, and not to your relatives but to total strangers.
ReplyDeleteI agree Anonymous. The legal fees are outrageous and this case is a perfect example.
ReplyDeleteIf legal fees are not capped, then the sky's the limit and lawyers (the greedy ones) tend to reach for the sky.
To better understand how we the people are destined to this racket one needs to read the history the background when the laws were first crafted and drafted how the players figured out how to control the courtrooms. The court hearings are theater scripted with the same ending. All profiting financially including job security.
ReplyDeleteWho reviews and drafts and approves every word, comma, semi-colon, period in the language of our laws?
Who controls our legislation?
L A W Y E R S
i agree with b inberg history is how we got to where we are, and where we are now in being protected by our big daddy the government, yes it's the state government jurisdiction in guardianship - protected to death being paid by your money whether you want or like the person or entity that controls where you live, who is allowed and approved to call you, see you, including your mail forget about it the G team gets that too. Kiss your life savings good bye while you are able, in being protected everything you own down to your paper in your desk drawer is under the control of the G Team - got the picture?'
ReplyDeleteGuardianship and conservatorship proceedings are in reality DIVORCE COURT!!! Family, friends, clergy are chopped out of your life, no standing to have rights to see you or talk to you without approval of your guardian, who most often do not want eyes or ears anywhere near their property, the ward is property name on paper producing money.
I would rather face the mafia, the mob at least I know what to expect. With no media, press attention to this problem in Chicago area the public is in the dark where those who are benefiting want you!!!
The public guardian is supposed to be taking care of indigent people. What is the public guardian doing on this case in the first place?
ReplyDeleteCook County Public Guardian's Office is not an office that takes only the indigent. The Illinois State Guardian's Office is supposed to be the agency that takes on those cases with little to no net worth.
ReplyDeleteLet's remember the law signed by Governor Quinn Smart Law or something like that regarding: Illinois OBRA special needs trusts.
Prior to the new law, private citizens and professional guardians (for profit and so called non-profit guardianship corporations) were able to establish OBRA accounts.
The new law prohibits that practice.
Only the Cook County Public Guardian and the State Guardian can establish OBRA accounts.
This is progress? In Cook County yes they will call that progress but let's consider:
There is a reason the Cook County Public Guardian has troops on the ground, eyes and ears wide open for potential wards with income, assets and property this is another hitting the lotto!!!!!!
With every established case, they have a new ward to open OBRA accounts to be used only for
ADMINISTATION FEES - no $ for the ward even if there is one million $1,000,000.00 in assets.
Sound fair and like a good plan to you? Volunteers?
What does the PG do? OBRA money is stashed away hidden qualifying that millionaire ward for .....MEDICAID hey that's YOU the taxpayer are you ready for more guardianship 101?
When the ward with the hefty OBRA account passes on, many times if not always that left over OBRA money is FUNNELED into CHARITABLE accounts - hey, does anybody know the amount of those charitable accounts?
The Guardian of the Estate or the Plenary Guardian creates a new account for their indigent ward.
Funds from CHARITABLE accounts are fed into new OBRA accounts or an account by some other name to Living Wards with depleted OBRA accounts that again will be used for ADMINISTRATIVE FEES only and fees to those who manage these accounts.
With every ward comes a parade of people billing usually on the court's auto approval, auto pay
plan.
Via OBRA:
All billing is off the court records no one knows who is billing or the amounts or for what it's auto pay by the manager of the accounts.
There is so much more - stay tuned to NASGA for the rest of the story.
I’m planning to bring suit against the cook county guardians office. I want to bring it to the media too! I’m outraged by these people. They’re office should be shut down!
DeleteDoctor shopping? For the evaluation needed to establish a guardianship case? And another case of allegations against the family member serving as Guardian misspending? I agree: " If true, then I have to wonder why they didn’t press charges. And in fact, wouldn’t they have an obligation to do so?"
ReplyDeleteI am completely shocked by the letter from the public guardian. If the public guardian actually believes that rot, I'd be even more shocked.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to see this article because people have to be aware before it happens to them.
ReplyDeleteI know well of a case where the Cook County Public Guardian came in, guardianized a woman with dementia and her healthy husband, refused to provide any funding to the daughter caring for her parents, sold the homes (one of which was income-producing property) for a song, (forbidding outside bidders to purchase), and then depleted the estate with their fees.
ReplyDeleteWe need an investigation of the "business" that is conducted by the Cook County Public Guardian's office, to include exposing how they mishandle the wards' homes, allow foreclosures, and sell homes to insiders in the court system for a song.
We need HELP!
Please report what you know to the appropriate authorities.... This website will hellp you:
www.probateabusemanual.blogspot.com