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December 18, 2024
By Paul Cook
Imagine that people from a cultish church show up to kidnap your father. You call the police on them. Then you find out that your father’s confidential wife also smuggled in opiates into the rehab center, to convince your father to leave the place. Then you find out that while your father had dementia and was being drugged on opiates the whole time, the confidential wife deeded herself all of his real properties, worth over $2 million, and was trying to conceal all this and take control over your father again to get away with her scheme and flee with the money.
The situation became so serious, I had to file an elder abuse restraining order against the confidential wife. To make matters worse, in this case, before trial, my father nearly died under suspicious circumstances. His blood sugar levels were lethal. He was sent to a substandard hospital. I watched him dying before me, as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
Thankfully, I ended up saving his life by taking him to a reputable hospital. The police have declined over and over again to investigate the case, even though I showed them a hair sample laboratory analysis, which proved my father was poisoned by pesticides.
Eventually, I had a three-day trial and 10 witnesses, which proved to the family court that the confidential wife was a danger to my father. The family law judge agreed that the confidential wife was committing sustained elder abuse against my father and issued a 3-year preliminary restraining order against this woman. The court ruled that the confidential wife failed to get my father critical medical care, left him isolation, left him in his own feces, and found the whole case “chilling.”
As far as I know, it isn’t easy to get an elder abuse restraining order against a spouse, and I believe I was the first person to get one. You would think the matter over, right?
Wrong. The confidential wife hired another attorney, and he threatened a conservatorship. I didn’t think it was a serious petition. I thought to myself, How could a court even entertain the possibility of a conservatorship, when the woman petitioning has been found guilty of elder abuse? I also had my father’s power of attorney.
She filed the petition, and little did I realize the arbitrary processes of the probate court system. I’ve always been my father’s actual attorney since 2013. But the probate court, without giving the family notice, on speculative grounds, without a hearing, appointed a court appointed attorney with a bad reputation.
And although this attorney says he’s going to do what is in the best interest of my father, he actually is going to bill either the county or my father as much as he can get. I was afraid. I heard from activists and victims of the horrors of the conservatorship system. Brittney Spears and Michael Oher, the former NFL player, have brought these hidden injustices to light. The Epoch Times has done a special also spotlighting the issues.
In this special, the Epoch Times has found that there’s a common theme in the Conservatorship system. It’s the same problem Shakespeare discussed in King Lear. An elderly parent is losing his capacity or his ability to take care of himself, and the disfavored child or other relative or neighbor or friend files a conservatorship to challenge the way the victim wants his assets distributed. In doing so, a power of attorney or trust becomes just a piece of paper and has no authority in conservatorship court. The court appointed attorneys apparently know better than the conservatee’s wishes, investigate the matter, bill at $250, and after 5 to 10 years, drain all the assets of the elderly.
In my father’s case, I tried to remedy the situation by disqualifying the judge. Instead, the judge refused to accept the challenge and blocked me from filing the paperwork. I invoked my father’s attorney-client privilege. The judge said it didn’t matter. If I didn’t give this court appointed attorney “access” to my father, he was going to fine me $1,500 and have me self-report to the State Bar. Then he muted my microphone; so, I couldn’t make my record.
I immediately filed an appellate petition. The judge repeated his threat of having me self-report to the State Bar. The day before the deadline, literally the 11th hour, the appellate court saved the day and issued a stay against the two judges who were working in concert to have me punished.
Then, in late November of this year, the appellate court ruled against the two judges and said that my peremptory challenge should have been honored and that the current judge hearing the case refused to comply with the higher court’s earlier orders.
The problem with the conservatorship process is the start of it, which is the appointment of private attorneys, who drum up investigations and profit off the most vulnerable people in our population. Because significant liberty and property interests are at play, the Court needs to build in a probable cause hearing to determine whether the petitioner has a credible cause to be a conservator. If not, the petition must be dismissed outright. Civil and criminal cases have this process built into it.
Think about this. Does law enforcement investigate every single complaint filed by a citizen? No. It needs to make a determination of the credibility of the crime. In fact, under the landmark decision in Terry v. Ohio, the police must have reasonable suspicion that a crime is occurring, which is more than just speculation; otherwise, the investigation would be in violation of our constitutional right to be free from search and seizure.
But not in probate court. It appears the Constitution may not even apply. Every petition, or complaint, will have a private court appointed attorney, who will rack up the bills and create harm and disruption and pain for these families. The State of California has forgotten a sacred commandment: “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may have a long life upon the land”; instead, it’s all about transferring elderly wealth, which was worked so hard for in their lives, into the hands of people, the victims never even knew.
Paul Cook is the Founder/Editor of The Legal Lens <http://www.alchemistcook.blogspot.com>
