ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — While New Mexico waits, several states are moving ahead with key reforms.
 |
| Catherine Falk |
Arizona, Hawaii, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and the U.S.
Virgin Islands all passed versions of the so-called Peter Falk bill
last year – legislation that originated with the late “Columbo” actor’s
daughter, Catherine Falk.
She was denied visitation with her
father at the end of his life, not because a court appointee stopped
her, but rather because her father’s second wife did. She says she
learned of her father’s death in 2011 from the media.
Falk urges
states to pass legislation that declares: “A guardian may not restrict
an incapacitated person’s right of communication, visitation, or
interaction with other persons, including the right to receive visitors,
telephone calls, personal mail or electronic communications.”
The Falk bill also requires guardians to alert applicable family
members when their loved one’s residence changes and when he or she
develops a life-threatening condition or dies.
Falk told the
Journal she and representatives of the National Association to Stop
Guardian Abuse met with New Mexico Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth,
D-Santa Fe, in the summer of 2015.
“We were (working) full force
with his legal drafters and we came up with a draft bill … in December
2015,” she said. “It got nipped really quick. We were told this language
is too dicey and we want to wait for the ULC law committee.”
Wirth declined to comment to the Journal for this story.
Asked
what she believes the chances are for passage of the Falk bill in New
Mexico, Catherine Falk said, “Very bleak. The biggest forces there are
working against us. They are powerful and have deep pockets, and it’s
very difficult to combat that.”
Begging for reform
Falk isn’t the only activist frustrated by the inability to enact elder guardianship safeguards in New Mexico.
 |
| Marcia Southwick |
“I’ve
been speaking with legislators since the 2013 legislative session,”
said Santa Fe resident Marcia Southwick, co-director of the National
Association to Stop Guardian Abuse, in describing the times she has
discussed the issue with lawmakers and, literally, begged for reforms.
“I got up at committee hearings and said, ‘No one is monitoring this
system!’ I’ve heard from many family members who say they have nowhere
to turn.”
Southwick says she has been told the legislative
leadership was waiting for proposals from the Uniform Law Commission, a
national group of lawyers that proposes uniform laws for states to
consider.
Southwick’s organization and other concerned groups
monitoring draft versions of guardian reform as they are produced by the
ULC committee on Guardianship and Protective Proceedings say they are
discouraged because, they believe, proposed new language still benefits
the for-profit players and does nothing to acknowledge or rein in
problem guardians, conservators or caretakers.
Full Article & Source:
‘Columbo’ bill seeks to curb guardian power
