Court-Appointed Guardianship Abuses Run Rampant in American Courts

Following multiple RebelPundit reports on guardianship abuse, our latest investigation reveals this problem is widespread across the country and there is top to bottom corruption in court appointed guardianship in Harris County, Texas.

After speaking to victims, lawyers, and activists, the investigation reveals that the probate court in Harris County works much like a good ole boys club where judges receive campaign contributions from lawyers who then receive favorable rulings. In a court with little oversight, several victims suffered physical and mental abuse and were left to effectively be euthanized.

Guardianship is a court created power to take decisions of healthcare and finances away from those the court has deemed incapacitated and unable to make those decisions for themselves.

Initially started to protect the elderly and mentally challenged from being taken advantage of, it has often been corrupted, having the opposite effect. Those perfectly healthy who are effectively jailed and held against their wills, often end up in nursing homes away from their families.

Sherry Johnston told RebelPundit her mother was one of those victims. Her mother died in September 2014, weighing less than thirty pounds her normal weight. She provided Rebel Pundit with a series of photos which showed bruising, bed sores, and she made a You Tube video of doctors and guardianship professionals refusing to provide her mother with treatment, instead choosing to send her to hospice care to die.

Johnston said her ordeal started when a family dispute led to an order placing her mother, Willie Jo Mills, in guardianship. Rather than choosing a family member to be her guardian, Judge Christine Butts, appointed David Dexel to be the guardian.

Johnston said her mother’s estate has been charged nearly $300,000 in total fees by court professionals, including lawyers like Dexel and Reiner who charged between $250-300 per hour for their services.

Debbie Valdez, President of Guardianship Reform Advocates for the Disabled and Elderly (GRADE) is not surprised and said poorly thought out legislation has led to problems in the State of Texas and Harris County.

She told Rebel Pundit that her group has received complaints against three of the four elected probate judges in Harris County.

The most notorious judge is Mike Wood who has been featured in a number of exposes in Houston area media. Valdez said in 2005, Woods was one of several judges to testify in front of the Texas legislature to argue for more ambitious guardianship laws, claiming elderly would be victimized without them.

The result was bill SB 6, which Valdez told RebelPundit has done the opposite, leading to far more corruption and abuse.

In an extensive expose, Lise Olsen of the Houston Chronicle wrote:

"Under a court-ordered guardianship, 86-year-old widow Helen Hale was plucked from the house she and her husband had built on wooded acreage in Cypress for their retirement and relocated to an unlicensed group home run by a caregiver with a criminal history. 

In some of the state’s largest counties, like Harris, Travis and Bexar, so many people are in guardianships that each probate judge oversees from 1,500 to 3,000 ‘wards’ of the court. Yet most judges have only a single investigator to check out potential problems."

Upon speaking with Hale’s family, the end result is that more than three years later nothing has changed.

RebelPundit conducted interviews with Hale’s daughter Susan Staley and her granddaughter, Jennifer Goings, and though Hale has six children, Judge Butts, without explanation, chose a daughter with a history of drug use who had recently spent more than a decade without seeing her mother, as her guardian.

Goings provided RebelPundit with a series of photos which show bruises, bed sores, and other signs of neglect perpetrated on her grandmother.

The photos of Hale’s bed sores from one of the unsanitary nursing homes she’s been forced to stay in were to graphic for publishing.

In another guardianship battle, Donna DeFrancesco and her brother Greg said they’ve been able to put lifelong sibling rivalries aside and they’ve grown closer fighting corruption in Guardianship.

“I assumed guardianship was lawful.” Greg DeFrancesco, a recently retired Houston police officer, told RebelPundit.

About a year ago, he thought guardianship was best for his mother, Olga, now 87, but this was challenged by his sister.

“They (guardianship abusers) are looking for people like us.” Greg DeFrancesco told RebelPundit.

By this, he meant that once there is a dispute amongst the family, that’s all that’s necessary for probate court to step in and take over.

Judge Loyd Wright appointed David Dexel who proceeded to stick their mother in a nursing home. The DeFrancesco’s have become close to Sherry Johnston and they believe their mother was treated much like hers.

In September 2014, after the two siblings reconciled, they wrestled guardianship back into his hands.

Greg DeFrancesco said when he finally removed his mother from the nursing him she was near death, dehydrated, and malnourished.

He told RebelPundit he believes his mother was effectively being euthanized. She’s now recovering.

Full Article and Source:
Court-Appointed Guardianship Abuses Run Rampant in American Courts

See Also:
NASGA:  Willie Jo Mills, Texas
Victim

GRADE:  Guardianship Reform Advocates for the Disabled and Elderly