http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-conserve14nov14,0,3305612.story?page=1&coll=la-home-local
The problems of the elderly being defrauded court appointed by criminal conservators has been told many Times in the LA Times over the decades - and nothing has changed. Hopefully, this in depth series will finally get Sacramento to address the problem. But is it is clear that something need to be done immediately. If these articles are an indication of the present situation, most of the conservators in this state need to be put out of business and quite a few judges need to be removed from office.
Until then, though, all awarding of conservatorships should halt - immediately - in the state until even the most basis reforms take place.
It should be impossible for a court to award a conservatorship without family knowledge. It shoudl be impossible for a conservator to nominate himself to become a person's conservator. It should be easy to remove a conservator. Any judge who appoints a conservator without checking them out on the Registry, should be guilty of a felony.
And there are dozens more reforms than need to be considered, but first there needs to be a quick fix to stop any more people with being saddled with corrupt conservators and a way for people to free themselves from those who are stealing from them.
I've been following the series. This is definitely a gross injustice that needs fixing immediately (if not sooner). It's an issue the AARP should be involved in (and if they don't, they've shown their hand).
ReplyDeleteOne of the "conservators" in the story (Part 3) said - presumably in her defense - that "... I wasn't that smart," she said in an interview. "There were probably a lot of things that I overlooked or didn't do."
So how the heck did she get appointed a conservator?
Comments to the article tell us that it's not just California's problem. It's a problem for anyone with more than a few hundred thousand in assets.