Guardianships

If you are the parent of a minor child, one of the most important estate planning decisions you will make is choosing a guardian. The guardian you choose will take over the enormous task of caring for your children should you pass away or become incapacitated. While the possibility of this happening is heart-wrenching, it is also something that you must consider for your sake and for the sake of your children. Confronting this difficult possibility and planning accordingly will end up bringing you peace of mind because you will know that your children will be in good hands should anything happen to you.

What to Consider in Choosing a Guardian for your Children

There are a number of things you should consider when Read more . . .

We all like to think that if one of our loved ones was being abused, we would realize it right away and quickly step in to help. We also imagine that if we were being abused, we would get help or that someone would recognize the signs of abuse and step in on our behalf. It’s scary to think otherwise. Unfortunately, our years of experience have taught us that elder abuse can be tricky to spot and difficult to stop. A very public example of this is playing out right now as comic book legend Stan Lee’s family, lawyers, and business associates fight each other over control of his future.

Stan Lee is the mastermind of the Marvel comic book universe. He created or co-created some of the world’s most well-known superheroes, including Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the X-Men, but right now it seems he could use a hero of his own.

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In October, Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, will be appearing in court. The whole world will once again be watching him, but this time it is not a happy occasion. Earlier this year, Buzz’s children, filed a legal petition seeking guardianship over him, and he filed a lawsuit in response.

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What would you do if a stranger showed up at your home out of nowhere, and told you they were your new legal guardian? They have the power to control your finances, make healthcare decisions for you, decide where you live, and can even prevent you from seeing your family if they don’t think it is a good idea for you to be around them. It sounds impossible, but a recent article in The New Yorker details how this nightmare scenario is actually playing out.

The article focuses on the plight of a particular couple in Nevada, Rudy and Rennie North, but it is something that could happen virtually anywhere thanks to the relative lack of oversight in the guardianship system.

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It is more than a little bit ironic that a company that specializes in identity theft protection is the source of the second largest personal data hack in United States history. When Equifax announced that 143 million Americans had their personal information stolen via a weakness in its own website, it was like a punch in the gut.

If you are curious, you can use a tool on the Equifax website to check whether your information was stolen.
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When you read the title above, what was the age of the person that came to mind? If you are like most people, the first person you thought of was a child. However, older adults are just as vulnerable as children online.  

Financial losses from elder fraud and abuse are estimated to total more than $36 billion per year. More and more of that fraud is happening online.
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“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”

-Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

This is the quote that sprang to mind when the Government Accountability Office’s Read more . . .

How can a guardianship help protect my adult child who is unable to care for him or herself?

A South Carolina mother is struggling to regain guardianship over her daughter, who is intellectually disabled and unable to live independently.  The daughter had been sexually assaulted years prior, leading to a landmark Supreme Court ruling.  In the case, the Supreme Court held that the group home in which the woman was living had a duty to exercise reasonable care in supervising its residents.
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