Tag: Probate Article

Justice Sleeps While Seniors Suffer Emmeline Frey was wheeled toward the bench, escorted by a family friend. She was 93 years old and frail, suffering from dementia and a broken hip. In San Diego County’s busy Probate Court, it was up to Judge Thomas R. Mitchell to decide how to preserve the $1 million she had amassed pinching pennies over a lifetime. On the recommendation of Frey’s attorney, he appointed a professional conservator named Donna Daum. Frey’s affairs were now in the hands of a caretaker acting under court supervision. Her money should have been safe. It was not. Daum gave her son, a car salesman turned financial advisor, more than $500,000 of Frey’s savings to invest. Over the next four years, the investments lost more than $100,000 in value while the son collected commissions. Mitchell, who described himself as the “super father” of the seniors who entered his courtroom, never questioned what Daum was doing with her client’s money or why her son was involved. The case illustrates how inaction and inattention by the courts have left many elderly Californians vulnerable to abuse by the very people entrusted with their care. Professional conservators wield enormous power over people deemed too infirm to look after themselves. They choose their doctors, control their bank accounts and decide where they will live — even who can visit them. Probate courts, which appoint conservators, are supposed to monitor their conduct, scrutinize their financial reports and fine or remove those who misuse their authority. Yet the courts have failed dismally in this vital role. A Times examination of more than 2,400 conservatorship cases since 1997 found that judges frequently overlooked incompetence, neglect and outright theft. Some conservators steered business to friends and relatives without… Read More

Frumeh Labow buzzes through the double doors of Los Angeles County’s main Probate Court, a queen bee in her hive. She has several items to settle. She asks a judge for permission to sell the Beverly Hills home of a 66-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease, though he wants to keep it. She asks the judge to order the release of financial records by the girlfriend of another aged client. She asks the court to approve $25,140 in fees, to be paid from the bank account of a third elderly ward. The judge gives her everything she wants. “I’m happy,” she says, making her way back through the double doors. “I got paid today.” Frumeh Labow, 58, is among the most successful professional conservators in Southern California. She filed 158 cases between 1997 and 2003, 50% more than her closest competitor. Her firm, Complete Probate Administration Inc., controls $60 million of other people’s money. After her court hearing, Frumeh Labow hops into her baby-blue Jaguar and heads for the house of a new client, an octogenarian with dementia and a million-dollar estate. Born in Chicago and named Frumeh to incorporate the Yiddish word for “pious,” Frumeh Labow grew up in L.A.’s Cheviot Hills and went to UC Berkeley. She spent 13 years at the county agency that handles conservatorships for the incapacitated and the mentally ill, then followed a conga line of colleagues into the private sector. In Complete Probate, Frumeh Labow has built what one attorney called a “private fiduciary estate factory.” She employs three full-time case managers. She has a controller, a paralegal and clerks who do everything from reconciling clients’ bank statements to planning their funerals. She herself spends much of her time in court — or, as… Read More