By Heidi Blake and Katie J.M. Baker: For Complete Post, click here…
ngd-This is part 1, there are two other parts with links through the complete post…
THEY CAN ISOLATE YOU: A teenager with cerebral palsy was snatched from the school gates and hidden from his parents.
THEY CAN BLEED YOU DRY: A successful rheumatologist was declared incapacitated after a bout of depression and lost her million-dollar waterfront home.
AND THEY CAN LEAVE YOU TO DIE: A 46-year-old man died under a do-not-resuscitate order that went against the desperate pleas of his wife.
All three nightmares share a common cause: These people had been placed under the care — and control — of legal guardians. America’s guardianship system was designed as a last resort to be used only in the rare and drastic event that someone is totally incapacitated by mental or physical disability. In those cases, conscientious guardians can provide vital support, often in complex and distressing circumstances. But an investigation by BuzzFeed News has found that the system has grown into a vast, lucrative, and poorly regulated industry that has subsumed more than a million people, many of whom insist they are capable of making their own decisions, and placed them at risk of abuse, theft, and even death.
The #FreeBritney movement has drawn international attention to the case of Britney Spears, and wrongdoing by individual guardians has surfaced in the past, but our investigation reveals the systemic failings behind these isolated stories.
In local courts across the country — often woefully unfit for the sweeping power they command — guardians, lawyers, and expert witnesses appear frequently before the same judges in an established network of overlapping financial and professional interests. They are often paid from the estate of the person whose freedom is on the line, creating powerful incentives to form guardianships and keep them in place.
“The judge knows the lawyers, the lawyers know each other,” said J. Ronald Denman, a former state prosecutor and Florida lawyer who has contested dozens of guardianships over the past decade. “The amount of abuse is crazy. You’re going against a rigged system.”
