SUTTONS BAY – The story begins at Martha Rothaug’s upright Yamaha.
It was June 2016. Martha, a former concert pianist, was becoming increasingly forgetful, struggling to play songs she once knew by heart. A doctor told Martha’s daughter, Jen Rodgers, the misplayed keys could be an early sign of dementia.
For Martha — “Marty” to family and friends — at stake was not only her health and where she would live in the final years of her life, but control of her $1.8 million estate.
The family’s accumulated wealth was far above average, yet their problem will sound familiar to many — an aging parent who wants to live independently; adult children who disagree about their parent’s care.
Particularly alarming in this case, however, is that Marty, 78, had planned for such an eventuality, consulting with an attorney on a 40-page estate plan she signed more than a decade before a doctor flagged the memory issues.
Jen was the person Marty trusted to handle her end-of-life care and decision-making. In 2007 and again in 2014, Marty put those wishes in writing.
“I nominate Jennifer A. Rodgers to serve as Guardian over my person and Conservator over my estate if a protective order over my person or estate is commenced after the execution of this power of attorney,” a document Marty signed and notarized Sept. 26, 2014 states.
But in March 2017, a state worker cited unsubstantiated complaints about Jen in a court petition. A Leelanau County Probate Court judge responded by appointing Jill Case, a woman neither Jen nor Marty had ever met, to be Marty’s guardian and conservator.
This decision by Judge Larry Nelson gave Case control over where Marty lived, how her money was spent and who could visit her. It also sparked a legal battle that would fester for years, occupy two northern Michigan probate courts, temporarily separate a mother from her daughter and rack up thousands in attorneys fees.
Jen, who previously shared part of this story with the Northern Express, said she tries not to dwell on the past, but that’s not easy.
“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t have worked together as a family,” she said.
A family divided
Marty has a son, Simeon Rodgers, Jen’s older brother who lives in Ohio.
Court documents show in the mid-2000s, Marty and Simeon became estranged after the family’s once successful metal fabrication company fell on hard times.
A resulting bankruptcy forced the sale of Marty’s Lake Leelanau home and in 2007, she sued Simeon in the Common Pleas Court of Montgomery County, Ohio, for breach of contract. Simeon counter-sued for defamation and infliction of emotional distress, court records show, and several months later, Marty wrote her son out of her will.
Simeon says Jen manipulated their mother into changing her will, that his lawsuit was a standard response and not intended to be punitive.
“My sister engineered all that,” Simeon said, of being removed from his mother’s will. “When you are sued, do you know the law well enough to know you always file a countersuit? You always do.”
Jen disputes Simeon’s characterization of her. In 2015, records show Simeon and Marty did begin to try to repair their relationship.
By then Marty had moved to Suttons Bay and soon after loaned Jen money so she could purchase her own home nearby.
Jen worked as a traveling surgical technician and she recalled that for the next several years, the two women’s lives adhered to a predictable schedule.
Jen would go to Florida in the winter for work, Martha would visit for a few weeks and then Jen would return to Michigan every spring. During the rest of the year, mother and daughter saw each other several times a week, going out to dinner, sharing home decorating ideas and visiting each other’s homes to watch HGTV.
This changed abruptly in March 2017.
While Jen was in Florida, Simeon’s adult son, Spencer Rodgers, paid Martha a visit.
The APS complaint
“No one lives with Martha. No one has been assigned to care for her. She has rotting food in her fridge. Jennifer has had no regular physical contact for 4 years with Martha.”
These words anchor a March 3, 2017 investigation report by Adult Protective Services, filed after staff at the state agency received a complaint from Spencer.
After that, things happened fast.
An APS worker, Michelle Hagerman, interviewed Simeon about what Spencer said he found in Marty’s refrigerator. In her investigative report, Hagerman made broad conclusions about Marty and Jen’s relationship, many of which court officials found later to be false or unsubstantiated.
The report stated Marty wasn’t taking her medications, and suggested Jen was not only neglecting Marty but was preying on her financially — observations which Simeon continues to contend were true.
The APS report stated Jen borrowed money from Marty and wasn’t paying it back, and that Jen “might” have taken out a $150,000 loan against Marty’s house in Marty’s name.
It’s unclear how Jen could have done this while also not having any regular physical contact with her mother in four years — a non sequitur in the report Hagerman didn’t explain.
Instead, Hagerman filed an emergency petition in Leelanau County’s probate court, seeking to have a judge appoint a temporary guardian for Marty.
Emergency guardianship petitions are designed to protect vulnerable adults who are in immediate danger. When a probate court register receives such a petition, he or she often schedules a hearing within a few days. Emergency petitions filed “ex parte,” as it was in Marty’s case, means an opposing party — in this case, Jen — doesn’t have to be notified.
“At this point, I’m a perpetrator,” Jen said, of how she believed the court and the state viewed her. “I was panicking. I should have caught a plane. But I didn’t know the magnitude of what was getting ready to happen.”
If Jen had booked a flight home, she said she could have shown Nelson a folder of documents proving the APS complaint was false.
There were notes from Marty’s doctor stating Jen should do what she could to help her mother maintain her independence. Paperwork from a service Jen arranged to assess Marty’s driving ability, as well as cost estimates from a home health care agency — tasks Jen completed before leaving for Florida.
Finally, Jen could have explained how the $60,000 real estate loan was so she could live near her mother.
Hagerman spoke with Simeon and Spencer, but didn’t interview Jen. Consequently, none of the above information was in Hagerman’s investigation report.
Four days after the emergency petition was filed, Nelson signed it. And appointed Case — who Hagerman suggested — as Marty’s temporary guardian.
Losing Control
In family disputes, it’s not unusual for a judge to see an unrelated third party as an objective solution.
It is unusual, however, for a judge to override signed durable power of attorney and patient advocate documents, which the law says must be followed unless a judge decides there are extenuating circumstances.
“If I have trust documents or a durable power of attorney before me, it’s very, very rare that I will override them,” said Melanie Stanton, who served as Grand Traverse County’s probate court judge from 2013 to 2021.
Judges do have the power to override these documents when they suspect abuse or neglect. A transcript of the emergency hearing shows Nelson appeared to be under the impression that Jen was angling for her mother’s money.
That suspicion was amplified by Hagerman, who testified — without evidence, the transcript shows — that Marty’s dementia may have affected earlier decision-making.
Judges often defer to recommendations from APS investigators. They also rely heavily on a type of court-appointed attorney called a “guardian ad litem,” assigned to meet with a vulnerable person like Marty and report their findings to the court.
The guardian ad litem in Marty’s case was Traverse City attorney Mattias Johnson. The court asked Johnson to review documents, meet with Marty and offer an opinion on whether the order granting temporary guardianship should be made permanent.
Johnson in his April 4, 2017 report described Marty as charming and well-dressed, and her home as beautiful and tidy. He acknowledged Simeon’s removal from Marty’s will and the legal documents naming Jen as her mother’s choice of decision-maker and beneficiary.
Johnson spoke with Marty’s financial manager, John Schubert who confirmed Marty’s substantial investments and stated Jen was helpful to Marty in financial matters and nothing she did struck him as untoward.
Johnson then recommended continuation of the outside guardian.
“While it is of yet unclear whether there has been any actual impropriety, GAL believes that the appearance of impropriety lends itself to continuing with a third party management of Martha’s finances and health decisions,” Johnson wrote in his report to the court.
Nelson, who declined comment for this story, entered an order May 17, 2017, making Case’s role as Marty’s guardian and conservator a permanent appointment.
Background Checks
Case appeared to have the right credentials to make decisions about the health, housing and financial needs of an elderly person showing signs of vulnerability.
She worked for Grand Traverse County’s Commission on Aging and her county personnel records show she passed FBI, Michigan State Police and state Department of Health and Human Services criminal background checks.
Probate courts differ from one county to the next on whether to conduct background checks on people they appoint. Emmet County, for example, asks the sheriff’s office to do it, Oakland County requires a background check and a credit check to be on its approved guardianship list and Grand Traverse County doesn’t conduct any background checks at all.
Judges and staff don’t have the time or the resources, Stanton said, and even if they did, they can’t access LEIN, the nationwide law enforcement intelligence network’s database that contains records of criminal offenses.
There’s no record of a criminal background check on Case by the Leelanau Probate Court, though if there had been a check, it’s not likely it would have noted civil infractions — records show Case’s paycheck years before was garnished by a debt collector.
Case had also been cited at her Commission on Aging job by COA Director Georgia Durga for unprofessional and inappropriate conduct, bullying and violating the county’s violence in the workplace policy.
“It is my expectation you will cease using bullying tactics as detailed above,” Durga wrote to Case in a 2010 corrective action form. “From this day forward I do not expect to receive any additional complaints from other employees/departments regarding your behavior. When you meet with me, I want you to bring solutions on how to coach employees to make them successful, not ways to remove them from their positions.”
Five years later, in 2015, Durga suspended Case for behavior which she said made another employee feel threatened; the five-day suspension was later vacated by a county administrator who labeled it a she-said, she-said accusation.
Following her appointment as Marty’s guardian and conservator, court records show Case communicated frequently with Simeon’s family, and positioned herself as a gatekeeper between Jen and Marty.
Records show Case told Spencer to unplug Marty’s home phone, then allowed Jen 15-minute phone calls with her mother and short, twice-weekly supervised visits. Jen could come to Marty’s home as long as she didn’t go anywhere but the kitchen, living room or dining room.
When Jen took her mother outside in July and to a nearby orchard, Case reported it to the judge.
“(H)er visits were to be supervised and that an aide needed to be with her mom at all times,” Case wrote, in a July 13, 2017 report to Judge Nelson. “She was not to take her mom outside without an aide.”
Case soon paid thousands for Marty’s care, hiring two women — Monica Bradford and Kathy Bower — to stay with Marty around the clock, either in her home or theirs. Canceled checks show, in April and May of 2017, Case paid Bradford and another woman, Anne Cole, $22,780 from Martha’s estate.
Case also moved Marty’s investment portfolio away from Schubert, Marty’s longtime financial adviser, to someone new, locking Jen out of monitoring transactions on her mother’s accounts.
This concerned Schubert enough, a guardian ad litem report shows, for a colleague of Schubert to file a suspicious activity report. Schubert did not return calls seeking comment, regarding the result of that SAR.
“Ms. Case was withdrawing large (in the mid-five-digit range) sums of money, something Marty had never done,” a GAL report filed with the court states. “When the advisor and his business partner questioned the Conservator about this, she moved the account to another investment firm.”
Near the end of summer in 2017, Case moved Marty out of her home and into an assisted living facility, the Highlands, in Northport. Court documents show Case didn’t tell Jen about the move. When Jen learned of it, these same records show Case refused to tell Jen where her mother was.
The move infuriated Jen, but according to court records, it also upset Marty.
“Martha asked why I was doing this to her,” Case wrote, in her report to Judge Nelson. “I reminded her that she has a disease and that the doctor said she needed 24/7 care. I told her that it was my job to make these decisions to look out for what is her best interest in where she lives.”
Case appeared to view a Mother’s Day gift to Marty from Jen — fleece-lined Crocs the color of Pepto Bismol that Jen mailed to her mother — as something nefarious.
Shortly after Mother’s Day in May 2017, Case filled out the paperwork for a personal protective order against Jen, stating in the application that recent mail and other communication from Jen was upsetting Marty.
PPOs are court documents mandating separation between alleged victims and their suspected abusers. They are signed by a judge and violators can be arrested.
“It cemented her control,” Jen said. “If I didn’t contest it, I would have never seen my mother again.”
Fighting Back
Jen said she tried to fight back against the court actions involving her mother, from the emergency guardianship petition by APS, to Johnson’s guardian ad litem report, to the PPO, but was unable to stop what she later referred to as a runaway guardianship train.
Jen said she remembers feeling angry and powerless until she hired her own lawyer, Andrew Shotwell of Smith & Johnson Attorneys P.C., a Traverse City firm. Records show Martha’s sister-in-law Lynne Hackenberger also had concerns about Marty’s guardianship and hired Traverse City attorney, Adam Lett, to contest Case’s appointment.
In December 2017, Case moved Marty from the Highlands in Northport to French Manor, an assisted living facility in Grand Traverse County. By changing the county Marty lived in, Case also changed probate court jurisdictions. Stanton, not Nelson, presided over Grand Traverse County’s probate court.
Stanton responded to petitions by Shotwell and Lett by revoking the PPO and assigning a new guardian ad litem, Traverse City attorney Janet Mistele, whose lengthy reports to the judge read like a spy novel.
“Despite Marty’s extensive estate planning, when APS received a referral from Simeon’s son alleging financial exploitation and physical neglect of Marty, rather than doing a proper fact-based investigation and attempting to confirm or dispel information from and about Marty’s daughter, APS accepted as true hearsay and other unverified information provided by members of Marty’s previously estranged family,” Mistele said.
Simeon maintains the accusations investigated by APS were legitimate and only a change of venue kept Jen from being investigated by law enforcement, a characterization Mistele in her report found no evidence of and Jen vehemently denies.
“It should be noted,” Mistele said, “that as to the allegation of financial exploitation, two separate prosecutors (Leelanau and Grand Traverse) have apparently reviewed the case and declined criminal charges based upon prior informal business dealings between mother and daughter.”
Mistele in her report also said she was “very disturbed” by photos posted on social media of Case, Hagerman, Bradford and Bower socializing and recommended Case be removed or allowed to resign as Marty’s guardian and conservator.
Lett flagged concerns about improper communications between Case, Matthias Johnson and Judge Nelson. Johnson on June 8, 2017 sent a private note to Nelson, copying Hagerman and Case, about Jen’s efforts to terminate the PPO. Communications outside of court with the judge that don’t include all parties are banned under the Judicial Code of Conduct.
Lett also lambasted Case’s relocation of Marty.
“Hiding the ward from family and friends is not among the powers of a Guardian,” Lett wrote in a court filing. “This woman believes she does not answer to anybody. That cannot be true.”
Case’s reputation with the court began to fall apart. She missed multiple filing deadlines and no-showed court hearings, not only in Marty’s case, but for seven other guardianships to which she’d been appointed.
Case was not criminally charged, though Judge Stanton took an unusual step and issued bench warrants for Case’s arrest. No arrest was made and Case’s accountings were later submitted and accepted by the court.
APS filed petitions to remove Case from all eight guardianship cases, which Stanton signed. Discipline came for Case at her COA job, when a subsequent COA director, Cindy Kienlen, ordered her suspension, as well as an apology to Judge Stanton.
Case refused, then filed retirement paperwork.
Case declined repeated requests for comment, stating she felt previous media accounts of Marty’s guardianship did not portray her fairly.
A note in her COA personnel file, from an interview Kienlen conducted with Case, provides some insight into Case’s actions.
“You stated that after taking over the first guardianship you quickly became overwhelmed by the amount of work required in the Guardianship and Conservatorship process,” Kienlen wrote, in a Sept. 18, 2018 letter to Case. “You denied receiving the mailings of bench warrants and subpoenas for your appearance at court. This is highly suspect that all mail and communication were not received by you, especially since Amanda (Probate Court Register Amanda Flowers) reported that none of the letters mailed to you were returned to the court.”
On Dec. 6, 2018, records show Jen filed a complaint with Michigan’s Attorney Grievance Commission against Johnson for his ex parte communications with the judge.
The Grievance Commission investigated, records show, though did not take further action. Johnson did not return a request for comment, though records show he responded to the complaint with an explanation and an apology.
Nearly everyone involved in the case sent ex parte communications to Judge Nelson, Johnson said, and this was his first-ever guardian ad litem assignment.
“I understand the seriousness of this offense and the repercussions that it could have had and that was not my intention,” Johnson’s Feb. 14, 2019 response states. “I would like to apologize to Ms. Rodgers for this error, to the Court for in any way placing them in a difficult situation, and to the commission for this action.”
Michelle Hagerman, the APS worker who triggered Marty’s guardianship and recommended Case, was “reassigned” to another state department more “suitable” for her, a court filing states.
Stanton appointed a different professional guardian to take over Marty’s case. Jen said this new guardian was expensive — she charged $70 an hour – but it was worth it.
Case, according to court documents, was providing her services at no cost.
Unanswered questions
Marty Rothaug died Oct. 14, 2020 and Jen says she believes stress from the guardianship proceedings hastened her death.
“It killed my mother,” Jen said, adding she agreed to share her story publicly, in hopes it might educate other families about guardianship and conservatorship and prevent them from experiencing similar grief.
Unanswered questions still keep her up at night, she said, even today more than five years later.
How did a key to Marty’s safety deposit box end up in the parking lot of Huntington Bank, where it was found by a staff member? Jen said her mother’s most valuable pieces of jewelry were later accounted for, though she’d like to know what happened to her father’s watches.
How could caregivers hired by Case burn through $125,000 of Marty’s life savings in only eight months? Who is supposed to vet those expenses?
And finally, how is it that Case, with her garnishments and COA disciplinary record, was appointed at all?
“They felt Jill Case was a better person to take care of her than her own daughter,” Rodgers said. “That’s the courts.”
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