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| Mary Jane Mann and her daughter, Carol Kelly, with friends in Switzerland Credit: Courtesy of Carol Kelly |
Overheard in conversation, Mary Jane Mann’s story might be mistaken for that of an elderly victim of guardian abuse in the recent Netflix film, “I Care a Lot.” But for her, the story was all too real.
Mann was a vibrant, 85-year-old woman living independently in Sacramento, California, when a family disagreement — beginning when one of her daughters allegedly attempted to have Mann change her trust — resulted in someone making an anonymous call to Adult Protective Services. Not long after, a court placed Mann under conservatorship; she wasn’t even present at the hearing. Mann had been a lifelong volunteer and world traveler, and had served as executive director of the Orange County, California YWCA. She’d actively saved for retirement. Multiple doctors reported she was competent. Yet like a concerning number of elders under guardianship or conservatorship around the country, Mann found herself suffering at the hands of the very system designed to protect her.
Suddenly, the conservator had her name on Mann’s bank account and trust, and was spending her money and receiving her mail. Mann’s driver’s license was taken away — though she eventually got it back. “I wake up crying at night,” Mann said of her situation in a 2011 CBS interview. “I just can’t believe this is happening.”
While there is little reliable data, a report that same year from the National Center for State Courts estimated some 1.5 million American adults to be under guardianship nationwide. Many times, guardians and conservators serve an important purpose: They make tough decisions and handle complex affairs for adults who are unable to do so for themselves, and who may otherwise become targets of fraud or be taken advantage of by family members.
But as a number of shocking reports from around the country — and the recent coverage of Britney Spears — has demonstrated, the system is easily abused. And when it is, victims struggle to obtain justice. While Mann — with the help of her daughter, Carol Kelly — was eventually able to prove her competence and get out from under conservatorship, her success was far from common. Mann died in 2012, and Kelly feels certain the situation took years off her mother’s life by escalating her blood pressure and causing panic attacks. Even after it was over, Kelly said, her mother was anxious it could happen again.
“They’re bullies, they’re predators,” Kelly said. “They’re still doing it and getting away with it. That’s what’s criminal.”
Who Are Guardians and Conservators?
In each U.S. state, adult guardians operate under different laws — and different terminology. In some, a guardian or conservator might be appointed for the person — making decisions such as where the ward will live, what medical procedures they need, and who can have contact with them. A separate guardian or conservator might be appointed for the person’s estate, handling financial matters such as paying bills, selling assets and balancing accounts. Sometimes, a guardian or conservator is appointed to just one of these roles, or the same guardian or conservator might be appointed to both. A guardian or conservator can be a family member, a private professional — paid from the individual’s estate — or a public guardian, who is funded by the state or local government when a ward does not have assets.
Pamela Teaster, a professor of human development and family science at Virginia Tech and director of the Virginia Tech Center for Gerontology, said that while there’s little to no official data on adult guardianships, the majority of guardians around the country are likely family members. Still, there is no guarantee that family guardians will act appropriately. There have been numerous accounts of family members stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from elders, pressuring them to sign over assets or engaging in other forms of abuse or neglect. Often, a court-appointed guardian or conservator is seen as a way to protect elders from unscrupulous family members, and to ensure that someone is acting in their best interests.
Yet this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, professional conservators or guardians may even seek to create rifts among family members — especially those who are already in disagreement — in order to gain control over a ward and their assets. Once they’ve done so, they’re free to bill the ward’s estate for their time and legal fees, and to continue doing so until those elders’ homes have been sold, their accounts have been emptied and they’ve been confined to a nursing home — possibly with very limited access to family.
In Mann’s case, a California conservator — the subject of a chilling, year-long ABC10 investigation, which delved into Kelly’s story as well as that of others — filed a petition for temporary conservatorship of Mann, claiming that she “appears to be suffering from cognitive impairment and moderate to severe short term memory loss.” The petition also alleged that Kelly had been attempting to isolate her mother and gain control of her assets — charges Kelly said were flat-out lies. Kelly said that she had wanted to work things out with her sister, but that the conservator and attorney had actively prevented that from happening. “It is not in their interests to have families get along,” Kelly said. “They tear families apart.”
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Pamela Teaster is one of the few
academics studying professional guardianships and conservatorships. |
Teaster — who has herself acted as a guardian twice for wards who were not relatives, mostly to learn from the experience — said that it’s not an easy job. She said that the ideal relationship of guardian to ward would be 1:1, and that the highest she recommends for professional guardians is 1:20, the rate mandated in Virginia. Many states have higher caps — such as Florida, where it’s 1:40 — while others don’t have caps at all, leaving guardians and conservators with as many as 100 wards apiece. These wards all too often end up warehoused in nursing homes, neglected and forgotten. “The problem is that if you put a cap on it, you don’t have enough slots for people,” Teaster said. “But I still, 20 years later, would not lift that cap because when you do these problems begin to happen.”
Ideally, Teaster said, a reliable family member should be enlisted to care for an incompetent loved one. “When we do the right things, we preserve the remaining rights people have,” she said. “I have to believe it’s most of the time. But when [guardian abuse] does happen — a percentage of that — it’s terrible. And you might not even know about it because the person under guardianship has lost the rights they have.”
How Guardians and Conservators Abuse Elderly Wards
What makes guardianships and conservatorships so ripe for abuse is
the extensive power that is typically granted. A professional guardian
of a person and their estate is able to directly bill their estate
(sometimes, for outrageously large amounts or unnecessary services),
sell their home and assets, and decide where they’ll live and who’s
allowed to see them. And all of this is executed with very little
oversight. (Click to continue reading)
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