Victory for Probate Court Reform Movement and the Carter Family

When Cardell Carter, daughters Venus Gist and Kimberly Carter decided to defy court order and remove their wife and mother from a Board and Care facility on Valentine’s Day, they had the backing of the Probate Court Reform Movement.

Maxine Ussery, one of the founders of the 78 member organization said, “We were there when the Carter family removed Katherine Carter from the Board and Care facility where she had been housed since December. Carter suffers from dementia and had degraded rapidly. The Carter’s feared for Mrs. Carter’s health while the Court was spending money for inferior care at the Carter’s expense. We were there again when the court ordered the family to court to face sanctions for their actions.”

Members of the Probate Reform Movement, who’d seen their estates decimated before the same judge believe their presence made all the difference in the world.

Ussery’s brother, Ray Willis said “I noticed a visible reaction by the Judge when he saw us sitting there. I told Judge Reardon when he financially destroyed my family he’d see us again, and I believe it was difficult for him to penalize another family in our presence.”

The conservator and court appointed attorney were seeking sanctions against the Carter family for their actions. Despite their efforts, the Carter’s and the Movement prevailed.

Judge Thomas Reardon, ruled in favor of the family, disallowing sanctions or forcing the family to return Mrs. Carter back to the Board and Care. He ruled against placing the family under oath to testify that 24 hour care was in place in the home. Then dismissed the petition for Mrs. Carter’s conservatorship with the admonition that “You’re going to regret my intervention the next time the family disagrees” and ordered limited conservatorship over the Carter estate until court attorney and fees are paid in full.

Judge Reardon also dismissed the petition over Mr. Carter who was placed in conservatorship because he had challenged court fees and decisions. Mr. Carter is able-bodied, mentally and physically, yet the Judge had stripped Mr. Carter of the right to manage his estate.

Tanya Dennis, coordinator for the Probate Court Reform Movement said, “This is why we discourage anyone from entering into probate to settle their estate. Once you enter probate you’re at the mercy of the court and the court is not your friend. A will and trust can prevent entering probate and it is vital that any disagreement between beneficiaries of the estate settle all differences privately.

There is a predatory climate that prevails in Probate Court and that is why we’re petitioning District Attorney Nancy O’Malley to investigate. We also want the Commission on Judicial Performance to audit probate cases since 2007. We believe the Commission will find minority families are being targeted. That’s why we exist, we’re demanding reform, and helping families keep their estates.” For more information regarding the Probate Court Reform Movement call 510-282-8200.

Full Article & Source:
Victory for Probate Court Reform Movement and the Carter Family

Surprise man spends thousands in probate court costs as he tries to help wife with dementia

All Bob McGuire wanted was to cash out his wife's modest retirement account and use the money to pay the mounting bills that have accompanied her dementia diagnosis.

After nearly a year, the 75-year-old Surprise resident and Navy veteran has racked up $6,000 in legal bills and court fees to access the $25,000 individual retirement account.

And his ordeal — navigating probate in Maricopa County Superior Court to obtain guardianship and conservatorship of his wife, Linda — isn't over: McGuire is contesting roughly another $2,000 in legal fees from a court-appointed attorney, designated by a court commissioner to represent and protect the interests of his wife.

When it's all settled, the family could end up losing one-fourth of his wife's IRA to legal fees and bills, McGuire said.

Husband challenges court fees

Probate court is designed to preserve the "respect and dignity of vulnerable adults and to assure their proper care and protection of assets," said Bryan Bouchard, a court spokesman.

Court officials would not comment on McGuire's case.

But Bouchard said Maricopa County's court system does everything possible to keep fees to a minimum. And in cases where one party questions the fees being charged by a court-appointed lawyer, the court will hold a hearing to determine whether the fees are "appropriate to the task and cost effective," he said.

McGuire is currently appealing the court fees he has been charged.

Rick Kilfoy, who was appointed to represent Linda McGuire and check on her well being, said a person who is incapacitated must have legal representation and the same lawyer who represented Bob McGuire could not represent his wife. Kilfoy declined to discuss the case further.

Full Article & Source:

Surprise man spends thousands in probate court costs as he tries to help wife with dementia

Daughter found guilty of invading privacy of her Kennett Square millionaire father

WEST CHESTER >>The former owner of an art gallery in Kennett Square has been found guilty of illegally intruding into a conference between her aging father, a court-appointed attorney and psychologist trying to determine his competency by secretly videotaping it with a webcam.

The Common Pleads jury hearing the case against Megan Brooke O’Conner deliberated about three hours on Wednesday before returning to Judge Ann Marie Wheatcraft’s courtroom with guilty verdicts on charges of interception of communication, a violation of the state Wiretap Act, and criminal use of communications facility.

Both are third-degree felonies, and could be punishable by a prison term. Wheatcraft ordered a pre-sentence investigation into O’Connor’s background before setting a sentencing date later this year.

The prosecutors in the case, Assistant District Attorneys Vincent Cocco and Daniel Hollander, told the jury of seven women and five men who heard the two-day trial, that O’Connor had been upset that she was being excluded from the conference with her father, a millionaire who had been bankrolling what Cocco called “a lavish and extravagant lifestyle.”

The conference had been set up as part of a guardianship proceeding brought by O’Connor’s half-sister to determine whether O’Connor had been abusing her father’s finances.

“She had a lot to lose depending on the outcome” of that case, Cocco told the panel in his opening statement. “She had a lot at stake. She wanted to be in that room.”

O’Connor was found guilty of setting up a web camera in the room in her father’s garage apartment at their North Union Street home in January 2015 and watching and listening to the meeting between her father, David Umbs, guardianship attorney Nancy Pine, and psychologist Kenneth Carroll. The meeting was to have been confidential, but O’Connor “believes the rules don’t apply to her,” Cocco said.

In her defense, attorney Steve Jarmon said that O’Connor should not be found guilty of the offenses because the meeting was ultimately not a confidential matter. What was discussed between Ulms and the others was eventually part of the record in the guardianship hearing. Those involved had no “reasonable expectation” that it would remain private, as the law requires, he argued.

“She listened in, we concede that,” Jarmon said. “But does that make her guilty?”

Much of the two-day proceeding, which featured testimony from Ulms, Pine, and Carroll, as well as O’Connor’s ex-husband, Patrick O’Connor, concerned not the facts surrounding the wiretap violations, but the dispute over O’Connor’s handling of her father’s money and the objections by her half-sister Mary Ulms.

The two sides of the family are estranged, and O’Connor was given power of attorney over her father’s finances. With it, she took expensive trips, bought jewelry and other items, and ended up buying the Longwood Art Gallery, which closed last year. Mary Ulms brought suit against her, and Judge John Hall ended up appointing Pine as his guardian to oversee his finances.

David Ulms testified briefly, and told Jarmon that O’Connor had his permission to use his money as she saw fit. Jarmon had contended that O’Connor was his sole companion, and that his children from his third marriage did not pay him much attention.

The criminal charge she faced was brought against O’Connor by Kennett Officer Amanda Wenrich in May 2016.

According to a criminal complaint filed in the matter, Wenrich began investigating O’Connor in December 2015 when Pine contacted her about a possible wiretap violation. She said that she had scheduled a private meeting in January 2015 with Umbs and Carroll, a Swarthmore psychologist, to help determine what his mental capabilities were. There was no permission given to anyone to record the interview.

But in December 2015, 12 months after the meeting, she was contacted by Patrick O’Connor who told her he had witnessed his wife watching the meeting via a live feed through a computer camera.

Patrick O’Connor told Wenrich that he had come home the day of the meeting between Pine, Carroll, and Umbs to find his wife sitting with a laptop, “watching video and listening to conversations occurring … in her father’s garage apartment.” While doing so, the compliant states, she was speaking by phone to an attorney who was representing her in the civil action and said: “We are screwed. He can’t answer a single question.”

Patrick O’Connor told the investigator that he recognized the computer camera that O’Connor was using as a portable device that had been installed in their home’s basement to monitor the activity of her two sons. She could easily have moved it, he said, and viewed the video on her laptop.

Wenrich had O’Connor’s laptop seized, and Chester County Detective Joseph Walton was able to find images and data that showed the laptop had been hooked up to a computer camera on Jan. 30, 2015 between 8:35 a.m. and 9:29 a.m., when the meeting between Pine and Umbs took place.

Wenrich also learned that O’Connor had testified about the video recordings during a guardianship hearing in Orphans Court in December 2015, admitting that she was able to “see it live.” O’Connor also told the officer that she had watched the meeting, but “wouldn’t have done so if she had known it was illegal.”

Full Article & Source:
Daughter found guilty of invading privacy of her Kennett Square millionaire father

The perils of probate court: Former judge with Alzheimer's could lose her life savings

Superior Court Judge Betty Lou Lamoreaux in 1988

Retired Orange County Superior Court Judge Betty Lou Lamoreaux was such a force in juvenile justice that the seven-story family court building bears her name.

Every day, hundreds of children and their parents stream through the doors of the Lamoreaux Juvenile Justice Center in Orange. Some are in trouble with the law, some are from fractured families. All are hoping for justice tempered with mercy.

Now Lamoreaux is in danger of being financially drained, in part by the very justice system to which she dedicated her life.

Lamoreaux, 92, has Alzheimer’s dementia, according to court records. Her family – mostly nieces and nephews, as Lamoreaux has no children – is trying to care for her and preserve her estate. But they’ve fought over how best to do that, and about who should be in charge of Lamoreaux’s money, and they’ve taken the fight to probate court.

The family dispute has grown to include no fewer than three judges and nine lawyers and related professionals, with more attorneys set to join the fracas.

Now, some in the family are afraid the trip to probate court could end with attorney fees swallowing up “Auntie Lou’s” nest egg, forcing her to sell her $1.8 million house in Newport Beach.

They argue that the particulars of probate court are problematic.

“The very court system she served, and was honored by, is now bilking her of her life savings,” says Duff McGrath, her 58-year-old nephew and her trustee.

“It wouldn’t happen to Betty Lou Lamoreaux if it wasn’t happening to a lot of other people. The system is flawed.”

McGrath’s frustrations are echoed by many in probate court – where the affairs of a loved one can be taken out of the hands of family members and turned over to experts who often are paid hundreds of dollars an hour. Every year, nearly 5,000 probate-guardianship cases grind their way through probate court in Orange County.

In theory, the work is done by sincere professionals trying to protect their clients.

But by nature, the process of turning one’s affairs over to lawyers and their subcontractors can get expensive, even when fees must be approved by the court.

Good work, some argue, takes time. And in probate court, time definitely is money.

“Even if you’re trying to do a good job (on behalf of the client), the longer it takes to do a good job, the more money you get,” said Kurt Eggert, director of the Alona Cortese Elder Law Center in Orange.

“There is the incentive to prolong the case.”

Until 2014, Lamoreaux shared her Newport Beach home with her 87-year-old sister, Shirley, and a niece. Over the years, as Lamoreaux’s dementia worsened, her house fell into disrepair, to the point of being unhealthy, according to court records.

McGrath and some family members went to probate court in 2015, hoping to get a court order that would give them the authority to separate Lamoreaux from those they felt would do her harm.

McGrath had moved Lamoreaux from her house to a senior living center in Corona del Mar while her home was undergoing repairs.

The court responded by appointing two people to the case, an attorney and a guardian – who also is an attorney – to represent Lamoreaux.

That’s when the legal wrangling began.

The court appointees, after speaking with Lamoreaux, believed she wants to move back home with her sister. A judge agreed and ordered McGrath to help Lamoreaux return home, a ruling McGrath has appealed.

McGrath hired his own legal team, who argued that Lamoreaux should stay at the center, which they noted has the expertise and facilities to care for her.

Along the way, the case picked up more professional consultants, a fiduciary and a few more lawyers, all charging from $200 to $450 an hour.

McGrath said the total, when everybody is working – including his attorneys – is about $3,000 an hour.

Experts hired in the case declined comment or did not return telephone messages.

Lamoreaux’s fate now is in the hands of Judge Kim R. Hubbard. A hearing is set for Tuesday to determine whether McGrath should be removed from his trustee position.

Lamoreaux’s physician has indicated that she should not be moved at this time, and she repeatedly tells friends that she wants to stay at the center, according to court records.

The attorney appointed by the court to represent Lamoreaux, Ernest Hayward, requested this week’s emergency hearing to determine whether McGrath should be thrown out as trustee and replaced with a professional. McGrath accuses Hayward of attempting to wrest more control over Lamoreaux’s affairs.

Regardless of who is right, finding the answer may get even more expensive than it’s been so far.

“We fell into a spiderweb,” said McGrath. “It’s been a year and a half of hell.”

Full Article & Source:
The perils of probate court: Former judge with Alzheimer's could lose her life savings