Ex-guardian fails to appear in court, but judge orders her to repay $35K to elderly woman’s estate

JOSE F. MORENO / Staff Photographer

A Delaware County woman accused of financially exploiting elderly people for whom she served as a court-appointed guardian failed to come to a Philadelphia City Hall courtroom on Tuesday for a hearing on how she spent a Northeast Philadelphia woman's funds. Her attorney also didn't appear.

Gloria Byars, 57, of Aldan, had been removed as guardian of about 100 elderly clients in the region after past convictions for fraud, passing bad checks, and forgery came to light.

Orphans' Court Judge John Herron said at the hearing Tuesday that Byars must repay about $35,000 to the estate of Estelle Segal.

The judge was angry that Byars did not come to the proceeding, and said he was "frankly shocked" at the absence of her lawyer, Sharon Alexander. "I don't understand a practicing lawyer intentionally failing to appear at a hearing and failing to ask for a continuance," he said.

Herron held the hearing with lawyer James Tyler, who was appointed as Segal's executor after her February death.

Byars' record was chronicled in a March 30 Inquirer and Daily News article highlighting a lack of state requirements, including background checks, for guardians who manage the affairs of people deemed incapacitated. The article featured the case of a Fox Chase couple, Edmund and Margareta Berg, for whom Byars also had been appointed guardian.

Herron in May had ordered Byars to pay $63,079 to the Bergs, including $34,112 for improper expenditures. Byars has not paid any of that money. Despite that order, Byars spent tens of thousands of dollars on a July 14 wedding reception at the Manor House at Prophecy Creek Park in Ambler.

Byars already was married to Leon DeShields, 57, and had asked guests to a "vow renewal," according to the invitation. Copies of the Manor House bills obtained by the Inquirer and Daily News show the planned reception for 163 adults and 34 children cost about $35,000 for meals, hors d'oeuvres, a shrimp-and-clam station, a dessert station, a patio tent, and facility charges.

Heidi Austin, a niece of the Bergs', said she was "disgusted" to learn about the reception.

"It has been a challenging year and a half, and still the woman is free to spend all the money she stole from the elderly," Austin wrote in an email. "My uncle just turned 90, and I would at least like to tell him that there is justice in this world before he leaves it."

Austin discovered Byars' fraudulent past and through an attorney brought it to Herron's attention. As a result, Philadelphia now requires that a state criminal history report be submitted for proposed guardians.

The new requirements mirrored recommendations proposed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Orphans' Court Procedural Rules Committee. In June, the justices approved new statewide rules requiring background checks; they take effect next June.

At Tuesday's hearing, Tyler said that Byars' lawyer had emailed him Aug. 16 and said she was aware of the hearing date but was going to be out of the country.

In his review, Tyler said he found that Byars had not accounted for $35,405 that she had spent of Segal's funds.

"Essentially," the judge said in court, it appears that Byars "converted [the $35,405] to her own uses and purposes."

Byars has not been criminally charged in any guardianship cases. Herron earlier this year referred the Segal and Berg matters to the District Attorney's Offices in Philadelphia and Delaware County. The office of State Sen. Art Haywood (D., Montgomery-Phila.) referred another case to the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office.

Full Article & Source:
Ex-guardian fails to appear in court, but judge orders her to repay $35K to elderly woman’s estate

See Also:
Judge sees 'mismanagement,' 'misappropriation' in ex-guardian's handling of elderly clients' funds

Judge sees 'mismanagement,' 'misappropriation' in ex-guardian's handling of elderly clients' funds

Gloria Byars (center) walks inside Philadelphia City Hall before entering Orphans Court Judge John Herron’s courtroom Monday, May 14, 2018. At right is her attorney, Sharon Alexander; at left is an assistant.

A Delaware County woman removed as court-appointed guardian for about 100 elderly clients in the region was berated by a Philadelphia judge Monday for repeatedly failing to follow his orders, being nine months late in filing a report he requested, and failing to show up at two hearings last month.

“She has failed over and over and over again to comply with the orders of this court,” Orphans’ Court Judge John Herron said of Gloria Byars, 57, of Aldan, who has been accused by family members of financially exploiting their elderly relatives. She arrived at the afternoon hearing a few minutes late, walking with a cane.

Byars, who has a criminal background of fraud, bad checks, and forgery, was the subject of a March 30 Inquirer and Daily News article highlighting the lack of state requirements, including background checks, for guardians who manage the affairs of people deemed incapacitated.

After her convictions became known to Herron last year and the judge learned that she was doling out work to her husband’s company without disclosing it, the judge removed her from the 34 cases to which he had appointed her, and ordered her to provide reports of how she had spent her clients’ assets.

Earlier this year, the other two Orphans’ Court judges removed Byars from their remaining cases, as did judges in Montgomery and Delaware Counties. In all, she was removed from about 100 guardianship cases.

Monday’s hearing dealt with the estate of a former Northeast Philadelphia woman, Estelle Segal, who died in February in a Bucks County nursing home at age 83. Byars, who operated Global Guardian Services in Lansdowne, had failed to file a report of how she had spent Segal’s assets as ordered Aug. 10 by Herron and had not appeared at an April 2 hearing to explain herself.

Herron, in an April 4 decree, wrote that $127,607 was unaccounted for in Segal’s estate. He sentenced Byars to five months in jail for contempt of court, but suspended the sentence pending Monday’s hearing.

On Monday, Byars and her attorney, Sharon Alexander, told the judge they would immediately file a final account of Byars’ expenditures. They said Byars had missed the April 2 hearing and another on April 24 because of illness.

Herron’s threat of jail time remains pending the outcome of a June 6 hearing to review Byars’ expenditures in Segal’s estate.

After Monday’s hearing, Byars and Alexander declined to comment.

The April 24 hearing was to explain disputed expenditures in the estates of a former Fox Chase couple, Edmund and Margareta Berg. The judge Thursday issued a decree ordering Byars to pay $63,079 — in part to reimburse the Bergs for $34,113 in improper expenditures and $4,487 in guardianship fees she paid to herself, and to pay $24,479 in legal fees and costs incurred by Margareta Berg’s brother, Josef Wituschek.

In a harshly worded opinion Thursday, Herron wrote that Byars’ “misconduct ranged from mismanagement of the estates of her wards in the best of cases, to misappropriation of their assets in the worst.”

Herron also lambasted the Philadelphia Corp. for Aging, which had recommended Byars for most of her city guardianships, writing that “the court is deeply disappointed in PCA and disturbed by its lack of due diligence in examining the history and fitness of [Byars] to serve as guardian before nominating her.”

Added Herron: “PCA’s utter failure to conduct even the most elementary assessment of [Byars’] fitness to serve resulted in her appointment to nearly all of her 91 former cases in Philadelphia.”

He added that although Byars “is only one bad apple, that one bad apple has imposed an astronomical administrative burden” on the court’s small legal staff, which has “had to go to extraordinary lengths to remediate her misconduct and find suitable successor guardians for each ward.”

The agency’s lack of vetting of Byars “has shaken the public’s faith in the guardianship system,” Herron wrote.

Byars has not been criminally charged in any guardianship cases. Herron wrote in his decree Thursday that the matters of the Bergs and Segal “have both been referred to the district attorneys of Philadelphia and Delaware Counties for appropriate review.”

Unlike 18 other states, Pennsylvania does not require professional guardians to undergo criminal background checks, although the revelations of Byars’ fraudulent past have spurred some changes.

In Philadelphia, guardians now must affirm that they have not been convicted of any crime involving fraud, deceit, or financial misconduct. Also, an individual or agency, such as PCA, now must submit a Pennsylvania State Police criminal history report for a proposed guardian. And if the guardian resided within the last five years in one or more other states, a criminal history report from each of those states is required.

The petitioner also must submit a statement of the guardian’s certifications, caseload, and counties where the guardian has served. The new city requirements are similar to proposed changes recommended in December by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Orphans’ Court Procedural Rules Committee to the Supreme Court justices, who would decide whether to adopt them statewide.

Changes also are being proposed in the legislature. State Rep. Mark Gillen (R., Berks) on April 9 introduced a bill requiring criminal background checks for prospective guardians and prohibiting felons from serving. State Sens. Art Haywood (D., Montgomery-Phila.) and Judith Schwank (D., Berks) are working on a Senate amendment to another bill to require background checks and certification for guardians.

“The court sincerely hopes that the discovery of [Byars’] malfeasance will serve as a clarion call to make the larger changes necessary to protect incapacitated Pennsylvanians,” Herron wrote in Thursday’s opinion.

Abbey Porter, a PCA spokeswoman, said in a statement Monday: “PCA acknowledges the court’s new procedure concerning its appointment of guardians … [and] endorses the position that criminal history is only one of the criteria that may be relevant to the screening of potential guardians, and looks forward to its role in the development of these standards.”

Full Article & Source:
Judge sees 'mismanagement,' 'misappropriation' in ex-guardian's handling of elderly clients' funds

New nursing home legislation would strengthen elder care ombudsman

At least a dozen bills to regulate nursing homes are under consideration in the Florida Legislature after 14 people died at a Hollywood, Florida, nursing home that lost power during Hurricane Irma.
The latest are identical bills filed Tuesday by state Rep. Katie Edwards, D-Plantation, and state Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Fort Lauderdale, that give new teeth to Florida’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman program, which records show has regularly turned up fewer complaints each year under Gov. Rick Scott.

Many of the bills, including those of Edwards and Farmer, require nursing homes and assisted living facilities to have generators capable of powering air conditioning in the event of a power loss.

Under Tuesday’s bills, the Ombudsman program, which is supposed to look out for residents in Florida’s 683 nursing homes and thousands of assisted living facilities, would be allowed to conduct undercover operations inside nursing homes, posing as patients or employees, to look for abuse and neglect.

“They say we’ll leave it to the industry, but I’m thinking I’m not liking what I’m hearing back,” Edwards said. “I had to call too many county commissioners and police departments post-storm to tell them to go by and check on a facility.”

A Facebook post complaining about a lack of power at a facility in Sunrise led Edwards to notify city authorities, who checked on the Sunrise assisted living facility and found it had been without power for three days after Hurricane Irma.

Edwards said that experience led her to believe an Ombudsman’s office with greater autonomy is needed if new generator regulations are to be enforced.

With the new legislation, the Ombudsman office would be contracted out to a nonprofit entity rather than be a direct state agency, as it is now. It would report its findings to the Agency for Health Care Administration, which then could fine the facility between $5,000 and $25,000, depending on the seriousness of the violation.

“Apparently not everyone has common sense to call 911 in an emergency and evacuate people to the hospital across the street,” Edwards said, referring to The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, which is across the street from Memorial Regional Hospital. “They have to get their act together, they have to have a plan, and damn it, it’s ridiculous that we have to mandate that people have to do that.”

The big boost to the state Ombudsman program is unique among the many bills. Another novel portion requires facilities to allow residents’ families to monitor them electronically as a safeguard against abuse.

Similarities include a requirement that nursing homes and assisted living facilities be treated as high priorities, like hospitals, when utility companies are restoring power.

The multitude of other bills includes:

SB 284: Filed by state Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation, this bill requires nursing homes and assisted living facilities to have generators that can power air conditioning in the event of a loss of power, and requires the Agency for Health Care Administration to conduct an unannounced inspection at least every 15 months to check and make sure the generator is in working order. The bill requires facilities to have enough fuel to power generators for five days.

HB 479: Filed by state Rep. Patricia Williams, D-Lauderdale Lakes, this bill requires an unannounced inspection by AHCA every four months. It also requires nursing homes and assisted living facilities to have generators to power air conditioning and enough fuel to last for five days.

HB 327: Filed by state Rep. David Richardson, D-Miami Beach, this bill requires AHCA to carry out an announced inspection each May before hurricane season and requires facilities to have generators that can power air conditioning and enough fuel to last four days.

SB 372: Filed by state Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, this bill would require generators to power air conditioning and enough fuel for four days. It also requires AHCA to carry out an announced inspection in May before the start of hurricane season. Additionally, it requires the Public Service Commission to ensure that utility companies treat nursing homes and assisted living facilities with at least 50 residents that offer critical medical care as high priorities, similar to hospitals.

HB 443: Filed by state Rep. Emily Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, requires nursing homes and assisted living facilities to have current contact information on file with both residents and the state Long-Term Care Ombudsman. It also mandates that residents be allowed to access personal records on file at the facility.

SB 830: Filed by Farmer, this bill is identical to HB 443.

SB 558: Filed by state Sen. Daphne Campbell, D-Miami, this bill requires all health care facilities that provide overnight care — including nursing homes and assisted living facilities — to have generators that can power air conditioning and enough fuel for four days. The generators must be able to maintain conditions throughout an entire facility.

HB 435: Filed by state Rep. Larry Lee, D-Port St. Lucie, this bill establishes a matching grant program, funded with $5 million every year through 2023, so that facilities buying generators can get a dollar-for-dollar matching grant from the state on a first-come, first-serve basis. The grant is open to both public and private facilities.

HB 437: Filed by Lee as well, this bill requires facilities to have generators and enough fuel for seven days.

HB 331: Filed by Slosberg, this bill adds new language to the state’s patients bill of rights, requiring facilities to send an explanation for any relocation in writing to both a resident and the Long-Term Care Ombudsman.

The legislative session begins Jan. 9.

Full Article & Source:
New nursing home legislation would strengthen elder care ombudsman