A New Kind of Slavery: Guardianship

By Marti Oakley:

What it really means to become a “ward of the state”

So how does a living, breathing human being find themselves in front of a probate tribunal? And why should being declared incapacitated, cause you to cease to exist in the law?

Probate supposedly only comes into play upon presentation of the death certificate. It appears that being declared a ward and the accompanying court order, is the de facto death certificate.

The entire system is pivots on the targeted victim being deprived of their natural rights and liberties; an impossible task unless by administrative order they are deprived of their own existence.

To become a “ward of the state” means that you lose your identity, all of your natural rights and liberties and everything you own so much so that another person takes over your life, your identity and all of your life’s work contained in your assets. For all intents and purposes, you died. You just didn’t know it.

Guardianship is said to be the fastest growing cottage industry in America. It is, in a nutshell, the complete takeover of another human beings’ life for the purpose of financial exploitation and personal financial gain. The predators in this government sanctioned system are no less insidious, no less of a danger to the public, than any other predator.

Virtually every day of the week, in every state, an elderly individual with sizable assets is targeted by a professional, for-profit guardian. Claiming the victim is [incapacitated], these parasitic predators then petition for guardianship. The proof of incapacity?  Most likely does not exist. The predatory guardian simply has to claim to the probate tribunal administrator, that there is incapacity of some kind. They do not have to provide any proof, no evidence of any kind to substantiate their claim. After all, there is an estate to be exploited and no one is allowed to stop the transfer of wealth that is about to take place. The predator guardian will most likely resign from a case as soon as the estate has been totally depleted and the assets totally converted to their personal accounts.

No one is allowed to refute the claims of the predator guardian. No evidence is allowed into the tribunal record to indicate that anyone presented anything to refute the claims of abuse, neglect or mistreatment the predatory guardian claims.

Full Article and Source:
A New Kind of Slavery: Guardianship in Amercia

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80 Year-Old First Time Bride Proves Love is Ageless

If you have ever worried that you are going to end up single for the rest of your life, well then, this is the heartwarming story you need to read right now.

As the Miami Herald reports, 80-year-old Maria Teresa Cobar recently wed 95-year-old Carlos Victor Suarez at Aventura Plaza Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Miami, Florida. The marriage is the first for Cobar, who immigrated from Guatemala at the age of 26 as a single mother and did not have time to look for love.

Her groom told the Herald that it was love at first sight. The pair will now share a suite together rather than live in separate rooms in the nursing home where they met.

Full Article and Source:
80-Year-Old First Time Bride Proves Love is Ageless

"Who Guards the Guardians?" by Diane Dimond

Coming soon!

Albuquerque Journal Investigative Reporter and National Columnist Diane Diamond is working on a series about the guardianship system in New Mexico. This is when the court appoints a guardian to run an elderly person's life when that person can no longer do so themselves. Diamond says she found out New Mexico's system is troubled.

Source:
Guarding the Guardians

Repo Man Helps Pay Off Bill for Elderly Couple's Repossessed Car

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, a car repo worker recently helped an elderly couple pay off the outstanding bill on their car, which he had to repossess after they fell behind on their payments.

"It's just been a miracle," Pat Kipping, 69, said of what happened to her and her husband, Stan Kipping, 83.

"I don’t know where to even start. We got behind about three payments on the car. I had called the bank and I said, 'Can you please give me until Dec. 3 and I will catch up on them?' and they said, 'No.' So I hung up and prayed and then he, Jim, showed up to repossess the car," Pat Kipping told ABC News today of Jim Ford, a man she says she had never met before he came to repossesses her car last week.

"The next thing I know is that he showed up three days later and brought the car back," she continued. "He had it detailed, and the oil changed, and changed the light bulbs. It also came with a turkey. It is just so overwhelming for me.

Source and video:
Repo Man Helps Pay Off Bill for Elderly Couple's Repossessed Car

They’re Growing Older. Their Mortgage Debt Is Growing Deeper.

It was a modest house, a two-bedroom ranch in Arlington, Mass. Jerri and Richard Newman had to stretch to buy it for $169,000 in 1996, but with his job at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and her freelance editing, they figured they could swing it.

They took out a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage. But their son developed mental health disabilities, including a bipolar disorder. To pay for his care, and help compensate for Ms. Newman’s interrupted career, the Newmans refinanced four times and took out a home-equity loan.

In an earlier era, the Newmans — he’s 65; she’s 62 — might now be contemplating retirement in a paid-for home. Instead, they’ve amassed so much mortgage debt, about $375,000, that they’re reluctantly considering selling. “We tried for years to catch up,” Ms. Newman said.

“The norm for a long time was, if you bought a house at 35 and didn’t refinance, you’d be done paying for it by retirement,” said Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, a research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Amid the continuing fallout from the housing boom and bust, however, a growing proportion of older homeowners now carries mortgage debt. And the average amount keeps rising, according to two recent studies, which may portend lower standards of living for many retirees.

More than three-quarters of Americans over 65 remain homeowners despite housing market gyrations. Those houses usually represent their greatest single asset.

But often there’s little equity left, even as prices have largely recovered, because so many older homeowners have borrowed against their homes.

As housing values rose more than 60 percent nationally between 2000 and 2006, homeowners like the Newmans (more than younger ones) refinanced and took out cash, or signed up for home equity loans or lines of credit.

The proportion of homeowners over 55 with housing debt has climbed, the Boston College group recently reported. Dr. Sanzenbacher provided the numbers: 50 percent still had mortgages, home equity loans or lines of credit in 2013, compared with 38 percent in 1998.

An Urban Institute study published this month, based on data from the national Health and Retirement Study, found a similar pattern among homeowners over 65. The proportion with housing debt rose to 35 percent in 2012 from 23.9 percent in 1998.

Moreover, the median amount they owed nearly doubled, to $82,000 from $44,000.

Tapping home equity “was an attractive opportunity,” Dr. Sanzenbacher said. “If you assumed housing prices would keep going up, it didn’t seem very risky.”  (Click to Continue)

Full Article & Source:
They’re Growing Older. Their Mortgage Debt Is Growing Deeper.

93 Year-Old Hosts "Great Depression Cooking"

93 year old cook and great grandmother, Clara, recounts her childhood during the Great Depression as she prepares meals from the era. Learn how to make simple yet delicious dishes while listening to stories from the Great Depression.



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Great Depression Cooking:  Depression Breakfast

Maja Daniels Wins First Photographic Grant on Alzheimer’s

Rethinking Alzheimer's behind one closed door

Swedish photographer Maja Daniels has won the first Bob and Diane Fund grant, a photographic grant dedicated to visual storytelling about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Selected from 83 entries, Daniels won for her long-term project Into Oblivion, which documents life inside one of France’s geriatric hospitals. There, patients with Alzheimer’s are confined within a particular ward, with a locked door separating the occupants from the rest of the hospital.

Daniels photographed that door, creating tender images that show the vulnerabilities of Alzheimer’s sufferers while highlighting society’s tendency to cast away its elders. “It is our very own fear, and negative connotations of ageing and dying, that makes us comply with these societal structures,” says the photographer. “Whilst being busy living an active, productive life we are perhaps relieved on a day-to-day basis by the possibility to be able to turn a blind eye to what is so conveniently hidden away from us by the geriatric institutions and care homes.”

With her images, Daniels hopes to force a rethink of “our institutionalized, modern way of living” and to question certain care policies, “such as the use of confinement as an aspect of care, by seeing the effects that can have on somebody’s life.”

For the judges – Sarah Leen of National Geographic, MaryAnne Golon of the Washington Post, and Getty Images’ Chip Somodevilla – Daniel’s images were deceptively simple, but “each picture screamed,” says Somodevilla.

“The idea of coming back to that door is brilliant,” adds Leen. “I’m moved by it.”

The grant was created in the memory of Bob and Diane Martin, the parents of Gina Martin, a National Geographic Creative employee who has spent the last five years raising awareness about Alzheimer’s impact on families. “To see this fund develop from an idea to actually reviewing so many beautiful and personal projects from all over the world was a special and emotional day for me,” says Martin. “The work and proposals brought me back to what my family went through and what millions of families are going through today.”

Daniels plans to use the $5,000 grant to finance the publication of Into Oblivion, but more importantly, she says, “it will help me pursue the difficult conversation that I think we need to have about how we conceive and care for people with Alzheimer’s disease.”

Maja Daniels is a Swedish photographer based in London.

Full Article & Source:
Maja Daniels Wins First Photographic Grant on Alzheimer’s

Woman to pay restitution, serve jail time for exploiting 93-year-old

CHARLESTON -- A woman was ordered to pay restitution and to spend time in jail after she admitted stealing money from a 93-year-old woman.

Nikola M. Cone, 37, for whom court records list an address of 1600 S. Second St., Mattoon, also admitted threatening three people with a gun in a separate incident and was placed on probation for two years.

The sentence was part of the agreement that included Cone's guilty pleas to chargesof financial exploitation of an elderly person and aggravated assault.

The exploitation charge accused her of using a debit card belonging to the 93-year-old, for whom Cone had power of attorney, to deposit $116 in the jail account of her boyfriend, who was in custody at the time.

The charge in connection with that, which took place in June and July of last year, was a felony offense. Probation terms in that case included restitution and three weekends in jail, set for January and February.

The assault charge alleged Cone threatened others with a gun on Dec. 26, 2014, and was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor. She was ordered to forfeit the gun in that case.

Other probation terms included substance abuse treatment and other counseling and payment of about $1,400 in fines and court fees.

Coles County Circuit Judge Teresa Righter sentenced Cone by accepting the terms of a plea agreement that Assistant State's Attorney Tom Bucher and Public Defender Anthony Ortega recommended.

Full Article & Source:
Woman to pay restitution, serve jail time for exploiting 93-year-old