U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging Request: Creating a Safer Guardianship System

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

National victims and their families, advocates:

Please send a short note to this committee at comments@aging.senate.gov asking for their engagement in stopping the abuse and financial exploitation of vulnerable American adults through the actions of local courts.  Anyone can choose to abuse; family members, guardians, lawyers, police, and judges. CEAR wants all vulnerable adults protected and the abusers criminally prosecuted.  However, in adult guardianship, the system that appoints the professional guardian routinely protects them and gives them omnipotent powers to mentally, psychologically, and financially exploit the alleged incapacitated person and their loving and legitimate family or caregivers.

This abuse is fully sponsored by the legal community and is a national issue.  This nation’s probate and adult guardianship systems were developed and protected by attorneys in each state who recognized long ago how easy conscription into guardianship gave them a pot of gold to draw from or steal with a judge’s protection.  Over the last 40 years the abuses and schemes played out on America’s vulnerable adults by the legal community has only gotten worse.  Trust and probate fraud are rampant as well as local and state law enforcement have refused to investigate complaints.  Now is the moment for our #MeToo movement. We must let Congress hear our voices!! 

Ranking member Senator Bob Casey hails from Pennsylvania, my home state. His father was governor of the state and worked for the law firm Elliott Greenleaf in Scranton, PA.  Stewart Greenleaf is a partner there and is the current Chairman of the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee. Pennsylvania Senator Greenleaf has been an ardent defender of guardianship in Pennsylvania and continues to strengthen the rights of attorneys and the guardians they protect through state legislation.  Senator Casey is likely completely misinformed about the issues in Pennsylvania. 

Eastern Pennsylvania in particular has many judges fully and publicly committed to the guardianship mills they run.  Any claim, fabricated or otherwise, by their Bar associates to warrant a guardianship is validated in orders. Hearings aren’t held, objections are denied, abuses and theft ignored, estate documents are denied, and downstream oversight not provided as the court rules based on the chorus of calumny coming from the prevailing attorneys who gain full access and control of an estate.