Category: Probate Court

A probate court is a court that has competence in a jurisdiction to deal with matters of probate and the administration of estates. In some jurisdictions, such courts may be referred to as Orphans’ Courts or courts of ordinary

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Abolish Guardianship, Preserve the Rights of Disabled People, and Free Britney

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They say one can judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable. That’s bad news for America. It has become increasingly and disconcertingly clear lately that American society as a whole treats its elderly as disposable objects, that is if it notices them at all. On Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo gave a half-hearted non-apology for his administration’s appalling handling of the COVID crisis, specifically in regards to the elderly. For readers who may be unaware of what is unfolding to be the biggest political scandal in New York’s recent history, the short version is that Cuomo apparently decided to force the elderly to stay in nursing homes where the conditions made them incredibly susceptible to COVID. As one with even a vague understanding of how viruses work would have guessed, a lot of New York’s elderly got sick and died likely as a direct result of that policy. According to some, the Cuomo administration then withheld (some might say lied about) the true terrifying death toll from the public. As my own mother passed away from COVID in a nursing home I, perhaps more than most, would like to see accountability for the many victims and their families for any negligent leadership that occurred. It would be easy to think of the New York nursing home scandal as merely another example of a politician lying to cover his own hide. Unfortunately, it speaks to a larger trend of people in positions of power treating the elderly as expendable. The scourge of conservatorship abuse has been in the news lately thanks to the ongoing struggles of Britney Spears. While the popstar is in her late 30s, the story certainly draws attention to how this legal maneuver impacts… Read More

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‘The way a master owns a slave’: Court-enforced ‘guardianship’ of seniors emerges as national issue

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At least 1.5 million adults in the United States are under the care of guardians and, critics say, are trapped in a flawed system which controls everything from a person’s finances to visits with family members. In North Carolina, Ginny Johnson described how, just three months after her 95-year-old father was placed in guardianship, she was locked out of the Raleigh home she had lived in for 53 years and her father was taken away. “My father was a 95-year-old healthy man when this happened,” Johnson said. “The day before dad was abducted he was on the golf course hitting golf balls with me. He had just lifted weights for 30 minutes and biked for 30 minutes.” Johnson said her father’s dying wish was that she help prevent other abuses like the ones done to him. “My father’s service in WWII was also heroic and yet he was kidnapped, robbed and murdered by our courts and legal system,” she charges. As “wards of the state,” many of America’s most vulnerable are “stripped of their individual rights, find themselves separated from friends, family members and lifelong support networks as a result of enforced isolation imposed allegedly for their ‘protection,” according to Sam Sugar, author of the best-seller “Guardianships & The Elderly: The Perfect Crime.” The American Bar Association, in a study published earlier this year, said that “guardianship is generally permanent, leaving no way out – ‘until death do us part.’ ” In many states, all that is required to become a guardian, for those who have not been convicted of a felony or recently declared bankruptcy, is taking a course. “My father was in great shape until he was warehoused by the court appointed guardian in a care center that… Read More

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