Judge begins to unwind conflicts in Ventura County conservatorship cases

by Byrhonda Lyons

David Esquibias is an attorney who owns Townsgate In-Home Services, which received $2.7 million from his wife’s clients. Photo by David Buchan

For years, a fiduciary in Ventura County has been directing her clients’ money to her husband’s law firm and health care company, all with the court’s approval. A newly appointed judge has begun to unwind the arrangements weeks after a CalMatters’ investigation exposed the conflicts of interest. 

Ventura County Probate Judge Gilbert Romero ruled that Angelique Friend violated court rules in three cases when she hired her husband, David Esquibias, as her attorney, and her clients paid the bill. The judge ordered her to stop hiring Esquibias as her attorney and Townsgate In-Home Services, Esquibias’ company. Romero blocked Esquibias from collecting attorney’s fees in the three cases.

“Here, the conservator hiring her spouse as her attorney and paying his fees from the estate reasonably could create the appearance of a conflict of interest and be perceived as self-serving,” Romero wrote in a ruling.

The judge also suspended Friend as the trustee in a fourth case after beneficiaries of the Mettler Trust argued that she breached her fiduciary duties by paying Townsgate $1.1 million from the trust from 2021 to 2025. They are asking the court to force Friend to reimburse the estate. 

Friend argued that she disclosed her connection to Townsgate and that she has no ownership interest in the company. A hearing for the case is scheduled for July.

Romero started a March 23 hearing by establishing a timeline of Friend and Esquibias’ relationship and when it was formally disclosed. The more questions he asked, the more testy Esquibias became. The attorney called the judge’s line of questioning “rather sickening.” 

“I am helpless to protect her,” Esquibias said of his wife. “I should tell the court, ‘Do not question my client.’”

Romero responded, “Doesn’t that go to the conflict?”

In one case, Friend became the conservator over Brenna Clark’s estate in 2014, court records show, and Esquibias represented Friend before they married. They never formally disclosed their dating relationship on the record, only orally, Esquibias told the court. 

Romero said that was a problem, even though the previous judge allowed it. That judge, Roger Lund, was reassigned last fall, weeks after CalMatters began asking questions about the arrangement.

“As soon as you and Mrs. Friend started a dating relationship, that was a violation of the rule of court,” Romero said. “I think your services should have been terminated at that point.”

Esquibias expressed shock that his work relationship with Friend had now become an issue after years of the court’s approval.

“It was something that was actually celebrated in this very courtroom by colleagues … who attended my wedding,” Esquibias said. Indeed, retired Judge Glen M. Reiser signed their marriage license in 2019.

The judge also considered disallowing Townsgate’s payments in one case, but he gave Friend a chance to show that Townsgate’s hiring was in the best interest of her client. The judge is scheduled to rehear that case on May 4.  

The CalMatters investigation found that Lund approved Friend and Esquibias’s arrangement for years, even as family members complained. Court records show the couple brought in about $3 million from 2019 to 2025 from clients in the six cases CalMatters reviewed; $2.7 million went to Townsgate, even though court rules and the California Professional Fiduciary Bureau’s code of conduct generally prohibit such conflicts.

Nearly three weeks after the story ran, in a rare move, Romero brought his own motion to reconsider the attorney’s fees and Townsgate costs he’d recently approved. Romero noted that he could only review approvals that he’d signed, and he couldn’t do anything about the years of approvals that came before him. 

“I have an obligation to correct myself,” Romero said.

In an email, Friend said “these relationships were disclosed from the outset, repeatedly presented to the court, and previously approved.”

“While I respect the new judge’s ruling and have taken immediate steps to comply going forward, including retaining new counsel and replacing the care provider company,” she wrote, “I disagree with applying that new view retroactively to arrangements that were fully disclosed and previously approved.”

She said they are “evaluating the next legal steps to formally dispute the retroactive rulings.” 

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Judge begins to unwind conflicts in Ventura County conservatorship cases 

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She directed $2.7 million from her elderly clients to her husband’s company. The judge approved every penny

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She directed $2.7 million from her elderly clients to her husband’s company. The judge approved every penny

California lawmakers created the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau to monitor self-dealing in the industry. Twenty years later, the bureau’s inaction in one case shows how conflicts of interest can continue for years with little consequence.  

by Byrhonda Lyons 

It was a successful year for Angelique Friend. The entrepreneur was at the pinnacle of her profession in Ventura County. State records show she was overseeing $20 million of her clients’ assets and directing a sizable chunk of that money back into her own household.

As the 2022 holiday season approached, Friend celebrated in style and shared the snapshots on her company’s Facebook page. 

She smiled for a photo with Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner at a star-studded fundraiser. She stood in front of a white Christmas tree, adorned with white ornaments and bright white lights, shoulder-to-shoulder in matching sleepwear with Kathy Hilton as the socialite launched a holiday pajama line.

It was like a scene from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” But Friend is not reality TV royalty. She made a name for herself in a less glamorous corner of California: Ventura County Probate Court.

Deep within the drab courthouse across from Oxnard’s agricultural fields, Friend is one of the county’s main private fiduciaries, chosen frequently by a probate judge to handle the financial and personal interests of elderly people deemed too ill to care for themselves.

Friend operated a unique system. Besides being paid for her services, she often chose her husband, David Esquibias, to be her lawyer. Then, when her clients needed in-home support, she hired Townsgate In-Home Services to provide their care. Friend knew Townsgate well: Esquibias founded it the year they married. 

Friend’s elderly clients often footed the bill for all three services, at least until they could no longer afford or use in-home health care. Then, with the court’s approval, Friend moved them to less-expensive care facilities and sold their homes, court records show. For years, Friend and Esquibias often disclosed their connections to the court, and Judge Roger Lund approved the payments, even though court rules and the California Professional Fiduciary Bureau’s code of conduct generally prohibit such conflicts.

Court records show the couple brought in about $3 million from 2019 to 2025 from clients in the six cases CalMatters reviewed; $2.7 million went to Townsgate. Friend has other clients whose cases don’t require public accounting in court and are not similarly reviewable by the public. 

The arrangement was so brazen that court staffers whispered about it, and other attorneys found it troubling. 

“Being able to have your own little referral source coming out of the court system. Wow. That should not be allowed,” said Lisa MacCarley, a Los Angeles-area probate attorney who was a prominent advocate for reform during Britney Spears’s conservatorship battle.

Friend wouldn’t agree to an interview for this story. Esquibias did not respond to CalMatters’ questions involving Townsgate.

In a letter to CalMatters, Friend said that she fully complied with state laws that require her to disclose her connection to Townsgate, get court approval and make sure the services are in the best interest of her clients. 

“I approach every conservatorship with heightened diligence, careful oversight, and full transparency,” Friend wrote in her letter. “My work is designed to withstand scrutiny and ensure the highest standards of care, as consistently confirmed by the Court and the Bureau.”

But state licensing records indicate she was more involved with Townsgate than she represented to the court. And CalMatters found at least two instances in which she did not disclose to the court that her husband owned Townsgate, at least three cases where Judge Lund called her out for hiring the company without prior court approval, and one case, records show, where she hired Townsgate months before the company was even licensed to provide in-home health care services.

By their nature, the cases that reach conservatorship are often complex and messy. Some people end up there because they’ve been taken advantage of by family, friends or previous caregivers. Others fight their children’s attempts to make decisions for them, or have needs too great for their family members to bear. Some have no children and no one else to take care of them. So the court steps in. 

With a judge’s approval, conservators exert vast control over their clients’ lives. They decide who provides them health care and where. They choose how their money is spent. They sell their clients’ assets to pay bills. They can control visitation and communication with family members, setting up the potential for high-stakes and high-emotion confrontations and amplifying the importance of avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest. 

The state agency created 20 years ago to monitor self-dealing in the industry, the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau, does not report taking any action against Friend for the conflicts. 

California lawmakers formed the bureau after a Los Angeles Times investigation exposed self-dealing by conservators and a failure of judges to stop it. Friend’s ability to send millions of dollars in business to her husband’s company highlights how the system continues to rely on individual judges and, even with the bureau in place, conflicts of interest can continue for years with little consequence.

Part of the Department of Consumer Affairs, the bureau forbids real or perceived conflicts of interest explicitly in its rules, saying that fiduciaries must “not engage in any activity where there is the reasonable appearance of a conflict of interest … or reasonably could be perceived as self-serving.”

Friend said she disclosed the connection to the bureau. “The Bureau has renewed my license every year without restriction and has never found that I violated fiduciary ethical standards or any governing law,” Friend wrote.

When CalMatters requested Friend’s reports from the bureau, it provided documents thick with black redaction lines. In 2023, the state Legislature significantly restricted what information the bureau can share with the public. 

CalMatters attempted to speak with officials at the bureau for a year. However, they would only respond to emailed questions. The bureau spokesperson, Monica Vargas, declined to say whether Friend complied with its conflict-of-interest rules. 

“The court is in a better position to ascertain the performance of the fiduciary and determine whether the various services are in the best interest of the conserved person,” Vargas wrote.

Separate from state regulations, California court rules forbid conflicts broadly, saying that a conservator “must not engage his or her family members to provide services to the conservatee for a profit or fee when other alternatives are reasonably available.” However, the rules allow judges to approve such arrangements if they determine that it’s in the best interest of the conservatee and it’s disclosed.

In tentative rulings, Judge Lund at times expressed concerns about Friend’s conflict of interest. However, those rulings are not final and only show what the judge is thinking. It’s unclear what happened in court because Ventura County stopped requiring transcripts for probate court in 2022.

Lund’s final court orders never mention Townsgate or demand that Friend stop using the company. All of the orders approved their payments. Without official transcripts, it’s impossible to know whether or how Lund addressed the conflicts in court.

The court record doesn’t reflect any of the conservatees’ attorneys objecting to the conflict of interest. 

One court transcript from 2022 obtained by CalMatters details what happened when one family challenged Friend’s conflict. “The representation to the Court as I recall is that they … tend to price themselves at or slightly below the market to avoid any problems,” Lund said. “And that is sufficient for the Court.”

Lund and court leaders declined to comment for this story. Weeks after CalMatters sent court officials questions about the approvals, the presiding judge for Ventura County Superior Court announced that he was reassigning Lund, moving him to family court. The move came as a shock to many in the local legal community. In a February hearing, the new judge, Gilbert Romero, expressed skepticism that he could approve Friend’s arrangements with her husband. He told her that “the rule of court says very clearly” that a conservator should avoid “any conflicts or any appearance of conflict.”

Before that, families of the conservatees often raised their concerns with the court and filed complaints with the bureau, to no avail. 

“She’s making a lot of money, her and her husband,” said Poppy Helgren. Friend cared for Helgren’s father, Lester Moore, for years. After Friend moved him to a residential care facility, Moore died from extreme constipation that was deemed the result of inadequate care, records show. 

Carole Herman, a leading eldercare advocate, is one of the first people Californians call when they have a problem with a court-appointed fiduciary. In 2023, she filed a complaint with the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau about Friend’s connection to Townsgate. 

The bureau hasn’t reported any response to the complaint, and Vargas would not discuss any pending complaints or investigations, calling them confidential. 

“I am totally disappointed and devastated because I worked really hard to get that bureau started, and they have no teeth,” Herman said. 

The six cases 

Lester Moore joined the U.S. Navy at age 17. After he was discharged, Moore moved to California, where he went on to work in the airline industry. Moore grew up during the Great Depression, and over his lifetime, he and his wife amassed more than 450 acres of land in his home state of Arkansas, more than a quarter of a million dollars in company stock, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments and savings. 

Moore ended up in a court-mandated conservatorship after he was diagnosed with dementia and his attorney was accused of professional misconduct. Friend was appointed the conservator in 2012. 

For years, Friend relied on a local company to provide Moore’s caregiving services. She ended that relationship and put Townsgate in charge in April 2019, according to court filings. At that point, Townsgate didn’t have a license to provide in-home health care services, according to state records. Home care organizations that operate without a license can be fined $900 a day. 

Later that year, Friend married Esquibias, according to her marriage license. 

In 2019 and 2020, Moore paid Townsgate $145,000 for care, documents filed with the court show, but the records do not show that Friend disclosed her connection to Townsgate. 

Then, in February 2020, Friend moved Moore to residential care and sold his home a few months later. Helgren was immediately concerned about her father’s care at the facility.

“I had put in complaints everywhere about them,” Helgren said. 

A year later, Moore died from septic shock from bowel obstruction and fecal impaction. A state investigation found Moore’s death was due to the facility not following Moore’s physician’s orders and its “failure to monitor” Moore’s condition, according to the state report. The facility has since closed.

CalMatters reviewed Friend’s publicly available cases and found six in which she used Townsgate for in-home services. She hired Esquibias to represent her in four of those cases, for which he was paid from conservatees’ funds.

Some of the others: 

• Grace and Joseph Brown lived off Joseph Brown’s U.S. Navy retirement pay for years, with little debt. The court appointed Friend as Grace Brown’s conservator after she was diagnosed with dementia. At that time, Grace had $1.1 million in assets, according to the accounting Friend filed with the court.
  
  From 2020 to 2023, Friend paid Townsgate $873,000 from Brown’s account for caregiving services, nearly 80% of her assets, according to the accounting that Friend filed with the court. At least $583,000 was paid “without prior Court approval, thereby severely depleting [Brown’s] funds,” according to a tentative ruling Lund issued in January 2024. He said he wanted to discuss forcing Friend to reimburse Brown. However, after the hearing, the judge approved the charges, calling them “settled, allowed, and approved” in his final order. His order does not mention Friend reimbursing Brown, and there is no transcript of the hearing. The judge also approved Friend’s charges totaling $46,000 for conservator fees. 
  
  James Brown, Grace’s stepson, thinks Grace was treated like “a cash cow.” He said Friend rarely responds to his questions about Grace, who is still under Friend’s care.

•  
  
  
  Esperanza M. Moorewas born in 1939 in the Philippines. She traveled the world before she met and married her husband, a physicist at the U.S. naval base in Port Hueneme. Moore owned two properties.
•  
• Ventura County officials asked the court to place Moore in a conservatorship after growing concerned that she was a victim of elder financial abuse. 
• 
  Within a month of becoming Moore’s court-appointed conservator, Friend brought on Townsgate In-Home Services for her care, without “prior Court approval,” as required by court rules, according to notes from Judge Lund. Still, he later approved the payments. 
  
  Friend paid her husband’s company $64,000 from Moore’s funds over roughly three months in 2022. Then, Friend placed her in a less-expensive assisted-living home and sold her properties. 
  
  Friend was paid $76,000 for her fiduciary services from November 2021 to December 2024; Esquibias received another $68,000 in attorney fees for his work from December 2021 to March 2025 to represent Friend as she tried to recover money that had been taken from Moore by her previous caregiver. 
  
  In conservatorships, there are two attorneys who are typically paid from the conservatee’s money — one for the person in the conservatorship and another for the licensed fiduciary.
  
  Friend was still Moore’s conservator as of this month, according to the court’s website. 

• Friend paid Townsgate nearly $680,000 from Molly Cooper’s account from September 2020 to March 2023, court records show. Her son, who asked that he not be named, said he was happy that his mother lived out her last days in her home rather than a nursing home. He said he had no idea about the connection when his mother was alive. Friend and Esquibias did not disclose their ties to Townsgate until after Cooper died, court records show.  
• 
  In addition to Townsgate’s costs, Friend billed Cooper $94,000 for her fiduciary services; Esquibias received $26,000 from Cooper’s estate in attorney fees, court records show

• 
  
  James Baker Mabry retired after a career as an electrical contractor. During his free time, Mabry enjoyed scuba diving and volunteered with the county water rescue team. “He was always in the water,” said his daughter, Kristin Tranquada. But as he aged, he was diagnosed with dementia, and his daughter petitioned the court to be his conservator. Her dad became angry and threatened her.
  
  Tranquada decided to step aside and let the court appoint a professional.
  
  Tranquada was grateful that Friend got her father to cooperate with caregivers. But as time went on, she and her sister began to question Friend’s professionalism. Tranquada said Friend hadn’t taken the necessary steps to transfer all of her father’s bills. Plus, Friend had allowed Mabry to get a puppy, which eventually lived with one of Friend’s employees. Then the sisters found out about Townsgate.
  
  Friend paid Townsgate $550,000 from Mabry’s funds over three years, and the court approved the payments. Lund approved a total of $128,000 in conservator fees for Friend in 2022 and 2024. He also approved $22,000 for attorney fees to Esquibias. Friend eventually moved Mabry into a care home and sold his home with the court’s approval.
  
  “This conservator’s husband received a great deal of money that my father needs for his care,” Tranquada said.

Robert Baskin, an attorney whose law firm represented at least two of Friend’s clients who paid Townsgate, said he didn’t see anything wrong with the arrangement as long as it was disclosed and approved by the court. 

“I don’t think that it is a conflict for a conservator to hire an affiliated agency like Townsgate,” Baskin said. “They did an outstanding job at a reduced hourly rate.” 

He said conservatorships can naturally pit fiduciaries against family members. “You get a lot of people complaining because they are looking at their ultimate inheritance,” Baskin said. 

He also had his own financial connection to Friend, property records show. In 2018, his family trust lent her $1 million. The repayment terms of the agreement were not included. Baskin declined to comment on the loan. “I’m not going to comment on my own business dealings. I’ve loaned many people money.” 

In her letter, Friend told CalMatters that her “personal finances are entirely appropriate and, apart from what is a matter of public record, private.”

Friend’s previous run-in with the bureau 

Before becoming a licensed fiduciary, Angelique Friend worked as a business analyst for Countrywide Financial, according to her LinkedIn profile. She got her fiduciary license in 2009 and built her business.

Licensed fiduciaries such as Friend manage affairs for seniors, people with disabilities and children. Fiduciaries can also be appointed by courts to administer estates when someone dies. 

In 2017, an appeals court criticized Friend for her role in delivering an inheritance to two brothers who had been disinherited in their mother’s will. Friend argued that because the beneficiary, her grandson, was already dead when his grandmother died, the assets should be distributed as if she died without a will.

The Court of Appeal noted that the woman did have a will; she expressly disinherited her two sons and awarded all the assets to her grandchild. 

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She directed $2.7 million from her elderly clients to her husband’s company. The judge approved every penny

“In 1934, My Life Snapped”

Hollywood has long abused conservatorships. I spent the past decade studying one of the darkest cases.

 

By Liz Brown

Harrison Post circa 1920. Liz Brown

I’m still thinking about the nail polish. Of all the details from Britney Spears’ explosive statement last month protesting the conservatorship that has controlled her life for the past 13 years, that’s the one I keep coming back to.

“I saw the maids in my home each week with their nails done different each time,” she told the judge. The 39-year-old singer had been told she couldn’t get acupuncture, massages, or hairstyling because of COVID-19 restrictions, and yet she could see that the people who came to clean her home were getting their nails done.

This level of vigilance—clocking the smallest changes in the behavior and appearance of those around you, scouring for clues to the world outside—shows how profound Spears’ isolation has been. As the public learned last month, a declaration of incompetence is a chillingly effective form of confinement.

Some in Hollywood have long weaponized these systems to seize control of the wealthy and vulnerable. I know, because I’ve spent the past decade retracing the dark saga of Harrison Post, a vulnerable, wealthy gay man who was taken captive and defrauded by his own family under the guise of “protection.” This was in the 1930s, and back then it was called a “guardianship,” but Spears’ testimony—an anguished plea delivered so fast that the judge kept asking her to slow down—was eerily familiar.

Harrison Post was a Hollywood socialite and the secret lover of my wealthy great-granduncle, William Andrews Clark Jr., or Will Clark. To say that Will was “wealthy” is a bit of an understatement: He was the son of Sen. W.A. Clark, who was one of the “Copper Kings” of Montana and who, at the dawn of the electrical age, owned nearly half the red ductile metal in the country. He’s the Clark in Clark County, Nevada, and the Clark who helped give us the 17^th Amendment, because the mining tycoon so flagrantly bribed state legislators to appoint him to the Senate that the electoral system was changed to give the vote to the people instead of politicians.

Will, his son, founded the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He helped establish the Hollywood Bowl. He is buried in the largest mausoleum in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the one that’s surrounded by a small lake. (His second wife, Alice McManus Clark, is also buried there—she was my grandmother’s aunt and namesake, and that is my connection to the Clark empire.)

Despite his great wealth and his part in creating two of L.A.’s most enduring cultural institutions, Clark isn’t widely known today, unlike peers such as J. Paul Getty. And that’s partly because in his own time, Clark was extremely guarded. Unlike his father, who liked to give speeches, Will did not hunger for public acclaim. An amateur violinist and an ardent bibliophile, he was a reticent sort. He had secrets, and one of the biggest was his romance with Harrison Post. Their relationship and the way it transformed Harrison’s life—from shop clerk to socialite millionaire to exile—is the subject of my book, Twilight Man.

In 1919, the shy widower walked into a boutique in San Francisco that catered to wealthy customers, and there he met the dashing, dark-eyed clerk, Albert Weis Harrison. Within months, the young man left his position, joined Will in Los Angeles just in time for the debut of the L.A. Phil, and changed his name to Harrison Post. Next came servants; glamorous friends like Alla Nazimova, Carole Lombard, and Greta Garbo; a villa in West Adams; a beachfront mansion on the swanky Gold Coast, and a 13-acre estate in the Pacific Palisades.

When Harrison’s sister Gladys fatefully arrived from Chicago, there was room for her, too.

In newspapers, Harrison was identified as “clubman,” “art collector,” or “Hollywood millionaire.” There were other words that people used for Harrison, like degenerate, but those were whispered or written in anonymous letters. At that time, violating Section 286 of the California Penal Code, or engaging in sodomy, carried a penalty of five years in prison. Even a misdemeanor charge of “conspiracy to commit acts tending to lower the morals of the community” could result in a prison sentence, not to mention public ruin. Every so often Harrison was romantically linked in the press with a starlet, a tactic likely intended to counter the rumors that trailed him. When the neighbors complained about the risqué parties he held in his near-windowless villa, and the district attorney ordered that he vacate the property in West Adams, he and Clark decamped to Europe for several months. Their money gave them options that were unavailable to poorer men, but it also made them bigger targets.

In the world of wealth management, Harrison was an interloper. He didn’t ascend into that rarified sphere as a man did, through the accumulation and control of capital, but as a woman was expected to—through a relationship to such a man. His position in that inner sanctum was considered suspect by many. Harrison was also Jewish. He never acknowledged his heritage, but others did. “Small, dark, and with Semitic cast” was how Clark’s accountant and biographer, William D. Mangam, described the former clerk who infiltrated the Los Angeles Athletic Club and other bastions of elite whiteness. In an era of restrictive housing covenants prohibiting nonwhite people from owning property in Los Angeles, Harrison was awash with real estate holdings. That would change.

In March 1934, Harrison experienced some kind of collapse. The medical records are scant. In later years, Harrison mentioned having had a “nervous breakdown,” though he also told people he’d had a stroke. In one document, a doctor described him having “a lesion on his brain.” Whatever led to his illness, he was convalescing in a luxury sanitarium that June when Clark died suddenly of a heart attack. Within days, Harrison’s sister Gladys petitioned the court to have him declared incompetent, and she was subsequently appointed the guardian of his estate, which totaled well more than $200,000, or nearly $4.5 million today. By then, Gladys was married to a car salesman named Charles Crooks, a name I almost didn’t believe the first time I saw it.

Clark, mindful of his lover’s fragile health, had established a $100,000 trust for Harrison, and yet the Crookses claimed this was insufficient. Gladys wasted no time “economizing.” She moved her brother to a cheaper sanitarium where a patient had hanged herself with a stocking, then deemed that institution too expensive and brought him back to his estate in the Palisades. She replaced his longtime staff and installed a rotating squad of male nurses. Harrison would later claim he’d been medicated against his will, “held in complete physical restraint,” and recorded with Dictaphones to be sure he wasn’t conspiring to escape. The court required Gladys to submit expense reports, and the itemized details are often unsettling. One of her first purchases was barbed wire. The Crookses also installed a burglar alarm. More than once they repaired the front gate. Were they trying to keep people out—or keep someone in?

Gladys told the court she needed to raise funds to maintain Harrison’s care. She sold his Rolls-Royce, Plymouth Coupe, horses, antiques, silver, and art. She auctioned off his books to his friends and peers. At the public dismembering of Harrison’s beloved library, George Cukor bought nine volumes of William Pater, and J. Paul Getty, the most aggressive bidder, scooped up editions of Charles Dickens, D.H. Lawrence, Arnold Zweig, and Goethe’s Faust. Later, Gladys would tell Harrison the books had been “misplaced.”

It wasn’t all deprivation and theft. She took Harrison to the circus and the movies. She bought a croquet set. She spent 51 cents on candy for “Mr. Post” and, with breathtaking pettiness, reimbursed herself for the expense.

Forced medication, surveillance, self-dealing—in Spears’ dramatic statement last month, I heard echoes of Harrison’s gothic ordeal. In both cases, the so-called incompetent was deemed vulnerable to influence and deception and therefore had to be protected against “designing or artful persons,” to quote Gladys’ petition. And in both cases, the court delivered the vulnerable person to that very fate. When Spears told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny that “my dad made me feel like I was dead,” I thought of Harrison’s case file, where the word deceased has been scratched out and replaced with incompetent. And then I discovered yet another echo when I read the name of the pop singer’s court-appointed attorney: Samuel D. Ingham III.

I know this name well, because the doctor who testified to the Superior Court of Los Angeles in 1934 that Harrison Post should be declared incompetent, because of the “lesion on his brain,” was a neurologist named Samuel D. Ingham. Ingham III, who resigned as Spears’ attorney after her statement to the court, confirmed to me in an email that Samuel D. Ingham was his grandfather. “I was aware that he did competency assessments for juvenile offenders, but was not familiar with the Post case,” he wrote.

Much of the information about Spears’ conservatorship is sealed from public view. Meanwhile, in the wake of the singer’s anguished statement, the case continues to unfold. Spears has now been approved to hire her own attorney and has pressed further to have her father removed from the conservatorship. She has not yet formally moved to end the arrangement, but she has said she does not want to submit to further evaluation to have her rights restored.

Few people in these arrangements are ever restored to competence. Harrison Post was. On March 9, 1936, the court declared, “Harrison Post is now sane and competent and capable of taking care of himself and his property.” By then, there was little of his property left. Gladys had dissolved and cashed out the trust Will Clark had established for her brother. With those funds in her possession, she didn’t need to bother with expense reports and attorneys.

At least Harrison was free. But this is where the plot swerves yet again. In the past, Harrison had found sanctuary with Clark in Europe, and that was where he turned in 1938. With a masseur named Oscar Tryggestad, one of the male nurses from his care, Harrison traveled to a small town on the Geiranger Fjord in Norway, an idyllic setting to recuperate from the horrific captivity he’d endured—and just in time for the Nazis to invade. “In 1934,” Harrison once wrote, “my life snapped,” and now it was going to snap again. But he had survived Gladys. And he—a gay Jewish man—would survive the Nazis.

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“In 1934, My Life Snapped”

Guardianship company to dissolve after ‘self-dealing’ $400K in contracts from elderly couple

By Justine Lofton

MACOMB COUNTY, MI – A guardianship company will dissolve after its owner illegally charged an elderly couple $400,000 for services from companies she and her husband own.

The “self-dealing” case that shows a court-appointed guardian was financially benefiting by hiring her own companies to provide services and charging a “shocking amount of money” was settled out of court by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Financial aspects of the settlement have not been released but the injunctive aspects are detailed in a news release from the AG’s office.

Guardianship company Caring Hearts Michigan Inc. will immediately cease operations and legally dissolve by the end of the year, the release said. In addition, [the owner and] her employees are permanently barred from operating any other guardianship or conservatorship entity.

Of particular concern in this case was a web of connections between [the] guardianship company and two other companies [the owner] hired to provide services to elderly people she had guardianship over.

“Our involvement in this case revealed what we feared: fiduciaries with a clear financial conflict of interest who billed a shocking amount of money in a relatively short period of time,” Nessel said.

Caring Hearts was appointed by Macomb County Probate Judge Kathryn George as both guardian and conservator for Robert Lee Mitchell and Barbara Delbridge, despite a petition submitted by the daughter and stepdaughter of the couple.

In a span of six months, Caring Hearts Michigan; Executive Care, a 24-hour in-home care company, also owned by [the owner of Caring Hearts Michigan]; and [a] law firm billed the elderly couple $400,000. Almost 72 percent of the bills were for Executive Care.

The Estates and Protected Individuals Code prohibits this kind of financial self-dealing by the guardian, Nessel said. In addition, courts are not permitted to appoint a guardian agency that financially benefits from directly providing housing, medical, mental health or social services to the legally incapacitated individual, she said.

Nessel places responsibility on the courts to ensure that the state’s guardianship system is protecting the vulnerable and that court-appointed guardians and conservators fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to those in their custody.

“To help, my team continues to look for similar instances of self-dealing and we will take swift action when it is discovered,” Nessel said.

Complaints about professional guardian or conservator entities who are engaging in similar self-dealing can be filed online with the Attorney General’s office.

Full Article & Source:

Guardianship company to dissolve after ‘self-dealing’ $400K in contracts from elderly couple

The state’s probate courts need to be fixed. Here’s how.

Michael Schless, of Boynton Beach, Florida reaches out and tries to block the camera as his picture is taken as he leaves Superior Court in New Britian Friday. Schless pleaded no contest to felony charges that, as a court appointed conservator, he stole from the savings of John Fitz, of Wethersfield. (Melanie Stengel/Special to the Courant)

By Tom Behrendt  and Sally Zanger

A conservator stole money from her elderly and disabled clients and was prosecuted and sentenced in federal court. Connecticut Probate Administrator Paul Knierim stated that the incident was unfortunate but that safeguards are in place. Judge Knierim suggested that such abuses are rare.

These reported abuses are the tip of an iceberg. The safeguards he referred to do not address the problems.

As lawyers who represent low-income individuals with mental health conditions, we and our colleagues who represent elderly clients too often see court-appointed conservators mismanaging the conserved person’s money. Life savings, however modest, are frequently wasted due to conservators’ ignorance of the Medicaid rules. Conservators may pay a nursing home nearly all of an individual’s assets, making their return home difficult or impossible. Often, these same conservators are quick to move the person to a nursing home without exploring community supports that would allow them to remain at home. In most situations, the Connecticut law requires that a conservator explore such less restrictive options before moving an individual to a nursing home.

But, it does not matter what the law says, because they don’t always follow the law. The law, enacted to protect vulnerable conserved individuals, is frequently ignored by those whose job it is to carry it out.
 

For example, the statute requires most conservators to provide a bond, which is a kind of insurance to protect the conserved individual’s assets from loss caused by fraud, negligence, theft or misrepresentation by the conservator. However, the probate courts rarely enforce that requirement, leaving people like the victims of the federally sentenced conservator unprotected.

When these issues have been exposed in the press over the years, probate court administration explains them away as isolated incidents. That is not the experience of our clients. We see theft, fraud, sloppy accounting and gross mismanagement of the conserved individuals’ funds. Sometimes the sums are smaller, because our clients are not wealthy, but the sums represent everything they have. Or had.

Too often, advocates for people who are elderly and disabled see this pattern: conservators (or their family members or colleagues) are enriched at the expense of a conserved individual under the excuse of making the conserved individual eligible for Medicaid. For example, we have seen that when someone’s home was sold to pay for a nursing home, the sale may be a “sweetheart” arrangement where the conservator is paid for doing the closing and the selling price is such that a colleague, relative or friend of the conservator purchases the real estate and flips it for a large profit. None of that profit benefits the conserved person (or the nursing home or by extension, the state and its taxpayers).

A colleague appealed one such case to Superior Court and won. The judge said that “substantial rights of the (conserved person) were gravely prejudiced” by the failure of the court to follow the statute and by the failure of the attorney to provide zealous advocacy. Despite a request to have him removed from the appointment list, he is still handling these cases.

This kind of self-dealing is not isolated or unique. Many people involved in the probate court system profit by exploiting conserved individuals.
 

It is unconscionable that the probate courts fail to take steps to prevent fraud and mismanagement. It is an embarrassment to the probate courts that it is the federal court and the federal prosecutors, not the probate courts, who have been addressing these problems.

It is absurd that random audits are touted as the solution to these problems when actual incidents that are pointed out are not punished or corrected by probate court judges. The offenders continue to be appointed as conservators and court-appointed attorneys.

Connecticut has a modern, even a model conservatorship statute, but it is too often ignored. The safeguards that are in place did not and would not protect the victims of the federally sentenced conservator. A bond would have protected them. A vigilant probate court might have protected them. Vigilant court appointed attorneys might have protected them. But no one protected them.

A system that required training might have protected them. A system where these cases were heard in Superior Court would have protected them.

Connecticut can choose to protect its most vulnerable residents. It just needs the political will to make the necessary changes.

Full Article & Source:
The state’s probate courts need to be fixed. Here’s how.

Editorial: Mayor's big-hearted bad judgment

Mayor John Tecklenburg should have known better than to loan himself without court permission $80,000 from accounts he controlled as conservator for an elderly former neighbor. Probate Judge Irvin Condon was right to remove Mr. Tecklenburg from the conservatorship after his violation of state law.

Mishandling Johnnie Wineglass’ finances showed the job should have been done by a professional. The mayor, a real estate agent by trade, said he did not know he needed court permission to loan himself the money.

“I think you meant well, but we can’t set a precedent of self-dealing,” the judge told Mr. Tecklenburg on Tuesday. Mr. Condon’s remark about “self-dealing” particularly stung Mr. Tecklenburg and could have an impact on his professional life.

The mayor agreed to become the woman’s conservator in 2008 — for free — when she started losing her memory and became unable to manage her money. He took out loans of $20,000 in 2011 and $35,000 in 2014 to benefit his wife’s gift shop, which was later sold; a third loan of $25,000 was taken out in 2016 to help him cover living expenses as he transitioned into the job of mayor. All the loans were repaid on time, with 5 percent interest, including an additional $877.22.

Mr. Tecklenburg also used $25,000 of the woman’s money to buy an Edisto Island tax sale property in 2011 and then sold it back to the original owner, yielding a $3,000 profit for her. Special conservators appointed by the court called it a risky move with the potential of leaving the woman with property that could have been difficult to convert into cash to pay her bills.

In the end, no harm was done to Ms. Wineglass’ finances. And by all accounts, Mr. Tecklenburg took on the job out of the goodness of his heart. But he should have sought legal advice about lending himself money. It was a case of big-hearted bad judgment.

In his official capacity, we expect the mayor to be more careful. Mr. Tecklenburg is the leader of the state’s largest city and plays a major role in how it brings in and spends its funds. It’s critical that the public have confidence in his judgment as well as his ability to handle money and follow the law. He will need to work hard to earn back any confidence lost as a result of this episode.

A report prepared for the judge by the special conservators recommended Mr. Tecklenburg continue to manage the woman’s money, as did two of her goddaughters. But Judge Condon was right to remove the mayor from the job. Violating the law is reason enough, even if no harm was done. Being mayor affords Mr. Tecklenburg no special consideration, and the judge would be expected to handle similar cases in the same manner.

Full Article & Source: 
Editorial: Mayor's big-hearted bad judgment

Judge rules Charleston mayor can no longer manage elderly woman's finances

Mayor John Tecklenburg (center)

Charleston County Probate Judge Irvin Condon decided Tuesday that Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg can no longer serve as the manager of an elderly woman's finances after finding Tecklenburg made loans to himself from her funds without getting prior approval from the court, which violated state law.

The judge’s decision came after professional conservators appointed to review the details of the case recommended that Tecklenburg be allowed to continue serving as conservator for the woman, Johnnie Wineglass, who is 93. 

Condon disagreed.

"I think you meant well, but we can't set a precedent of allowing self-dealing," Condon said.

In legal terms, self-dealing is when a trustee takes advantage of their position for their own personal gain. The law says "any transaction which is affected by a conflict of interest is void unless the transaction is approved by the court after notice to interested persons and others as directed by the court."

The judge temporarily suspended Tecklenburg from handling Wineglass' funds in an order filed May 1, explaining that the details of the loans were unclear and needed to be reviewed further. The hearing Tuesday was to determine whether those financial documents showed self-dealing, and whether Tecklenburg should be removed or reinstated as conservator.

Tecklenburg took out three loans totaling $80,000 over five years. He borrowed $20,000 in 2011 and $35,000 in 2014 for his wife Sandy Tecklenburg's gift shop, Meeting Street Gallery; and one personal loan in the amount of $25,000 in 2016.

He repaid each loan in full with 5 percent interest before taking out the next loan. Tecklenburg incidentally paid about $877 more than he owed in interest.

He said in a written statement to the court that the interest rate he paid is comparable to a rate he'd pay if he had borrowed the money from a bank.

"My intent with regards to each of these loans was to supplement and grow the limited funds that I was handling for Ms. Johnnie," he said in the report submitted to Condon.

Tecklenburg also purchased a tax sale property on Edisto Island in 2011 with $25,000 of her funds and sold it back to the original owner. The transaction yielded a $3,000 profit for Wineglass.

The special conservators appointed by the court, Catherine Kennedy of Columbia and Ayesha Washington of Charleston, noted in their report that it was a risky move.

"Ms. Wineglass could have been left with real estate that might have been difficult to convert to cash to pay her bills," they wrote.

Wineglass is a former neighbor of the Tecklenburgs and is now in an assisted-living facility. She did not appear in court, but several relatives and godchildren wrote letters to the judge asking that Tecklenburg remain serving as the manager of her finances.

The special conservators, who were appointed for their expertise in probate law, agreed with the family members. Kennedy served as probate court judge in Columbia from 1987 to 1999.

"Although he violated the law, his stated intent was to benefit Ms. Wineglass, and ultimately she was repaid with substantial return exceeding bank interest," they wrote.

They also noted that Tecklenburg is not a lawyer and wasn't represented by one when taking on the conservatorship about a decade ago.

Condon offered Tecklenburg the chance to testify, but he declined.

Reached by phone hours after the hearing, Tecklenburg said the judge's decision took him by surprise.

"I thought he would follow the special conservators' advice," he said. "It was just like his mind was made up. I just respectfully disagree with his opinion."

Condon said the case was difficult for the court, but he did not think Tecklenburg had acted as a responsible conservator as he had made "risky investments" with Wineglass' funds.

"It appears Mr. John Tecklenburg meant well, and did good deeds for the protected person, Ms. Johnnie Wineglass," he said. "But one cannot do a good deed and then take advantage of your position as fiduciary. A fiduciary does not make loans to himself and family-controlled businesses without court approval, especially unsecured loans."

He also indicated that Wineglass herself wanted Tecklenburg removed from the role.

The judge cited a letter he received in January 2009 from attorney Kevin Eberle, who had been Wineglass' next door neighbor for 13 years. A month earlier, Tecklenburg was appointed temporary conservator. In the letter, Eberle said he was concerned because Wineglass had come to him, upset, and "adamant that she did not want Mr. Tecklenburg to serve."

In April 2009, four months after Condon received that letter, Tecklenburg was appointed permanent conservator for Wineglass.

Eberle said late Tuesday that at the time he raised those concerns, he did not realize Wineglass' mental state was deteriorating.

"I wish I had the benefit of hindsight," he said. "I regret that Judge Condon would not have picked up the phone and called me."

In his ruling Tuesday, Condon ordered Tecklenburg to cover all the court fees associated with the case. The judge said he would not be referring the case to another court for further prosecution. Tecklenburg has the right to appeal the decision within 10 days.

Tecklenburg said he didn't know if he would appeal. He's waiting to see a copy of the judge's written orders.

Wingate said one reason they might appeal is because the conservators did not find proof of self-dealing after reviewing the extensive financial records. A court order that suggests otherwise might have wide-ranging consequences for Tecklenburg, who is a real estate agent by trade.

"In his profession, he might have to answer questionnaires from insurers or entities he enters into contracts with (that ask) 'Have you ever had any form of violations under the law?' He might have to answer, 'Yes,' " Wingate said.

In an interview with the newspaper in May, Tecklenburg explained how he became the conservator for Wineglass in 2008.

She became a close family friend when they lived next to each other on Moultrie Street near Hampton Park. After the family moved elsewhere, Tecklenburg said he continued checking on her periodically.

On one visit, he discovered Wineglass had fallen victim to a series of telephone scams and had gone into significant debt. That's when he decided to help her sort out her finances, which he said was like a part-time job for the first few years.

He never charged Wineglass any fees for his services.

Once the house was sold and her debt paid off, she moved into a full-time care facility. The money she had left was about $50,000.

Tecklenburg said his goal was simply to grow that small fund so she could continue paying for her care.

Full Article & Source: 
Judge rules Charleston mayor can no longer manage elderly woman's finances