Gavel and scales of justice

Read the complete coverage of the latest shocking Guardianship Abuse case – once again committed by a sitting judge and his court-appointees – concerning how Titus County Judge Brian Lee was able to declare Dr. Mike Reichert mentally incompetent without the Texas State Constitution’s guaranteed protections of Due Process, including the right to trial by jury and the right to appeal a determination of mental incapacity.

Perhaps more shocking, is that the currently convened Texas Legislature is considering HB 1438 which would make things much worse for proposed wards, existing wards, and their families.  HB 1438 would allow courts to seize a proposed ward’s “cash, securities and other assets” before a court-order declaring the person to be incompetent has been made by a judge. (See Section 9, found on page 6 of text of proposed HB 1438)

In Dr. Reichert’s case, this would have meant that local auto mechanic Joe Thompson, who originally petitioned Titus County Judge Lee to put Dr. Reichert under guardianship, would have triggered the seizure by Titus County of all of Dr. Reichert’s assets, including his home and car, cash, securities, and all other assets – dispossessing Dr. Reichert’s legal heirs of all of their property, and rendering whomever else was living in Dr. Reichert’s house at the time a guardianship for him was proposed, to become homeless.

HB 1438 contains numerous sections on replacing low-level county judges like Titus County’s Judge Lee, with higher-court probate judges like Texas’ Presiding Probate Judge Guy Herman.  In our opinion this is a power-grab by Judge Herman, as he is a sitting probate judge in Travis County (Austin) who has had a hand in authoring, along with the Real Estate Probate Trust Lawyers (REPTL) section of the Texas State Bar, HB 1438.  Sitting Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman is also listed as a testifying in favor of HB 1438. (You can view re-broadcast of his testimony here. Forward ahead to about 5:00 hrs into recording to view discussion about HB 1438.)  Judge Herman’s actions in both helping to write legislation, as well as testify either FOR or AGAINST any legislation that will become law under which Judge Herman will adjudicate in his courtroom are unconstitutional, violating both the Texas State and US Constitution’s Doctrine of Separation of Powers.

HB 1438, and indeed no current or proposed law in Texas provides a legal remedy for the return of any proposed or existing ward’s seized assets, ordered in the process of guardianship.  Once an older person’s home is sold out from underneath them, negating years of careful, well-thought out financial planning, at a price that is often well below market value and frequently to a crony or acquaintance of the court of their appointees (attorneys, guardians), there is no legal remedy available.  Once a guardianship has been instituted, most victims of guardianship abuse committed by judges and their appointees, never receive any restitution or return of seized property.

In the crazy legal world of guardianship, an auto-mechanic can file guardianship on a doctor he barely knows, but the doctor’s family is denied legal standing in a court of law.  Once a guardianship is instituted, a living human being has all constitutional rights stripped from them and becomes a piece of property, owned by the guardian.  Property has no family, and thus the ex-person’s, now a piece of property, former family, have no legal standing from which to contest a guardianship of their loved one(s).

The judges and their appointees who commit guardianship abuse – which includes the institution of guardianships that run counter to both state and federal constitutions – hide behind claims of “judicial immunity,” using their power to cover-up their abuses of their office and the trust we, the people, have put in their offices, and in them as individuals.  It’s a deplorable situation that must end now.