By Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), opinion contributor
In
Florida, seniors are valuable members of our communities. Having chosen
our beautiful state to live out their golden years, they expect peace,
relaxation, and sunshine. But what is supposed to be a reward for a
lifetime of hard work can quickly become a nightmare if they become
victim to guardianship abuse.
Legitimate guardianships
are established by state courts when it is determined that an individual
is unable to attend to their financial and personal affairs. The
appointed guardian is given vast control over the individual under their
care, including power of attorney, control over their bank accounts,
property, and assets, and the ability to make medical decisions.
Unfortunately, these wide-ranging responsibilities leave room for bad
actors to take advantage of those under their care — lining their
pockets with the assets they were tasked with administering.
Like
sharks hunting prey, unscrupulous guardians are on the hunt for
vulnerable seniors to isolate, abuse, and defraud. What makes this
problem especially difficult to solve is the lack of oversight,
transparency, and accountability within state-administered guardianship
systems. For example, we don’t even know how many Americans are under
guardianship, deprived of their personhood or their ability to make
critical decisions for themselves.
It is common practice for an individual who is appointed
as a guardian for a senior or person with a disability by a state court
to also be appointed as a representative payee by the Social Security
Administration (SSA). That means the guardian receives and manages the
Social Security benefits of the person they’ve been tasked to care for.
Unfortunately,
state courts and SSA aren’t always talking to each other. If a court
removes a guardian for abuse, fraud, or neglect, that guardian could
still receive those Social Security checks in perpetuity. This is where
the Senior Guardianship Social Security Protection Act comes in.
This legislation
would direct state courts to notify Social Security if a guardian has
been removed for cause, giving SSA the ability to remove the former
guardian as representative payee. If there is one thing I have learned
in my time in Congress, it’s that agencies work best when they are
talking to one another. If you are not suitable to serve as an
individual’s guardian, you aren’t suitable to collect their Social
Security benefits either. That’s just common sense!
The
bill also directs the SSA to report to Congress biannually on the
number of Social Security payments being diverted to non-family
representative payees, so that we can finally begin to determine how
many Americans are actually under guardianship.
To further address guardianship fraud, I have also introduced two bipartisan bills with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) — the Freedom and Right to Emancipate from Exploitation (FREE) Act to give those under guardianship an escape hatch from abusive private guardians, as well as the Guardians Aren’t Above Prosecution (GAAP) Act to
clarify that fraud commissioned under a guardianship is still fraud
punishable by law. Additionally, I co-introduced the bipartisan Guardianship Accountability Act along with Reps. Darren Soto (D-Fla.), Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) to implement further oversight and data collection of the guardianship system.
An
unaccountable, opaque system that allows a fraudster to essentially
imprison a human being with an ongoing stream of revenue — be it a
Social Security check or in Britney Spears’
case, global record sales and tours — invites corruption of the worst
order and demands reform. This suite of bills is an important start to
protect seniors, persons with disabilities, and anyone else who finds
themselves trapped by abusive guardians or conservators.
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