By Marian Kornicki
On
March 30, 2023, the Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing,
“Guardianship and its Alternatives: Protection and Empowerment.”
Importantly, this hearing featured one victim witness, Dr. Tina Paone,
who spoke about her family’s traumatic, unresolved guardianship
nightmare.
Her testimony resonated for the many
victims that listened to her, as we know too well that guardianship
cases are never resolved when there is an estate with money. As she
said, “On paper, the current system appears well-intentioned. That’s not how it plays out. On behalf of my family, and so many others, I beg you to please implement meaningful reform.”
At this same hearing, Senator Bob
Casey (D-PA) proposed a bill titled the Guardianship Bill of Rights Act,
which would create a national council charged with promoting less
restrictive arrangements for people living under, or being considered
for, court-ordered guardianship—thereby leading to fewer guardianships.
As I described in “Guardianship Destroyed My Family,”
published last year on Mad in America, I have seen in my own life the
damage and exploitation that can be wreaked by court-appointed
guardians. In an effort to advocate and enact change, I belong to
Victims and Families Harmed by Guardianship, a national human rights
coalition that functions as a consortium of state coalitions on the
quest for reform.
This is critical work. Most victims
cannot report the exploitation they are experiencing because they are
silenced by gag orders, chemical restraint, or threats of retaliation.
So, it is up to us—those of us who can speak out—to use our voices for those who cannot. Hopefully, we will be heard.
Some background: Britney Spears is not alone
For many people, the considerable harms of guardianship only came to the fore with the story of Britney Spears,
whose long battle for agency and independence ended on November 12,
2021—when a judge freed her from a conservatorship that had controlled
her life for 13 years. Five months earlier, following Spears’ emotional
testimony, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Casey stated that they
wanted more federal oversight of the country’s guardianship system. They
wrote a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and
the Department of Justice (DOJ), asking both agencies to provide
information about data they collect on the prevalence of guardianship in
the U.S; on any efforts the agencies have made to protect people under
guardianship; and on the ways Congress can improve federal collection of
guardianship data.
In that letter, they described how
“Ms. Spears’ case has shined a light on longstanding concerns from
advocates who have underscored the potential for financial and civil
rights abuses of individuals placed under guardianship or
conservatorship.” I spoke to a staff lawyer in Senator Warren’s office,
now gone, who told me they never received a response to their letter.
Britney Spears is hardly alone: An
advocate in California suggested that based on the current population,
there may be as many as 4 million people in guardianship. And as Spears
told the court, “this conservatorship is doing me way more harm than
good.” She described in excruciating detail how the legal guardians
dictated where she lives, works, and receives therapy. They stopped her
from seeing friends, forced her to take medication against her will, and
prevented her from having her IUD removed so she could try to get
pregnant.
She went on to say, “I deserve to have the same rights as anybody does by having a child, a family, any of those things.”
With the above as a backdrop, I and
other advocates contacted Senator Casey’s office, and we asked for a
virtual meeting with the Senator. He was not available, but we met with
Josh Dubensky of his staff (who has since left the Senator’s office).
The victims were from all over the country and we met every month,
having approximately six sessions total. He designated an email address
for us to send in our guardianship stories to share with him, Senator
Casey, and the Senate Committee on Aging.
During these sessions, we asked to
have a hearing convened so that victims and their families could
describe our experiences, including all the harms we endured, in a
public forum. We told him it is not legislation that we need; we need
investigations and prosecutions. When Mr. Dubensky left the office, he
referred us to another member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging
and part of Senator Casey’s team.
In March, 2021, U.S. Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Matt Gaetz (R-FLA) sent a letter to U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY),
then Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, asking that a hearing be
convened in the House Judiciary Committee. Victims from all over the
country sent letters to Congressman Nadler and the entire Judiciary
committee. We never heard from him.
In July of 2021, Representative Charlie Crist (D-FLA) introduced the FREE ACT
to “protect Americans whose rights have been stripped away”—which is
completely meaningless and useless. Why? Because he didn’t
simultaneously call for investigations for the already existing victims.
At the time he made the announcement, he was asked if investigations
were a possibility, and he said no. Obviously, he is not serious. The
matter of guardianship fraud needs to be referred to the DOJ.
We contacted Crist, too—and got no response. Can’t such politicians imagine this could be happening to them? Apparently not.
Then, on December 1, 2021, Crist and
Eric Swalwell (D-Ca) invited Britney Spears to speak to Congress by
sending a letter to her via her attorney. Victims learned about the
letter in February of 2022, when Spears posted it on her social media account.
That same month, we began
communicating with Michael Gamel-McCormick, Director of Disability
Rights in the office of Senator Casey, who is chair of the Senate
Special Committee on Aging. I sent him my MIA personal essay. He emailed
to let me know that their office cannot work on individual cases, but
said “it illustrates the thousands of problems with guardianships and
conservatorships” and added: “We are working at the federal level to
ensure due process and oversight.”
Later in February, representing our
victims’ coalition, I emailed McCormick to say that it was important to
convene a hearing or hearings on this crisis—and it is important, too,
to raise awareness and promote understanding of what happens under
guardianship and what those of us who’ve lived through it have
experienced. If we aren’t heard, things can be denied and ignored. There
needs to be firsthand evidence from victim families. He responded with
the following: “Senator Casey agrees with you about firsthand voices at
hearings. We can’t commit to a time for those hearings now, but they are
part of the planning process.” Victims again began sending in their
guardianship stories to him.
Listening to victims
So, after years of pushing and
persevering and begging reporters to write stories on guardianship, and
urging politicians to represent us, and meet with us, and hold hearings,
we finally had our hearing on March 30.
To be clear: We don’t think the
Guardianship Bill of Rights Act is the answer. When Senator Casey
introduced it, he, too, didn’t call for investigations and prosecutions.
None of this is surprising, given the political machines that influence
Congress—and the judges who hand out lucrative guardianships to some of
the very lawyers who helped them get elected. If not for
lawyer-lobbyists and money in politics, there would not be the problem
of guardianships.
Families are absolutely blindsided by
the abuse that results. People are being pushed into guardianship and
their assets taken. This is not a tricky issue. The Department of
Justice must act.
In 2018, The New York Times
published a story about Phyllis Funke, a 77-year old journalist, with
whom I spoke in the hopes she could attend a meeting I was trying to
arrange with Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). After scheduling a meeting in
Washington, D.C., it was abruptly canceled. Ms. Funke was completely
overcome by what had happened to her after she was placed into a
guardianship with a former New York policeman. As she described to The Times,
all of her assets were withheld from her. “I’ve been bullied,
blackmailed and stripped of the things I need to live, including my
money.”
In 2022, Orit Mizrachi of California
told me her mother was placed into an unwarranted conservatorship after a
lawyer said she should file for it herself—to protect her mother.
Mizrachi was not appointed. Instead, a professional guardian and a
lawyer were appointed. They began billing her and placing liens on the
family home. They spent $75,000 of her mother’s money trying to transfer
her parents’ savings accounts from Israel, and did not allow her mother
to travel there to visit her siblings.
Another California victim, Patty
Lacy, a registered nurse, shared with me that her late father, a US
veteran, was placed into a conservatorship with a guardian who was a
complete stranger and neglected her father’s health needs. As a result,
Lacy not only lost her inheritance, but was denied the opportunity to
care for him. “I listened to the hearing, and I do not believe in
another bill that judges will violate,” she told me. “The senators said
nothing of how they will reimburse the victims and families for the
confiscation of their assets and lack of healthcare. What about removing
the judges and having them disbarred?”
Next, consider the story of Poppy
Hegren, director of nursing services at Southern Nevada State Veterans
Home in Boulder City, NV, and the only child of Lester Moore, a U.S.
veteran who died in 2021. Hegren emailed me the following after we
spoke:
“Like
you, I believe that there needs to be investigations into the
Guardianship racket that has stolen the inheritances of the rightful
heirs. I was tricked into seeking a conservatorship for my father in CA,
although there was a Family Trust that clearly stated my parents’
wishes and had me as the only child being the Successor Trustee. I will
never forget in the Probate Courtroom in Ventura County CA, the numerous
attorneys at the hearing, acting like vultures in their fancy suits and
Italian leather shoes. After the hearing, I watched them in the parking
lot drive off in their Mercedes Benzes and Land Rovers. It was never
about protecting my father with dementia. It was about grabbing his
assets that he and my mother, both Depression survivors of the South and
Veterans, had saved through frugal living.
“The
Judge ignored the Family Trust and placed Lester Moore under a
for-profit conservatorship that proceeded to liquidate his assets and
property. His 500-plus acres and the numerous homes he had since 1956 in
Arkansas were also liquidated by this CA conservator. (This was)
property that was meant to stay in our family. Any Southerner
understands the meaning of land.
“The
Judge also continues to hold on to $250,000 of the Trust assets over 2
years after my father’s death, ‘just in case there is further
litigation.’ These are assets that are meant for the rightful heirs, not
the legal elite.”
What’s next?
Lester Moore’s family is hardly
alone: An audit by the guardianship fraud program in Palm Beach County
estimates that over $273 billion in assets are controlled by guardians
in the United States.
This has to stop. Change needs to
happen. Victims have written to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the
Senate Subcommittee on The Constitution. As one victim family wrote,
wishing to be anonymous: “We must end the victimization of American
families by the probate system’s conservatorship/guardianship legal
complex.”
Right under our noses, Americans are
being railroaded into unneeded guardianships and conservatorships,
controlled by appointees who, with the help of the courts, proceed to
bill the assets of the victims and their families with no oversight.
Yes, the guardianship system can be
reformed by making sure no one is sent there—but no one will be sent
there if you abolish it. Everyone knows that there is a pattern and
practice of abuse in the probate courts across the country, and the way
that ends is with investigation and prosecution of those who are
violating the laws and rights of vulnerable people who come to court for
protection.
We were all horrified as the details
of Ms. Spears’ case were revealed. She had been held against her will
for 13 years and silenced with threats and drugs. Her earnings were
billed away by attorneys. This is happening to untold numbers of
Americans under the color of law and under the guise of “protection.”
Families are being ruined and their estates robbed by “officers of the
court.”
Ms. Spears has finally escaped. We have to ensure that the rest of us escape as well.
Full Article & Source:
Listen to the Victims: Senate Holds Hearing on Guardianship
