Peggy's Story - Rethinking Guardianship

The telling of Peggy’s story begins at the end, when she had her last conversation with the new Assistant Clerk of Court in this North Carolina County:

Recently, when asking for help to see her twin sister Jean after three years of being blocked from doing so by Jean’s guardian, despite a recent court order explicitly stating that she had the right to see her sister, the Clerk stated,

“It is not our job to enforce orders concerning the guardian of the person; it’s just our job to review the accounting of the guardian of the estate.” The follow-up question from Peggy: “So whose responsibility is it to enforce the orders of the guardian of the person?” The Clerk’s answer: “Nobody’s.” Peggy’s reply: “What should I do to be able to see my sister?” The Clerk’s answer: “You need to file a petition for another hearing.” Peggy said, “If the orders aren’t enforced from the hearing, what good would this do?” The Clerk did not answer…

A soft-spoken, intelligent Registered Nurse and mental health advocate, Peggy recounted the earlier life that she lived with her mother and twin sister. Born in 1951, the twins were raised by their mother with support from a loving grandmother and an aunt nearby. They played music together in a band, were very active in 4H, went to the Governor’s School in Winston Salem and in general, developed a very close bond.

“Jean was a wonderful musician – she played piano and clarinet and was good in math. She was a very sweet person. We shared everything and mother did her best to raise us.”

In the early 1970s, when Jean was 17 or 18, she had a mental health crisis and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and delusional schizophrenia. Jean had to leave school so the twins’ mother asked Peggy to leave school too. Later in that decade, Peggy went back to school and became an RN. She worked at hospitals, the public health center and took care of her family – her mother, sister and eventually, her husband.

Peggy’s challenging journey with guardianship and the court system began in the late 1990s when her sister stopped taking her medication and went in and out of psychiatric hospitals during the twelve years she was living next to Peggy.

In 1999, Peggy was told that her sister needed a guardian; Jean didn’t have insight into her illness and wouldn’t accept that she was sick. A social worker from a mental health agency recommended guardianship and referred Peggy to an attorney. The attorney told Peggy that she was “too close” to be the guardian. Peggy listened and believed her.

At the time, the two sisters were attending NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) meetings and shared experiences with others there. A charismatic and persuasive woman attending the meetings took an interest in them. Peggy shared that her sister had a large trust from her father, which she believed was a major factor in this woman’s interest in Jean. Peggy trusted her at the time.

Peggy petitioned for guardianship in 2001 – “I just wanted to do what was best for her” – and testified on Jean’s incapacity (e.g., jumping out of the car and almost getting hit) in court. Jean heard this at the hearing and was upset. The woman from NAMI was in the courtroom and having gained the confidence of the sisters, was named Jean’s general guardian.

Even after the guardianship was assigned, Peggy was still taking care of her sister and the guardian rarely saw her. In 2002, after coming out of inpatient care, the guardian placed Jean in a home by herself and didn’t consult or appear to care what Peggy thought about it. Eventually, Jean was living in an unlicensed family care home, operated by the guardian, and she had run away several times.

In 2006, Peggy petitioned for a hearing to become the guardian of the person and estate upon suspicion that the guardian was comingling Jean’s trust funds to benefit her businesses. Although a neighboring county’s Department of Social Services investigated and recommended the removal of the guardian of the person and the estate, the Clerk of the Court of the county in which Jean had been assigned guardianship ignored the investigation.

During the hearing, the Clerk only heard the guardian’s witnesses and would not listen to Peggy’s witnesses. Although it was found that the guardian had indeed commingled funds, the court allowed her to retain the role of guardian of the person even as the role of guardian of the estate was reassigned to the Public Guardian (a local attorney and a 15-year owner of a bookkeeping business that was set up to aid people with disabilities manage their money).

Persisting in her efforts, Peggy found that her sister’s financial reports, prepared by the newly assigned guardian of the estate were incomplete and inaccurate. Balances appeared to never account for the commingled funds and the Public Guardian let them go through to develop starting balances for the next year.

In the meantime, Jean was living in a small room within a home for over $6000/month from her trust. After the Public Guardian withdrew over $500,000 of Jean’s trust money in five years, he sent a contract to Peggy, asking her to pay for her sister’s expenses, which she did for about a year.

Blocked from visiting her sister, Peggy asked for a hearing in 2008 to be allowed to see her sister and petitioned to be the guardian. Unfortunately, the hearing was held on a snowy day and Peggy’s witnesses were unable to get there. During the hearing, the court ruled that Peggy could visit Jean unaccompanied by the guardian but the current guardian was retained.

Peggy visited Jean twice a month for about three years after this hearing when Jean was placed in another family care home. However, when Peggy could no longer afford to pay over $3,000 a month for her care, Jean’s Guardian of the Person placed her in a family care home that she herself owned and operated. The guardian refused to allow Peggy to visit Jean anymore after this.

To this day, Peggy is blocked from seeing her sister. This brings us back to the beginning of this story…

Here are Peggy’s comments about her experience:

“There is such a large-scale abuse of the mentally ill financially and otherwise, and their families, by the guardians, court system, social services and family and adult care homes, that the guardian laws and possibly the guardianship system needs to be revised or changed.

There is no accountability or oversight of the guardians or the local court system that is supposed to govern the guardians. With this lack of accountability, the guardian system allows for financial exploitation, fraud, and abuse at several levels. The guardian laws allow for such unlimited interpretation of the law by Court officials, that any basic and vital law can easily be ignored and broken.

The mentally ill are not able to help themselves or to speak for themselves, in many cases, because social workers are told by the guardian that they are unreliable and too sick to be taken seriously.

Many times, family members have not been allowed to participate in care or even allowed to see their mentally ill loved one, even after court orders have been made ordering the guardian to let them see them.

When a system such as this allows such unlimited and ungoverned power of the guardians over their incompetent wards, this system attracts unscrupulous guardians and others who are supposed to monitor the guardians. Especially when large amounts of money are available from federal and state funding and from their ward’s own funds, this provides a very lucrative incentive to become guardian or family care owner.”

Peggy’s Story