In May of 2017, the New Mexico Supreme Court Commission studying Guardianship Reform heard testimony from an expert who spoke on behalf of professional guardians throughout the state.
Sharon Moore explained that her company, Ayudando Guardians (the word means “helping” in Spanish) adhered to “a model code of ethics” and had the trust of district judges. She said that the company accounts were audited once a year. Both Sharon and her partner Susan Harris were also certified by the National Center for Certification of Guardians
Approximately 2 months later, Sharon and her partner, Susan Harris, were charged with a decade-long sophisticated scheme to embezzle funds from client trust accounts. It was eventually discovered that 11 million in clients funds had been stolen.
How can such a thief be brazen enough to testify before the Supreme Court on behalf of the industry? And what does this say about the profession? Tonight we’ll discuss this case, its outcome, and efforts in New Mexico to reform the Guardianship system.
Our guest tonight is Arlene Sandra. She and Reverend Ralph will be talking about the numerous BS bills in Pennsylvania each of them an underhanded protection of the predators.. Two are listed below…there’s MORE!
HB 422 (Hickernell) Creates a database for tracking and criminal or civil convictions for abuse, neglect and exploitation in care facilities.. (but does not mention professional predators or attorneys)
HB 1430 (Day) specifically expands the ability for dept. of aging, an adult protective services to civilly prosecute family members for accused criminal activity and allows the state to assume the estate and the ward in adult guardianships. Specifically to increase Medicaid pay for “professional” guardians to $300 a month per ward.
These are just two of the upcoming bills that target family members and conveniently overlooks the predators. the 2nd bill is an obvious money maker that will be paid through taxes to the predators. I suppose stealing an estate, selling other peoples homes, collecting the social security and/or military retirement, and/or railroad retirement wasn’t enough.
Welcome to Pennsylvania! We take human trafficking for profit very seriously!
LISTEN LIVE HERE! Tonight June 17, 2022 at 7:00 pm CST! Call in number is 917-388-4520
On tonight’s show we introduce you to…Reverend Ralph, a minister out of Montgomery co Pennsylvania. He is very concerned about the abuses he is hearing about in his hometown. He will be reviewing with us the constitutional right to freedom of religion. That the ward has a right to clergy visits. Anyone can become a clergy member online. Reverend Ralph will educate us on how to do it.
We are nearing the end of the year and its just about break time. We have a lot to cover and will wind down for the break on the 17th. We will cram in as much as we can before then.
Imagine a situation in which someone you love is abducted. You may or may not know where they are, but you are powerless to free them. The captor takes their money by getting into their bank account and investments, changing insurance policies and trusts to the benefit of the captor. The captor drugs the loved one into oblivion and forbids them to contact friends or family members.
If a masked thug did all this, law enforcement would jump into action, and the person reporting such a crime might even be hailed as a hero.
However, if the perpetrator of such actions does so by manipulating the probate or civil court system, it is business as usual. No one bats an eye if the victim is declared by the court to be an “incapacitated person” in need of a guardian, whether the allegation is true or not.
Worse, there is often swift retaliation against anyone speaking up for these hidden victims of guardianship abuse. Such bullying tactics are so common that they are considered part of the standard “playbook” used by the perpetrators of guardianship exploitation through local probate courts.
Occasionally, stories of this abuse of power make it into mainstream media, such as that of Golden Flake heiress Joann Bashinsky and the film from Netflix, “I Care A Lot”. More often, stories appear in alternative media and blogs.
The prevalent thinking is that, indeed, this case is an anomaly. Few realize how commonly it occurs. And few recognize the high cost at which these stories ever see the light of day.
In January, 2019, Shelley Thomson was abducted from her home in New Braunfels, Texas under color of law. She was falsely accused of being “incapacitated” and assigned to Texas Health and Human Services (HHSC) as her guardian. She was moved to a nursing home, and her house and other possessions sold to cover guardian and nursing home expenses, as well as legal costs to keep her “incarcerated.” Her human and legal rights have been abrogated, and she undergoes daily abuse, including malnutrition, isolation, denial of exercise, involuntary or hidden drugging, neglect, and a long list of other abuses. Shelley is a scientist, articulate, has career ambitions, and advocates for herself daily against all odds in a corrupt probate system.
Shelley’s attorney, Phil Ross, has volunteered to liberate her because he believes a grave injustice has been committed. After 2 years, about 300 legal filings and appeals, he recently filed several motions, including permission for Shelley to have access to what little cash is left in her account so she can continue to defend herself; preventing the state of Texas from using that money for prepaid funeral expenses; asking for damages for using the funeral gambit as a form of illegal retaliation against Shelley and Phil; asking the court for a fair mental examination; moving the jurisdiction to a fairer state probate court; requesting a jury trial; and restoring Shelley’s capacity so she can be released from guardianship.
A court hearing on these motions is scheduled for Thursday June 3 at 9:00 am CDT, New Braunfels, Texas time. Zoom Link: https://txcourts.zoom.us/j/5022885368
This hearing is open to the public, and we invite all to attend. Irrespective of the ruling, during the hearing (but most likely after the hearing after the judge leaves the courtroom), there will be an opportunity to comment and present evidence, and this will go into the record.
For further information about the history of this case, and for fundraising support, please visit:
Join us this evening as various individuals protesting the horrendous “guardianship” racket in Australia. The trustee’s in Australia are openly hunting elderly victims who can be abducted, isolated and robbed blind all under tribunal protection. A recent protest against the elder racketeering has elicited various threats against the protestors, and several calls were made to shut them down. The protest was under permit and was peaceful.
Guardianship in its current state is a global racket. The elderly who should be cared for are instead viewed as prey and are subject to having their lives ended prematurely.
Australia rivals only the U.S. in its insidious treatment of the elderly. Other countries are following suit and also hunting and targeting the elderly who are marked for eradication. Globally, the elderly are considered a waste population and Australia and the U.S. are leading the way in the culling of those 60 and older.
Join Coz and Marti tonight as they host Liz Rizzo,
Liz Rizzo was Rusty Warren’s companion. Rusty is a well known comedian from the 60’s. She had 7 gold albums from that period. Her cutting edge humor was signified in her popular routine, “Knockers Up!”. At 91, Rusty has fallen prey to guardianship trafficking. Abducted and held captive by her abductors, she is told Liz doesn’t want to see her or talk to her. This is trauma based bonding by the book. Isolated, terrified and suffering from the onset of dementia, everything is being done to dehumanize Rusty and frighten her.
“Rusty was my partner over 35 years, we built a life together. We have a Trust to protect our assets and she put her wishes in writing. Judge Lee in Tucson disregarded the Trust, taunted me about being gay and said I was not credible. I was legally Trustee of the Estate but they challenged it.”
As so many others have discovered, pre existing legal instruments are quickly discarded to allow the predators access to any assets. This was never about Rusty or her well-being. It was only about gaining access to her jointly held estate and stealing as much of it as possible. To do that, Rusty had to be taken prisoner and deprived of her legal capacity.
Please join us as we cover this case which exposes more of the hunting of the elderly for profit.
Luanne Flemming host of “Hidden Truth Revealed” will be co-hosting and will be joined by Phil Ross, attorney for Shelley Thomson. Shelley will also be calling in so that we can hear from her personally.
Shelley Thomson is in a New Braunfels, Texas nursing home (Colonial Manor). She does not belong there and is desperate to be liberated.
Under the guise of guardianship, Texas Health and Human Services Commission took her computer, all her money and assets – and (HHSC) used her disability as an excuse to abduct her, steal her house, her cat, and move her into an abusive nursing home. Her guardian has threatened her with violence. Shelley is held prisoner with no right to leave her room, no visitors, and no exercise.
Shelley Thomson was labeled as incapacitated falsely and maliciously by the state of Texas. State guardianship fraud is a national scandal. Under the guise of protection, states target victims for their money, and treat them worse than prisoners. Shelley’s guardian has threatened her with violence and she has been drugged against her will.
If Shelley cannot pick her own psychiatrist, the court will assign their own, and they will choose the cheapest expert to rubber stamp a denial of capacity once again.
A GoFundMe campaign to raise enough money for Shelley to hire her own psychiatrist, and to help defray expenses of her lawyer who has represented her for over 13 months pro bono. Please click on the link, read the ad and donate. Thanks!
Join Marti Oakley, Coz Whitten-Skaife and Austin Gibson as we explore the magical, mystical world of corrupt judges who facilitate the theft of estates of the elderly, and who appear to have magical powers that allow them to “re-interpret” the final wishes of the deceased as laid out in their wills, trusts and other instruments. Montgomery Cty Pennsylvania courtrooms appear to operate on an overload of judges who have magical powers not available to us mere mortals.
What goes on in Montgomery Cty. Pennsylvania courtrooms? The corruption from the bench is blatant. Supposedly having far more knowledge about intended heirs and recipients of benefits from wills and trusts, one judge in particular has decided that his clairvoyant capabilities have helped him determine what the deceased really wanted as opposed to what the will says.
Having diverted art collections to city owned galleries instead of going to the college designated appears to be the result of an clairvoyant epiphany. In another instance, a judge decided that instead of intended family heirs receiving their inheritance, the funds should go to certain charities. Charities that the judge was involved in? I guess anything is possible when you are channeling the dead for profit.
And could someone explain why so many people targeted for guardianship/estate theft and then isolated in a nursing home have their heads shaved?
Friends remembered Wilma Williams as fiercely independent, but a stroke left her in a wheelchair and reliant on hearing aides as large as headphones the day her attorney arrived with a plan to divvy up her $1.7 million estate.
The 93-year-old military widow with no children had nieces and nephews, but Bob Machen personally drafted a will that made himself her primary beneficiary and his son — a man she had never met — a possible heir as well.
Machen said the will represented the wishes of a woman who was like a sister to him and who he helped for years. He claims he watched as she affixed a scribbled signature to the document in a Fairfax County rehabilitation center on July 31, 2018.
Williams died 10 days later, and her relatives said they were stunned to eventually learn that Machen was poised to reap a $1.5 million windfall while they would receive modest bequests. They couldn’t believe the will truly represented Williams’s desires and decided to challenge it in court.
They say the case is a particularly brazen example of the financial exploitation of the elderly, a problem that is rapidly increasing as the senior population grows. The number of people aged 65 and older is projected to double between 2018 and 2060, according to government figures. Various estimates put their losses from fraud between $2.9 billion and a staggering $36.5 billion each year.
A $22 million civil RICO case from Cleveland, Ohio has survived another procedural hurdle and appears headed to trial in Cuyahoga county court.
RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization. It was passed by congress and signed into law by President Nixon 50 years ago, in 1970. Originally designed to combat organized crime, the laws’ application has expanded to include any group profiting from an illegal activity.
Macomb County Probate Judge Sandra Harrison ordered the release of Fred Smith, who lives in Bruce Township, but with a stern warning that if he doesn’t account for the missing funds, he will find himself back behind bars.
A Utica man has been confined to the Macomb County Jail for over three weeks and will spend at least two more weeks there for failing to account for millions of dollars spent from his mother’s trust fund that he controlled.
Two former clients of disbarred Hendersonville attorney Andy Allman may finally get their day in civil court after a special judge recently denied a motion to dismiss the cases.
Linda Cela of Clarksville and Erbit Navarro-Teran of Lebanon both filed complaints in Sumner County General Sessions Court against Allman nearly three years ago.
Investigators say Traci Hudson stole more than $500,000 from a man she had guardianship over.
For the latter part of his life, Maurice Myers lived on his own in a small home south of Sarasota.
Then, in March 2017, when he was 92, Myers was hospitalized twice with numerous health complications. He was released to a rehabilitation facility, then moved to a senior care home in Pinellas Park. There, he’d be closer to his daughter, who oversaw his affairs.
The case highlights the unexpected downsides of court-appointed adult guardianships, which are designed to help the old and the infirm manage their lives but are under fire nationwide amid allegations of neglect, abuse and financial exploitation. Those problems haven’t escaped the watchful eye of Congress, as evidenced by the recent introduction of HR 4174 to enact protections against elder abuse and neglect under guardianship.
BOSTON − In an emotional speech before the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers (BBO), Attorney Lisa Siegel Belanger gave as good as she got. Using her allotted 15 minutes she called out the actions of BBO member Attorney Marsha Kazarosian and the law firm Burns & Levinson for their “fabrication” and exaggeration of charges against her as “retaliation” for her exposure of their “racketeering ring which has preyed on seniors,” including her father, Marvin H. Siegel. The BBO seeks to strip Belanger of her license to practice for two years.
Belanger noted in her speech that despite five years of her filing complaints to the BBO against Attorney Kazarosian, the BBO refused to conduct any investigation against the powerful political figure (and Mass. Gov. Charlie Baker’s high-profile appointee). She also noted that both Kazarosian and BBO Chair Jeffrey R. Martin were absent from the hearing, and that she was again stripped of the opportunity to question her accusers. She pointed out that Martin serves as partner in the firm Burns and Levenson, a firm also at the center of Belanger’s complaint. (Yes, Belanger took on some of the most connected lawyers in Massachusetts.)
With no relief from the courts for years (fighting against those she documented as preying upon seniors), Belanger finally went public. Her case as well as the systemic draining of millions from her now deceased father’s accounts have been chronicled in a series of articles in The Boston Broadside. Belanger noted that while no actions were taken against Kazarosian, and no charges were ever taken against her, everything changed when her family’s plight became public. READ MORE HERE
” I have a warrant out for my arrest because I saved my mother from criminals. The warrant was put out by the same judge and guardian that stole my mother’s freedom and her estate.”
What I am about to share with you is unbelievable, yet it is happening around the world. It is the best kept secret of white collar criminals.
I invite you to view my website below that chronicles my and my mother’s story of horrific abuse by the probate / family courts in the United States, which forced us to flee to Greece for our safety and our lives.
I helped my mother escape a fraudulent guardianship in which a judge forced her to give up all of her rights, forced her into an institution where she was drugged and isolated, and forced her to forfeit her entire estate, including her homes and companies to a corrupt guardian that is unrelated to the family. To conceal their crimes, the predators label their theft of her human and civil rights “in her best interest.” There was nothing wrong with my mother. She was simply wealthy and vulnerable due to age, becoming a widow, and trusting two of her own corrupt children. My mother and I made an extraordinary escape in 2016 and now live in exile in Greece. She is originally from Greece. We are both American and Greek citizens. Had I not taken my mother, she would not be alive today. She lost everything to guardianship; I lost everything to save her.
We left with the clothes on our backs leaving our children, grandchildren, homes and our lives behind. After months of hiding, we arrived in Greece with the help of friends, relatives, complete strangers, and the kindness of a representative at the Greek Embassy who granted us emergency passports for our safety.
Facing the glare of the elder-fraud spotlight, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (left) is sending his top experts to address the problem in a Steubenville public forum.
Titled “Protecting the Unprotected” the forum will be held from 12:30 pm to 4:00 pm on Wednesday, October 23, 2019 at the Towers Building, 500 Market Street, in the 2nd floor conference room.
Ohio has battled elder-fraud for years, and the state is again in the hot-seat due to a racketeering case brought by Dr. Mehdi Saghafi from Cleveland. A racket is a crime at both state and federal levels and can be spotted when the those billing to “fix” or “manage” a problem are the same people that caused the problem in the first place.
Dr. Saghafi’s claim is that his family was the victim of financial exploitation when his 80-year old wife was trapped in the legal maze of a court-ordered guardianship. The family claims that once “captured” in the court system, attorneys and accountants targeted the family’s assets and billed the family hundreds of thousands of dollars for the ”care” of his wife.
Just months before that racketeering suit was allowed to proceed, there was the FBI investigation of Ohio Judge Diane Vettori-Caraballo (shown left). The judge was indicted and pled guilty to charges stemming from her theft of over $100,000 from an estate for which she was the court-appointed administrator. For more on that story, go here: https://wp.me/p9585T-gD
Ohio is not alone in the fight against fraud. Weeks ago, Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel fired four of her state’s probate administrators after complaints that the attorneys had used their court-power to drain the assets of estates they controlled. See this link for details: https://wp.me/p9585T-fH
Over the summer, Florida’s probate system made national headlines when court-appointed guardian Rebecca Fierle (right) was accused of causing the death of a man who was in her care by issuing a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) order—without informing or getting the consent of the man who was “not to be resuscitated.” For more on this fraud story, go here: https://wp.me/p9585T-gt
Yost’s Steubenville event features nearly a dozen speakers including four with state-wide experience in elder-fraud investigation and prosecution: Sylvia Pla-Raith; Kevin Barbeau, CFE; Michael Kaizar, CPA CFE; Kelly Igoe, JD. The session offers residents of the region a place to meet and learn about the “red flags of fraud” from Ohio’s experts in elder financial fraud.
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) calls fraud “theft by deceit,” and “theft with a smile and is prosecuted every day across the USA. But in cases where the “mark” or victim is an incapacitated and/or elderly person, the issues can expand from simple fraud into a RICO and civil rights cases.
“Many people don’t know that there are thousands of people in guardianships in Ohio,” says Rosanna Miller (shown right with her father, Clair) who is a member of the advocacy group “Ohio Coalition to End Probate Corruption” (OCEPC). The Ohio coalition is just one of nearly a dozen grass-roots groups across the United States who fight guardianship and elder financial abuse including NASGA, AAAPG and VGPR.
New federal elder-care legislation (U.S. H.R. 4174) details that there are approximately 1.3 million elderly adults in the United States who have their lives controlled in a guardianship. These vulnerable adults have amassed roughly 50 billion dollars in assets. These figures will get bigger with the aging of the “boomer” generation and the rise in life-expectancy.
The Steubenville forum is designed to help people learn how to spot and stop fraud from the best and brightest in the area of elder fraud prevention and prosecution. The speakers will detail the warning signs of elder financial exploitation and financial crimes and give attendees tools and strategies to assist victims of financial exploitation.
In addition to the state-level experts, there will be local Jefferson-County speakers as well, including Sheriff Fred J. Abdalla; Jefferson County Attorney Jane Hanlin; Marie Holt, Ericka Kirkpatrick and probate Judge Joseph Corabi. The forum is designed to give people in the community a local contact when they need expertise in the elder financial fraud area. Q&A sessions are expected, time permitting.
The event is free but the room holds only 125 people. Please use this link to pre-register:
Tonight, Patricia & Robert Femia join us to talk about the downstream effects of predatory guardianships. Patricia’s mother, captured and isolated from her family, soon succumbed to the psychological torture inflicted upon her. In a classic case of trauma based bonding, she rejected all ties to her daughter and her family. Instead, she identified with her captors. In what was a clear case of the Stockholm Syndrome, and the effects on the family as this unfolded were staggering.
“This horrific ordeal has left me and my family completely heart-broken. My mother was taken care of and had her daughter and son-in-law and grandchildren living closely around her every day. She lived comfortably, was healthy and had her independence for many years. Once this whole scenario unfolded,she died all alone in a nursing home.”
Tune in as Patricia and Robert tell how they managed to survive this attack on their family, and where are they today in managing the damage.
The Silver Standard with Romona Paden, contributor
This year’s Whistleblower Summit had many interesting and illumination discussion panels.
For us at the Silver Standard and The EARN Project, the panel conducted by Marti Oakley was of most interest.
Many people are drawn to the Summit just to meet Marti. They have listened to her shows on her TS Radio Network, and they appreciate her for being a leading voice for reform and her achievement in bringing this issue to the Summit. She was her usual dynamic self, shining a light into the dark corners of this growing global threat. More
ALLEGED MASSIVE ELDER ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION RING IN MIGHIGAN PROBATE COURTS
The guardianship system isn’t new; in fact, it’s rooted in medieval English law. Every US state still uses some form of the system, which, at its best, is designed to protect citizens who are no longer able to protect themselves by declaring them wards of the state. We know, of course, that the system is rarely at its best, with increasing reports of abuse cropping up nationwide, prompting Congressional calls for reform.
But the level of controversy over how guardianship cases are handled in one Detroit-area probate courtroom has reached such heights, the story reads more like Orwellian fiction than it does a model of the American experience.
An unsettling number of accusations have been leveraged against the court, citing abuse, neglect, robbery, and exploitation, often in cases that arguably didn’t merit guardianship in the first place. In as little as a year, “incapacitated wards” are stripped of the entirety of their savings and possessions and rendered completely reliant upon social services and benefits such as Medicaid. Even high-profile families, including the estates of Rosa Parks and Aretha Franklin, have been drawn into the quagmire.
Award-winning investigative journalist Gretchen Rachel Hammond spent the past 13 months independently investigating a systemic problem at the Oakland County Probate Court, which has allegedly been shielded by the highest levels of Michigan government for the past 30-some years. With the help of a forensic accountant, three Wayne State University Journalism School researchers, and thousands of corroborating documents, she has published a first-of-its-kind exploration into the court system, its four judges, four guardians, and the stories behind more than 2,200 wards.
Background:
In July 2018, Hammond engaged in a freelance, self-funded investigation to determine if alleged abuses at the Oakland County Probate Court were systemic.
Discoveries include the forced separation of families and isolation of the vulnerable; fraudulent petitions for guardianship by Adult Protective Services investigators; massive overbilling; the forced removal of individuals from their homes and the placement of them in nursing facilities or unlicensed group homes with subhuman living conditions; real estate fraud; and missing assets that number in the millions of dollars.
The investigation met with constant challenges, including threats and harassment by Oakland County Sheriff’s officers. A surreal March 12, 2019 four-hour meeting between Hammond’s team and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s staff led to a new line of inquiry and discoveries of campaign ties between Nessel, Whitmer and Oakland County Probate Court Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan and her family.
Biography
Gretchen Rachel Hammond is an award-winning freelance investigative journalist based out of Chicago. Her work has won or been nominated for four successive Chicago Press Club awards, been recognized by the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Journalists (NLGJA), and covered topics such as criminal justice, abuse at ICE detention facilities, and alleged discrimination on the part of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services leading to the unnecessary separation of children from their parents.
GRETCHEN IS AVAIL FOR INTERVIEW AND THE FULL 5 PART SERIES IS AVAIL
The Australians are back! The last few weeks have seen major activity behind the scenes. The first Australian Summit on trustee (guardianship) abuse and estate theft was held. Approximately 100 victims attended and spoke. With media, the shadow Attorney General Mr David Jantezkin in attendance, the 3 hour planned summit was extended to 5 hours to allow everyone to speak.
Highlighted at the Summit were the:
Physical & Psychological Isolation- Usually very quick
Bed side hearings
Victims drugged and moved without notice
Notice they do this when the victim is close to family and loved ones
Order placed to control visitations
In the midst of all this, the Australian government tries to cover its tracks and close all the loopholes in what is an expanding police state. Everything is being privatized including titles on property. Even the banking royal commissioner is upset over the growing distrust of the government. The efforts currently appear centered on property and financial interests.
We will also have several family members of victims calling in.
Are guardians, professionals in the legal system, and influential people in the political system stealing from wards (elderly and disabled individuals who have been placed in guardianships) and laundering the money through shell companies? Specifically, can shell companies be found by examining the April Lynn Parks court case and/or IKOR? In addition, is there a connection between the two? This document presents raw data about court-appointed guardian Parks and IKOR, an elder services franchise. Criminal wrongdoing in individual guardianship abuse cases is known. The criminal network, that runs from county courts and county Area Agencies on Aging (Adult Protective Services)
to high-level government offices, is not known. Shell companies may be one piece of the puzzle.
Facts About Shell Companies:
A shell corporation is a company with financial assets but no significant business activity.
Shell corporations don’t create products, hire employees, or generate revenue. Rather, they store money and engage in financial transactions. Shell corporations can be used for illegal purposes like money laundering or legitimate purposes like storing funds in the early stages of a startup. According to the research group Global Financial Integrity, the U.S. is the second easiest country to create a shell corporation in. Delaware, Nevada, and Wyoming are the most popular states for creating a shell company due to lax incorporation requirements and strict privacy laws. Storing personal assets in a shell company makes sense for people with a large amount of wealth from investments.
The Panama Papers implicated a number of government officials and public figures in crimes ranging from tax evasion to money laundering. The investigation, which exposed the rogue offshore finance industry, showed that owners of shell companies can hide their identities from United States authorities This constitutes a “significant loophole” in the country’s ability to tackle money laundering and illicit financing. The Panama Papers may offer clues about how money is laundered after it is illegally obtained through guardianship scams.
Facts about Systemic Elder Abuse/Guardianship Abuse:
In most states, if you are deemed incapacitated by a court, it will hand your rights over to a professional or family guardian who then will make all decisions for you. Given that state courts are backlogged, and judges are faced with stacks of papers, it’s no wonder that a tendency to treat every case with uniformity has developed. Unfortunately, one size does not fit all, and many elders and persons with disabilities are not being treated as individuals with dignity but rather as second-class citizens without equal protection under the law—as a non-person. The descriptions of how removal of rights has caused suffering are heartbreaking.
Now that someone (often a complete stranger) has been appointed Dictator over your life and assets, and now that this Dictator has almost no supervision and little accountability for how your assets are spent, how are you feeling about it? Not too great. How is the guardian feeling? Power drunk.
Even though guardians can control every aspect of people’s lives, they aren’t monitored by outsiders. They pay themselves out of your estate in addition to having the right to claim that anything they do is in your “best interest.” If that means selling your house and throwing you into a lock-down unit, so be it. If your spouse of 50 years fights for your freedom, they will simply, on your behalf and “in your best interests”, get you a divorce from that pesky spouse. If your family doesn’t like it and wages a court battle, the guardian can use YOUR money to hire a lawyer to battle back, quickly exhausting your estate. And, what are your families chances of winning if you are in one of the many jurisdictions where the judge, the guardian, who was very possibly appointed by the judge, and the guardian’s lawyer are old pals?
Our guest tonight is Lisa Belanger. After a seven year battle to free her father from a predatory guardianship, on January 28, 2019 Lisa issued an alert that the guardians were attempting to put her father Marvin Siegel into hospice. The message was clear…Marvin’s estate had been successfully depleted to a great degree, ( they claim there might be a balance) by the guardians and attorney’s. These same professional predators refuse to give a current accounting of where the estate stands now.
Having no further value to them, hospice was the clear choice for hastily ending his life. Lisa was successful in stopping that effort. but somehow his death appears to have been hastened, none the less.
Despite Lisa’s ongoing efforts, her father passed away on March 15, 2019. But the questions remain. Marvin’s estate had been valued at 9 million when he was taken hostage in the probate/guardian system. What could these predators possibly have done for him over the last seven years that would have cost 9 million dollars? He was held prisoner in his own home. Denied contact with his own children and grandchildren until just recently, and drugged incessantly against his will. During this time his assets were liquidated, real property re-titled to the predators, and valuable personal property simply disappeared.
So what happens when the “ward” dies? Join us as we attempt to discover just what happens once the “ward” is deceased and can’t be used anymore to justify the theft of the estate?
Editor’s note: The Silver Standard is building one of the most useful, documented and resourced webpages for educating families and seniors on the risks and rights of the elderly and their families. Be sure to join this site for up to date, relevant information on the state of the elderly in YOUR state.
On the EARN website under “State Info,” There is a drop-down list where you can find all the legal information about Financial Elder Abuse and involuntary Guardianship for your state.
As we researched each state, a question arose—though the public chooses those who will represent their interests and safety and, through one manner of taxation or another, pay the salaries of those representatives as well as Attorney Generals, Judges, and District Attorneys, why is there so little concern shown for the senior citizens in so many states? It is particularly perplexing given the fact that those very senior citizens are, more often than not, paying the largest share of the taxes and casting the largest share of the votes.
Over the next year, we will compare all 50 states, each month we will carry forward the state that was the best in the previous month’s comparisons, to see…
WHO IS DOING THEIR JOB.
Financial Exploitation of Elders
Comparison of State laws protecting Elders against Financial Exploitation
Coalition of Organizations for Reform and Ethics
The PPJ Gazette 