KDD’s appellate court decision reversing sanctions in probate
by jmdenison
One of the most mind boggling things about probate court is the fact that judges always appoint GAL's from a list, and if the alleged disabled wants an attorney, that attorney gets appointed from a list also. The alleged disabled cannot ask for the attorney they had before and none of the parties can object to the GAL appointed for them. As noted before, it is very, very difficult for an older person to trust any attorney, let alone one that they are told has been "appointed for them."
Most people are not used to that. They are used to hiring and firing their own attorney, and no full explanation is provided to these people that 1) they will be billed for this attorney; 2) the attorney will be making a report to the court that will determine who, when and where they may live; 3) the guardian chosen for them MAY elect to place them in a nursing home, sell their own home against their wishes and advanced directives, as well as personal property in the home.
It is entirely interesting in a recent case I was involved in, the husband had income of about $4,000 per month and he was guardianized. The wife, who was in no better mental condition, was not guardianized because she had no money of here own. She was just "told" she could only make decisions for herself and no one else. For some unknown reason, the wife was in a nursing home burning away at $7,000 per month, but had no money so eventually evicted from there. Her medications had racked up a bill of thousands of dollars and the nursing home was threatening to stop providing her medications because the wife's family had not applied for medicare which would have covered most of those. Eventually, the nursing home will lien the couple's paid for home and sell it for the nursing home expenses and charges. I have no idea how this case will come out, but Judge Kowamoto was not concerned about any of the bills from the wife, would not authorize payment for any of these, and it is unknown what will happen when more than $50,000 in nursing home bills for both husband and wife hit as liens on the couple's fully paid for home.
Adding to all these issues are the problem that the court will not pay for full time nurses, and no one will, but $7,000 per person can be spent on nursing home care. Both husband and wife need more than assisted living at this point.
If anyone has any solutions to all of this please kindly pass them along.
| Comment | See all comments |
Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions.
Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser:
http://marygsykes.com/2013/04/
KawamotoDragon.com
|
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for commenting.
Your comment will be held for approval by the blog owner.