Conservatorship is Meant to Protect, but in Tennessee, it Sometimes Destroys

Just two years ago, 80-year-old Jewell Tinnon was living comfortably in the Edgehill house she and her late husband had bought and paid for years earlier.

Tucked away in the home on a cul-de-sac off 13th Avenue South were a life’s worth of possessions, her prized Sunday church clothes and her diamond rings. Parked outside was her 1995 low-mileage Pontiac.

But all that was before a petition was filed, without her knowledge, in Davidson County Probate Court to protect and conserve her life, health and assets.

Today, Tinnon, now 82, lives in a one-bedroom public housing unit watching a television donated by a friend. There is little furniture. Her house, her car, her jewelry and all her possessions are gone, sold off at auction. A large chunk of the proceeds — $36,000 in fees and expenses — was used to pay the lawyers who handled the process.

Tinnon’s plight, a Tennessean review has shown, is not unique. For Tinnon and others, records show, conservatorship, a court process intended to protect those judged no longer able to care for themselves, has proved to be a path in the opposite direction.

Stripped of the right to make even the most basic decisions about their life, health or finances, some of those placed in conservatorship have watched their life’s savings — everything from their homes to their clothes — swallowed up by legal and other fees.

The situation has drawn the attention of national elderly and legal organizations fighting guardianship and conservatorship abuse and sparked an ongoing effort to change states’ laws to provide additional safeguards.

Some who claim their conservatorships were mishandled are fighting back.

After a woman who was trying to get out of a conservatorship complained about how her case was handled, the Nashville judge who handles such cases instituted new procedures in his courtroom.

And Tinnon? After obtaining additional medical exams to prove her mental capacity, she has filed a lawsuit seeking $1.6 million in damages from her former attorney and the organization that had all her possessions auctioned off.

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Conservatorship is Meant to Protect, but in Tennessee, it Sometimes Destroys

Woman Loses Everything After Being Placed in Conservatorship

Jewell Timmon, 82, has lost her house and all her possessions after being placed in conservatorship.http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1
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Woman Loses Everything After Conservatorship

Vermont Assisted Suicide Bill Dead

“For nearly two hours Thursday afternoon, the Vermont Senate focused on legislation that would allow people with fewer than six months to live to opt for a lethal dose of medication. From the start, it was clear the legislation wouldn’t pass – and it didn’t, failing on a procedural vote.”

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Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network:

Public Guardian Possibly to be Appointed Conservator of Heiress

Los Angeles County officials said Monday that they were opening an investigation into possible financial exploitation of a housebound Palos Verdes Estates heiress by her money manager.

The launch of a probe into the handling of Susan Strong Davis’ affairs came in response to a Times article describing how the 87-year-old widow spent millions of dollars on a four-bedroom home in Beverly Hills despite suffering from what relatives said was dementia that left her unable to make even minor decisions.

Davis’ longtime money manager, John E. Larkin, sold her property for the new home at a $300,000 profit and is overseeing construction. He was also instrumental in arranging her 2005 donation of $600,000 to a charity connected to the Kabbalah Centre, the controversial spiritual organization to which he belongs.

Richard Franco, the acting program manager of the county’s Adult Protective Services, called the article “very troubling” and said elder abuse investigators would begin looking into Davis’ situation “ASAP.”

Separately, Davis’ relatives, who do not live locally, said they had called a county elder abuse hotline and asked for an investigation. Nephew Thomas Dutton Jr. said he was told that someone would visit her home and evaluate her condition.

The county elder abuse investigators are social workers who refer cases to law enforcement if they find evidence for criminal prosecution. If they determine that Davis cannot care for herself, they can work with the county Office of Public Guardian to ask a court to appoint a conservator to make financial, medical and other decisions on her behalf.

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L.A. County Looks into Possible Financial Exploitation of Heiress

CT Lawyer Honored for His Pro Bono Work

A city attorney was honored for his pro-bono work representing the elderly, mentally handicapped and families in need in probate court cases.

Stephen Keogh, a partner in the law firm Keogh, Burkhart & Vetter, took home the first “Glenn R. Knierim Pro Bono Award” at the Probate Assembly’s annual meeting in Hartford.

“It’s really quite an honor,” he said. “Every probate court judge can name at least 12 lawyers who can take home this award.”

Probate Assembly President-Judge Daniel Caruso said the assembly created the award to honor the probate lawyers who go above and beyond their duties to accommodate their clients. The award is named after the longest-serving probate court administrator.

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Norwalk Lawyer Honored for His Pro Bono Work

FL Man Arrested; Suspected With History of Bilking Elderly

A man charged with exploiting the elderly is suspected in a swath of cases involving older victims who paid for work that was never done.

James David Gruner, 38, was arrested at a St. Johns County motel Wednesday and jailed following an investigation of four complaints of bilking victims in the past three months, according to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators said Gruner has a history of befriending elderly residents offering to do work for them and once payment is received, the suspect leaves without completing the work.

Gruner has been arrested in other parts of the state for contracting without a license and victimizing the elderly in the past dozen years, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Twenty-one cases have been reported in Brevard, Flagler, Putnam, St. Lucie and St. Johns counties.

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St. John’s Handyman Arrested; Suspected of History of Bilking Older Residents

‘Pity the Poor Judges’

‘There’s a growing pay gap in our country that is alarming both national and state officials, who say it raises a fundamental question of American justice.

No, Bucko, it’s not about the yawning, ever-growing chasm separating your sad paycheck from the heavy haul of the executive swells at corporate headquarters. Indeed, the “injustice worrying our leaders is literally about justices — as in state and federal judges. More and more of them are wailing that they’re grossly underpaid at about $150,000 a year.

One judge in New York says she’s so strapped she had to sell a summer home in the Hamptons. “I’m working to achieve justice for other people,” she complains, yet “I don’t feel that I’m experiencing justice.”

Let me pause a moment so you can reach for a hanky and sob with her about… well, the raw injustice of $150,000 judicial paychecks. It’s embarrassing, they sniff, to sit on the judge’s throne across from a big-firm lawyer who banks 10 times what you’re paid.

Good grief, get a grip! Maybe you haven’t noticed, your honor, but millions of people can’t get any kind of job, middle-class wages are evaporating, health coverage is a fantasy, and poverty is on the march.

Besides, as my friend Jim Harrington puts it, being a judge is a public service, and doing that job should not depend on how closely your pay “matches the extravagant earnings of attorneys at elite law firms.”

Jim is a lifelong public interest lawyer in Texas who makes maybe a third of what judges do, but he notes that this is more than most folks get.

Judges’ pay should be moderate, Harrington argues, because that puts them in the position to “understand the problems of the day-to-day life” of regular Americans who come into their courts seeking a small measure of justice.

Now that’s judiciously put.

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Pity the Poor Judges

NH Man Allegedly Assults Uncle While Leaving Probate Hearing

A Hopkinton school counselor leaving a probate hearing in Manchester Friday regarding an ongoing battle over guardianship of his father allegedly assaulted his 75-year-old uncle, according to police.

In documents filed by police, the incident allegedly occurred in the Vine Street Garage in Manchester as Eugene Fox, 63, the co-director of guidance at Hopkinton Middle/High School, was leaving the third of a three-day hearing regarding issues surrounding guardianship of his father, Alden Fox. It is not known if the assault was connected to the probate case.

The guardianship issue has been in court for about two years.

Fox and his brother, Wayne, had petitioned for an emergency preliminary injunction to remove and replace Dawn Whiting, court-appointed guardian of Alden and Esther Fox’s estate. Esther Fox died in July 2011. The petition claims that Whiting is bleeding the assets of the estate by incurring more than $200,000 in legal fees and is not sufficiently bonded to handle several million dollars worth of Massachusetts real estate. Whiting does not visit Alden Fox or provide funds for his daily care, the affidavit states.

Alden Fox, 92, lives on a retirement income of about $40,000 annually, and the affidavit submitted with the petition states that amassing $200,000 in legal fees is not prudent management of the estate. The court affidavit claims the legal fees were for Whiting’s interest and did not benefit the estate.

The documents claim that Whiting presented to the court plans to sell waterfront property to pay creditors as if the debt belonged to Alden Fox, when she intended to use the funds to pay legal fees she created.

The parties in the probate case agreed to mediation, and the case will be taken up in early May.

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Man Allegedly Assults Uncle While Leaving Probate Hearing

Woman Ordered to Pay $10K Resitution to Victim

Ann Marie LaCourse, 48, of Sleepy Eye, appeared in court Friday (March 30) to plead guilty to financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult.

In the plea bargain, LaCourse will pay restitution to the victim in the amount of $10,000 within one year, be on supervised probation for one year, spend six days in jail over the course of three weekends with an additional 30 days with an at-home monitoring system.

LaCourse was fined $1,000 and faces additional impositions at her sentencing May 11 at the Brown County Court House.

She will undergo a psychological evaluation before sentencing and has already completed a compulsive gambling program.

She had been charged with four counts of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult and four counts of theft after an investigation began in April 2011, when an officer with the Sleepy Eye Police Department (SEPD) was contacted by Brown County Family Services (BCFS).

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LaCourse Pleads Guilty to Financial Exploitation of a Vulnerable Adult

Editorial: The Trust Must Be Restored

There is a maddening irony in the fact that those who lost money entrusted to an “officer of the court” must now turn to the courts to try to recover some portion of their devastated estates.

Gulfport attorney Woodrow W. Pringle III may have stolen almost $2.4 million from bank accounts he managed for children and adults unable to handle their own affairs.

Summoned to Gulfport, where he was born and raised and still practiced law, the 56-year-old Pringle left his home in Windemere, Fla., and checked into a luxury hotel in Orlando in December 2010. There, according to a medical examiner’s ruling, he committed suicide.

On the morning of his death, Pringle emailed Harrison County Chancery Clerk John McAdams, saying: “I want to apologize for abusing your trust. I abused the trust of my family, friends, judges and so many others. I was able to do this for so long because people trusted me and believed in me. I am truly sorry and want you and everyone else to know that no one ever knew this was happening.”

Since then, one lawsuit has been filed against Harrison County and two against McAdams over Pringle’s misdeeds. McAdams also is suing Pringle’s widow on behalf of seven victims whose money allegedly went to buy the Pringles’ house.

The purpose of these lawsuits is to recover money, not to uncover how Pringle was able to dupe so many for so long.

What is certain is that chancery clerks, including McAdams, have for years failed to follow a state law that requires them to compose a list each year of guardians or conservators who are delinquent in filing accountings of the money they manage for children and vulnerable adults. Chancery Court judges then have the authority to demand those accountings from delinquent filers, the law says.

Pringle managed such accounts for McAdams and the chancery judges of Harrison County. Hours before his death, Pringle acknowledged betraying the trust those officials placed in him. But more than a year later, it is still unclear why those officials did not do more — or at the very least, what the law requires — to verify that trust.

The lawyer for McAdams, Donald Dornan of Biloxi, said: “We were all shocked … when Woody Pringle had embezzled funds from all these vulnerable adults and minors over a period of years. Now that we’ve investigated it, we know that he was very meticulous in presenting falsified accountings to the chancery judges and secretly depositing guardianship and conservatorship funds into his own trust account. Nobody knew what he was doing.”

Pringle started stealing as early as 2004, according to the forensic accounting undertaken after his death. He kept getting by with it with “some song and dance … something he made up,” as one attorney put it.

“He seemed to know what he was doing,” McAdams said of Pringle.

But why didn’t anyone else know?

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The Trust That Pringle Stole Must Be Restored