State guardianship for the elderly . New Yorker article details a nightmare

[Murphy101]

One of the things I find most upsetting about this is the elderly who won't sign up for help that would really help them because they're afraid of something like this happening.

 

This is personal, but someone who struggles to clean or do laundry due to chronic health issues -- but is generally pretty functional about many things -- however, has sufficient problems with mobility that a crooked judge and doctor could easily approve something like this with only stretching things a little bit -- won't sign up for housekeeping help, even though it would be free, because it would open the door to something like this.

This. Or giving up their drivers license. Or admitting they are having just about any difficulties. The elderly aren’t stupid just because they are old. They know they are prime marks for scammers and abuse and they live with so many fears. This article made me so angry bc this rightly validated so many of those fears and makes it harder to give them legitimate care.

[Cindy in FL.]

That is just heartbreaking. I had POA for my dad over the past few years. Dad would keep telling people that I got to make all the decisions, and I would tell him that the POA was for when he could no longer make the decisions. It was helpful that his doctors would tell him the same thing. I hate to hear stories like this.

[Tree Frog]

Last May, two days after the kids and I arrived home from a wonderful Lukeion trip, there was a knock on my door at 7:45 AM. Annoyed and severely jet-lagged, I opened the door and was confronted by a woman who asked if I was the niece of Bob [XXXX]. When I said I was, she announced that I had been reported for elder abuse, that she would be his guardian from now on, and that I needed to turn over all his legal and financial documents along with info on all bank accounts and assets.

 

I was totally stunned. I told her that I'd been looking after him for more than 20 years, he lived in an assisted living facility 1 mile from my house, he spent time with my family every week, he had never EVER been abused in any way, and I would not give her any information or documents until I spoke to a lawyer. Two hours later the mailman handed me a registered letter from the assisted living place saying that since I had "refused to return their phone calls for the last two weeks concerning Bob's medical issues, they had been forced to notify Protective Services that he was being neglected."

 

I think there was fire coming out of my nostrils when I went flying into the assisted living place and demanded to speak to the care manager. I explained that although I'd been out of the country for two weeks, which was why I hadn't been in to see him, I had my phone with me and had not received any calls or messages from them. Oh, they were calling my old number, that I had already asked them to change TWICE, the second time in writing??? I asked why they didn't email me when they didn't get a response, and the manager said she just assumed that the email they had on record, from 3 years earlier when I'd first applied to bring Bob there, was a work email from my previous state, so she figured it wasn't current — without even trying it. (It was never a work email and yes it was current.) The medical crisis that had "forced" them to report me for neglect was that his blood pressure had spiked and he was complaining of dizziness, so the care manager had to take him to the doctor herself.

 

I was beyond livid. I told them that I had both general and healthcare POA for him, I had a lawyer on speed-dial, I could get ten different people, including his primary care doctor, to write letters stating that I had never ever neglected him, and that unless they called Protective Services and closed the case immediately, he would be moving out that afternoon. They closed the case, and a month later that particular care manager left.

 

We're talking about a developmentally-disabled 87 year old, who was never married or had children, whose expenses are paid by a trust set up by his mother before she died. At the time I thought the whole debacle was the result of incompetence, not malice, but after reading that article, I'm wondering if he might actually have been targeted.  :glare: 

 

My heart aches for all the people whose relatives were stolen from them, and whose attempts to find justice were thwarted by corruption in every area at every level. The depravity of people who prey on the elderly is just sickening.

 

It's terrible! You had advanced warning and could immediately do something about it. Many of the people in the article didn't know about all the court proceedings until after everything changed "legally" and they no longer had access to family or belongings.

[DesertBlossom]

This is so disturbing. Unbelievable.