The significance of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day this year cannot be understated. In nursing and long-term care facilities across the country, our nation’s most vulnerable are isolated from their loved ones, who are still unable to visit or ensure that they are receiving the proper care due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Yet, whether people believe the coronavirus is a danger or a conspiracy, there is no denying the fact that the elderly are dying in these facilities, sometimes without the knowledge of their families, at horrific rates (46,000 nationwide according to a USA Today study).
The industry’s lobbyists have used the crisis to successfully garner liability protections in 20 states including New York, Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut and Kentucky. According to the Washington Post, this is part of an “agenda to use immunity to evade long-standing liabilities.”
Even with a federal law that now mandates long term care facilities must disclose the number of cases and deaths due to COVID-`19, there are still states that are refusing to release data or have divulged unreliable numbers.
In New York and Michigan, both governors came under fire came under fire for mandating that nursing homes accept COVID-19 patients.
We know that, during the lockdowns, probate and family courts nationwide still heard guardianship/conservatorship cases by phone or Zoom meetings. This was a huge concern for the vulnerable who may not have had access to the technology to attend. Without the proper monitoring of these cases, we do not have a clear idea as to whether guardians and conservators were continuing the practice of moving the elderly out of their homes and into a facility, despite the dangers of doing so.
Today, NASGA reaches out to people across the country to ask for their help while offering some help of our own:
Please take our COVID-19 guardianship survey by clicking: HERE. This six-minute survey is designed only to help us gather data on how guardianships have been dispensed over the past four months and what has happened to wards. Answers will be used for no other purpose than to formulate a study to distribute to the media and lawmakers while assisting where possible on individual cases.
Our full guardianship survey is available HERE. In just 20 minutes, you can help us accomplish the kind of nationwide data collection the lack of which has muddied the waters in terms of understanding the level of guardianship abuse that has and continues to victimize our most vulnerable.
Today, NASGA announces that it has made available documentation gathered by investigative journalist Gretchen Rachel Hammond and her team for the Lisagor Award-nominated series on a massive alleged guardianship abuse ring operating out of Oakland County, Michigan.
These case files offer an insight into the practices employed by four guardians including allegedly fraudulent petitions for guardianship, billing and real estate practices, questionable ward progress and Guardian at Litem reports and heartbreaking letters to the court from the wards themselves. Each folder comes with a brief, explanatory paragraph and each file is highlighted to show questionable behavior.
On this elder abuse day, it is more important than ever to come together, share information and build a movement that neither media nor lawmakers can continue to ignore. Together, we will end the abuse and exploitation of our most vulnerable once and for all!
(Note: Surveys are a joint project of NASGA and ProbateWatch)
I was already proud of the work my team accomplished last year
investigating the alleged abuse and exploitation of Michigan’s most
vulnerable by probate judges and attorneys.
As one national editor told me when I pitched the idea, “no one wants to read about the elderly.”
It was a story that I eventually self-funded, at the cost of my
savings and my apartment. But I believed in it, as did each member of my
amazing team.
For Ellen Chamberlain, Slone Terranella and Hope Winkles; each at the
time journalism students at Wayne State University and Tim Mulholland, a
Chicago-based CPA, this nomination has been earned ten times over.
For myself, after struggling with depression after the story’s
publication, it has gone a long way towards showing me something I
refused to believe: that what my team and I accomplished and that all
the sacrifices it took to do so, were worthwhile.
I am pretty sure this is a first for the Daily Kos in Chicago.
Regardless, it means the world that we were able to find a home for the
story here and that it has been honored alongside the Chicago Tribune
and Chicago Suntimes.
Especially in times like these, for those of you who feel as I did in
the fall of last year, please know there is always hope and that there
are still ideas and dreams worth chasing.
National guardianship abuse awareness organization
applauds Michigan Lt. Governor’s decision to replace State Public Administrator
As both an advocate for victims of guardianship abuse and legislative change nationwide, the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse (NASGA) commends Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist’s decision appointing Katharyn Barron as State Public Administrator as a hopeful step in the right direction in a state which has been plagued with horrific abuses of constitutional, statutory and human rights of individuals under guardianship and their families allegedly committed by County Public Administrators and Probate Court Judges for the past 30 years.
Although the November 22 announcement by Attorney General Dana Nessel curiously omitted any mention of former State Public Administrator Michael Moody, who held the position for over eight years, NASGA Community Outreach Coordinator Gretchen Rachel Hammond says the decision to replace him is long overdue.
Prior to joining NASGA, Hammond was an award-winning investigative journalist who published an August, 2019 groundbreaking five-part series detailing alleged abuses by now-former Oakland County Public Administrators in over 2,000 cases. The articles noted that Moody had been consistently unresponsive to complaints by desperate families who reached out to him stating that public administrators, acting as guardians and conservators, were isolating, abusing and stealing from the estates of seniors and developmentally disabled individuals placed under Oakland County Probate Court guardianship often after petitions filed by agencies such as Michigan’s Adult Protective Services which were not accompanied by any corroborating medical evidence.
“I collected dozens of emails from Moody to these family members,” Hammond says. “His consistent response was that there was nothing he could do and that these families should hire legal counsel. However, numerous attorneys told me that they would not take cases at Oakland County because fighting a public administrator who had been appointed as a guardian or conservator by any one of the four judges was a losing proposition that would end up in the threat or sanctions against the attorney or worse.”
“The uniform response was that public administrators who take guardianship and conservatorship cases are acting as private attorneys and, therefore, not under Moody’s jurisdiction,” Hammond adds. “But, with no one providing any oversight, these families go around in circles with no resolution. It has meant that these alleged abuses have continued unchecked, even after Nessel’s formation of an Elder Abuse Task Force.”
On the same day Hammond’s series was published, Nessel announced the removal of three of the four public administrators featured in her stories. As with Moody’s replacement, there was very little explanation as to why.
“The hope is that this second quiet move will finally help provide some degree of relief for alleged victims and their families,” Hammond says. “Michigan ranks highest in the states where we have seen massive corruption in probate courts. It is long past time for an out of control cycle to end and for thousands of victims and their families to have redress.”
For the past 11 years, NASGA has been a leading nationwide voice to curb abuses by professional guardians through legislative change and awareness. It has been an invaluable resource for researchers and journalists seeking to shed light on a topic which has received scant media attention.
CONTACT:
Elaine Renoire,
Director
info@StopGuardianAbuse.org
Gretchen Rachel Hammond,
Community Outreach Coordinator
gretchenrachelhammond@gmail.com
5:00 pm PST…6:00 pm MST…7:00 pm CST…8:00 pm EST
"Join us this evening as Gretchen Rachel Hammond returns! We have lot to talk about!
We will be discussing the do's and don'ts of survivors of guardianship abuse and, the failure of agencies to act when a crime is reported to them with evidence. It would appear, it is only a crime if someone outside the inner circle does it. If it is one of these tribunal participants like probate examiners, guardians, attorneys and others who routinely traffic the elderly and disabled through these kangaroo courts, nothing will be done. The police won't respond, nor will any agency whose sole existence is supposed to be making sure these things don't happen no matter who does it! Obviously if you are connected to these rackets no one will make a move against you.
Gretchen will also speak about her new position with the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse (NASGA) where she will head up Community Outreach. After her year long investigation on the massive abuses taking place in Michigan probate tribunals, Gretchen is off on a new endeavor!"
5:00 pm PST…6:00 pm MST…7:00 pm CST…8:00 pm EST... "Join us this evening as Harold Jackson reports on the involuntary guardianship of his mother in …you guessed it!! MICHIGAN. Mr. Jackson took his experience with the blatant corruption in the probate system and channeled that into not only exposing the corruption, but researching and documenting lawful remedies that can be used to hold the perpetrators accountable. Having done extensive, exhaustive legal research, he has come up with what looks to be a bonafide plan for recovery.
(Mr. Jackson is NOT an attorney and has never claimed to be one.)
Names such as Judge Ryan and John Munger show up repeatedly in Oakland probate court. These individuals work as a team along with other routine players, working under the guise of elder services and protections, they prey on members of the public for no other reason than self enrichment while abusing the not only the system meant to protect the elderly, but also the targeted victim.
John Munger has profited handsomely and of course there are no limits on how much he can charge the estate or how often.
He has billed my Mother TENS OF THOUSANDS for his “services” at $250/hour – while giving side contracts to people like James Cassidy who then charged MY MOTHER’s estate to clean up evidence of the damage caused by the negligent conservator. They removed EVERYTHING in the house. Judge Kathleen Ryan authorized this.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Courtesy Getty Images.
Ms. Nessel,
While you were running for Michigan Attorney General in 2018, I was
an award-winning investigative journalist, member of the LGBTQ community
and a Democrat.
Had I also been a resident of Michigan, I would have cast an
enthusiastic vote for both you and Governor Gretchen Whitmer. This was
not because of my political and social backgrounds.
I've interviewed politicians, lines of them. All of them parroted
whatever talking points they thought my newspaper’s readers wanted to
hear. The post-election reality was, as expected, entirely different.
You ran a campaign that seemed to be based on genuine sincerity rather than expedient politics.
“It’s just a basic belief that it’s never the wrong time to fight for justice,” you said. “It’s
never the wrong time to fight for what’s right, and that there are so
many people out there clamoring for representation, clamoring to have
their voices heard, clamoring for recognition of their rights and equal
dignity, just as human beings.”
Having spent my career, driven by the same ideology, your promises
resonated with me as much as they clearly did with Michigan’s voters who
included the voiceless.
But the post-election reality is that you have not only broken that
promise, but actively shielded the alleged perpetrators of some of the
most horrific and repugnant crimes and flagrant abuses of civil and
human rights in Michigan’s history.
In July last year, myself, a team of three Wayne State University
researchers and a forensic fraud examiner launched an investigation into
the systemic judicial removal of the civil, constitutional, statutory
and human rights of Michigan’s senior and developmentally disabled
communities as well as subsequent allegations of the abuse, exploitation
torture, isolation and robbery of them by public administrators and
judges at the Detroit-area Oakland County Probate Court.
On March 12, at the behest of your Communications Director Kelly
Rossman-McKinney, my team met with a contingent of your staff led by
Child, Elder, Family and Financial Crimes Division Chief Scott Teter.
Over the course of four hours, we presented evidence in the form of
court documents culled from 2,278 separate cases belonging to now-former
Oakland County Public Administrators Jennifer Carney, Jon B. Munger,
Thomas Brennan Fraser and John Yun who had been appointed as guardians
and/or conservators over allegedly “legally incapacitated” seniors and
developmentally disabled individuals by Oakland County Probate Court
Judges Jennifer Callaghan, Linda Hallmark, Daniel A. O’Brien, Kathleen
Ryan and former judge Elizabeth Pezetti.
Our findings, which also included data-driven research and interviews
with family members and whistleblowers in the legal and medical
communities, included:
Thomas Howard. Image taken shortly before his death after
two years of guardianship. Image courtesy of Dr. Bachard
Abuo-Rass
Guardian ad Litems (GALs) working in the interest of a
court appointed guardian rather than prospective wards by encouraging
them to accept a public administrator (sometimes name specific), while
discouraging them from attending a guardianship hearing and filing their
reports and recommendations as late as the day of a guardianship
hearing.
Public administrators appointed with no due process
afforded to the wards or rights guaranteed under Michigan Compiled Law
as well as the dismissal of family members in favor of a public
administrator.
The use by APS of legal representation by the Attorney
General’s office to ensure the guardianship of a ward, over their
objections and in cases where the GAL also felt no guardianship was
necessary.
Injuries sustained by 96-year-old ward Pauline while
under guardianship
and as a resident of Medilodge,
Southfield. Image courtesy of the
family.
The vacating of advance directives such as Durable Power of Attorney and Medical Advocacy forms without cause.
Families (husbands/wives, siblings, parent/child) put under guardianship at the same time and, in some cases separated.
Possible Medicaid fraud where Medicaid is applied for by a
public administrator prior to a spend-down and when the ward has over
$2,00 in non-exempt assets.
Fungus growth on leg of Nancy Haddock
after one year of guardianship. Image
courtesy of Catherine Haddock
Resale of homes by investors at full market value or higher.
Evidence of home mortgages owned by judges and attorneys paid off in three years or less.
Massive over-billing, breach of fiduciary duty, double and
triple dipping and hundreds of thousands of dollars in unaccounted for
money in estates belonging to wards who passed away while under
guardianship.
Guardian accounts of annual ward billing filed with no
corroborating evidence, such as receipts, to justify charges which were
approved by all four judges.
This evidence was just part of a systemic pattern and practice
established by this investigation, which has been unchecked since for at
least the past two decades.
However, in an email that evening, Mr. Teter requested I forward him
only the case number and alleged victim contact information in one case
where a home was sold under market value or a Durable Power of Attorney
ignored.
He did not ask for any further information regarding the use of
unlicensed group homes, Medicaid fraud, over-billing, judicial
misconduct or public administrator malfeasance.
This was a surprise, given the weight and breadth of the evidence we
presented to you. Where two cases can be dismissed as a
misfortunate error, 2,278 seems like more than carelessness.
Equally startling was your subsequent March 25 announcement of an
Elder Abuse Task Force, my attendance at which Ms. Rossman-McKinney
actively blocked by telling my then-Detroit Free Press editor the
conference would only address “high level elder care issues” and neither
guardianship nor Oakland County.
This was a lie.
During the announcement, you presented nine legislative reforms to
Michigan’s guardianship system. No criminal investigations into the
activities of public administrators, private guardianship companies,
probate attorneys or judges were ever mentioned.
The membership of your Task Force was also concerning as it included
pro-guardianship agencies and organizations such as the Michigan Probate
Judges and Guardianship Associations, the Michigan State Bar and the
State Court Administrator’s Office (SCAO) who successfully blocked
reform legislation proposed by the 1998 Supreme Court Guardianship and
2005 Governor Jennifer Granholm Task Forces.
Furthermore, the SCAO has actively and consistently shielded probate judges, such as Macomb County Probate Judge Kathryn George.
After an investigation by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission
however, no disciplinary action was taken. Indeed, since 1995 not a
single probate court judge engaged in misconduct has been removed from
the bench.
The same is true for disciplinary actions against probate attorneys
by the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission. The one glaring exception
was the disciplinary action against attorney Steven G. Cohen after he
spoke out about the alleged collusion between a Wayne County Probate
Judge and two attorneys who drained the estate of civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
George remained on the Macomb County bench allowing history to allegedly repeat itself when a 2019 investigation by WXYZ
determined precisely the same behavior with guardianship company Caring
Hearts formed by an attorney who donated to George’s campaign.
Meanwhile George is still taking guardianship and conservatorship cases
in Macomb County begging the question as to why.
That isn’t the only thing which has not changed.
Family members who attended your Elder Abuse Task Force Listening Sessions and
presented horrific stories of abuse and neglect at the hands of probate
judges, public administrators and attorneys across Michigan have
reported back that there has been no action taken by your office to
investigate these cases.
We have letters to families, from your employee State Public
Administrator Michael Moody, who responded with a similar answer to
complaints, received long before and after the announcement of your Task
Force, by telling them that their best option to deal with allegations
of abuse and neglect by Michigan’s professional guardians and probate
attorneys is to “get an attorney.”
August 14, 2019 letter
from Michael Moody to complaining family concerning crimes allegedly
committed to Nancy Collins by Thomas Brennan Fraser. Image courtesy of
Jayne Collins.
Although Munger was fired as a public administrator in
2017, he still takes guardianship, conservatorship and deceased estate
cases in Oakland County the most prolific of which is the guardianship of Aretha Franklin’s eldest son Clarence. The
ongoing deceased estate case is presided over by Callaghan who used to
work for Munger’s former law partner Yun and whose Judicial Attorney
Christina Waid is also a former Munger employee.
At a September 16, 2019 Elder Abuse Awareness event you attended
alongside Michigan State Rep. John Cherry (D), numerous frustrated and
angry Michigan families, whose relatives have suffered horrific and
neglect abuse by probate attorneys and judges statewide, finally asked
the questions as to why these crimes have not been investigated.
They were questions my peers in the media have been unwilling to put to you.
Growing increasingly foul tempered and
unprofessional, you attack the audience: “You don’t know how to vote?”
and apportion blame for your office’s inaction to protect Michigan’s
vulnerable on Republican legislators who “Don’t care for me,” Governor
Gretchen Whitmer, the Secretary of State, budget cuts, every other
agency she oversees, lack of staffing and the amount of time she’s been
in office.
You responded to these families by telling them “I would rather ensure you don’t lose your money at all, than prosecute.”
You added that they should take their complaints concerning probate
judges to the Judicial Tenure Commission, the Michigan Supreme Court or
just “vote them out.”
“I guarantee you this is the only way anything will happen, “ you said.
You stated that you need more time.
While that is ticking on, court files indicate that neither they nor
the judges have modified their behavior in the slightest. Furthermore,
there is evidence that Munger and Fraser are disposing of their assets
and that court files such as guardian accounts and ex parte orders are
being deleted from the dockets or altered and refiled.
That this is happening under the nose of an Attorney General is
unacceptable, That thousands of vulnerable people are in danger while
they wait “for the system to work” is unacceptable.
Families in Oakland, Wayne County, Washtenaw and St. Clair counties are now turning to me for help.
Your September 6, 2019 announcement to “object to” over $200,000 in
billing by Caring Hearts in Macomb County. is more of a band-aid than a
solution. Accounts filed by a guardianship company with no
corroborating evidence should be investigated. The receipts should have
been filed upon demand from the family and the company should not have
been given until January next year to produce them.
We have found absolutely no evidence that you are investigating any other incidents of alleged probate court corruption.
Professional guardians are not immune from investigation when wrong doing is found. This was the case in Nevada and most recently in Florida.
After professional guardian Rebecca Fierle was found to have executed
Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders without the knowledge of her wards
or their families, Governor Ron DeSantis made the astute observation
that new or existing legislation is meaningless without consequences for
those who break it.
In contrast, your lack of commitment to any kind of criminal
investigation into alleged crimes in Michigan is astonishing and led my
team down a new line of inquiry as to why.
During your campaign, you pledged that “As AG, I will
increase resources to defend seniors from neglect, abuse, and
exploitation. I'll ensure that unsafe assisted living facilities and
in-home care providers are stripped of their licenses, issue scam
notifications for public awareness, and vigorously prosecute cases of
Medicaid fraud.”
It seems this particular promise came with conditions that did not
include anyone other than allegedly abusive family members, friends or
low-level nursing home employees such as CNAs. Your arrests of these
individuals, while laudable, fit the “majority of abusers” narrative
both yourself and the Michigan Guardianship Association have been
hammering home since March 25.
Nursing home executives, probate attorneys and judges have yet to become part of that narrative.
A politician who makes promises she has no intention of keeping is
expected. One who attempts to shield alleged criminals who are attacking
defenseless people with nothing more than a public relations campaign
designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the voters who placed you
into office is utterly despicable.
While you have forced me to question my own loyalties to party and
community, the real shame of it all is that those who will suffer the
most are the “people out there clamoring to have their voices heard,
clamoring for recognition of their rights and equal dignity, just as
human beings.”
Padlocked refrigerator at unstaffed unlicensed group home in Oak Park, Michigan. Image by Slone Terranella.
The seniors and developmentally disabled individuals who are being
terrorized by these courts are not just the people you swore to protect,
they are human beings.
They deserve better. They deserve justice. It is clear that we disagree on that.
However, for the rest of your tenure, if I have to fight you alone to
ensure these human beings are protected and that the attorneys and
judges who have allegedly committed some of the most unprecedented and
horrific crimes against them receive swift justice. you had better
believe I will.
Gretchen Rachel Hammond, investigative reporter, fills us in on the after shock of her expose' on Oakland county Probate Court, Michigan.
Gretchen's five part series, fully documented in tedious detail the corruption and abuses that have been on going for years! The number of lives destroyed while predators in the system were given ownership and control of vulnerable elderly an disabled individuals, allowing them to warehouse these people and help themselves to their assets is a national disgrace. All of it done within the full view of the state's attorney general, Dana Nessel.
She wasn't the only AG to turn a blind eye, just the last in a long line.
"It seems the guardians and judges at the Oakland County Probate Court have been doing a bit of house cleaning since August:
Elderly and developmentally disabled victims are getting moved out of unlicensed group homes.
Small refunds are being offered to victim family members on the proviso that they sign a form saying they received a refund for "accidental over billing."
Guardians are trying to close out cases and get rid of their own assets (such as half million dollar homes).
Files in case dockets are being altered or removed (such as accounts, change of address forms and ex parte orders).
As of last week, the court's only public access computer (the one my team and I used to research case files without paying $1-per-page) is gone."
Tune in as Gretchen fills us in on the recent activity in Michigan. Amazing what a top-notch investigative journalist can do!
by Gretchen Rachel Hammond Part five of five
At the Oakland County Probate Court, relationships between the four judges as well as those between the judges and the attorneys who work in their courtrooms are not simply limited to judicial campaigns. They have a history that is not always on the surface.
Judge Jennifer Callaghan
Judge Jennifer Callaghan, who began her career as an Assistant Attorney General, was hired by Oakland County Public Administrator John Yun in 2010 as an associate attorney and regularly took guardianship and conservatorship cases at the Oakland County Probate Court. When Callaghan ran for Oakland County Probate Judge in November 2016, Yun’s office served as her campaign headquarters, where she received almost $160,000 in contributions.
Oakland County Probate Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan, retiring probate judge Elizabeth Pezzetti, and Judges Linda S. Hallmark and Daniel A. O’Brien attended as “Honored Guests.” Ultimately, Callaghan won with 68 percent of the vote.
Callaghan’s husband Sean is an FBI agent serving in the Detroit office.
Her Judicial Staff Attorney Christine A. Waid used to work for former Oakland County Public Administrator Jon Munger. His firm’s email address is still listed on her profile at the State Bar of Michigan (SBM) and her name is included an attorney with the firm listed as a defendant in a 2016 lawsuit.
Jon B. Munger
Yun and former Oakland County Public Administrator Jon B. Munger worked out of the same address on Gateway Park Drive in Clarkston, Michigan, before Munger relocated his Munger & Associates headquarters half a mile down the street. While Callaghan recuses herself as judge in Yun cases, Munger regularly appears in front of her.
The ongoing deceased estate hearings concerning musician and civil rights activist Aretha Franklin, who passed away in August 2018 without leaving a will, is presided over by Callaghan.
As he is presently the guardian to Franklin’s eldest son, Clarence, Munger is an interested party in the case.
Judge Linda S. Hallmark was appointed as Oakland County Probate Court Judge in 1997 by then–Governor John Engler (R) after spending three years in private practice at May’s then–law firm May & May, PC. She has been unopposed since taking the bench.
May has donated not only to judicial campaigns, but to individuals running for Michigan’s House and Senate. ...
Civil Death for the Developmentally Disabled
According to a March 2018 report released by the National Council on Disabilities, an estimated 1.3 million Americans with disabilities have been directly impacted by guardianship. [Dohn] Hoyle asserts that 73 percent of Michigan’s developmentally disabled population are under some form of guardianship.
Dohn Hoyle
We have kind of a mill,” he says. “The issue isn’t one of a blindfolded lady justice deciding upon whether they need one or not. It’s automatically assumed. The system continues to portray the necessity of guardianship.”
In its report, the Council took the system to task.
“It has often been noted that an individual subject to guardianship moves through the world indistinguishable from the rest of the population,” the report noted, “except that he or she has undergone a kind of civil death and is no longer permitted to participate in society without mediation through the actions of another if at all.”
The report’s key findings stated that “people with disabilities are widely (and erroneously) seen as less capable of making autonomous decisions than other adults regardless of the actual impact of their disability on their cognitive or decision-making abilities. This can lead to guardianship petitions being filed when it is not appropriate and to guardianship being imposed when it is not warranted by the facts and circumstances.”
“Prisoners have more rights than people under guardianship,” Hoyle says. “I don’t think people recognize that, they ignore it or don’t pay attention to it. So, probate judges are able to continue what they’ve always done, which is not to the benefit of the people who are given guardians.” Full Article and Source: The Fortress: Part Five of Five: Protected by Secrecy and Ageism
[F]amily members, like so many others in Oakland County and across Michigan, feel helpless. In trying to find legal counsel for themselves or their loved ones, they scoured the State Bar of Michigan’s website and methodically contacted each on its substantial list of estate, probate and elder law attorneys.
According to numerous families who spoke with this investigation, if their case has anything to do with the Oakland County Probate Court, attorneys either declined to represent them or asked for an unaffordable retainer.
Two such attorneys stated that the reason was a high probability of facing punitive sanctions or a disciplinary investigation by Michigan’s Attorney Grievance Commission for challenging a probate judge’s appointee.
They spend day-after-day desperately seeking help from the Attorney General, and, since their cases involved public administrators appointed as guardians and conservators, State Public Administrator Michael Moody. ...
A Task Force of Their Own
MI AG Dana Nessel
During the run-up to last year’s election, [Mimi] Brun and[Jayne} Collins met with then–candidate for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who pledged to do what her predecessor had refused and take their complaints about the Oakland County Probate Court seriously.
During a March 25 press conference at her office in Lansing, she announced the creation of an Elder Abuse Task Force. With the participation of Michigan Supreme Court Justices Richard Bernstein and Megan Cavanaugh, Nessel presented a number of reforms to Michigan’s guardianship system as among their primary goals. Although attendance to the press conference was restricted only to members of the press, [Randy] Asplund, McCasey, Abood, Rice-White and her husband Jeff went to Lansing anyway.
There, alongside families fighting probate cases in both Oakland and Wayne counties, they carried signs demanding an investigation of Michigan’s probate courts and asked Nessel’s staff if they could join the event.
Since it was their lives and those of their loved ones that had been devastated by the probate courts, they were surprised to be denied access. During the press conference, no mention was made of investigations into alleged crimes committed by probate judges, public administrators or attorneys. Supreme Court Communications Director John Nevin told a reporter that “we don’t have specific instances of wrongdoing.”
It was December 18, 2018, and in the lockdown Alzheimer’s unit of Lahser Hills Care Center in Southfield, Michigan, 64-year-old Virgil sat at a rectangular, plastic lunch table with a small and untouched plate of food in front of him.
The lockdown unit is on the second floor of the facility and only accessible from the main entrance via a code-restricted elevator, the doors of which open into a common area that looks like a hybrid of a hospital ward and prison dayroom.
Legally deaf, Virgil (whose last name is omitted for privacy reasons) stared directly ahead. He made no eye contact, but his expression was one of despair. His only answer to questions from this investigation was given through a single, cinematic tear that ran down his cheek, which he made no attempt to wipe away.
For 40 years, Virgil had lived in his childhood home in Pontiac under the care of his mother Beth. After she passed away and left the home to Virgil, the neighbors, with whom both mother and son were close, stepped in and helped wherever they could. Virgil was not a wealthy man. He had no savings to speak of, and his only income came via a Social Security check.
However, he did have property.
Jennifer Carney
In late 2016, Oakland County Public Administrator Jennifer Carney was given control over that property alongside Virgil’s income, identity, possessions, and future after he was placed under her guardianship by Oakland County Probate Court Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan. It all began when a petition for guardianship was filed in the court by Michigan Adult Protective Services (APS). The reasons for the guardianship began “[Virgil] is deaf.”
Virgil was adamant that he did not want to leave his childhood home, something he was able to express to his Guardian ad Litem (GAL), a probate attorney assigned by the court to investigate the allegations, inform Virgil about his rights, note his objections and make recommendations as to whether guardianship is warranted. Virgil’s feelings were echoed by his neighbors in letters to Ryan.
On August 11, 2017, Carney met with Virgil at his home. In his subsequent report, the GAL noted that, “Ms. Carney indicated a willingness to allow for a temporary move, while determining if MORC [Macomb Oakland Regional Center] services are available to allow [Virgil] to remain in his home.”'
Losing a Home (Twice)
Carney’s accounting shows that, from her point of view, Virgil’s forced relocation was far from temporary.
On September 25, 2017, Carney’s office told Lahser Hills that “the plan is for Virgil to be there long-term.” By November, Carney was billing Virgil $10.50 per-call for back-and-forth calls between her office and a property preservation services company called Wolverine Securing, which was disposing of “[Forty] yards of debris” from inside Virgil’s home. It was not explained, in the line item, whether this included any of personal belongings. However, on November 27, Carney’s accounts note that Virgil’s sister called to inform the Public Administrator that that she had taken “some photos etc. out of the house.”
According to those same accounts, the sale of Virgil’s “Property-auto/personal” netted a total of $842. It is unknown whether Carney took a car or if Virgil even owned one. However, what is clear is that she paid Wolverine Securing $1,969. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) lists the Wolverine Securing headquarters with the same Clawson Tank Drive, Clarkston, address as the law firm of former Oakland County Public Administrator Jon Munger. Carney was employed by Munger before forming her own practice in 2017.
Virgil’s home was listed on February 20, 2018, for $44,900 and was taken off the market one day later. A line-item in Carney’s accounting shows that the realtor called her office one week before the home was listed with information about a potential buyer.
On February 23, 2018, Carney filed a petition with Ryan to sell Virgil’s home for $41,400.
The only evidence of the home’s value, attached to the petition, was an Oakland County tax assessment, which was not dated. In the document, Carney noted a total of $6,172.35 in unpaid taxes and mortgage on the property.
On November 8, 2018, Earnest Inc. signed a Quit Claim Deed ( a document transferring interest in property from one individual/company to another) for the property to a Florida company, Evergreen Mortgage Notes, for $10.
Today, Virgil’s former home is listed for sale at $89,500 (reduced from the original list price of $104,900).
Accounting Questions
In 2018, Carney applied for and received Medicaid on behalf of Virgil, with a $1,123-per-month patient pay amount, paid to a facility outside of the bills covered by Virgil’s Medicaid or insurance benefits. She indicated that Virgil also received Medicare.
A February 16, 2018, line item shows that Carney’s office contacted an attorney and limited-license psychologist, who is on the Oakland County Probate Court’s list of individuals conducting Independent Medical Examinations (IMEs) for the developmentally disabled. She advised him that “the house is up for sale. Once we have those funds, we will be able to pay the bill.”
According to her account, filed one year later, Virgil’s annual income was $16,821.04. However, his expenses totaled $50,851.55.
It was a Saturday evening on Thanksgiving weekend, 2018, and Carolyn was sobbing bitterly in the living room of an unassuming four-bedroom bungalow on Leslie Street in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park.
The home was one of a myriad of unlicensed small group facilities across Michigan’s Oakland, Wayne and Genesee Counties in which adults and developmentally disabled individuals have been placed after being declared an “incapacitated ward” by Oakland County Probate Court Judges, Jennifer Callaghan, Linda Hallmark, Daniel A. O’Brien and Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan.
Carolyn, 64, who like her two roommates, Rita and Mary, asked to keep her last name private, had been moved into the facility by her court-appointed guardian and former Oakland County Public Administrator John Yun.
The three women told this investigation that they had been alone since the previous Wednesday, when all staff left for the Thanksgiving holiday. On their way out, someone had wrapped a large chain around the handles of the kitchen’s refrigerator/freezer combo unit and padlocked them shut.
Fortunately, Mary’s son was able to bring in McDonald’s once a day, otherwise the women would have been left for the entire long weekend without any food at all.
Court records show that individuals who attempt to leave a nursing or group home facility (called eloping) have been tracked down and caught by Oakland County Sheriffs or local police and then placed, by the guardian, in a lockdown ward.
Carolyn is one of well over 1,500 wards whose lives are under the complete control of Oakland County Public Administrators who act as guardians and conservators. Even though the roles are not in their job descriptions, they have accepted thousands of cases as private attorneys. They include Yun and his colleagues, Thomas Brennan Fraser, Jennifer Carney and Jon Munger.
Judge Daniel O'Brien
In March 2016, presiding Judge O’Brien had declared Carolyn incapacitated and handed her over to Yun. His decision followed a petition for guardianship filed by a Michigan Adult Protective Services (APS) Investigator, which stated that the “Proposed ward survived a stroke in July 2015 resulting in some physical limitations and some memory issues.”
Yet, as Carolyn was ravenously devouring what was left of her paltry McDonald’s Thanksgiving dinner, she had no problem recalling her life under Yun who exerted control over every aspect of it, including her annual $12,579 Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
In an account Yun filed with the court in April 2017, he took $2,700 in attorney’s fees from Carolyn, paid $7,224 in group home rent and gave her an allowance of $1,538 for the year, or approximately $128 per month. However, according to Carolyn, she only received $40 per month from Yun, which left her reliant on the unlicensed group homeowner and its staff for her food and daily living needs.
She added, at the time, that she had seen Yun only once in the more than two years since she had been placed under his guardianship. Despite begging him to allow her to live independently, she claimed that he simply responded, “You’re fine where you are.”
With no money, no means of transportation and terrified to say even a word of dissension to the group homeowner, whom Carolyn described as “harsh,” it has been next to impossible for her to work toward independent living. But that wasn’t the worst of her problems. Between tears, she claimed Yun had also isolated her from her own daughter.
“I lost my family because of him,” she said.
Carolyn believed her daughter had no idea she was under Yun’s guardianship, that she didn’t know how to reach her and that Yun would not provide any new contact information.
In 2016, retired teacher Christine Abood's mother, Gloria, was placed under the control of Oakland County Public Administrator John Yun who put her in a Novi, Michigan, nursing facility. Abood and her sons say they were unable to be at Gloria’s bedside on the night she died because she had been moved and Yun didn’t know where she was.
“I will never forget that, never,” Abood says. “He was supposed to care for her and he didn’t even know where she’d been moved? Why?”
It was a question Abood raised during a 45-minute back-and-forth argument with [Michigan Attorney General Dana] Nessel’s staffers, who refused her and the other families access to the press conference. She left the lobby, throwing her arms up in exasperation. ...
...During her more than two-year fight to regain custody of her mother, [Virginia] Wahab’s daughter Mimi Brun claimed she was denied visitation rights, had a warrant issued by [Judge Linda S.] Hallmark for her arrest and filed three reports with the local police department asserting that [then Oakland County Public Administrator Jon] Munger had illegally entered her mother’s home and looted it.
Jon Munger
After the story was published, a July 30, 2018 bench trial on Brun’s petition to terminate the guardianship and conservatorship of Munger was presided over by Hallmark. During a day-long deposition, Munger was asked how many times he had been appointed as a guardian.
“Several thousand,” he replied, but could not precisely cite the Michigan statute under which a guardian is considered necessary.
He admitted to entering Wahab’s home to look for “Information about ownership, assets, bills, any of the above” and to taking a painting that was hanging on Wahab’s wall.
“It's very colorful. I walk around it every day in my office,” Munger noted.
When asked if he had seen his ward lately, Munger replied, “In 2018, I doubt it.”
He also admitted that he hadn’t reviewed Wahab’s medical records since his first visit in 2016.
Judge Linda S. Hallmark
After a second day of testimony, the trial was adjourned. Before it could resume, Hallmark issued an August 3 opinion and order terminating Munger as guardian and conservator.
“Mr. Munger has satisfactorily provided care, control and custody of Ms. Wahab,” Hallmark wrote. “In all of these matters, Mimi Brun has interfered with Mr. Munger using misinformation, obfuscation and self-dealing. She has engaged in scorched earth litigation. Ms. Brun has demonstrated a complete lack of authority because she believes herself to be the victim.”
“The litigation in this matter has been ongoing for two years,” Hallmark concluded. “The financial and emotional costs to the ward have been significant. It is not in the ward’s best interests for the litigation to continue. Her assets have been depleted but remain with the family.”
Award-winning investigative journalist Gretchen Rachel Hammond spent the past 13 months independently investigating a systemic problem at the Oakland County Probate Court, which has allegedly been shielded by the highest levels of Michigan government for the past 30-some years.
The guardianship system isn’t new; in fact, it’s rooted in medieval English law. Every US state still uses some form of the system, which, at its best, is designed to protect citizens who are no longer able to protect themselves by declaring them wards of the state. We know, of course, that the system is rarely at its best, with increasing reports of abuse cropping up nationwide, prompting Congressional calls for reform.
But the level of controversy over how guardianship cases are handled in one Detroit-area probate courtroom has reached such heights, the story reads more like Orwellian fiction than it does a model of the American experience.
An unsettling number of accusations have been leveraged against the court, citing abuse, neglect, robbery, and exploitation, often in cases that arguably didn’t merit guardianship in the first place. In as little as a year, “incapacitated wards” are stripped of the entirety of their savings and possessions and rendered completely reliant upon social services and benefits such as Medicaid. Even high-profile families, including the estates of Rosa Parks and Aretha Franklin, have been drawn into the quagmire.
