Coeur d’Alene, Idaho (APN) — The county court is the Constitutional embodiment to the community it serves. The judicature; the predominate official power is duty bound to administer legal decisions and judgments for the safety of the population, as well as the lawful regulation of disputes and commerce. Your local courts decide whether a person committed a crime and what the punishment should be, if any. The Court provides a peaceful means to decide private disputes that people can’t resolve themselves. However, in many counties radical polarized views, ingrained civic power structures and the abandonment of ethical forbearance have created a paradox of integrity for both blue-collar and white-collar crime mitigation. The once revered American quality of purpose guided honesty and having strong moral principles or moral uprightness has been superseded by entropy; qualities associated with a state of disorder, randomness, uncertainty and self-enrichment at the expense of justice as defined by statutes legislated to facilitate the greater good of the community and it most vulnerable members.
Critics state the profit-from-conflict incentive law practice model, professional competitiveness spawned by law school factories and Machiavellian litigation antics has enabled systemic entropy within the courts and decayed American jurisprudence beyond repair. After all who polices the Courts and its Officers? In either light, public safety is at a precipice, faced with crucial matters that cautions all Officer’s of the Court to reflect upon how they value the spirit and purpose of the law, the financial rewards of their profession and whether or not that is at odds with the community in which they live in relation to their personal understanding on the purposeful nature of their practice, advocating for their client’s unethical motivations or their own ambitions when they believe the ends justify the unscrupulous manipulation of the means. This could not be more relevant in family law when dealing with the best interests of innocent children, vulnerable persons and elderly members of the community.
In civil disputes involving the best interests of vulnerable persons, brain-injured handicapped accident victims, children and elderly persons with diminished capacity; the law practitioner’s character, ambition to win by all means necessary, alignment with process-rigging third parties that can deceptively accomplish successful outcomes and the governing or lack of civil procedures within litigation often decides a case, regardless of weather justice or safety concerns are properly served. In process litigation such as probate, the governing estate documents dictate disposition while the Magistrate’s broad scope on counsel’s non-compliance and manipulation of litigation processes determine a disputes outcome. In vulnerable or at risk senior matters these actions often occur in a rigged pay-to-play probate court.
Agents of Authority and The Court Sanctioned Protection Racket.
With the substantial increase in the senior population, their lifetime of accumulated wealth and co-morbid decline in physical and cognitive abilities, the challenges to the probate court are enormous and greatly compounded when verifiable evidence of abuse, negligence and exploitation arise when the elderly person is still alive and their well being is determined to be at risk. These are treacherous circumstances that raise the question on why courts that rule on matters of equity are also tasked with administrating complex circumstances involving criminal law that would be better suited in a District court. This is the realm of undue influence, guardianship, conservatorship, estate planning, end of life planning, a senior’s dependency on caregivers, life-sustaining healthcare services, and can include unscrupulous professionals orchestrating family chaos for profit so aligned practitioners of law and support services can “earn” the senior’s estate through unending professional fees and residual kick backs from for-profit conservatorship firm referrals (what some in the legal field refer to as an estate scriveners retirement fund). When regional court districts repeatedly allow these unfortunate circumstances to continue, case after case, the elderly community itself becomes a “natural resource” that provide fertile financial opportunities for cross-referring geriatric services provider networks seeking profit on the misfortunes of others in what is commonly referred to as a racket.
With the substantial increase in the senior population, their lifetime of accumulated wealth and co-morbid decline in physical and cognitive abilities, the challenges to the probate court are enormous and greatly compounded when verifiable evidence of abuse, negligence and exploitation arise when the elderly person is still alive and their well being is determined to be at risk. These are treacherous circumstances that raise the question on why courts that rule on matters of equity are also tasked with administrating complex circumstances involving criminal law that would be better suited in a District court.
Probate Court is the realm of undue influence, guardianship, conservatorship, estate planning, end of life planning, a senior’s dependency on caregivers, life-sustaining healthcare services, and can include unscrupulous professionals orchestrating family chaos for profit so aligned practitioners of law and support services can “earn” the senior’s estate through unending professional fees and residual kick backs from for-profit conservatorship firm referrals (what some in the legal field refer to as an estate scriveners retirement fund). When regional court districts repeatedly allow these unfortunate circumstances to continue, case after case, the elderly community itself becomes a “natural resource” that provide fertile financial opportunities for cross-referring geriatric services provider networks seeking profit on the misfortunes of others in what is commonly referred to as a racket.
Law Expert, Former Intelligence Officer & County Sheriff Speaking on Elder Abuse, Hospice Murders, and Estate Theft In Corrupt Probate Courts.
David Straight speaking on Elder Abuse, Hospice Murders, and Estate Theft: Law expert, former intelligence officer & county sheriff David Straight speaking at his Utah seminar and discusses elder abuse, hospice murders and estate theft going on in our corrupt probate system.
Probate court is a segment of the judicial system that primarily handles such matters as wills, estates, conservatorships, and guardianships, as well as the commitment of a person with psychiatric disabilities to institutions designed to help them. When wills are contested, for example, the probate court is responsible for ruling on the authenticity of the document and the cognitive stability of the person who signed it. The court also decides who receives which portion of the decedent’s assets, based on the instructions in the will or—barring that—other laws in place. The role of the probate court is to make sure that a deceased person’s debts are paid and assets are allocated to the correct beneficiaries. The term probate is used to describe the legal process that manages the assets and liabilities left behind by a recently deceased person. Probate is multifaceted in that it covers the overall legal process of dealing with a deceased person’s assets and debt, the court that manages the process, and the actual distribution of assets itself.
Julia Kagan; Investopedia
Some states do not call venues probate court but instead refer to them as a surrogate’s court, orphan’s court, or chancery court authorized to apply principles of equity, as opposed to those of law. As initially intended the probate process is best suited to matters after a elderly person passes. Probate matters get far more complex when elder abuse, negligence and exploitation occur while the senior is living, since law enforcement, Adult Protective Services and County prosecutors habitually refer to these matters as civil and will not provide the senior protection from predatory care providers, professionals or friends taking advantage of the seniors diminished capacity when the senior is unaware, unable or unwilling to accurately access their precarious circumstance and request help.
What happens when the elderly person is still very much alive and nefarious family, new romantic encounters, so called friends and professional predators want to feed off the vulnerable persons estate assets as soon as early onset dementia, Alzheimers or diminished capacity set in or even earlier if covetous family or friends can persuade seniors into signing estate documents naming them as their Agents of authority. This is elder abuse and a specialized area for disreputable Estate Planners and their crony-aligned professional associates often play a leading role when they draft custom Powers of Attorneys & Advanced Directives with embedded Guardianship and Conservatorship clauses, evolving Living Trusts that interplay with asset shifting Trust Amendments and Wills with full knowledge they are legally representing the senior but in practice are working for the predator with designs to steal the seniors estate.
Estate theft happens far more often that the average person would think, some attorney firms specialize in the practice, covertly of course; this is why elder abuse and exploitation is such a complex societal phenomena that has flourished into an organized trillion dollar racket encompassing law, health care, social services and the financial services industry. The limited good news is that 10’s of thousands of elder rights advocates, grass roots organizations and investigative journalists have connected on the internet and compiled petabytes of data that they are sharing as the elder justice community gains an expedited understanding on how these rackets works culminating in an expanding, organic, loosely connected, open source knowledge base that provides collaborative research, education and predatory behavioral alert systems that identify key elder exploitation practices and cross-county hubs.
Complex societal challenges arise when county courts are tasked to safeguard the best interest of children, vulnerable persons and the elderly. When these circumstances arise it provides context where community members can benchmark the integrity of their local courts. This includes the officers of the court whom have tailored their services, relationships and residual fees based on how the regional courts facilitates justice or conversely allows predatory legal practices that:
- 1) standardizes conflict-of-interest when servicing the elderly,
- 2) orchestrates familial conflict-for-fee and stonewalling practices,
- 3) permits deceptive chicanery in Living Trust drafting and exaction that destroys the seniors estate,
- 4) allows concealment in financial Discovery,
- 5) fails to enforce protective mediation provisions,
- 6) allows respondents to appoint their choice of supposed third-party neutral court visitors, physicians and for-profit conservators while forcing the dismissal of court reporting agents that would provide transparency in submitted evidence and allow for proper Discovery,
- 7) allows third-parties to omit material facts in court reports to conceal materiel facts detrimental to exploitative or abusive parties,
- 8) further enables isolating, abusive and predatory behaviors that hasten the demise of the areas most vulnerable population and
- 9) allows crony-aligned legal, social services and health care service “association-in-fact enterprises” to prosper and dominate probate court outcomes that affect multiple elderly victims on numerous cases.
A simple formula applies; the more regional seniors being exploited the greater threat to the integrity of the county court and the community itself. The safeguard or lapse thereof is the gowned black line. As the U.N. defines “Judicial integrity, independence and impartiality are key prerequisites for establishing an effective and functional judiciary and judicial system for the peaceful resolution of legal disputes. The establishment of an independent and effective justice system that safeguards human rights, facilitates access to all and provides transparent and objective recourse is a core value held the world over.” However, when the last line of defense is aligned in a association with predatory professionals, innocent victims, the true advocates for the victim and the entire elderly community are captive to the whims of suited vultures feeding off the helpless as a former state prosecutor explains:
The system is rife with potential conflicts of interest. Guardians, guardianship lawyers, and expert witnesses may all be paid from the same source — the estate of the person whose rights hang in the balance. “The judge knows the lawyers, the lawyers know each other,” said J. Ronald Denman, a former state prosecutor and Florida lawyer who has contested dozens of guardianships. “The amount of abuse is crazy. You’re going against a rigged system.”
Buzzfeed: Here Are 8 Major Takeaways From BuzzFeed News’ Investigation Into Guardianships
Loyalty to oath, Canon rules and public office could not be more vital to the community when county magistrates are the only or last line of defense in both economically marginalized and affluent counties where aligned cronyism in probate courts tends to be financially lucrative for estate planning/G-C lawyers and their for-profit guardianship-conservatorship firm alliances. This is also evident in geriatric service fields where exploitation and fraud has become standardized practice because of unprecedented high levels of home healthcare fraud and little to no undue influence statutes to protect the elderly with physical disabilities and diminished capacity when they are dependent on opportunistic care providers/self-serving heirs for survival.
Elders who have been abused have a 300% higher risk of death when compared to those who have not been mistreated. Probate Judges have to be able to reconcile that members of the legal community are also top-level, high risk predators as the Legal Issues Related to Elder Abuse; A Pocket Guide for Law Enforcement identifies on page 22: “Consider whether the alleged perpetrator is in a position (e.g., a caregiver, guardian/conservator, or lawyer) to victimize other older people.” Many elder rights advocacy organizations have solid proof to support claims that probate Judges and State Bars are complicit in the epidemic of elder abuse and exploitation because they knowingly fail to police perpetrators, aid & abet litigation asset transfers to exploitative family/friends and approve the professionals non-complaint fees, licence predatory practices while trash canning Bar complaints that provide prima facie evidence of fraud, theft, psychological abuse, medical neglect and undue influence.
Undue influence occurs when an individual is able to persuade another’s decisions due to the relationship between the two parties. Often, one of the parties is in a position of power over the other due to elevated status, higher education, or emotional ties. The more powerful individual uses this advantage to coerce the other individual into making decisions that might not be in their long-term best interest. Undue influence is an equitable doctrine that involves one person taking advantage of a position of power over another person. This inequity in power between the parties can vitiate one party’s consent as they are unable to freely exercise their independent will. In exerting undue influence, the influencing individual is often able to take advantage of the weaker party.
Adam Hayes; Investopedia
Predatory home-care providers employ insidious but tactic, subtle-to-blatant undue influence & gas-lighting techniques to induce dependent seniors into a Stockholm Syndrome state similar to how Cult leaders gain control of their followers. Like cult leaders, this is why predators like to isolate their prey. Recognizing the abuse, negligence and exploitation patterns trustworthy family or friends that try to help their parents or acquaintances can get slapped with restraining orders also drafted by estate planners or their associates who coordinate with the police and the county judge to have such “trouble makers”, abusive parties or bad actors as they are often refereed to, thrown in jail. In many cases those whom try to expose the predators acts can lose all their financial assets when trying to help the vulnerable person through compromised probate litigation. Many estate planners claim estate documents are protective documents while falsely misrepresenting that such documents will help a senior avoid probate and taxes. But on the contrary these paper estate-extraction tools or probate papers allows predators to legally rob you of your estate, bar you from family contact, supersede your personal authority over yourself, force you into institutional care and ultimately lead to an early demise.
County Court Integrity Destroyed By Aiding & Abetting Organized Elder Exploitation Protection Rackets.
The following Article was written by leading Elder Rights Advocate Dr. Sam Sugar of American’s Against Abusive Probate and Guardianship on July 15, 2020 Titled “Getting Educated About The Racket”.
The professional Guardianship racket is a threat to everyone who loves or is or will be a Senior in America.
Abusive Professional Guardians and their hired gun hyper litigious lawyers will torture and impoverish anyone they attack and they do not even have to steal to get rich in guardianship cases. All they must do is accumulate and collect on the mountains of fees they charge helpless wards and their families.
The following is the playbook court insiders and private guardians use to abuse wards and families and divert funds from the seniors the Probate court appoints them to protect. It is based on real life experiences and testimony of many hundreds of victims in Florida and across the USA.
*A court insider is defined as a Judge, Lawyer(s) or Professional Guardian or favorite court examiner or employee of the court or State Bar.
1. Using personal connections, favors, coercion and political advantage, court insiders create a tacit systematic court payment network by working behind the scenes to ensure favorable court orders are granted, which strictly benefit the guardianship insiders at the expense of everyone else. The network ensures a specific group of or an individual guardian will be appointed to specific seniors with assets to plunder. In exchange for these favors, judges will receive sums of money or other inducements (drugs, sex, sordid secrets kept, blackmail, re-election votes, no pay mortgages and leases, land deals, insider information, private trusts, etc.) so they will, among other things, reliably ignore advance directives to jumpstart guardianships as well as rule favorably on capacity exams and on a guardian’s fraudulent estate accounting and questionable documents as routinely submitted to the Probate court judge.
2. Create a secretive referral network of paid spotters and informants to identify susceptible vulnerables in their homes or in hospitals, ALF’s, doctors’ offices, senior centers, investment seminars, court filings, bank tellers, APS workers, etc. Approach or attract a targeted family (particularly a contentious one) who has a senior who is ill or slightly confused and bring them to court for a rigged capacity evaluation to propel the process via instant emergency guardianship. Having the alleged incapacitated person heavily medicated in court is helpful.
3. Convince the family and senior that guardianship is a good and helpful safeguard against exploitation and is only temporary and that power will ultimately be given to the accusing party. This statement is used to ease fears in the beginning stages of the criminal procedure. The goal is to lull both seniors and family members into a state of false security so they will not question what is about to come.
4. Guardian takes full control (marshalling) of the senior’s assets. The complaining family feels safe in their false belief that a professional is only temporarily handling their loved one’s affairs.
5. Guardian strengthens their hold by intentionally isolating the senior from family members physically and emotionally. The family and judge might be told that family visits are stressful to the senior. The family is deluded to believe that they are helping the senior by staying away, thus hiding any and all guardian actions from their purview.
6. Guardian repeatedly informs the senior that their family no longer cares about them. If other family members protest the guardian’s decisions, the guardian will place restraining orders (stayaway orders) on the family members who disagree. This tactic is implemented to increase the guardian’s control and punish any opposition to their abuses. The enhanced control sets the stage for future billings involving family conflicts, which the guardian will create when additional funds are needed.
7. Guardian begins to slowly drain assets from the so-called protected senior’s estate (beginning with small amounts and over time the stealing grows larger). While this crime is being committed, block all senior bank statements and other records from concerned family members to ensure they will not be aware of what is taking place. If questioned about the missing monies or bank statements, use the illusion of privacy or avoiding conflicts to explain these actions. Use the fraudulent excuse that HIPPA laws prevent guardians from sharing health information about the ward (this is a complete lie).
8. Guardian encourages family members to argue with each other so guardian can bill the estate for resolving conflicts, which were actually created by the guardian. (This tactic is a big money maker for all insiders).
9. If the protected senior lives in their own home the guardian will hook up with a complicit care giver company or home health service who will report to the court what the guardian wants them to say. The false reporting will create future conditions, which will allow the guardian to sell the senior’s home for pennies on the dollar.
10. The care giver company will soon report to the court that the senior can’t be cared for in their home. This is important because a paper trail is needed for what is about to happen.
11. The senior’s home gets sold usually for pennies on the dollar to a buyer (often the guardian attorney or his proxy) who is willing to pay cash for a portion of the already deeply discounted home’s sale price. The cash portion of the transaction is never reported to the court or senior’s family, which allows the guardian and the buyer to pocket large sums of money from the senior’s home and then flip it immediately for even more profit that is never reported to the court or the IRS. Any reported funds from such a sale are used exclusively to pay accumulated legal and guardian fees before the money runs out.
12. Guardians will change or create a trust because trust accounts can be left out of estate accounting in many court jurisdictions. The trust ensures the cash transactions involving the senior’s home will not be discovered.
13. Before the home is sold, it is time to place the senior into a guardian friendly living facility. Before the senior is ensconced in that facility, assign a doctor who is willing to over medicate and ensure that senior is essentially stuporous at all times to reduce complaints and cost of care. Many guardians will try to brainwash the over medicated senior that their family no longer cares for them. The depression enhances the medication, which makes it easier for the guardian to control the situation.
14. Continue to funnel the ward’s business and money to downstream collaborators including banks, real estate firms, jewelers, appraisers, pharmacies, facilities, hospitals, home health agencies, resale shops, and a host of others in return for their cooperation and reciprocal inducements.
15. If the family conflict finally turns to attacking the guardian’s actions or gets out of control, turn family members against each other and promise a sum of money to the relative who cooperates with the guardian.
16. Senior passes away and now it’s time to delay settlement. Family members will want to put their bad experiences behind them. Delaying the settlement makes it possible for the guardian to negotiate terms, which will hide the crimes committed against the senior and the family and allow maximum time for further staged fraudulent billings, motions and actions which are automatically approved by court.
17. The long delay frustrates family members to the point where they will settle without a thorough accounting just to get the proceedings over. In Guardian Abuse cases often, the estate is not settled for as long as ten years after the ward dies—all the while being drained by fraudulent billings from lawyers and others.
18. The guardian having furtively changed beneficiaries of all insurance policies, and having sole control of death certificates, deposits life insurance and any other death benefit proceeds into the trust that was created, never reports the payment to the court, never pays taxes on it or if reported, the funds are used exclusively to pay fees.
19. The guardian wraps up the stealing by informing family members if they talk about what they went through they will be sued for defamation, put in prison or may never receive the inheritance. Often families are forced to sign falsified papers–called Non disclosure and Non Defamation clauses– exonerating the insiders prior to receiving what, if anything, is left of their inheritances.
20. The recent increased media exposure of guardian crimes throughout the United States has created a new page for this playbook. When commissions are formed to look into guardian abuse, ensure that the commissions are rigged by appointing only attorneys, judges and staff who make their money from the system and are friendly to guardians to ensure business as usual will continue; create positive press to placate the public; never allow articulate advocates to testify; vehemently and authoritatively deny and dispute all negative news coverage; make sure every participant in the system plays along to get along and severely punish any defectors from the scheme; ensure that those who object are vilified, humiliated, ridiculed and subjected to maximum legal abuse; above all else keep everything cloaked in secrecy.
A ward once said, “I used to fear getting cancer, now I fear guardianship even more”
One notorious guardian was quoted as saying “losing assets to us is just a part of getting old and nobody cares about old people”
This well-oiled machine is growing daily. The damage it does is staggering.
Sam J Sugar MD
Founder AAAPG.net
www.aaapg.net
drsam@aaapg.net
855 913 5337 x101