The Conservatorship Protection

Posted on by Elwin Hornedo

 A conservatorship is a court case where a judge appoints a responsible person or organization (called the “conservator”) to care for another adult (called the “conservatee”) who cannot care for himself or herself or manage his or her own finances.

My brother Miguel spent some additional time in San Diego to work on getting a conservatorship put in place to better protect my mother from any additional abuse and to give us better control of taking care of her finances.

The city of San Diego provides a free Conservatorship Clinic. The clinic provides free assistance with information on the Conservatorship process and court forms only to clinic participants not represented by attorneys to Petition the Court for Conservatorship of the person. They also provide information regarding alternatives to Conservatorship. The process involves gathering the information you will need to fill out your forms then file the forms/petition. The petition must include information about the proposed conservator, potential conservatee, relatives, and the petitioner (person filing the case in court). It must also include reasons explaining why the conservatorship is necessary and should be granted.

Once a petition is filed with the court, a court investigator is appointed to interview the proposed conservatee and to determine if the individual is truly incapacitated and whether appointment of a conservator is justified. The investigator reports back to the court with an opinion.

We were trying to do this on our own as we did not have the money to hire a lawyer to go through this process.

In the mean time we wanted to have Irma come back out to my house in the Dallas area for Thanksgiving as we had done the prior year. Her friends and neighbors were all aware of what was going on and were keeping a closer eye on her and helping out as much as they could. We would talk to her on a regular basis and had to remind her to take some of her medications. She had osteoporosis and was supposed to take a monthly pill for it and Miguel would call her on the first day of the month and make sure she would take the medicine. As is the case with many people the children became the parents, we became her medical and financial advocates. We were her caregivers from afar protecting her from any additional abuse and making sure she was ok.

Parentification is the process of role reversal whereby a child is obliged to act as parent to their own parent or sibling.

We were looking forward to seeing her on Thanksgiving and having her with us. She brought us a lot of joy, she was the funny and giving she exuded love to all around her and absolutely lived for her grandchildren.

Protect the Elderly from Financial Exploitation

Selfhelp-conservatorship California

Wikipedia-Parentification

Protecting Irma

Posted on by Elwin Hornedo

My mother was the best person I have ever had the privilege of knowing. She was the epitome of love, what she suffered during her life was not deserved. I think about her every day. I miss her terribly and wish that I could have done more for her.

She was love and kindness and pure, she loved unconditionally and when someone hurt her she was wounded deeply. I loved my mother so much and it hurts to know that her own flesh and blood hurt her for their own selfish needs. I will never forgive or forget what my brother Sam did to her.

I am not perfect and have my flaws but in a million years I would never had done to her what Sam did to her. My true brother Miguel thinks that at some point I should forgive him but after all of these years I cannot see that happening.

I wish she was still here and part of the reason she is not is attributed to my brother Sam, at the end of this you will see why and not question this statement.

During the visit (where Sam had tried to withdraw money from the Free ATM) not only had we initiated the Power of Attorney we also wanted to have my mother assessed again for dementia. I met with her doctor at Kaiser right before her appointment to talk to him regarding her mental status. I asked if he would re-assess her as we had growing concerns regarding her memory.

In our first visit the doctor told us that she was just suffering from age related memory loss but the memory loss was really starting to concern us. It seemed to be getting worse and we felt that the doctor had not done a proper assessment. The doctor was perturbed that we were asking him to do the assessment, the doctor did a more complete assessment and decided to refer her to a neurologist.

Miguel and I continued to look for her original will and trust as well as trying to find where all the money went. We were waiting on the documents from her bank to start forensically searching to find out what had happened.

My mothers finances started to normalize since we had taken over paying her bills for her and managing her bank accounts. Without the financial abuse by my brother Sam she actually had money in her account and continued to build a buffer as her expenses where a lot less than what she got from Social Security and her pension.

We were trying to get my mother to start using some of the services offered to the elderly such as ride sharing services that only cost $5 as we did not want her driving and other services that would do well visits to her. She was a very independent woman and did not want to use some of the services offered. It is tough to get someone at the age of 85 to start doing something different from what was normal to them previously.

The doctors visit to the neurologist was scheduled and we were trying to get her to use the ride service but she did not want to do that and somehow Christina (for once) volunteered to take her. We were not comfortable with her taking her but pretty much had no say in the matter. The day of the appointment I spoke with the doctor and asked that she see Irma alone without Christina and informed her of the financial abuse that had taken place. The doctor agreed and after the appointment she called me to say that Irma was in the beginning stages of dementia and was shocked that she was still driving.

Unfortunately this confirmed our fears and now it became imperative that we get a conservatorship in place.

Protect the Elderly from Financial Exploitation

https://www.aba.com/advocacy/community-programs/consumer-resources/protect-your-money/elderly-financial-abuse