‘Guardianship’ Can Ruin Your Life!
New Book: Guardianship: How Judges and Lawyers Steal Your Money
By W. Leon Smith, Iconoclast Publisher
Want to give up all your rights and become a “thing” instead of a person? Then guardianship could be in your cards.
A new book authored and compiled by M Larsen exposes an under-the-radar trend that targets Baby Boomers to have their retirement funds, their freedom, and their lives depleted.
Guardianship: How Judges and Lawyers Steal Your Money explores case studies of individuals whose lives were ruined at the hands of greedy lawyers, judges, and guardians who take over the financial assets of the elderly and disabled, drug their subjects to prove incompetence, and totally rule their lives, even when the person under attack is normally healthy and mentally fit. Targeted are the wealthy whose estates are drained for profits to benefit the attackers.
According to the book, “Appointed by courts for various reasons, guardianships strip an otherwise sane, engaged older adult of their freedom while depleting their resources in an ugly loop that seems to mostly benefit lawyers. The book is the definitive road-map of solutions for concerned relatives who try to correct the crimes against a loved one’s estate, health, and even life.”
Larsen explains that the compilation of articles was written by journalists, attorneys, and other advocates across the nation. “Our collective goal is to make this serious crime public since the process needs to be changed.”
In danger are the 76 million Boomers who, at the whim of a court, can have their personal freedoms stripped away, have their assets taken forcibly, and are subject to abuse in many cases.
According to Dr. Sam Sugar of Florida, “Professional guardians are a cottage industry that is becoming more organized and powerful as lawyers and probate judges realize what a gold mine it is to take over the lives and assets of elderly Americans to the detriment of their heirs. Once a court-ordered guardianship is established, the elderly person’s finances are under complete control of the appointed guardian who may or may not be a loving family member.”
“It’s just another indication of how this racket has infiltrated and corrupted our most sacred judicial process and turned it into a cash cow for the stakeholders in this predatory legal system, which threatens every single older adult in America,” he added.
In an interview with The Lone Star Iconoclast, Steve Miller — an investigative journalist who has studied guardianship fraud for over 10 years and is a former Las Vegas city councilman, former Clark County Regional Transportation commissioner, chairman emeritus of Goodwill Industries of Southern Nevada, and president emeritus of Opportunity Village, a charity — was questioned by Iconoclast publisher W. Leon Smith.
Miller said, “What I’m trying to tell people is just stay where you are. Don’t move until we get this straightened out.”
Miller explained that many of the elderly are targeted when “moving to the Gulf Coast in Texas, Arizona, lakes in Arkansas — there’s a million places elderly people are being enticed to go with their money. The vultures are circling in those areas.”
He said the “Sun City communities, the lakeside communities, the ones that are making a big effort to bring in wealthy retirees are the target areas. I don’t think its happening in Alaska, I guess, because most people want to move to warmer climates. I’m just noticing it mainly in warm climates.”
When asked about appropriate vetting of guardians at the Center for Guardian Certification, especially since much of the certification is handled online, Miller said, “It’s a sham. We have been investigating them. We registered people who are not alive. We’ve registered a dog. So, it’s a sham.”
Larsen’s book lists 14 points of checks and balances that need to be put into place as a means of the elderly avoiding becoming subjects of fraud. Miller described these as prescribed laws that need to be activated. Currently they are not.
“It depends on where you are,” he said. “Nevada is rapidly changing its laws. Some of these laws that were designed to help guardians to steal” are being tested. “We think it all started here, so whatever we are doing needs to be spread around the country. As an investigative writer, I’ve been looking at this and writing about it since 1999. We’ve had other complaints all the way back into the 80s and 70s.”
He said that “specifically, one guardian shaper has written all the laws and encouraged all the states and assemblies to pass these laws through the use of their outdoor advertising company. They donate money to respective family court judges, assemblies, and state senators” who are seeking free advertising come election time. “He’s managed to endear himself all over the state and got the horrible laws enacted at our state capitol. Now he gets all the judges down here to do his bidding.”
Miller explained that no one is safe. “A lot of times we found that helpers in the home are sources of bad information that the court uses.” Families need “to stay put. I don’t care if its freezing where you live, you shouldn’t be moving because you got a brochure in the mail” that offers the benefits of warmer climates. “Stay put,” he repeated, “because if you come up to Nevada, Texas, Arizona, or Florida or some other places, you don’t know who these people are. They’re watching you and as soon as your spouse dies, that’s when they come and get you.
“That’s always the trigger. They’ve done it with a few ‘couples’ if they have enough money. The criteria is how much money do you have. If you have enough money, they’ll do whatever they want.”
Miller noted that the speed in which the courts act and guardians are appointed coincides with the amount of money in trusts and financial accounts the elder victim possesses. He said that the predominate bank that keeps popping up during investigations is Wells Fargo, which turns its back “when guardians want to leave the trail.”
When asked how long it normally takes for elder care to be stripped from family members, Miller said, “Within weeks. You’d be surprised how quickly the judges will respond to a motion by your professional guardian to take away the rights that the wealthy elderly or disabled person can have. Oftentimes, the victim and the family are not even aware when it does happen.
“We’re going to change the laws so that they have to be informed and that their family can be there and that a judge must appoint a taxpayer-funded lawyer to represent the elderly or disabled person and their family. They can’t come to court without a lawyer while they sit there with a bank of attorneys working for the guardian.”
Miller said that what is disgusting is that the “guardian is trolling the money from the Wells Fargo trust to be able to pay for the overpriced attorney while the family members have to pay out of their own pockets. It gets to be ridiculously expensive and the elder person usually passes away during the middle of this battle. You don’t hear much about this; it’s not sexy. The elderly are dead and can’t testify, so it’s the perfect crime against the weakest of the weak.”
According to Miller, the cadre of guardian vultures “and their judges covered every base and they did it through the state assembly and the state legislature for 30 years. Nobody paid attention. It gives them absolute power to do what they’re doing.” He noted that now the state supreme court in Nevada is looking at changing the laws, based on investigations that revealed the results of the bad laws.”
Under consideration are the constitutional rights of elderly victims and their family members, because the elderly lose the right to vote and the right to make life choices. It is all decided by a stranger, not even a member of the family.
Miller mentioned a case that is in federal court about an elderly man. “After he got freed by his daughter from the captivity that he was in, he filed a federal lawsuit which right now is in our federal court system rapidly progressing.” Miller mentioned the bank, the guardian, enablers, and others who caused the problem for the man. “We need one case to succeed before we can start to bring in all the others,” he said. “In the meantime, this will be the test case.”
“What’s happening here is horrible,” said Miller, “and it’s just now starting to make news around the country. Prior to this, we were just screaming from the rooftops, but nobody was listening.” He described the acts of illicit guardians as “the most pervasive crime in the history of our country. It’s scary, really scary.”
He said that quite often family members of the elderly are falsely derided in court by guardians who label the family members as unfit to care for their parents. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the most wonderful person. You can go to court here and the judge is going to deem that you are an exploiter in some way and unfit to care for your own parent. He puts a stranger in your place and the stranger is a professional and they immediately have total power of attorney over your parents. There goes your inheritance. There goes the house. Houses are often transferred with the title over to the guardian and the nicer the house, the quicker it happens.”
Miller said that the elderly become wards. “I compare it with the B-movie ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ The guardians are the body snatchers. They come and take you and become you and put you away. They medicate you. They give you a psychotropic drug. They take you out of your home after your husband or wife dies, and they put you in a rest home. They keep you so drugged you don’t even know what’s going on while all your money’s being taken and your family is screaming, trying to stop it. They can’t and if they do try and stop it, a warrant will be issued for their arrest.”
He described a case where a woman was able to help her father escape to another state, which elicited several lawsuits. After the 90-year-old man was taken off drugs he “was completely lucid. The only thing wrong with him was he was a war hero and has a 95 percent hearing loss. That’s why they did it to him. That’s why they made him a ward in the court when his wife died. When I sat with him, even though I had to yell in his ear, he was such an intelligent man he could do anything we wanted to at 90 years old.” But he had been “made into nothing but a ward, just a thing, waiting for him to die.”
At the conclusion of the interview, Miller wanted to stress one thing. “My only last words to people are until this is straightened out at the national level, stay home. Don’t be enticed by color brochures you get in the mail or on the Internet and move away from the people who love you to some strange far-away warm climate, living on a golf course or a lake and riding around in golf carts or three-wheel bicycles thinking that this is a safe environment. You’re actually moving to the worst ghetto in the United States. It’s unsafe because of these predators waiting for the Las Vegas strip watch.
“They move here and they’re watched. The predators know how much money you’ve got by the fact that you paid cash for the house you got. As soon as your spouse dies, they send one of these guardians to your house to make sure you’re okay. No matter how okay you are, they still say you’re not okay and the judge rules you need a guardian and then that guardian needs to come in temporarily and you don’t even know it’s happened. You’ve got this guardian sitting in your house when you fall asleep. They troll your valuables. They go to your bank vault. They take everything you own and your family is left thinking ‘Who is this stranger?’”
Miller said that often these strangers alter their names to better psychologically sell themselves, like April Harps or Acacia Bristol. “They know your wife has died and you’re at home and you haven’t really had a good meal and you haven’t shaven for maybe a week or so. People think it’s because you are mourning and ‘knock, knock, knock,’ here’s a really pretty middle-aged woman named Acacia or April at your door smiling, saying, ‘I’m here to help you. Have you had anything to eat? Can I take you to lunch?’ And then it begins.”
Once under guardianship, a person has fewer rights than a criminal. Lost is the right to marry, to vote, to apply for government benefits, to have a driver’s license or identification, to travel, to contract, seek or retain employment, to sue and defend lawsuits, to manage property, to make any gift or disposition of property, to determine residence, to consent to medical and mental health treatment, and to make decisions about his or her social environment. All social aspects of their lives are stripped. Any health care surrogate, durable power of attorney, or pre-need guardianship is nullified and the laws protecting those advance directives are trampled.
The book is available through Amazon, Kindle, and www.guardianabusecases.com.
