It was [over ]five years ago that David E. Tate, Petitioner, along with notorious attorney Paul T. Housch, entered “Judge” Randy Kennedy’s court to conduct an “emergency” Ex Parte hearing “petitioning” the court for a conservatorship over brother John Daniel “Danny” Tate. With nothing but grossly perjured hearsay testimony, Kennedy “glad to do it” entered orders of conservatorship, administered the fiduciary oath to David E. Tate and ordered Danny Tate’s Vanguard account seized.
Source:
Five Year “Anniversary” of Court-Ordered Hell
See Also:
Danny Tate’s Home Auctioned Off to His Former Lawyer!
It was five years ago today that David E. Tate, Petitioner, along with notorious attorney Paul T. Housch, entered “Judge” Randy Kennedy’s court to conduct an “emergency” Ex Parte hearing “petitioning” the court for a conservatorship over brother John Daniel “Danny” Tate. With nothing but grossly perjured hearsay testimony, Kennedy “glad to do it” entered orders of conservatorship, administered the fiduciary oath to David E. Tate and ordered Danny Tate’s Vanguard account seized.
Source:
Pauper vs Probate: October 23, 2007 Ex Parte Hearing 5 Year Anniversary
See Also:
Danny Tate’s Home Auctioned Off to His Former Lawyer!
Full Article and Source:
Pauper v. Probate: Tennessee on Trial
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State bar association hears horror stories about problems with Tennessee’s conservatorship law
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Members of the Tennessee Bar Association heard an earful on Thursday from Tennesseans upset over the state law that they say allows unscrupulous people to take advantage of vulnerable adults.
The conservatorship law is meant to protect adults with diminished capacity because of age, disability, mental health issues or addiction. It allows a judge to appoint someone as a guardian to oversee their affairs. But the system does not always work as intended.
At the Thursday hearing in Nashville, Jewell Tinnon, who is 82 years old, said two grandsons took over her affairs through a conservatorship, selling her car and her house and everything in it. She eventually was able to get out of the conservatorship, but only after she had lost everything.
Tinnon begged the panel of attorneys listening to her testimony for help in finding somewhere to live.
“Next month, I’ll be outdoors,” she said. “I ain’t got nowhere to live.”
Songwriter Danny Tate told the panel he was placed in a conservatorship in 2007 by his brother, who felt he was a drug addict.
“They had no medical evidence, no police reports, no calls to 911, no complaints from neighbors,” he said.
Tate said he was a millionaire before the conservatorship began, with all his bills paid and near-perfect credit. Now he is in bankruptcy and the house where his children were born and raised was sold at auction.
Under a conservatorship, he said, “you cannot vote, marry or enter into a contract. Your signature is not valid.
“A death row inmate has more rights than a conserved ward of the state.”
Another speaker, Ginger Franklin, said a conservator was appointed for her in 2008 after she suffered a traumatic brain injury from a fall.
Although she recovered, the conservatorship process already was under way.
“I lost my home, my car, my job, the majority of my possessions; my credit was trashed — all because I fell down the stairs at my home. If it happened to me it could happen to you or anyone.”
Loretta Threatt and Jeanette Bryant told the panel one of their sisters had taken control of their 88-year-old father’s estate and placed him in various nursing homes and assisted living facilities. They said they are only allowed brief, supervised visits with him and that his pastor is not allowed any visits.
“It’s been done unfair and inhumane, and I feel like it’s unconstitutional,” Bryant said.
National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse President Elaine Renoir said problems with guardian and conservator systems are nationwide. Some people really do need a guardian, she said, but there are not enough protections for those that do not.
She said Tennessee needs better due-process protections that would allow someone who is being considered for a conservatorship to fight it. That includes allowing them to use their money to hire an attorney and letting a jury hear their case if they request it.
Full Article and Source:
State bar association hears horror stories about problems with Tennessee’s conservatorship law
Several witnesses who said their rights and property were wrongly taken away in court proceedings joined a retired Wilson County judge on Thursday in calling for changes in the way conservatorships are granted and monitored in Tennessee.
Retired General Sessions Judge Haywood Barry told a Tennessee Bar Association panel that more monitoring is needed for those involved in conservatorships.
“You need some sort of training,” he said, referring to lawyers appointed by the courts to act as fact finders in conservatorship cases.
“The law is in pretty good shape. It’s a matter of getting the judges to go along,” Barry said, adding that monitoring needs to be independent. “You need someone from outside the system,” he said, “then I think they’ll pay attention.”
Thursday’s hearing was the first of four to be held across the state by a bar association panel that plans to make recommendations to the General Assembly, which is considering a series of reforms proposed by state Rep. Gary Odom, a Nashville Democrat.
Tennessee law allows a judge to appoint a conservator to have control over another person’s health care or finances when that person is judged to be incapable of making decisions for him- or herself.
Barry’s testimony followed that of several witnesses, including Jewell Tinnon of Nashville and songwriter Danny Tate, who testified that conservatorships had wrongly stripped them of all their possessions. Both were released from conservatorships after they obtained medical exams to prove their mental capacity.
Full Article and Source:
Witnesses’ tales reveal flaws in TN’s conservatorship law
A Nashville songwriter who fought to free himself from a court-ordered conservatorship has now lost his house.
Danny Tate’s home in Belle Meade was auctioned to the highest bidder Tuesday morning to pay more than $150,000 in legal fees.
The legal fees accumulated during a contentious court fight in Davidson County Probate Court that lasted more than two years.
Tate’s brother said he was a drug addict and needed a conservator, which is similar to a guardian, to safeguard his wealth.
Eventually, Tate won his freedom from the conservatorship, but it came at a high price. Tate was ordered to pay both his own legal bills, and the bills for his brother’s lawyer, Paul Housch.
“This is the way the law acts. You have to pay your debts,” Housch told Channel 4.
The two lawyers who were owed money were the only serious buyers at the auction.
Tate’s own attorney, Michael Hoskins, was the highest bidder. He bought his former client’s house for $120,000, about one-third of its value on tax records.
Danny Tate says when the conservatorship process began, he was a millionaire. At the end, he was broke.
“Now they’ve rendered me homeless,” Danny Tate said.
“As a child I believed that truth and justice prevailed in our American legal system. I no longer hold to that ideal,” he said.
Hoskins told Channel 4 that if Tate would pay his legal fees, he would get his house back.
Source:
Songwriter’s Home Auctioned for Legal Fees
Michael G. Hoskins
Paul T. Housch
Judge David Randy Kennedy
See Also:
Auctioning Danny Tate’s Home to Pay his Court-Appointed “Protectors”
Sign the petition seeking impeachment of Judge Randy Kennedy
Judge Randy Kennedy has ordered the sale of Danny Tate’s home in an ongoing conservatorship that was allegedly terminated May 24, 2010, nunc pro tunc. The auction is set for Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012, at 10 a.m. on the courthouse steps. Ain’t nothing like a Kennedy Conservatorship. He’ll conserve you right into bankruptcy, homelessness and indigence.
Conservatorship is meant to protect, but in Tennessee, it destroys.
Paul Housch entered the Motion for Order of Sale…,
and was joined by Michael G. Hoskins…,
…both probate practitioners who created the debt, along with unpaid taxes to the IRS by the fiduciary/conservator, David E. Tate. The entire debt falls at the feet of this court and its officers.
Attorneys who practice in Kennedy’s court are all in on the swindle. You don’t practice in Kennedy’s court unless you have agreed, in privy, to abide by his errant and corrupt proceedings that are in violation of the Conservator Code as well as that long forgotten document known as the Constitution.
Now read the article from USA Today Hoskins’ Quote (annotated) and you will find Michael Hoskins claiming he would fight to save Danny Tate’s home. Hoskins made similar false proclamations in the Jewell Tinnon case and in violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct was quoted in the Tennessean in the link below.
Ms. Tinnon now refers to Hoskins as “that dirty bastard”. We concur. Hoskins has always been in on the swindle. The lawsuit v. Karl Warden, which Hoskins reported was Kennedy’s brother-in-law, was withdrawn. Hoskins pulled the same bait and switch in the Danny Tate conservatorship claiming he would pursue all legal recourse, yet filing only a failed appeal.
With a Motion for Recusal (the second one filed) before him, Kennedy entered the Order for Sale of Home in violation of procedure, without any written explanation of why he should not recuse himself.
Full Article and Source:
Pauper v Probate: Order for Sale of Home
Hoskins’ Motion for Order of Sale
USA Today: Hoskins Quote Annotated
Jewell Tinnon’s Conservatorship Lawsuit Dismissed
Questions: Who will be the new owner of Danny Tate’s home – the home in which he raised his two daughters, the home he planned to leave to them – and at what cost?
Will the proceeds from the sale satify the hunger of the Tate’s ravenous court-appointed protectors or will they want more, and more, and more….?
That’s a headline to grab attention in Austin, Nashville, L.A. and for entertainers across the country – as it should. Growing use of probate instruments like wills, trusts, guardianships and powers of attorney is putting at risk both individual liberties and property rights. An ongoing legal battle involving the “Godfather of Soul” James Brown’s estate helps illustrate this point as also does the case of Nashville rocker Danny Tate who in past years fought a questionable conservatorship (guardianship) and now is targeted in what appears a series of retaliatory actions for speaking out against the perpetrators of his alleged probate abuse and the “justice” system that allows it to continue. The general public may read or hear of such actions while continuing to enjoy an “it can’t happen to me” mindset, but such confidence is misplaced as a reality emerges in which people at all levels of wealth – be it worth $50,000 to $100,000, $1 million or far more – are targeted for Involuntary Redistribution of Assets (IRA) actions. Wealth is relative and in today’s world – there’s always someone happy to take yours.
Disgruntled family members, wannabe heirs and/or disingenuous legal professionals are often perpetrators of IRA actions. The James Brown estate case includes the full range of these parties. Traditional media sources have widely reported on the wrangling of Brown’s heirs – the legitimate, the disinherited and the wannabe, but only The Newberry Observer is reporting on the multi-layered legal industry machinations that commenced in the years following the singer’s December 2006 death and continue today.
In 2000, Brown established the James Brown “I Feel Good” private foundation to provide scholarships for poor children in South Carolina and Georgia. Brown’s estate plan reportedly stated that upon his death, “the proceeds of his music empire, including royalties to more than 800 songs, would be rolled into his ‘I Feel Good’ Trust.” Attorneys Adele Pope and Robert Buchanan served from 2007 to 2009 as court-appointed fiduciaries of Brown’s estate and trust which includes the “I Feel Good” trust. During Pope’s tenure, Newberry Observer reporter Sue Summer reports that Brown’s music empire – per all previous Brown fiduciaries – was valued at about $100 million less a $15 million dollar debt.
Summer further writes how in late 2008 or early 2009 former South Carolina Attorney General (AG) Henry McMaster and Columbia CPA Russell Bauknight created the “Legacy Trust.” She quotes a Pope legal response describing the trust as “McMaster’s vehicle to take control of Brown’s assets and funnel $50 million from the needy and deserving students James Brown intended to benefit to claimed heirs Brown intentionally disinherited from his worldwide music empire.” AG McMaster appointed current trustee Russell Bauknight who serves at the pleasure of the attorney general. During this timeframe, the estate value was also revised to a reported $4.7 million at-death appraisal despite, per Pope, the estate generating $4 to 5 million a year in royalties alone prior to Brown’s death.
And though Brown’s will and trust included clauses excluding from distributions any parties that challenged his estate plan, McMaster ultimately negotiated a settlement deal giving away more than half of Brown’s music empire to those Brown specifically disinherited, including his former companion Tommie Rae Hynie and about half of his alleged children. Summer describes Tommie Rae Hynie as follows:
After Brown’s death in 2006, Hynie claimed to be Brown’s wife and sued his estate for a share of his $100 million music empire. The two had exchanged vows in 2001, but Hynie was married to another man at the time. When Brown discovered her marriage, he sued Hynie for an annulment. The Aiken County case was settled when Hynie signed an agreement that she would never claim to be Brown’s common-law wife.
With this backdrop, it’s difficult to believe that Brown’s final wishes are being honored. It’s troubling that the state of South Carolina has been such a force in this action. Adele Pope appears to share such sentiments as she continues working to determine how private assets that were once part of a private foundation were then legally placed in an alleged public trust in violation of the asset owner’s clear intention? And if it’s a public trust, why can’t the public access information revealing its details?
Pope has used Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to attempt accessing copies of the trust and documentation regarding the $4.7 million appraisal. The office of current Attorney General Alan Wilson – the office that prosecutes FOIA violations – has resisted all efforts. Instead, Summer reports “Legacy” trustee Bauknight having “threatened Pope with legal action and sanctions if she continued to exercise her rights under the FOIA.”
Most recently, Pope is facing a subpoena related to the diaries of Tommie Rae Hynie. Specifically, Summer writes, Pope is being asked to “turn over all written communications related to the Hynie diaries, including any communications with this reporter, any ‘blogger, website or media outlet.’”
Summer’s latest article describes a long-time Brown friend suggesting “that the diaries could be key in disallowing Hynie’s claim and returning about $25 million to the Brown trust for needy and deserving children.” The diaries were once available to all parties early in the case, but in February 2008, Judge Doyet Early issued an order for a return of the original diary to Hynie attorney Robert Rosen and other copies returned to the Clerk of Court pending a hearing. Four years later, a hearing has yet to be scheduled.
Pope has previously alleged the AG’s office is seeking to conceal public documents which would reveal “improper acts by members of the AG’s office, the previous AG and/or the trustee of the ‘Legacy Trust.’” The Hynie diaries could further support that claim if, as some believe, they reveal Hynie’s ineligibility as a Brown heir and that the AG’s office elected to disregard or neglected to investigate this important point.
Through the state of South Carolina’s revision of James Brown’s estate plan, the entertainer’s property rights appear to have been posthumously disregarded while his designated beneficiaries’ inheritance rights – namely the children for whom he intended scholarships – appear violated. The state’s failure to respect Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests creates concerns over its commitment to transparency and open government as well as its approach to taxpayer accountability. This latest development seems now to flirt with free speech and freedom of the press issues which further heighten the case’s ever-intriguing nature and the warning it should send the public regarding the safety of their own property.
While the James Brown estate gives an important example of posthumous asset diversion, Nashville musician Danny Tate’s experiene shows that while alive – probate actions can also be used to target property and other individual liberties.
Nashville musician Danny Tate admits his struggle with alcohol and drug issues may at a point have merited assistance, but never would he – or most anyone else – have dreamed that such “help” would manifest as the near depletion of his $1.5 million estate and a continued assault on any future prosperity. These, however, are the circumstances directly resulting from a 32-month “temporary” conservatorship petition initiated in October 2007 by his brother David Tate, facilitated by attorney Paul T. Housch and sanctioned by Davidson County Circuit Court Judge Randy Kennedy.
A series of articles entitled Musician Danny Tate’s conservatorship: a case of caring or corruption? (Part One Part Two Part Three) provides the long, sordid details of Tate’s plight. From the beginning of this action at which time David Tate is alleged to have used a fraudulent Durable General Power of Attorney to gain initial control of his brother’s finances and then fund attorney Housch’s October 2007 petitioning for the musician to be conserved, the administrative ease and casualness of process accompanying this life-altering status is noteworthy and should serve as a cautionary tale to all Americans.
For 32 months, Danny Tate simultaneously fought to regain control over not just substance abuse, but also his civil and property rights that some court observers believe were hijacked by the Tennessee probate court. His day in court arrived only after the Middle Tennessee Court of Appeals reversed one of Judge Kennedy’s critical case rulings, an act described by Nashville Scene as “meaning the Probate Court had strayed so far from established legal procedure that an extraordinary judicial slap on the wrist was dealt to Kennedy. More remarkable still, Judge Frank Clement, the jurist who issued the Appeals Court decision, used to sit in Kennedy’s seat in Probate Court.”
This court ruling basically acknowledged the questionable process by which Tate was conserved and forced Judge Kennedy to allow a hearing that would make the 32-month “temporary” conservatorship permanent or else the status would be terminated. Danny Tate’s day in court came on May 24, 2010, and took place in a courtroom full of Tate supporters along with a local television camera crew. The hearing quickly evolved into what seemed a scripted media event with Danny Tate’s release from the conservatorship put front and center for all (especially the cameras) to see. “They saved him” seemed a recurring theme used to justify the 32-month legal ordeal which left Tate destitute.
Full Article & Source:
Dead or alive – James Brown, Danny Tate show threats to property rights thrive
SIGN the IMPEACH RANDY KENNEDY PETITION for Senator Mae Beavers and Represenative Gary Odom
See Also:
Danny Tate Continues Fight Against Probate Court’s Assault on His Personal and Property Rights
Danny Tate Case Not Over by a Long Shot
Legal minds have recognized that the internet is the greatest tool Democracy has provided to individuals for seeking Justice in a Legal System run amuck, and is the new frontier for Freedom of Speech and protection of Individual Liberties.
Know This, that when you exercise Freedom of Speech, you are also held accountable for everything said when exercising this Freedom, and you put your Individual Liberties at risk if you do not constrain your words by fact and rigorous honesty, and do not libel for libel’s sake, unless truth is the absolute defense.
Judges, Attorneys, any Officers of the Court, and including Governors, Legislators, Law Enforcement Agencies, State Militias, and especially any Branch of Federal Government that includes the Legislature, the President and especially The Judiciary, even standing Armed Forces, for all of these bodies are considered entities composed of Public Servants, whose sole purpose is to serve the public by whom they have been Vested with any Authority or Power, and that the Consideration of Individual Liberties is paramount when sitting as a Public Servant, and that our Sovereign Rights as Individuals be kept in the forefront of all Legal Process, especially in consideration of Due Process.
Full Article and Source:
Pauper V Probate – Pledges and Declarations
National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse 