Home Again - A Guardianship Overturned

THE CASE OF A COURT-APPOINTED GUARDIAN WHO TOOK CONTROL OF AN 80-YEAR-OLD WOMAN’S LIFE HAS TAKEN A TURN.

Jennifer Rodgers walked into a courtroom July 3 and got something that seemed for months to be out of her reach: permission to spend time with her mom.

The court ruling arrived just in time for Rodgers — and friends and family of her mom, 80-year-old Martha (pictured above, at right) — to get together for a Fourth of July cookout.

The breakthrough occurred after Martha’s legal guardianship and conservatorship transferred from Leelanau County to Grand Traverse County. Some fresh sets of eyes noted problems that had occurred in Martha’s case, which had languished as court-appointed guardian Jill Case took almost complete control over Martha’s life.

That’s all changed. Grand Traverse County Probate Judge Melonie Stanton appointed Jennifer Rodgers as co-guardian of her mom. And she said she would have to issue an arrest warrant for Case after Case failed to show up for that hearing. (Most recently, Case missed another deadline on July 11; an arrest warrant was expected to be issued for her arrest through the probate court.)

“I’m very happy that there’s some clarity,” Rodgers said after the hearing. “It’s been a long road, and we just had to be patient until the situation exposed itself as an injustice.”

Lynn Hackenberger, Martha’s lifelong friend who filed one of the petitions to have Case removed, said after the hearing that she also was delighted with the outcome. She praised the manner in which Stanton handled the case. She said it was unlike her experience while the case was pending before Probate Court Judge Larry Nelson in Leelanau County.

“It was night and day,” Hackenberger said. “You had a judge that was willing to listen. In Leelanau, he didn’t give anybody a chance to say anything. He had his mind already made up.”

A COMPLETE BREAK-DOWN
At the July 3 hearing, a dozen friends and family showed up to support Rodgers. At the other side of the room, Rodgers’ adversary and estranged brother, Simeon Rodgers, stood alone. Jennifer Rodgers alleges that her brother took advantage of guardian and conservator laws in order to insinuate himself back into his mother’s million-dollar-plus estate after he had been left out of her will.

After the hearing, Simeon Rodgers said he had no comment and expressed anger about an earlier Northern Express article about the case. The complicated, heartrending saga was profiled in “Fighting for Mom,” a story that appeared in the Nov. 18, 2017, edition of Northern Express.

The case began when Simeon Rodgers and his son, Spencer, along with a state Adult Protective Services worker and Case, alleged that Jennifer Rodgers had taken advantage of and neglected her mother in late 2016 and early 2017, despite evidence that Jennifer Rogers had attempted to make arrangements for her mom.

Jennifer Rodgers was almost immediately stripped of legal control of her mom’s affairs even though Martha herself had legally declared — while she had been in good health — that she wanted her daughter to care for her if her health should decline. Nevertheless, APS and Nelson put Case in charge of Martha’s health and financial affairs.

The move infuriated Jennifer Rodgers. As Martha’s health faltered, Case enabled Simeon Rodgers, who had been written out of his mother’s will following a long-ago dispute, to get back into his mother’s life.

Relations between Jennifer Rodgers and Case deteriorated and soon, Jennifer Rodgers’ visits with her mom were strictly controlled by Case. After the publication of the Northern Express article in November, Case moved Martha from a nursing home in Northport to an undisclosed location (which turned out to be in Traverse City) that she would not reveal to Jennifer Rodgers or Martha’s friends in her hometown of Suttons Bay, apparently fearing they would inform Martha’s daughter of Martha’s location.

Full Article and Source:
Home Again - A Guardianship Overturned