Who Owns Your Estate?

By Curt Chancler

Who really owns your estate? In reality you do NOT. The assets, land and property acquired throughout your lifetime can be taken, changed, and/or sold if a Probate Court so decrees. You can write a will and it isn’t worth the paper it is written on if challenged and taken to Probate Court. While statutes decree that the Court is to follow the wishes of the decedent that does not always happen.

Right now in Linn County Oregon a six year probate battle continues to rage between an avaricious Portland, Oregon Northwest Natural Gas Company (NWNG) and their legal firm Stoel Rives; West Coast Bank’s Trust Company represented by Garrett, Hemann, Robertson, Jennings, Comstock and Trethewy of Salem; and their alleged linchpin James Van Horn, stepson to Archie Q. Adams, Sr., represented by Fitzwater & Meyer LLP, Portland and paid by NWNG.

NWNG reportedly also guaranteed West Coast Trust $20,000 to assure they took the position of personal representative. All this in order to strip the inheritance, a lifetime of work for Archie Q. and Ethel Adams, from their children. An inheritance that NWNG continues to assert to the Court is of little value.

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Who Owns Your Estate?

Hearst in Conservatorship

The supervision of Phoebe Hearst Cooke’s care and estate is now in the hands of her twin brother and her nephew.

Judge Teresa Estrada-Mullaney ruled Wednesday that George Hearst Jr. and his son, George Hearst III, are the new conservators for the 81-year-old granddaughter of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.

Estrada-Mullaney ruled after brief comments from attorneys that Cooke’s cognitive state and paranoia make her vulnerable to fraud and undue influence.

Cooke’s family members will oversee her personal care and fortune, estimated to be worth $2 billion.

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Family will handle care for aging Hearst heir

See also:
Conservators and Lawyers Line Up

$2 Billion Conservatorship Battle

Penny Slots Guardian

A woman accused of stealing about $34,000 from an elderly woman she was appointed guardian of in order to play penny slots made her initial appearance last week in Douglas County Circuit Court.

Carol Jean Tolliver faces one felony theft charge. She was appointed the other woman’s guardian in August 2006 and was to receive $250 a month for managing her finances. From April 2008 to February 2009, the woman’s bank account shrunk from $99,693 to $800, according to the criminal complaint.

Kathy Izzard, an economic support worker with the Douglas County Department of Health and Human Services who was investigating the case, noted that Tolliver had produced checks that had been written out to a Superior bar and to the bar’s owner from the account.

Tolliver told Superior Police Detective Mike Jaszczak that she wrote the checks out for cash and felt she could do so because her name was on the checks.

The complaint stated that she told the detective that because she has watched over the woman, who resides in a nursing home, “she was entitled to the money.”

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Penny slots spur thefts

Audit Finds Fund Mismanagement

A new audit indicates that the past practices of the Cook County Public Administrator's Office cost taxpayers at least $227,871 in missing funds and possibly millions more in sweetheart contracts.

The office is supposed to protect the assets of those who die without a will or with an executor who is incapable. But an audit by county auditor Laura Burman found that before 2003, estate funds were commingled and estates with negative balances were subsidized by others with positive balances.

At least some checks were outright stolen from one estate to the tune of $3,198, and about $3 million was spent on estate services that were questionable, the account found. Burman found that some of the companies hired to "manage" estates weren't even incorporated or registered with the state when they were given the contracts.

Nicholas G. Grapsas, the new county public administrator who took over in November, told county board members that he has since separated each estate and instituted many of Burman's recommendations for cleaning up the office.

Still, he admitted, county taxpayers had to fork out at least $227,871 to make up for a deficit in the office's fund that had to be repaid to the estates.

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Cook Co. fund mismanagement cost taxpayers $227,871

“Guardian of Mentally Ill” Probate Case

More information on the Mary Kass case.
See: Battle of Artist Wills

An ailing artist, her wealth and future were flung into the spotlight.

The Boston Globe revealed on its front page sealed court proceedings in the guardianship case of resident Mary Kass, a student of Hans Hofmann in the 1950s in Provincetown and an art patron.
As a result of the sudden publicity local police were posted outside Kass’s East End home on Commercial Street, at the request of her lawyer, until valuables could be removed. That coverage lasted for about 10 hours, police said, at a cost of $32 per hour, just after the Globe story broke.

Kass’s niece and nephew, both from the Washington, D.C. area, filed a lawsuit late last year in Barnstable against Kass’s primary caretaker, resident Elizabeth “Betty” Villari. The case is labeled a “guardian of mentally ill” probate case, with Kass as the ward under consideration.

According to the Globe, the plaintiffs alleged that Villari, a personal trainer who co-owns a local gym, and psychotherapist Mary Ellen Henry, also a resident, took advantage of Kass’s diminished mental state to gain control over her and her assets, including the purchase of three waterfront homes.

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Wealthy artist’s competency case made public

She lived in a modest, brown house on a narrow Provincetown street. Few knew of her vast wealth, the valuable works of art she owns. And that is how the intensely private artist apparently wanted it. Mary Kass studied with renowned artists, exhibited her paintings in Provincetown, and displayed her work in Denmark, France, and Switzerland.

Now 74, Kass uses a wheelchair.

Her enormous fortune, estimated at $60 million, is at the center of a legal dispute between her relatives and the personal trainer and psychotherapist whom Kass named as the primary beneficiaries of her estate.

A judge is expected to decide whether Kass needs a legal guardian. If the judge decides Kass cannot take care of herself, two people on opposite sides of the dispute over the estate want responsibility for her welfare: her nephew, Thomas Kass Berger, and her former personal trainer, Elizabeth ''Betty" Villari.

The judge's decision, following a 10-day trial will not determine who inherits Kass's fortune. But her legal guardian, if the judge appoints one, would be responsible for her financial affairs, property, and physical welfare.

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Future of Cape artist becomes $60m question - Judge weighs guardianship as 2 sides vie

Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime

Under the influence of declining birth rates, expanding longevity, and changing population structures around the world, the global prevalence of senile dementia is expected to increase more than four-fold within the next forty years. Within the United States alone, the number of affected individuals over the age of 65 is expected to rise exponentially from 8 million cases (2% of the entire population in the year 2000), to 18 million retirees (roughly 4.5% of the national census in the year 2040). Although they are striking, these statistics quite likely underestimate the scope of the coming epidemic, as they fail to consider the impact of under-diagnosis, early-onset disease, and the potential for a changing incidence of illness in the context of increasingly toxic environments.

In the face of this imminent crisis, concerned observers have called for policies and practices which aim to prevent, limit, or reverse dementia. Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime is a timely resource which reveals why and how medical treatments themselves – specifically, psycho pharmaceuticals – are a substantial cause of brain degeneration and premature death.

A first-of-its-kind resource for patients and clinicians, the book integrates research findings from epidemiology (observational studies of patients in the “real world”), basic biology (animal experiments), and clinical science (neuroimaging and autopsy studies) in order to demonstrate the dementing and deadly effects of psychiatric drugs.

Source:
Drug-Induced Dementia: a perfect crime by Grace E. Jackson, MD

Filial Responsibility Laws

Boomers could get caught by laws already on books in thirty states

Did you know you could be responsible for your parents' unpaid bills? Thirty states currently have laws making adult children responsible for their parents if their parents can't afford to take care of themselves. While these laws are rarely enforced, there has been speculation that states may begin dusting them off as a way to save on Medicaid expenses.

These laws, called filial responsibility laws, obligate adult children to provide necessities like food, clothing, housing, and medical attention for their indigent parents.

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research organization, 21 states allow a civil court action to obtain financial support or cost recovery, 12 states impose criminal penalties on children who do not support their parents, and three states allow both civil and criminal actions.

The passage of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 made it more difficult to qualify for Medicaid, which means there may be more elderly individuals in nursing homes with no ability to pay for care. In response, nursing homes may use the filial responsibility laws as a way to get care paid for.

Full Article and Source:
States May Take New Look at Requiring Adult Children to Pay for Aging Parents

More information:
States With Filial Responsibility Laws

Adult Children Could Be on Hook for Parents' Nursing Home Bills

Group Claims Filial Responsibility Laws Will Save on Medicaid Costs

Taking Care of Our Caretakers: Using Filial Responsibility Laws to Support the Elderly Beyond the Government’s Assistance

Adult Children, Aging Parents and the Law

Landmark Ruling

What experts say was a landmark Supreme Court ruling allowed their maternal grandfather, George Smith and his wife Brenda to adopt the children.

The legal battle over their adoption may have ended their relationship with their paternal grandparents, an outcome one attorney involved called heartbreaking.

Smith, whose daughter La Shonda was the children’s mother, and his wife first petitioned to adopt the children in April 2005. That was about a month after their 27-year-old father, Eduardo Silvils, died in a car accident.

Silvils’ parents did not ask to adopt the children but did seek guardianship. Their position was that neither set of grandparents should adopt the children, thus creating a situation where both sets of grandparents had the chance to see the grandchildren regularly.

In 2006 a family court judge supported their position, giving the Smiths primary guardianship of the children but denying adoption. In his order, the judge wrote that it was in the children’s best interest to “enjoy the love, affection and involvement of all their grandparents in their lives.”

The District Court of Appeal upheld that decision. But the Florida Supreme Court ultimately disagreed.

The high court called a split guardianship “the antithesis of the right to permanence and stability that is afforded by adoptions.”

The children also have financial security after a Jacksonville jury awarded them and George Smith $2.83 million in a wrongful death lawsuit filed after their mother’s death.

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Jacksonville grandparents adopt after landmark decision

McQuillan Pleads Guilty

A former Jackson County lawyer pleaded guilty as charged to embezzling about $800,000 from the estate of a veteran.

Richard McQuillan admitted to three counts of embezzling more than $20,000. His crimes are punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $15,000 or three times the stolen amount, whichever is greater.

McQuillan removed funds three times from the estate of Robert Howard, who died in December 2006, and converted the money to his own use.

Circuit Judge John McBain is to sentence him July 16.

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Jackson attorney pleads guilty to embezzling $800,000

See also:
Estates Bled Dry

Attorney Plundered $1Million Estate