Friday, March 23, 2018

The National Council on Disability Warns the Public of the Risks of Guardianship


The following statement was submitted by Rick Black, Director of the Center for Estate Administration Reform (CEAR).

The National Center for Disability (NCD) Report examines “Civil Death” of the rights of people with disabilities and the elderly under guardianships, calls on Department of Justice to ensure full and fair due process rights. Click here to review the report.

It is an excellent report that provides data and insights on the current state of guardianship in the U.S. It also provides a transparent view on how the system is dysfunctional, providing no assurances of upfront due process to protect the rights, dignity, and estates of targeted individuals or the downstream protections for the individual who has in effect been made a “slave” to their guardian.

Local courts where guardianships are established routinely rule on the whims of the judicial officer (judges, magistrates, hearingmasters, clerks, other lawyers, laymen) and the procedures in no way mirror established rules of civil procedure or state and federal laws.  Today, if the judge is negligent to criminally complicit there is ALMOST NO REDRESS for the victim.  This lack of integrity of the system has created an open door for the criminal element to set up shop with almost no risk of investigation or prosecution.

However, the NCD failed to analyze the familial funds lost to fraudulent guardianships. Per Metropolitan Life/Bloomberg $1.5 trillion passes generationally in the U.S. each year and the number is projected to rise to $2.5 trillion by 2030. 

Guardianship is one of the easiest ways to redirect those assets to unintended third parties.  Involuntary guardianships, proposed purely for the purpose of assuming someone else’s wealth(most often referred to as “theft”), are estimated to claim $10 billion a year in familial damages.  

No comments: