Intentions
One good place to start would be the 2021 Guardianship virtual Summit sponsored by multiple advocacy groups across the country and produced by Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianship where a distinguished array of advocates, victim families, government officials, educators, and academics will present information to paint a realistic and honest picture of the guardianship industry as it exists today. Registration and tickets can be found at the link below.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2021-guardianship-summit-tickets-141592020545
There is an old adage that goes something like “even the best of intentions often goes awry”. And in the guardianship sphere, it is the intentions themselves that often are the problem.
Loving families with the best of intentions can find themselves in the position of having to deal with the complexities of an aging parent. Even when resources are plentiful, knowing how to best deal with the onslaught of mental or physical decline in a loved one can take an enormous toll. Watching the transition from having a parent who is a beloved, highly confident, accomplished and revered mentor slide into varying degrees of dementia, physical frailty and dependency is a special kind of heartbreak and sadness. Even large families tend to delegate the primary responsibility for the care of an aging parent to one family member, usually the one who is closest to and spends the most time with the aging parent. But that responsibility can be overwhelming. And over time even the most loving child adult or otherwise, may need respite from the enormous complexities of the physical, mental, emotional, and financial burdens of being the primary caretaker of an aging parent. And even in the best of families, arguments can easily arise over the disposition of a parent or of a potential inheritance when disagreements about how that money is being spent arise. At some point — with the absolute best of intentions –considerations may arise about whether to initiate a guardianship.
At the other end of the spectrum of intentions is the situation of abusive families. Years of conflict and resentment against a family member or sibling, or an ex-spouse or even an ex-business partner can easily trigger a desire for payback when the target of those negative emotions becomes vulnerable physically or mentally. The burning desire to exact revenge for perceived slights and injuries over as much as a lifetime can foster a desperate attempt to relieve the offender of their assets and even their life. That course of action– representing the absolute worst of intentions– may lead to a consideration of guardianship.
More commonly, the loved ones of declining and increasingly vulnerable older Americans are burdened with a crisis which our society is unbelievably bad at addressing. Our patchwork safety net for the elderly has giant holes in it both financial and social. Medicare, the federal program for senior healthcare, was not designed to cover the costs of long-term custodial care. Medicaid, which does help with long-term residential costs and such expenses is woefully underfunded and an entire industry of private businesses and institutions has arisen to game that system and bankrupt it even faster than it is already. Social service agencies are often too serpentine for even the most adept to navigate. The cost — financial, emotional, mental, physical, spiritual –of caring for a vulnerable elder is backbreaking for families of modest or even more than modest means. The burden is that much greater for poor families who simply do not have the resources needed to even begin caring for an elder family member in decline. To relieve some of the burdens, guardianship might be considered as a viable alternative.
Whichever of the above paths lead to even consideration of a guardianship, whether the intentions are born of love, exhaustion, revenge, guilt, lack of resources, desperation or naïveté, the guardianship industry like the Whale/Leviathan in the tale of Jonah is ready to swallow up anyone in its path and have them live and die inside the belly of the beast. However, unlike Jonah, no one ever escapes this beast!
And life in the belly of the guardianship beast can be hell on earth for the elder as well as their loved ones, friends and even neighbors. Here are just a few of the terrifying terms, topics and phrases that are commonly associated with the abuses so often seen in guardianships: Abuse, neglect, exploitation, isolation, overmedication, restraints, estate theft, straw man sales of homes, staged litigation, excessive and double billed legal and guardian fees, lock down units, corruption, sanctions, subpoenas, lying lawyers, corrupt judges, sadistic guardians, predatory guardians, colluding financial institutions, voided advance directives and wills, zombie like states, feeding tubes, mysterious fractures, cremations that violate plans and wishes of ward, failing to report to family the death of their loved one, keeping secret the location of a ward, moving the ward repeatedly to keep them hidden, filing trespassing charges when family attempts to visit, starvation, bogus PT and OT, insurance fraud, Medicare and Medicaid fraud, kickbacks to guardians, changing insurance beneficiaries, kidnapping birth injury kids with trusts on their 18th birthday, keeping cremains of wards as trophies, fake inventories, fake accountings, feckless government accountability agencies, laws ignored by Judges, bankrupt families hiring multiple failed lawyers and so many more!!
Despite denials by those who profit the most from it, including elected officials, guardianship abuse—especially from professional guardians– is a real thing. It is horrible. It is common. It represents an existential risk for any potentially vulnerable person in this country. And it doesn’t take much to become vulnerable—a fall, a stroke or heart attack, hospitalization for any reason and even the slightest hint of mental decline. That is all a colluding judge needs see or believe to instantly feed you to the beast with a stroke of his pen.
No matter what your intentions may be, no matter the reason you or anyone else might be considering the imposition of a guardianship for or over someone you know or love, you must realize that even its most vocal proponents agree that a guardianship is a last-and I mean the last-resort at best. Once a guardianship begins, it can never be stopped except by death. Once the money starts flying out of an estate, it doesn’t stop until it’s all gone. Once you become embroiled in guardianship litigation, it never ends. Once the isolation, overmedication, and physical restraints begin, they do not ever end. No matter how smart it seems to you, no matter how much you think it might improve your life or your bank balance, rest assured you are wrong. No matter whether your intentions are loving or nefarious, guardianships can release a whirlwind of pain, suffering, deprivation, regret, and despair on everyone touched by it.
For anyone who is sincerely interested in the welfare of their loved one, it behooves you to become very well-educated on all the options available for families with a senior in decline. Supported decision-making, non-court-based mediation, powers of attorney, and a host of other alternatives to guardianship are more popular daily as the dangers and pitfalls of relying on the unpredictable and often lawless decisions of administrative court judges in matters of family affairs become less and less attractive.
One good place to start would be the 2021 Guardianship virtual Summit sponsored by multiple advocacy groups across the country and produced by Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianship where a distinguished array of advocates, victim families, government officials, educators, and academics will present information to paint a realistic and honest picture of the guardianship industry as it exists today. Registration and tickets can be found at the link below.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2021-guardianship-summit-tickets-141592020545
Make it your intention to join. And if you know of someone who would benefit from the education, buy them a ticket too.