Conservators Gone Bad

A recent series of articles in the Los Angeles Times exposes the abuses perpetrated by some conservators.

Part One:  Robin Fields, Evelyn Rubia, & Jack Leonard, When a Family Matters Turns into a Business, LA Times, Nov. 13, 2005:

The Times examined the work of California’s professional conservators, reviewing more than 2,400 cases, including every one they handled in Southern California between 1997 and 2003.

Among the findings:

•  Seniors lose their independence with stunning swiftness. More than 500 were entrusted to for-profit conservators without their consent at hearings that lasted minutes. * * *

•  Some conservators misuse their near-parental power over fragile adults, ignoring their needs and isolating them from loved ones. One withheld the allowance that a disabled man relied on for food, leaving him to survive on handouts from a church. Another abruptly moved a 95-year-old woman to a care home and for a month refused to tell her daughter where she was.

•  In the most egregious cases, conservators plunder Seniors estates. One took 88-year-old Thelma Lara bee’s savings to pay his taxes and invest in a friend’s restaurant. Helen Smith’s conservator secretly sold Smith’s house at a discount — to herself. The conservator’s daughter later resold it for triple the price.

•  More commonly, conservators run up their fees in ways large and small, eating into Seniors assets. A conservator charged a Laos Angel es woman $170 in fees to have an employee bring her $49.93 worth of groceries. Palm Springs widow Mary Edeline kept paying from beyond the grave: Her conservators charged her estate $1,700 for attending her burial.

•  Once in conservator’s grasp, it is difficult — and expensive — for seniors to get out. Courts typically compel them to pay not only their own legal fees, but those of their unwanted guardians as well. In the 15 months it took Theresa Herrera’s grandson to unseat her conservator, almost half of the 92-year-oldie’s $265,000 estate had been exhausted.

Probate courts are supposed to supervise their work. Yet oversight is erratic and superficial. Even when questionable conduct is brought to their attention, judges rarely take action against conservators.

Part Two:  Jack Leonard, Robin Fields, & Evelyn Rubia, Justice Sleeps While Seniors Suffer, LA Times, Nov. 14, 2005.

Part Three:  Evelyn Rubia, Jack Leonard, & Robin Fields, Missing Money, Unpaid Bills and Forgotten Clients, LA Times, Nov. 15, 2005.

Special thanks to Prof. Joel C. Dobris of the University of California — Davis for pointing out this series of articles.