"Motives of Petitioners in Contested Conservatorships and Guardianships"

by DIANE G. ARMSTRONG, PH.D.
Prepared for the Senate Special Committee on Aging

In discussing the motives that drive these involuntary conservatorship and guardianship proceedings, I am speaking for the hundreds of thousands of men and women whose retirement years have been destroyed by them. Our states designate these proceedings as "non-adversarial" in nature, brought out of the goodness of a petitioner's heart to help an elderly person in distress.

It is a powerful term, and it is almost always incorrect. These are court battles, fought over money, power and control. Sadly, the elderly lose almost 94% of the time, often in proceedings that take only minutes. Their cases are rarely appealed.

Let's begin with a brief discussion of the motives guiding family members. The majority of these petitions are Filed by adult children who are seeking some form of control over the personal and/or financial affairs of their aging relatives. They are sibling battles rooted in issues of inheritance and control, often described as "thinly veiled pre-death will contests." Anyone who reaches 62 with coveted assets is at risk.

As one forensic psychiatrist noted about these so-called protective proceedings, "For every $100,000 in a given estate, a lawyer shows up; for every $25,000, a family member shows up; and if there isn't any money, then nobody shows up" Harold T. Nedd's "Fighting over the care of aging parents," USA Today).

What motives drive members of the court? Judges and their favored professional conservators and guardians, expert witnesses and court investigators have unspoken agendas: money, power and control. When an elderly individual is brought into court and forced to prove his or her competence, we soon see that the system does not work. We have a system rife with court-sanctioned abuse of the elderly. Why? Judges override
protections that have been put in place in the codes. It happens every day. Judges disregard durable powers of attorney—the single most important document each of us can create to determine our care should we become incapacitated.

Judges ignore our lists of pre-selected surrogate decision-makers. The current system does not work. This reality is most apparent when a wealthy individual falls victim to these involuntary proceedings and his or her wealth becomes a ripe plum to be shared by the Judge's favorites.

The cost of my mother's 18-month conservatorship battle in Los Angeles
Superior Court exceeded one million dollars because no court appointee would let the matter end until my mother agreed to settle out of court and pay every bill of every person involved on both sides of the case.

Money is a lure. Once the hook is set in a wealthy potential ward, courts have a feeding frenzy. All of Riverside County in Southern California was held hostage by the collusion between a single probate judge and his favorite professional conservator. [See Cases #3 and #4 in Appendix]

Families are destroyed by these proceedings. The hundreds of thousands of unfortunate men and women who have been placed in the velvet handcuffs of contested conservatorships and guardianships in America are without hope. Their conservatorships and guardianships end only when they die—or when the system spends their estates down to $10,000 or less and spits the wards out into a harsh world of poverty.

Sibling battles rooted in issues of inheritance, control and care; social welfare petitions driven by hidden agendas of power and control; nursing hones that quietly require financial guarantees; and court actions that create the very abuse they are tasked to address—our country's involuntary conservatorship and guardianship system is out of control. It is no longer a morally permissible option.

Due to space constraints a very limited version of Diane's presentation to the the Senate is presented here click on the .PDF icon to see her complete work along with compelling case histories.