UNGUARDED: How a tight-knit network of Miami real estate players bought and sold Guardianship homes for profit

By Daniel Rivero, Joshua Ceballos

With Miami−Dade officials continuing their investigation of the Guardianship Program of Dade County and its real estate transactions, WLRN has learned that two companies — linked to Miami City Attorney Victoria Méndez — purchased and sold for hefty gains nearly three dozen properties that were once owned by the nonprofit, through a network of businesses or individuals.

WLRN previously reported that Miami’s Guardianship Program — the largest in Florida — sold 14 properties to Express Homes and six properties to Gallego Homes over a 13−year period.

Express Homes is owned by Miami City Attorney Méndez’s husband, Carlos Morales. Gallego Homes was owned by her mother, Margarita Méndez. Victoria Méndez was registered as the vice president of Gallego Homes from its founding in 2010 until 2018.

Gallego Homes was legally dissolved weeks after WLRN reported on its real estate transactions earlier this year.

In analyzing sales data of all real estate transactions in Miami-Dade County dating back to 2009, WLRN found that the two companies and their officers bought a total of 33 properties that originated from the Guardianship Program — 13 more than what was found in our initial reporting — and business associates of Morales bought six other homes sold by the nonprofit.

The Guardianship Program cares for those deemed by a court to be incapacitated, who don’t have the money to afford a private guardian and who have no friends or family willing to take care of them. The staff takes control of their assets — including vehicles and real estate — and sells them to help pay for future care and living expenses.

Proceeds from the sale of an incapacitated person’s property goes toward their long-term care, but profits made on resales do not.

Reached via email, Victoria Méndez declined to answer questions for this story. “My family has done nothing wrong,” she told WLRN.

In March, following WLRN’s reporting on the agency, the Miami−Dade County Inspector General’s Office, an independent "watchdog" agency of the county, launched its investigation of the Guardianship Program’s property sales. The investigation remains ongoing after several months.

In late March, top Miami−Dade County officials, including Mayor Danielle Levine Cava, reached an agreement with the Guardianship Program to temporarily halt sales of the nonprofit agency’s properties until county investigators can complete their inquiry. In exchange, the county agreed to continue making $2.7 million in funding payments to the agency.

In mapping the connections among the two companies and others, a clearer portrait emerges of those involved in the sale and resale of Guardianship Program properties.

Advocates for the elderly and critics who have sought reforms for all guardianship programs say more transparency of financial transactions and more oversight is needed of agencies serving as public guardians.

Longtime associates

One name that repeatedly appears in transactions involving Express Homes is that of Antonio Lorenzo, a Miami realtor and property appraiser.

State corporate records show Lorenzo, between 2004 and 2006, owned a real estate title company called Title Zone with Carlos Morales and Victoria Méndez, who were listed as corporate managers with the company. Morales later started a nonprofit called Southern Housing Alliance in 2012, and named Lorenzo as vice president. The nonprofit shuttered in 2015, according to state records.

In select guardianship properties bought by Morales, Margarita Méndez and their companies, Lorenzo appraised the property on behalf of the Guardianship Program.

The connection between Lorenzo and the Guardianship Program appears to have started in 2009, after a woman named Maria Sanchez was declared incapacitated by a Miami-Dade court. After gaining control of Sanchez’s finances and decision making responsibilities, the Guardianship Program of Dade County asked the court for permission to sell her West Flagler condo.

In the Guardianship Program’s court petition requesting permission to sell the property, the program included an appraisal done by Antonio Lorenzo. He estimated the condo on West Flagler and 37th Avenue was worth $20,000. In the appraisal, Lorenzo mentioned there was evidence of mold in the unit and that work had to be done to clean the property.

In the end, the Guardianship Program opted to sell the condo for $5,000 to Express Homes, the company owned by Carlos Morales.

As recently as late 2022, Lorenzo worked as a realtor selling properties once owned by clients under the care of the Guardianship Program.

In three instances identified by WLRN, Express Homes sold or transferred a Guardianship property to a business owned by Antoliano Lorenzo, Antonio Lorenzo's father, within days of the original sale. And in two separate cases identified by WLRN, Express Homes and Gallego Homes quickly sold Guardianship properties to companies owned by the Lorenzos.

In one case, Express Homes acquired a North Miami house in 2013 and resold it to Secure Funding Group, LLC. — a now-defunct company that listed Antonio Lorenzo as a manager — for a $50,000 gain the same day it was originally bought.

Katie Lepri Cohen/WLRN

Emma Louise Ladson was evicted from her mother's home after she became a ward of the Guardianship Program of Dade County, which then sold the home.

In another case, Emma Ladson’s Liberty City home was sold to Lorenzo’s company for a $1,000 loss a month after it was first bought from the Guardianship Program by Gallego Homes. In that 2015 sale, previously reported by WLRN, Lorenzo originally appraised the property, according to court records, and Gallego Homes bought it for $31,000. Lorenzo continues to maintain the property as a rental.

“A family member from Georgia called me to say: ‘When did you sell the house? They sold your home for $30,000.’ I go: ‘What are you talking about?’” Ladson previously told WLRN. "Are you kidding me? I just couldn’t believe it."

Hillary Hogue, an activist who tracks guardianship cases in Florida probate courts, told WLRN that she often sees cases of people with connections to probate cases involved in subsequent property sales.

“That's usually exactly what happens,” she said. “It doesn't shock us. It's just the nature of the beast.”

Quick sales, significant gains

In 2014, Maia Investments, a company owned by Antoliano Lorenzo, directly purchased a home from the Guardianship Program of Dade County from an incapacitated man named Kirby Latimer. The home was bought for $125,000 and resold for $149,000 three months later, property records show.

To this day, Antonio Lorenzo serves as a board member in a non-profit started by Morales: the Abuelos Foundation. According to its website, the foundation’s mission is to “assist senior citizens and also offer them compassion by providing them with services, cost-saving, beautifying and modern home improvements, as well as advocating for their needs before local governments.” Victoria Méndez serves as the foundation’s treasurer.

Abuelos Foundation Website

Nonprofit The Abuelos Foundation was started by Carlos Morales, has Antonio Lorenzo as a board member and Victoria Méndez as its treasurer.

Separately, Lorenzo and his wife Melissa Lorenzo have been real estate agents for the sale and resale of properties owned by people under care of the Guardianship Program.

In 2020, Lexan Real Estate, a company owned by Melissa Lorenzo, made $7,500 for acting as the real estate agent when Express Homes bought an incapacitated woman’s Liberty City duplex through the Guardianship Program for $125,000.

The following year, Express Homes resold the remodeled property for $360,000, a gain of about $235,000. Antonio Lorenzo worked with Express Homes as the real estate agent for the resale of the property, according to public real estate listings.

Then, in June of 2022, Antonio Lorenzo appraised a Richmond Heights home owned by an incapacitated woman named Cassandra Canty Mathis for $355,000. His wife then sold the home on behalf of the Guardianship Program to an unrelated company for $360,000, making $21,600 on the sale, according to court records.

The new owners sold the home for $590,000 in April of 2023.

As WLRN has previously reported, advocates have expressed concerns about whether the Guardianship Program is getting the best deal it can get for people under its care — a requirement under state law — citing multiple instances where homes have quickly been resold for higher prices.

Four of the five properties that Antonio Lorenzo lists on his Realtor.com profile were Guardianship Program properties. Two of the homes were originally owned by Express Homes when Lorenzo worked with them to resell the properties. The two other guardianship properties were purchased by Westchester-based attorney Michael A. Gonzalez before Lorenzo helped resell them for significantly more money.

WLRN found that Gonzalez purchased at least four Guardianship homes since 2021. For example, he bought a home in the Shenandoah neighborhood of Miami owned by an incapacitated woman named Primitiva Lopez in March of 2022 for $455,000. Ten months later, Gonzalez sold the home for $960,000, more than double the original price. Antonio Lorenzo originally appraised the home for $355,000, and he was the real estate agent on the resale of the home, according to court records.

The median sales price for a single family home in the 33145 zip code in March of 2022 was $710,000, according to Redfin.

Hogue, the activist who tracks Guardianship cases in court, told WLRN that she was surprised the Guardianship Program submits property appraisals to the courts, which goes beyond what is required by law.

“In the state of Florida, there isn't a law stating that you have to do an appraisal. Usually what's filed is a ‘market analysis,’ which is just terrible,” said Hogue.

His friends called him ‘Rocky’

In 2012, Carlos Morales founded a nonprofit organization called the Southern Housing Alliance. All of the registered officers of the nonprofit — among whom was Antonio Lorenzo — have purchased properties that once belonged to incapacitated people under the care of the Guardianship Program, court and property records show.

The nonprofit was legally dissolved in 2014.

The listed treasurer of Southern Housing Alliance was a man named Alexander Perez. In 2015, Express Homes bought a Sweetwater townhome from an incapacitated person named Eloina Millares Pais for $85,000 and then four months later sold it to Perez for $175,000, according to property records. Perez is still listed as the owner of that property.

The nonprofit's secretary was Antonio Piedra, the owner of a company called Lucaser Holdings. Between 2010 and 2015, the company directly purchased five properties owned by incapacitated people under the care of the Guardianship Program. The company most recently bought a house belonging to an incapacitated woman named Joyce Grala for $51,500 in 2015, then resold the house for $158,000 seven months later.

Gallego Homes also bought and later sold another Guardianship property to Lucaser Holdings. That property used to belong to Edward Wysocki.

Joshua Ceballos/WLRN

Edward Wysocki's home, in an unincorporated area near the University of Miami, was bought by Gallego Homes.

Wysocki, known as “Rocky” to his friends, lived in his 1948 home near the University of Miami for decades. Wysocki’s longtime neighbor and friend, Peter Hill, recalled that the house was once covered in bromeliads and tropical plants, all planted or tended by Wysocki himself.

“He had lots of orchids, lots of tropical plants. He had palms, which were very rare. He had orchids and exotic plants in his backyard with a fish pond that was very beautiful,” Hill told WLRN. “Gardening was his passion.”

Today, the single-family property has more of a contemporary style, with an astroturf-lined cement driveway and modern entryway with little to no foliage to cover its curb appeal.

In March of 2012, when Wysocki was already in his 90s, he entered the care of the Guardianship Program of Dade County after Hill and Wysocki’s other friends called the Department of Children and Families to report that he was left alone and neglected in his home.

Two months later, the program asked the Miami-Dade court system for permission to sell Wysocki’s home to pay for his care at an assisted living facility. The very next day, the probate judge approved the sale. The house had gone out for private bid after it was assessed for $90,000.

Hill says the home was in a state of disrepair, and needed new bathroom work, kitchen remodeling, and roof repair. Hill offered to buy the house for $68,000 in an email auction, but he was outbid by a company called Gallego Homes, which bought the house for $85,000 in June of 2012, according to court records.

Less than two weeks after purchasing Wysocki’s house, Gallego Homes sold it to Piedra’s company, Lucaser Holdings, for $120,000. Just five months afterwards, the company resold it for $335,000. The money made on the two subsequent resales of the property did not go towards Wysocki’s care.

Wysocki worked for the Miami-Dade County Library system as an artist and designer. Hill said he drew paintings of Everglades landscapes and of nature. He was a gardener, and a collector of exotic and tropical plants. When his home was sold, his artwork and plants were disposed of, Hill says, and he wasn’t able to keep a single one.

“My only regret was the day that they started working on the home. They came with a dumpster and they threw everything in there. And I wish I had gotten at least one of his paintings just as a keepsake to remember him by,” Hill said.

One home, many threads

Javier Llanes has worked with the Guardianship Program as a real estate agent going back to at least 2012, listing select properties on real estate websites. That year, Llanes placed a Coconut Grove home on the market for less than a single day before it was sold to the company Gallego Homes for under asking price, property records show.

In one property transaction identified by WLRN, numerous threads of the disparate connections related to these property sales come together.t

A woman named Yiriam Ossorio bought an Allapattah home from an incapacitated woman named Alice Latimer for $48,000 in 2015, through the Guardianship Program. Just over three months later, Ossorio transferred the house to Express Homes.

Though the transfer was a step removed from the Guardianship Program, the program’s real estate agent, Javier Llanes appeared as a witness on the deed, alongside Antonio Lorenzo. Their names and signatures appear one on top of the other.

Another home Llanes worked on belonged to Puerto Rico native Juana Raymond, who lived in Homestead. Raymond spent decades working as a grader of tropical fruits grown in South Dade alongside her Cuban-born husband Ramón Raymond. Over the years, the couple did well enough to buy a house at 15495 Leisure Drive in Homestead.

Years after Ramón died, Juana was placed under the care of the Guardianship Program of Dade County after being diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer's. Her daughter, Sonia Raymond, recalled being shocked to learn that she could exercise no influence on anything after the process was completed.

“I had no rights. I had no rights,” Sonia said.

A few months after taking control of Juana’s decision making, the Guardianship Program moved to sell the family home to better take care of her. The non-profit enlisted the help of Javier Llanes to sell the home as a real estate agent, according to court records.

Sonia told WLRN she was notified of the intent to sell but never alerted to any bidding process or told how much the home would be sold for, nor when a sale would be completed.

The house was sold to Gallego Homes in July of 2013 for $36,500. A month later, Gallego Homes resold it for $60,000. Court records show no bidding on the property.

Sonia Raymond

Juana Raymond pictured in 1994 with her grandchildren at the family house that the Guardianship Program sold to Gallego Homes in 2013 to pay for her care. Her daughter Sonia says most of Juana's personal belongings were discarded under court order before the family even had a chance to see them.

When she later pulled up public real estate records and saw the price Llanes and the Guardianship Program sold the house for, Sonia Raymond was livid. If she had known the price range, she and her three siblings could have bought the home themselves, she said.

“That's nothing. That house sold for way under market. Way under market. And then it was sold a month later,” she said. “You're talking about ten grandchildren that lived, that knew that as abuela and abuelo's home. It’s incredible.”

Raymond said one of the worst things about the entire incident was that all of her mother’s personal belongings were discarded two months after she was placed under guardianship before the home was even sold. A court filing notes: “Personal items disposed of as per court order.”

Family photos dating back to Puerto Rico and Cuba, childhood photos of Sonia and her siblings, mementos, items with nostalgic value were lost for generations of the surviving family.

“When I tell you we got nothing, we got nothing. Nothing from the inside of the house,” Sonia said.

Full Article & Source:
UNGUARDED: How a tight-knit network of Miami real estate players bought and sold Guardianship homes for profit

Local Spotlight: The dangers of guardianship programs

By Chris Remington

The new series from Unguarded from WLRN explores the sales of homes of 'incapacitated' people in South Florida to private companies. [Illustration by Camilla Kerwin]

There are an estimated 1.5 million active adult guardianship cases across the country. It’s a massive industry, with guardians controlling an estimated $50 billion in assets.Advocates for guardianship reform say a lack of oversight leads to many reported instances of fraud and abuse.

Two new investigations from Bloomberg Law and WLRN News found guardianships can harm some of the most vulnerable members of society with little legal recourse. In South Florida, the GuardianshipProgram of Dade County sold at least a dozen homes of “incapacitated” people under their care to one Miami real estate company, Express Homes.

Those houses were often resold for hundreds of thousands dollars more than the purchase value. Carlos Morales is the owner of Express homes and his wife is Miami City attorney Victoria Méndez. The couple has claimed any allegations of impropriety are baseless. Miami-Dade County has asked the Guardianship program to temporarily halt the sale of any new homes while they investigate their real estate practices. 

The Bloomberg Law investigation underscores how essential rights of those in guardianship can be taken away, the vast amounts of money companies can gain from their clients, and the challenges of terminating a guardianship once it’s begun. 

Sara Abbott in Indiana was under guardianship for more than six years. A court appointed attorney took over as her guardian from her mother in 2021 and controlled all of the funds she received from social security. After years of fighting, she was able to terminate her guardianship last month. 

Last month, the Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing focused on improving guardianships in response to the investigations.

Full Article & Source:
Local Spotlight: The dangers of guardianship programs

WLRN investigation featured in national conversation about guardianship reform

By WLRN NEWS STAFF

WLRN Investigation: Unguarded

When elderly people or those with disabilities or mental illnesses are placed under guardianship, their rights are removed. A legal guardian is appointed to make life decisions for them, including decisions about their personal finances. Without greater transparency and scrutiny on these legal arrangements, vulnerable people can become victims of fraud and abuse.

U.S. senators, attorneys, advocates and people who have been placed under guardianships, as well as their families, are calling for more transparency and scrutiny nationwide. They also recommend the embrace of less restrictive options than guardianships such as supportive decision making, in which people who are considered “incapacitated” or incapable of making decisions independently can do so with the guidance of people they trust.

“Unguarded,” a project from the WLRN News investigations team, along with a recent series from Bloomberg Law, in part prompted the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging to hold a March 30 hearing on guardianship programs, with an eye toward reforms.

Journalists from both news organizations shared their insights Tuesday morning during an hour-long episode of the national radio show 1A, produced by WAMU in Washington, D.C., as well as NPR.

WLRN’s Danny Rivero, who co-reported the project with reporter Joshua Ceballos, appeared on the program. Rivero advised people who might be considering placing a family member under guardianship to think ahead about how the arrangement might affect any real estate holdings the person might have.

If an elderly father comes under guardianship, for example, “all the decision making is removed from father, but also daughter, son, uncle, wife, everyone,” Rivero said on the show. “It's really incumbent on everyone, especially if you're proactively looking to put someone in guardianship, to get your affairs in order before you do so.”

During the show, listeners heard an excerpt from part two of WLRN’s investigation, in which Emma Ladson describes her astonishment when she learned that the Guardianship Program of Dade County sold her then-incapacitated mother’s Liberty City home for $31,000 in 2015.

The sale was to Gallego Homes, one of two real estate companies WLRN has identified as frequent buyers from the Guardianship Program. The other company was Express Homes. Both companies have family ties to City of Miami’s top attorney Victoria Méndez.

When the Guardianship Program took control of the Ladson home, Emma, who was living there with her mother, was evicted.

“Because she did not have her name on that deed, the court could just quickly move to get her out of there, even though the family had owned that home outright for years,” Rivero said. “That was the family home. … Four generations had been through that home. And then, from one day to the next, she was put out on the street. She ended up in a homeless shelter.”

One of the obstacles to reforming guardianship programs nationwide is a lack of transparency about how they operate. According to Bloomberg Law’s reporting, there are an estimated 1.5 million active adult guardianships in the U.S.

In Florida, guardianships have not been tracked statewide — until now. A new law passed last year requires a statewide registry and is slated to be available early next year.

On 1A, Rivero said the lack of a registry has alarmed the advocacy group AARP for years.

“Part of the complaint that they've had for a long time is they just don't know. They don't know how many cases are open in Florida,” Rivero said. “You'd have to go into the guts of local government, to go to each clerk's office. And then each one has its own system. It's just incredibly cluttered and hard to track.

“So, I mean, there is hope that the database will be step one toward enabling people to put more scrutiny on this,” Rivero said.

Full Article & Source:
WLRN investigation featured in national conversation about guardianship reform

Unguarded: Michigan’s guardianship system leaves vulnerable exposed

BY MARDI LINK and LUCA POWELL 

George Pappas poses for a portrait with his Toyota Prius outside his apartment in Harbor Springs on Thursday. Elise Page was appointed as Pappas’s conservator in 2019. Page was convicted of embezzlement in 2021 for stealing thousands of dollars from Pappas.

Record-Eagle/Mike Krebs

A conservator who took a 95-year-old man’s debit card on a shopping spree at Victoria’s Secret.

Another who hasn’t accounted for $17,000 from the sale of a 74-year-old man’s land, and a third on trial, accused of embezzling funds from 11 vulnerable individuals.

Record-Eagle reporters in August 2021 began examining records in 10 of Michigan’s probate courts. They found a steady stream of worrisome stories ranging from family isolation to outright theft.

The stories involve people of means and those on fixed incomes, people who live independently and those who require residential care, those with close family members and those without, but all have one thing in common: They begin with a judicial decision meant to protect them by appointing a guardian or conservator.

Anecdotally, thousands of guardians and conservators — acting as fiduciaries — serve in their roles without running afoul of the law. Still, they are barely monitored by the courts that hand them the keys to a person’s estate. The State of Michigan has no rules governing who can serve as an appointed guardian so long as the person is older than 18. Often, vulnerable adults have little control over some of the most important decisions in their life — like where they live, who they can see, and how their savings are spent.

Decades of reform attempts by governors, attorneys general and legislators failed to alter the Michigan judiciary, which controls guardianship, keeping a casual eye on a system that lets bad actors harm the vulnerable.

During a nine-month investigation, Record-Eagle reporters found the following:

• Probate courts aren’t built to audit and monitor what guardians do with their wards.
• Protocol changes by the state judiciary, made in the name of reform, weakened state oversight.
• Three employees in the Attorney General’s office are tasked with keeping a watchful eye on more than 1,600 vulnerable individuals who have no family members interested in their well-being.
• Reform efforts have come and gone with little to show, the result of repeated efforts by judges and professional guardians to resist oversight changes. Those efforts are being revived today.
• “Good” guardians are sorely needed, but the job often pays pennies and encourages professional guardians to oversee as many wards as possible.

George Pappas holds a photo of himself and his late wife, Geneva, at his apartment in Harbor Springs.

Record-Eagle/Mike Krebs

Robbed of money and dignity

In early December 2020, George Pappas had to pay his utility bill.

At 95, it was a point of pride for Pappas that he could drive, even though he’d recently had a conservator appointed to manage his money. After Pappas’ wife, Geneva, died in 2019, Pappas said he tried to keep up with daily chores, but eventually told a social worker at a local Veterans Administration office he needed help.

Pappas asked if someone could schedule his dental appointments, arrange to have the brakes on his car fixed and help arrange a pre-paid burial.

Records show the social worker told him he needed a conservator and referred Pappas to Emmet County Probate Court. Judge Valerie Snyder appointed a Harbor Springs woman named Elise Page.

Probate courts in Michigan are run by elected probate judges, and with no backgrounding rules from the state, the judges have latitude on how to find and vet the guardians and conservators they appoint.

In Page’s case, court staff asked the sheriff’s department to run a background check before adding her to a list of those willing to serve. That check found no criminal convictions; yet records kept across the hall in district court show a number of debt collection cases, all since closed, filed against her. Unpaid loans, a bounced check to a Petoskey florist, and debt for medical services.

Soon after her appointment, Page closed Pappas’ bank account, moved his money to a credit union and applied for a debit card in her own name. Ten days later, Page went on a shopping spree at vape shops, fast food drive-thrus and Victoria’s Secret.

She was eventually caught, but not by the court. Pappas paid his utility bill with a check from his old bank account and when it bounced, he told a clerk at city hall. The clerk called the police.

By then, Page had transferred $63,665 from Pappas’ old bank account — his entire balance — into the new credit union account, police records show. During the next few weeks, Page withdrew $10,300 in cash and spent another $3,615 with the debit card.

Dressed in a robin’s egg blue suit, Pappas testified righteously at the sentencing hearing after Page was convicted of fraud in the case.

“My wife worked 30 years to earn money and this person took advantage of that, blood money, for her prosperity and her hunger,” said Pappas.

Pappas’s story speaks to the casual accountability mechanisms in place for guardians and conservators. Conservators have about two months to tell a court how much money they’re responsible for. After that, they file annual reports with line items detailing expenses. Courts don’t require receipts and these financial reports are often as brief as, “Rent: $7,000,” “Car: $4,000.”

If anything looks fishy, casting the net to catch the fish isn’t the court’s job. Michigan probate courts are only responsible for monitoring whether guardians and conservators file financial and other documents on time and that these documents are sent to “interested parties.”

It’s those interested parties — a spouse, a daughter or son, siblings or staff with a government benefit agency like Social Security — and not the court who bear responsibility for ferreting out wrongdoing.

“The court is not an investigative body, it’s a paperwork body,” said private practice attorney Patrick Cherry, of Cadillac, a special assistant attorney general in dozens of guardianship and conservatorship cases, under contract with Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office.

Interested parties are not generally attorneys or accountants. Often they are family members who may have little experience with probate court matters and may not know they have the right to object to discrepancies.

“In my experience objections to accountings are fairly rare,” Cherry said.

In Pappas’ case, bank records show Page spent Pappas’ money weeks before the first accounting was due to the court.

‘Easy opportunity for exploitation’

Expenses made by conservator Elise Page on the account of
George Pappas, a 95-year-old WWII veteran who was appointed
a conservator in Emmet County. Page was convicted of
embezzlement in 2021.
Courtesy of George Pappas

In Grand Traverse County, former Probate Judge Melanie Stanton balked at the idea that courts should monitor the fiduciaries they assign. Stanton, who retired in 2021, said probate staff don’t have time, nor do they have access to LEIN — the statewide police backgrounding database. Probate courts also don’t have the flexibility to pick and choose who they put in charge, because there’s a lack of available guardians.

“A court doesn’t do an investigation,” Stanton said. “That’s not my role.”

In 2020, Stanton was tasked with sorting out the guardianship and conservatorship of Martha Rothaug, a Leelanau County woman with a significant estate and feuding adult children. Judges often appoint outside guardians in cases where siblings appear to be vying for a parent’s money. In Rothaug’s case, a woman named Jill Case was appointed in 2017 by Leelanau County Probate Judge Larry Nelson.

Case moved Martha out of her home and into a nursing home and transferred more than $500,000 in savings from her local account at Merrill Lynch. The action prompted a colleague of Jon Shubert, Martha’s financial planner, to file a suspicious activity report naming Case.

Unbeknownst to either court, Case had a years-long disciplinary record at her job at the Grand Traverse County’s Commission on Aging. Managers reprimanded her for bullying colleagues to tears, records in her personnel file show. Separately, Case’s paycheck had also been garnished in civil court — a legal recourse used to recoup money when a person has an unpaid debt.

Judge Nelson declined comment on Martha Rothaug’s guardianship. Jill Case also declined, saying, “the news has not done me justice in the past involving Jennifer Rodgers.” Rodgers is Martha Rothaug’s daughter, and much of Rothaug’s saga was first reported in the 2017 story “Fighting for Mom” in the Northern Express.

“The court thought Jill Case would be better to take care of my mother than her own daughter,” Rodgers told the Record-Eagle. “She loved the power.”

In Antrim County, the family of a 74-year-old man, Thomas Dobrzelewski, has been at odds with his former conservator concerning $23,000 they say hasn’t been accounted for following the sale of a portion of Thomas’ land. The family has filed paperwork with the probate court questioning expenses – including home repairs and shopping trips to Walmart — where his conservator spent thousands of dollars.

Dobrzelewski’s conservator, Vicki Hamlin-Rogers denied any wrongdoing, but has yet to show the family receipts, court records show.

When one of Dobrzelewski’s children took over their father’s conservatorship, the family found he had $1,475 to his name. When his wife died, Dobrzelewski did not have enough money to afford her headstone.

The Dobrzelewskis declined to comment on the case, but said they hoped their father’s guardianship saga could be instructive for fixing guardianship broadly.

“The current system provides easy opportunity for the exploitation of our most vulnerable population by the very courts and conservators and/or guardians charged with protecting them,” the family told the Record-Eagle in an emailed statement. “Many of the most vulnerable have no capability to challenge the fiduciary decisions and accountings made by conservators and/or guardians.”

Hamlin-Rogers is a professional guardian based in Emmet County. She has more than 20 wards between Emmet, Otsego, Charlevoix, Grand Traverse and Antrim probate courts. In Charlevoix, the Record-Eagle found Hamlin-Rogers had expensed $20,000 for “home repairs” in another conservatorship, not unlike some expenses flagged by the Dobrzelewskis in Antrim.

George Pappas’s discharge papers hang on his refrigerator at his
apartment in Harbor Springs on Thursday. Pappas is a World
War II veteran.
Record-Eagle/Mike Krebs

Charlevoix Court Probate Registrar Mary Clees said Judge Valerie K. Snyder – the same judge who appointed Elise Page to George Pappas – looks at every receipt meticulously, but that no public records exist detailing Hamlin-Rogers’ expenses.

Reached for comment, Hamlin-Rogers said that she had nothing to add to the Dobrzelewski case beyond the vacate order issued by the court. She did not reply to a question regarding her expenses on her Charlevoix conservatorship.

The family’s dispute was being mediated via the Antrim Probate Court, but has been paused pending the outcome of a referral of Hamlin-Rogers’ case to the Michigan State Police. Antrim County Prosecutor James Rossiter confirmed he is reviewing an MSP investigation into accusations of embezzlement passed to his office in October 2021 to determine whether to levy criminal charges in the case.

In cases where guardians or conservators run afoul of the law, making a victim whole again isn’t a sure thing.

Page, Pappas’ former conservator, was prosecuted for embezzlement, convicted and sentenced to pay $15,269 in court costs and restitution, plus spend 11 months in jail. She served five months, with the remainder held in abeyance, and is currently on probation. Page declined to comment for this story through her attorney, Jonathan Steffy.

Pappas will turn 97 in September and said he’s dissatisfied with how the court handled his case. He did receive a $2,500 check in the mail from a victim restitution fund, and Page is expected to get a job and pay back the money she owes to Pappas and to the court.

But probation documents state, for now, Page can pay court costs in monthly installments of $30.

At that rate, Pappas won’t be repaid until he’s 138 years old.

‘Putting blinders on’

Mack
Courtesy of Milton Mack Jr.

Months into his first term in office, Judge Milton Mack Jr. wanted to mend fences.

Mack was less than a year into his new job as state court administrator, a position which oversees every court in Michigan and is housed within the State Court Administrative Office.

A decade before his appointment, a Michigan Auditor General’s report cited numerous flaws in how probate judges monitored conservators. The auditors wrote that judges were “generally not effective” in monitoring conservatorships, and that SCAO should revisit how Michigan’s probate courts review annual accountings.

Mack said the probate judges bristled at the auditor’s conclusions, and at SCAO’s lack of support. He argued that law changes in 2001 altered the responsibilities of probate courts; before the code was changed judges were required to look at detailed receipts, afterward they were only to request detailed receipts if a complaint was raised about the conservators’ spending.

“The criticism was just factually wrong, and SCAO did not back us up in the beginning,” said Mack, who was the Chief Judge of Wayne County Probate Court at the time.

So Mack set out to rebuild trust between probate judges and SCAO.

Mack encouraged probate judges to begin influencing SCAO, allowing them to help pick regional administrators and have a say on guidelines regarding guardians, he said. The overarching focus was on strategies that were inexpensive and effective, building off the premise “that complicated doesn’t get stuff done,” Mack said.

One of those changes was to eliminate the requirement for local courts to tell his office about negligent guardians.

In a memo from July 2016, Mack told Michigan probate court officials they no longer needed to tell SCAO the names of conservators or guardians who fail to write in about their wards’ condition, or those whose annual financial accountings are deficient. Instead, the courts should just tell the SCAO how many cases were deficient. The changes, the memo explained, were done in the name of “streamlining.”

“When possible, SCAO reduces or eliminates reports to strike a better balance between reporting levels and effective oversight,” the memo states. “This month, SCAO streamlined the Deficiencies in Guardianship/Conservatorship Administration Report (SCAO 65) by eliminating Part B. Effective immediately, the report will no longer include a detailed list of deficiencies, with the case number, name of fiduciary, date, type, and court action for every deficiency over the past six months.”

A Record-Eagle reporter asked Mack why the state wouldn’t want to track the names of deficient guardians. Mack said his office didn’t need those names, that the reports created more paperwork, and that when they arrived at SCAO’s office in Lansing, they were being filed away in a cabinet.

“Having all those names doesn’t help SCAO do its job and it’s extra work for the courts that is nonproductive,” Mack said. “It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

Mack served at the head of SCAO until 2020, when he became State Court Administrator Emeritus – a position newly created for him. Mack said one of his roles is to advise the new Administrator Thomas Boyd, on issues like guardianship, where Mack has expertise.

One of Mack’s critics is Bradley Geller, former legal counsel to the Washtenaw County Probate Court and director of the Michigan Center for Law and Aging. Geller said Mack’s tenure at the SCAO weakened an already ineffective oversight apparatus.

Geller said state court officials have no idea how many professional guardians operate in Michigan, or how many wards some of these guardians have. He said the same “willful ignorance” guided the decision to curtail court reporting.

“In other words it’s like putting blinders on,” said Geller. “The less you know, the less obligation you have to actually administer the courts.That’s consistent with Milton Mack and it’s consistent with SCAO.”

Geller is a vocal and longtime critic of Michigan’s guardianship system. In 2017, Geller attempted to sue every probate court in the state in federal court. In his complaint, Geller wrote that judges and state agencies were failing to dismantle a “good old boys club” which was inappropriately institutionalizing vulnerable people to the advantage of lawyers, guardians and judges. Geller’s case was dismissed on a lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

Geller himself was terminated from his job as probate counsel at the Washtenaw County Probate Court in 2004. Geller said he was fired alongside a number of probate court staff by then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Maura Corrigan. The firings came in the wake of a state audit that detailed lax oversight of conservators by Washtenaw County Probate Court staff.

Mack said that his work didn’t weaken SCAO’s oversight and that his form is still effective without names. A better solution, Mack said, lies in a $175 million proposal to digitize and unify Michigan’s courts, a proposal that Mack put forth in 2018 but that has not moved since then. Shared record-keeping would allow SCAO to easily spot bad actors working across Michigan counties.

SCAO isn’t the only state office with oversight responsibility, however. The Michigan Attorney General also plays a role by appointing public administrators. Public administrators are guardians for entire counties who take the cases of wards who have no relatives. They also handle estates, and are supposed to distribute the remaining money in an estate according to a decedent’s will.

These administrators have come under public scrutiny, and even been fired, and yet some retain guardianships and conservatorships.

Attorney General Dana Nessel and former AG Bill Schuette terminated a handful of public administrators following media reports of questionable attorneys fees and assets not being turned over to rightful heirs. But despite being fired, the same former administrators retained an unknown number of guardianship and conservatorship cases.

Schuette in 2017 fired Oakland County public administrators Barbara Andruccioli and Jon Munger; former Macomb County public administrator Cecil St. Pierre resigned after being suspended. Nessel in 2019 fired administrators Jennifer Carney, Thomas Fraser and John Yun, also of Oakland County, as well as Robert Kirk, a public administrator in Macomb County.

John Munger has no active cases in Oakland County, but Jennifer Carney has 415 open or adjudicated cases, Thomas Fraser has 560 open or adjudicated cases and John Yun has 577 open or adjudicated cases, court records show.

An Oakland County Probate Court representative defined an adjudicated case as a case in which a judge has ruled, sometimes adding a co-guardian or discharging one guardian and replacing them with another, though the case may still come before the court for further rulings.

In many and perhaps even most of the above cases, Carney, Yun and Fraser may no longer have an active role, though data on the court’s website is inexact and all three are listed on the county’s Professional Guardian List.

Katharyn Barron, appointed in 2019 as Michigan’s public administrator, said she didn’t view this as a problem.

“Just because we removed them from their job as county public admin, that had nothing to do with their role as a guardian or conservator for individuals,” Barron said. “The court appoints them not because they’re the county public admin, but because they’re a private attorney.”

Andruccioli in 2018 was hired as Oakland County’s probate register and continues in that role today.

Meanwhile, there are also some 1,600 people under guardianship in Michigan with no immediate relatives. These cases all default to the Attorney General, who, by law, is the last person of interest in a case when there is no one else.

Under Nessel, it is Barron’s duty as state public administrator to blow the whistle on any questionable reports or annual accountings submitted by her wards’ guardians and conservators.

An unknown number of these are filed in undigitized courts across the state and are labor-intensive to track.

Barron is also the chair of Nessel’s Elder Abuse Task Force, where she coordinates a committee of more than 100 officials, lawyers, elder advocates and politicians, seeking to improve life for the state’s elderly.

Still, Barron said she checks on “each and every one” of these 1,600 cases, something she’s been able to accomplish with the help of remote court hearings, her office manager and a contracted law student.

Failures of reform

Elected Michigan officials have been trying to fix guardianship for decades, though each attempt has yielded little real change.

Murmurings of guardianship abuse in Michigan emerged in 1996. The Associated Press reported on the for-profit businesses of Alan May, a Wayne County professional guardian, and on guardians across the state with self-dealing arrangements between nursing homes and conservators.

Since then, elected officials established committee after committee to study the issue. For example, in 1996, the State Supreme Court convened a task force on guardianship reform. They produced 11 recommendations, including that “minimum ethical standards for professional guardians and professional conservators should be promulgated and enforced.”

Three years after those reforms were instituted, a 2003 report from the Office of the Auditor General showed problems in the probate courts. Auditors took a sampling of cases from Washtenaw, Wayne, Huron, Calhoun and Jackson counties. In one court, the auditors found 44 out of 114 annual accountings filed by conservators should not have been approved.

“For example, in 1 case a conservator reported annual expenditures of $37,198, but documented expenditures of only $27,717. In another case, a conservator reported nursing home expenditures of $15,558 but provided documentation supporting only $4,740,” the audit states.

In 2005, then-Governor Jennifer Granholm established another task force. This one also recommended minimum standards for guardians. The task force warned that “incidence of elder abuse is likely to rise significantly” over the next 20 years,” owing to Michigan’s aging population.

The recommendations led to no new legislation. When state auditors returned in 2012, they found the state court administrators had only complied with a few of the recommendations made in 2003.

Again, auditors recommended more oversight. And again, SCAO officials agreed.

The office would revamp its use of SCAO 65, officials promised, which would help probate courts identify conservators and guardians with “repeated deficiencies.”

This was the same form that, under the administration of Milton Mack, was “streamlined” to exclude names entirely – making it useless in terms of identifying specific bad actors.

In 2019, Attorney General Dana Nessel announced the creation of the latest Elder Abuse Task Force. Since its inception more than 100 members — judges, lawyers, guardians, advocates, accountants – have met monthly via Zoom. Reforming guardianships, conservatorships and court practices is one of the task force’s goals.

Chief among them was the idea that guardians should be certified — effectively licensed – by an agency such as Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. LARA already oversees licenses of professions from nursing, medicine, child care and even barbers.

Reformers have urged lawmakers to pass a certification requirement since the 1990s, which would mandate education, training, background checks and insurance bonding for guardians and conservators.

Salli Pung, the state’s long-term care ombudsman, chairs the task force’s subcommittee on certification, something which is already a requirement in 14 U.S. states.

“If we’re going to require certification for a dog groomer, we should be requiring it for people who are responsible for every aspect of someone’s life,” Pung said.

Only two of Nessel’s task force’s many initiatives have so far been accomplished. Banks must now report fraud of vulnerable adults and there’s a new form for law enforcement to use when reporting that fraud.

The fate of the other seven — including certification – is tied to proposed legislation stalled in the House Judiciary Committee since June 2021.

Members of the task force said the proposed legislation has elicited objections from trade groups representing judges and guardians.

Judge John Tomlinson, president of the Probate Judges Association, said the initial package would slow the court’s ability to deal with emergent guardianship cases. “PJA couldn’t approve the first package of bills,” Tomlinson said.

The Michigan Guardianship Association also publicly opposed the package, including certification requirements that would require regular visits and limits on the number of wards a guardian can accept. The organization has spent $18,000 per year in lobbying expenses.

MGA representative Georgia Callis in March agreed to an interview with Record-Eagle reporters, canceled a scheduled interview, then stopped responding to requests to reschedule.

Guardians and judges have traditionally opposed oversight measures, such as capping how many wards can be assigned to one guardian.

If there’s money in a person’s estate, a guardian makes $83 per month, or about $1,000 per year. To make minimum wage, a professional guardian would need at least 20 wards.

Mack and Tomlinson said many shoot for 30 or more, on the assumption that some cases will be managed pro bono.

Judges have expressed concern over whether “capping” would leave thousands of vulnerable people in Michigan unguarded. According to Milton Mack, it’s very likely that the first wards to be dropped would be those being served pro-bono.

Mack said he was worried that, by regulating guardians, the new task force might actually end up leaving hundreds of vulnerable adults out to dry.

Legislation proposed by the task force is now in its third revision, and has been modified significantly.

If passed, the new law no longer would “cap” the number of wards a guardian can be appointed to serve, for example. Other changes have also been edited out of the initial bills, including requirements for guardians to personally visit their wards.

Several members of Granholm’s 2006 task force described their previous efforts as fruitless, in part because of pushback from guardians and judges.

“I don’t remember that there was a lot of change. I think I would have celebrated it if there was,” said Sharon L. Gire, a task force member and former director of Michigan’s Office of Services to the Aging.

“And there certainly were professionals in the field – attorneys who make a living – who were very concerned about not having too much control over what they do,” Gire said.

Barron vowed Nessel’s task force won’t have similarly insubstantial results.

“We’re not a task force that is going to write a report and then pat ourselves on the back and ride off into the sunset,” Barron said. “We’re not report-writers. We’re initiative accomplishers.”

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who was also on the 2006 task force, said she’s skeptical.

“That’s what they said the last time. That’s not what happened. The task force met, we had some very good discussion, it was a very comprehensive report, and then literally nothing happened,” said Worthy.

Full Article & Source:

Unguarded: Michigan’s guardianship system leaves vulnerable exposed

Editorial: One guiding principle to untangle guardianship flaws

We wish for heroes and villains.

We need people to inspire us onward in a flawed world; we need people to blame for the flaws.

But our desire for clarity can create polarity. Our search for simplicity can miss the point.

The Record-Eagle’s nine-month dive into Michigan’s guardianship and conservator system found few heroes or villains, and fewer simple answers.

The more reporters investigated, the more tangles they found.

Many working in the system had both insight into its flaws and also reasons for them — changed policies, realities of funding and staffing, jurisdiction issues, delineation of duties, client privacy, fragmentation and more.

Those in the system juggle these, with the responsibility to decide what’s best for someone else, while walking a tightrope between ardent family members who disagree with each other on what “best” is. The difficulties are no doubt immense.

But we let one faction guide our reporting: The people for whom the system is built.

Vulnerable adults. The elderly. Those incapacitated by circumstance and illness. The guardian/conservator system is meant to serve them — not those orbiting around them.

But time, and time again, we found the system serving itself, the absence of the voices of the individuals in question creating both a vacuum and an opportunity for exploitation; a lack of accountability and transparency allowing repeated and unnecessary incompetence and abuse.

“Unguarded’s” findings bear repeating:

• Probate courts aren’t built to audit and monitor what guardians do with their wards.
• Protocol changes by the state judiciary, made in the name of reform, weakened state oversight.
• Three employees in the Attorney General’s office are tasked with keeping a watchful eye on more than 1,600 vulnerable individuals who have no family members interested in their well-being.
• Reform efforts have come and gone with little to show, the result of repeated efforts by judges and professional guardians to resist oversight changes. Those efforts are being revived today.
• “Good” guardians are sorely needed, but the job often pays pennies and encourages professional guardians to oversee as many wards as possible.

Progress is possible, and long overdue.

Attorney General Dana Nessel’s Elder Abuse Task Force — a body of 100 officials, lawyers, elder advocates and politicians — put forward several fixes to improve life for the state’s elderly.

Of nine, two have been realized — banks must now report suspected fraud of vulnerable adults and there’s a new form for law enforcement to use when reporting that fraud.

The other seven stalled in the House, “revised” by special interest-influence to dilute caps on the number of wards a guardian can be appointed to serve, remove requirements for guardians to personally visit their wards and debate certifications for guardians and conservators, including requirements for minimum training and professional standards.

Lobby groups for those in the system, like for judges and guardians, opposed the initial recommendations.

This isn’t the end of the story, as all of us will be needed to fix what is broken.

We will continue our reporting on every side of this complicated problem.

But the answers can be simple if we let one principle guide us — who does the system serve and how does it serve them?

Full Article & Source:

Editorial: One guiding principle to untangle guardianship flaws

 

See Also:

A guardianship gone wrong 

 

Michigan’s guardianship system leaves vulnerable exposed 

 

Isolated by guardianship 

 

Conservator says she's targeted by AG task force

Isolated by guardianship

By Mardi Link and Luca Powell

George Pappas and his daughter, Mary Hilliard, in a photo taken in the 1950s and preserved in a family photo album.
Maria Sterlini/Special to the Record-Eagle

BAD AXE — It was June 2021 and by the way she describes it, every bone in Maria Sterlini’s body told her the solution to a family emergency seemed obvious.

Five years earlier, a Huron County probate court judge deemed Sterlini’s cousin, Mary Hilliard, 68, incapacitated because of a mental health diagnosis. In 2016, the judge appointed Hilliard’s elderly mother, Rita Sniecikowski, as guardian.

But then last summer Sniecikowski, 83, was hospitalized, throwing Hilliard’s life into disarray. Hilliard’s family lost control of her care — and have since felt isolated from her.

Sterlini said she wanted to keep her family together, yet at times it seemed to her as if those in positions of authority did just the opposite.

A public guardian and staff with Adult Protective Services supported Hilliard’s emergency placement in an adult foster care home, while Sterlini and another close relative said they thought Hilliard should live with family.

This case came to light last August when Record-Eagle reporters began examining probate court records in 10 Michigan counties, as part of an ongoing probe of the state’s guardianship system.

Reporters learned, among other findings, problems can arise when family members, a judge, and social service agency staff all contend they are acting in the best interests of a vulnerable person, but disagree on what those best interests are.

Hilliard became a resident of Lauren Osantoski’s AFC in Bad Axe on June 9, 2021, and has had scant contact with some members of her family since.

“This doesn’t make sense to me,” Sterlini said. “I don’t understand why the family wasn’t included in this decision. We never wanted her in a foster care home.”

Sterlini said she and Hilliard’s father, George Pappas, of Harbor Springs, can count on one hand the number of times they’ve spoken with Hilliard in the past year.

The public guardian contends the frequency of communication is what Hilliard wants, while Sterlini and Pappas expressed concern the AFC’s phone policy, trauma experienced by Hilliard when her mother was hospitalized or stonewalling by caretakers could be responsible.

Calls to the foster care home by a reporter seeking to speak with Hilliard went to voicemail and were not returned. Osantoski, owner of the AFC home, did not return calls seeking comment. County officials confirmed the facility does not allow individual cellphones, providing instead access to a house phone.

Ashley Kidd, a case worker with Huron County’s Public Guardian office, which now oversees Hilliard’s case, said limited contact is what Hilliard has so far preferred.

“Mary does have all of their phone numbers and she is allowed to call if she wants to,” Kidd said. “She doesn’t always want that communication, at least not right at the moment.”

Pappas, 96, who owns a car and drives short distances but cannot make the 460-mile trip from Harbor Springs to Bad Axe and back, said he last spoke with his daughter in mid-April.

Sterlini and Pappas said they tried to make a conference call to Hilliard on April 24, Greek Easter, a holiday of special significance for the family, who are members of the Greek Orthodox Church. The call went to voicemail and wasn’t returned, Sterlini said.

Pappas is himself no stranger to the control a third-party court-appointment can exert over a person’s life. In 2021, an Emmet County Probate Court judge appointed him a conservator, the decision went awry and continues to be the subject of extensive reporting by the Record-Eagle.

“I feel like Mary has been stolen from us by all these people,” Pappas said, of staff with social service agencies and the probate court. “I can’t even get with her anymore on the telephone.”

Worth saving

Maria “Dolly” Sterlini, 74, lives 130 miles south of Bad Axe in Canton. When Hilliard’s mother was hospitalized, Sterlini, who lives alone, said she’d hoped Hilliard could come live with her.

Sterlini and Hilliard have always been close, Sterlini said, growing up as they did just blocks from one another in a Detroit suburb. Hilliard is artistically talented, Sterlini said, recalling summer afternoons the two spent together, painting and drawing.

“Mary is the most beautiful, heartfelt person you ever want to know,” Sterlini said. “There’s never been a cross word between us. She’s like my little sister. And she’s worth saving.”

Hilliard is one of more than 130,000 adults in Michigan who a probate judge has determined requires help managing their medical, housing or financial affairs and as a result have a court-ordered guardian, conservator or both.

When Huron County Probate Court Judge David Clabeusch appointed Hilliard’s mother as her guardian, he also appointed the county’s Public Guardian, Stephen Allen, as her co-guardian and later, her conservator. Jacilyn Geiger took over in the role when Allen retired in 2020.

Guardians make medical and housing decisions, conservators handle finances, which in Hilliard’s case included $643 in monthly social security disability benefits, records show, and $76 a month from Veterans Affairs.

A court-appointed attorney met with Hilliard on July 6, 2016, court records show, and reported back to the court that Hilliard did not drive, cook or grocery shop, but had easily recited her age, birthday and address.

The attorney said in her report that Hilliard questioned whether her mental health diagnosis was still accurate.

Sterlini said she also has questions about Hilliard’s diagnosis and treatment; annual guardian reports filed in 2017 and 2018 by Sniecikowski state Hilliard saw a psychiatrist twice annually for treatment and prescription medication refills.

Doubly Victimized

Pappas said he feels like his family has been doubly victimized by a system that has long failed to care for the state’s most vulnerable residents.

Decades of reform attempts by governors, attorneys general and legislators have so far failed to alter the Michigan judiciary, which controls guardianship and conservatorship in the state’s probate courts.

But it is family members and other “persons of interest” — and not the court — who bear the responsibility of making sure appointed guardians and conservators protect the people they are assigned to serve.

Pappas and Sterlini are listed as “persons of interest” in Hilliard’s case, records show, and after APS placed Hilliard in the AFC home, Sterlini fought Hilliard’s guardianship in court.

On Aug. 6, 2021, Sterlini filed a petition in Huron County Probate Court, seeking to have herself appointed Hilliard’s guardian. The court appointed a guardian ad litem who met with Hilliard and reported back to the court, but never met with or mentioned Sterlini, records show, even though Sterlini was the petitioner.

Hilliard attended the Aug. 10, 2021 petition hearing, where Judge Clabuesch asked her where she preferred to live, at the Osantoski home or with Sterlini — who the family knows as “Dolly.”

In hundreds of pages of documents the Record-Eagle reviewed for this story, the transcript of this hearing is the only time Hilliard’s voice was evident.

“The Osantoski home is a — what’s, what is it?” Hilliard asked the judge.

“Right there, where you are,” the judge said.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh. Lauren’s,” Hilliard said.

“Lauren’s,” the judge confirmed. “Do you —”

“I, I, I think I’ll go with Dolly,” Hilliard said.

The judge asked again whether Hilliard wanted to live with Dolly and the transcript shows Hilliard said living with Dolly would alleviate pressure on her mother.

When the judge responded that he didn’t want to know about Hilliard’s mother, he wanted to know which place was best for her, Hilliard said she couldn’t make up her mind.

“All right. That’s fine,” the judge said. “That’s a sign of somebody being incapacitated.”

Sterlini’s petition was denied, court records show, the public guardian retained its appointment as co-guardian and conservator and Hilliard stayed at the AFC home.

Sniecikowski, after being hospitalized, did not return to the apartment she shared with her daughter and, records show, now lives in a nursing home. In October the court removed her as Hilliard’s co-guardian.

A Difficult Spot

In Michigan there are a handful of counties, like Huron, in the state’s thumb, which fund public guardian offices and employ staff to accept probate court appointments. Their jobs are difficult and, records show, frequently underfunded.

A county public guardian is different from a public administrator, which most counties in Michigan have. Public administrators are attorneys who handle estates when there are no heirs on record. The state also has an overall public administrator, Katharyn Barron, who acts as “person of interest” for vulnerable people who’ve been appointed a guardian or conservator, and have no family of record.

“As a county-funded office, we don’t turn down any cases,” Kidd, employed by the county’s public guardian office since 2017, explained. “We are having a growing number of people who are on our caseload and now live outside the county as there’s a lack of appropriate housing available in our area.”

Vulnerable adults the public guardian office is appointed to serve all once lived in Huron County, Kidd said, and many still do, though others are placed in facilities as far away as Rose City (117 miles), Grand Rapids (204 miles), Berrien County (260 miles) and Detroit (113 miles).

A fact Sterlini said makes placement of Hilliard into a sought-after spot in the county, instead of with family, all the more inexplicable.

The county’s public guardian office has a full-time staff of four, Kidd said, who are responsible for the well-being of about 270 people. Kidd confirmed she and others in the office have had repeated communications with Sterlini and Pappas.

“Dolly does have the right to petition the court if she feels there is a more appropriate placement or a guardianship alternative of her being the guardian,” Kidd said, of Hilliard’s case. “I get where Dolly is coming from. We empathize that she wants her family close to her. Unfortunately, it just hasn’t ever gone that way due to Mary’s wishes.”

Kidd said the staff all know Hilliard and see her frequently. Osantoski’s AFC is near the public guardian’s office and Kidd said a dozen other people the office serves as guardian or conservator also live there.

Osantoski’s AFC is one of the only facilities in the area that accepts emergency placements like Hilliard’s, whose situation was first investigated by Adult Protective Services after Sniecikowski expressed concern for her daughter to a hospital social worker.

That doesn’t explain why Sterlini and Pappas weren’t informed, or why faulty information stating Hilliard was in danger of becoming homeless, was included in an APS log documenting the complaint.

Records show Sterlini began communicating with the public guardian’s office in 2019, asking to be kept informed about Hilliard’s care. Pappas said he wasn’t initially informed his daughter was placed in an AFC home, either.

Instead, when Pappas learned his ex-wife was hospitalized and he couldn’t reach his daughter, he called police.

Records show officers from Bad Axe Police Department visited Osantoski’s AFC for a welfare check and found Hilliard safe, happy and in good health. The involvement of law enforcement, however, prompted another alarming entry in the APS complaint log.

This entry, dated June 23, 2021, referenced a call to APS from Osantoski.

“Lauren stated Mary’s dad called her on Friday night,” the entry states. “No one knew she had a father. He called police and had them come out to check on Mary ‘cause Lauren would not release any information.”

If Pappas wanted to speak with his daughter, the APS log states, he had to go through the public guardian.

Kidd said the public guardian’s office is in a difficult spot – Sterlini and Pappas would like Hilliard to live with family, while by law public guardian staff must respect Hilliard’s wishes and according to Kidd, that means staying at Osantoski’s.

“She would do OK in a home setting with family or whatnot, if that was something she desired,” Kidd said, of Hilliard. “She’s been very happy where she’s at. She has not expressed wanting to go anywhere else.”

Pappas previously expressed concern about the care Hilliard is receiving there, and while state records with the Bureau of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs show the facility is in compliance, there have also been regulatory violations.

Since October of 2019 the facility has been the subject of six special investigations by LARA licensing consultants – none have substantiated allegations or recommended the facility’s license be reviewed.

“The residents are going to be afraid to tell you the truth for fear of what will happen to them when you leave,” stated one complainant, whose name LARA redacted.

Adult foster care homes in Michigan are required to be licensed by LARA, and many of these facilities draw all or a large portion of their residents from placements by social service organizations, like APS or community mental health.

Previous reporting by the Record-Eagle has found it is common for residents of AFC homes to be appointed guardians, conservators or both. AFC home residents are often elderly, developmentally disabled, mentally ill or struggle with memory issues.

Pappas said last year he was unable to speak with his daughter on Father’s Day, and is hopeful when he calls on June 19, the result will be different.

Pappas kept a tally of his attempts to talk with his daughter, jotting down on a yellow legal pad repeated denials and excuses, including, “we’re eating lunch,” or “It’s Sunday.”

Phone calls are the only way Pappas can communicate with his daughter, he said, since he is unable to drive to the AFC home and, while he sends cards and letters, she doesn’t write back.

“That is something that we have addressed with the home,” Kidd said, reiterating Hilliard has phone numbers of family members and can make outgoing calls if she wants.

Sterlini has continued to communicate with the public guardian’s office. For example, in October she emailed the office to ask whether Hilliard received the hot pink hat, scarf and gloves Sterlini sent to her for the winter.

Last year, during one of several visits a Record-Eagle reporter made to Pappas’ apartment in Harbor Springs, Pappas put the handset for his landline on speakerphone, called Osantoski’s AFC, gave his name and asked to speak with his daughter.

The staff member who answered the phone said Pappas had to call Hilliard’s guardian.

When Pappas asked for the name of the guardian and their phone number, the call was disconnected.

Full Article & Source:

Isolated by guardianship 

 

See Also: 

A guardianship gone wrong 

 

Michigan’s guardianship system leaves vulnerable exposed