By Jaimee K Martello
World Elder Abuse Awareness Day was on June 15th. Father’s Day was June 16th. Many are not aware of WEAAD. I only know it exists because of a book I started co-writing with a friend. A legal guardian and conservator have hijacked her father’s life and estate and she cannot get him out. To date over half a million dollars have been billed to estate; he is drugged to incapacitation so that he cannot defend himself in court. My friend, his daughter, is terrified and panicked. Fighting with every cell of her energy that has not been killed in the process against the system.
It is consuming my thoughts and destroying my perspective on reality. I had a sit-down with my parents to pass along what I learned about elder abuse through this project. I had to warn them.
My friend, who I will call Lilly to protect her and her family, is amidst a legal battle with her sibling and a cabal of lawyers over the legal guardianship and conservatorship of her 74-year-old father, though he can still make decisions. His decisions are neither recognized nor respected by the family courts. As Americans, we complain about our presidents being in their 70s or 80s, but our parents are pretty damn young, smart, physical, and capable at 70.
Lilly explains her father’s life had been kidnapped. Sacrificed, slowly, for the cash cow underbelly of the legal system. His bank accounts have been drained. Property for sale. Her bank account is near zero as she spends the only dollars left fighting for her dad against his conservator and legal guardian. This week she received a petition against her home. She co-owns a condo with her dad, and they want it. By technicality, they have that legal right.
My jaw is dropped and I have a perpetual pit in my stomach. I fear for her but I also tread with caution. Is this real? Lilly keeps saying it feels like a movie, when I remember… I’ve seen this movie.
I Care a Lot, starring Rosamund Pike, dropped on Netflix in 2020. It is a horror movie veiled by black comedy. How many more horrors could we take in 2020?
The IMDB logline is “A crooked legal guardian who drains the savings of her elderly wards meets her match when a woman she tries to swindle turns out to be more than she first appears.” It does not say “Based on a True Story.”
Was my old friend, Lilly, feeding me a story? We don’t live in the same state and haven’t seen each other in a while. Was she plugging a controversy into ChatGPT and reading it back to me?
As a writer and content producer, I attempted to write a memoir treatment to help her expose this life-altering story. We talk for hours and hours each week. The transference of fear I have includes the sit down with my parents and the countless speculation, anger, and sadness my husband must endure.
In 2021, Esquire quoted J Blakeson, writer and director behind I Care a Lot. “The idea first came when I heard news stories about these predatory legal guardians who were exploiting this legal loophole and exploiting the vulnerability in the system to take advantage of older people, basically stripping them of their life and assets to fill their own pockets.”
This is real, and yet, I had a hard time suspending my disbelief. I ignorantly believed the world was just. Scratch the silver screen. This is happening, and hiding, in plain sight.
Lilly told me about her struggle to find a lawyer to help her. Criminal law would not touch her case. Everyone pointed to elder law. She followed their advice and held confidential consultations with three elder law attorneys, but no one took her case. Instead, one took that information and colluded with her sibling to take action on her father’s estate. The first lawyer nominated the second one to represent her father’s temporary legal guardian and conservator until the third was nominated to be his permanent conservator. By the book, any court-appointed justice would deem this is as unethical. 100 percent a violation of the lawyer-client code. But this crime is layered and seems to be protected by the courts. But we must swear and solemnly affirm that what we shall state shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the—
They took the very truths and words against her. Framed Lilly as the abuser and the reason her father should be under a legal guardian. While having their cake and eating it too, they rarely know the life inside of a jail cell, or a life removed of agency. God bless we live to an old age, but god be damned if we get taken by this scandal. That our lives can be stolen, frozen, and drugged. For profit.
I went into research mode. I found several documentaries and news stories attempting to blow the whistle. Mickey Rooney produced a documentary on elder guardianship and exploitation in 2012 called Last Will and Embezzlement. Headlines pick up the Wendy Williams conservatorship daily. The #FreeBritney Campaign was a viral sensation. Mad in America has an informative interview, “’A Playground for Predators’: Diane Dimond on The Abuses of Guardianship.” Dimond includes too many true stories on the topic, and lists many resources and knowledge to help blow the whistle.
In 2018, true crime director Billie Mintz released The Guardians, an expose on a legal kidnapping business in Nevada. I had a visceral reaction. The lawyers, the courts, the nursing staff, and the victims spit lyrics verbatim of what Lilly had told me. I cold-called the Mintz.
I’ve worked in non-scripted and editorial television since the early aughts. I pitched my credits in hopes of verifying my ethical intent for a call. He offered a time for the three of us to speak.
The film exposes a trillion-dollar business. An unjust common practice that is duplicitously supported and enforced by so-called legal practices. “Do not go to the courts,” he said on our call. “They are in on it.” In the deep waters of directing The Guardians, Mintz learned elder law, and the injustice and inhumane practice of legal guardianship is a calculated effort by the court, the attorneys, and the healthcare system. He said he entered this world as I did, with reluctance and skepticism. He could not accept this corruption as fact. There had to be a catch. A victim exposed why we cannot imagine these injustices to reach far and wide. “I had to learn. There is no universal moral code.” I’ve been playing those words on repeat daily. There is no universal moral code.
Lilly told Mintz her backstory. Her father was very successful and owned many commercial and residential properties. Her mother passed not long before and he was grieving the loss of a marriage lasting half a decade. She and her sibling were estranged. She was appointed, by her father, as power of attorney and health proxy if in the event it was needed. Her sibling served her papers to remove her titles and take control of her father’s assets.
Between her sibling and a ring of lawyers, blessed by the judge again and again, her father’s financials were compromised and now out of his control. The lawyers found doctors who would willingly sign false statements that he was unable to take care of himself, and they made untrue and harmful claims that Lilly was unable to care for him. One attorney drugged him to incapacitation so that he was medically unfit to attend the trial. A judgment can be made without a man in court.
“This is a business. You are a target.” Mintz went on. And I swallowed the harrowing truth. There is no universal moral code. He broke down the viciousness of this organized crime and what he learned first-hand while in production. What is happening to Lilly is textbook. Play-by-play. WWE-style blow-by-blow. The lawyers love it when you push back. It is a drug. If it were Vegas, the lawyers would be the house. You can come to play, but the house always wins. Lilly remembers a lawyer threatening her: “If you push back, we will ruin you and drain your assets.”
One of the victims in the documentary The Guardians, Julie Belshe, who lost her both of her parents, Rudy and Rennie North to conservatorship, fought tooth and nail to get the District Attorney and the Attorney General to listen, investigate and send their kidnapper April Parks to prison. She now continues the battle by leading the National Guardianship Liberty Movement. Belshe confirmed the cycle is a minefield of layering and lawyering. It is built for you to set off bombs one by one, and the lawyers or the judge step in to provide a solution, one that will then destroy every ounce of faith, every dollar of cash, and every square foot of real estate.
One in ten citizens over the age of 60 suffer elder abuse. We aren’t expected to retire until 67. I am not advocating for presidents being at this age, but if they can rule the country, why are our loved ones at such a life-threatening risk? We work and work and work in the land of the free and the home of the brave to wait for our social security check and now must fear someone taking it from us? Your golden years ring different when someone else is on the receiving end of your hard-earned cash.
Belshe drew me a diagram and laundry listed the players. “Everyone is in on it.” Lawyers, courts, social workers, hospice, doctors, nurses, nursing homes, realtors, rehab centers, and attorney generals. It goes on. They wrongfully trick you into legal guardianship, identify vulnerabilities whether a rift in the family or an elder that lives alone, and then attack. They manage a successful transfer of power to their firm, legally, then reframe your will, your property, your accounts, and your family’s character to their narrative. They defame and defund you.
“And Lilly’s sibling is a f*cking idiot.” Belshe said. “He won’t get a dime. They are playing him too.” They spend down. They bring in a suite of aids, doctors, and physicians that the victim does not need, bill back the hours, generate interest on your money, and liquidate your funds until the elder is on Medicaid. They accelerate their death and cremate them.
There is no universal moral code. Just because I am good, and I have empathy, does not mean others do. It is the removal of our independence—one that this country prides itself on daily. That which makes us human, more importantly. Yet, Lady Liberty looks down on us and laughs.
I follow a lawyer/influencer on Instagram/TikTok. The firm claims to “be different.” And I’m in too deep not to test the waters. I emailed them asking for guidance on a case like this. In under two hours, I received a form letter response. A form letter I’ve heard Lilly read to me time and time again regarding her quest for help. After careful consideration…. We regret to…. Seek assistance from a firm that specializes in this type of practice.
The specialists are the enemy. And I am struggling to find the heroes in this scripted alternate reality.
There are professional criminals in our system who are provided a funded playing field, and sworn into law. I wish we could tell the whole truth, but this legal mafia is a well-oiled machine, which appears to be veiled and protected by the state itself.
Lilly and I had a call with an acclaimed journalist. Her take was that American citizens will rally for our elders because we are all destined for their future. We are in the early stretches of the Silver Tsunami, which is the highest percentage of elders our country has known. This is the time to knock on the media’s doorstep. Someone in politics would rally around this during an election year. (Yet another one in the system capitalizing on this crime.)
Yet we’ve yet to find an investigator to help a family whose monies have been depleted.
We know there is an audience out there. We are all subject to abuse. I ask you, rally with us. Share your common stories and make noise. Suspend your disbelief and learn secondhand how our country is endorsing terroristic acts against our twilight years.
The United States Senate Special Committee on Aging estimates 1.3 million adult guardianships in the United States and an estimated $50 billion in assets under guardianship arrangements. Try to remember you are not alone.
You do not need someone to tell you no way, oh my god, I can’t believe it, who would do such a thing? Find a social support system of others who understand and know this is real. You need a network that says I know. This is what we are going to do.
Full Article & Source:
Elder Eyes Wide Shut
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