Category: ALL ARTICLES

A conversation with the executive director of the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada about their advocacy and defense services in adult guardianship proceedings.  The Legal Aid Center’s Guardianship Advocacy Program provides representation to seniors and adults with disabilities who are facing or under guardianship to ensure the adult’s legal rights are protected.  In order to provide legal representation to as many adults as possible, the Legal Aid Center developed a training manual that provides advocacy guidelines for pro bono attorneys who take adult guardianship cases through Legal Aid Center’s Pro Bono Project.  The manual warns would-be pro bono attorneys: “Accepting […]

Dr. Sam Sugar is the founder of a nonprofit education and advocacy organization known as Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianship. Since 2013, Dr. Sugar and AAAPG have been in the national forefront of the guardianship reform movement, focusing the attention of the media and the public on the plight of victims of guardianship abuse. To listen to this 30-minute podcast and to access prior podcast episodes, click here. Feature Story. Dr. Sugar is also the author of Guardianships and the Elderly: The Perfect Crime (Square One 2018). The book is described as a survival guide to understanding, dealing with, and […]

Commonwealth Club Online Forum December 8, 2021 from Noon to 1:00 p.mRegister Today How Judges Are Raiding the Assets of Older Adults and Lining the Pockets of Conservatorship Attorneys This forum will explain how the assets of seniors and people with disabilities are often drained in order to pay the fees of a variety of attorneys in probate conservatorship proceedings. With vague or nonexistent rules and a lack of accountability, judges are making ad hoc and often arbitrary orders requiring conservatees and proposed conservatees to pay unreasonable or excessive legal fees. Not only are they required to pay the fees of […]

It’s not just for lawyers.  The public may attend the webinar too. Presentation: This one-hour presentation will explore the duties of attorneys as they fulfill the zealous advocacy requirements of  AB 1194, a conservatorship reform law that takes effect on January 1, 2022.  Participants also will receive a rundown of 10 potential legal and professional dangers of neglecting the duty of care, as well as an analysis of such issues as third-party standing to file motions, complaints, appeals and civil actions against attorneys who do not provide zealous advocacy to their clients and to the public entities that employ, appoint or fund […]

This episode of the podcast series focuses on a Zoom Town Hall where victims of the California conservatorship system shared their stories, local elected officials in Alameda County acknowledged the need for reform, and #FreeBritney activists discussed their movement to rid superstar Britney spears of the confines of conservatorship.  Most of the presentations involved the negative experiences that many seniors and their families have had with conservatorship proceedings.  Many of the complaints focused on the greed of attorneys and the complacency of judges.  Before offering several specific proposals to reform key parts of the conservatorship system, attorney Thomas F. Coleman, […]

The Subcommittee on the Constitution of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing today titled “Toxic Conservatorships: The Need for Reform.”  In his opening remarks, Senator Richard Blumenthal essentially referred to a “carrot and stick” federal approach to reform.  He called on the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services to provide the states with “best practices” guidance that would address three issues: a serious exploration in each case of less restrictive alternatives such as supported decision-making; improving civil rights protections; and better mechanisms to monitor ongoing conservatorships to reduce the risk of abuse.  He […]

After studying conservatorship legal defense providers in all 58 counties in California, a new report from Spectrum Institute has found that inadequate funding, high caseloads, a lack of performance standards, and an absence of quality assurance controls are contributing to deficient legal services for indigent adults with mental and developmental disabilities.   The report recommends a variety of remedial actions by state officials and agencies. It also calls on civil grand juries in all counties throughout the state to investigate these deficiencies. Some 70,000 adults in California are living in probate conservatorships. About 5,000 new petitions are filed annually. Some are […]

This episode of the podcast series picks up where the second episode left off.  It describes the shift in the advocacy activities of Tom Coleman after his memoirs were published in 2009.  He ventured into the area of abuse of people with disabilities, especially those with developmental disabilities, with the goal of promoting more effective responses to such abuse by government agencies.  While doing that important work, Coleman was introduced to an extremely challenging set of problems with the probate conservatorship system in California.  After investigating a few specific cases of young adults with developmental disabilities whose rights were violated […]

By Thomas F. Coleman Daily Journal – August 24, 2021 Conservatorship reform advocates were cautiously optimistic when the Judicial Council adopted new training requirements for attorneys in probate conservatorship proceedings.   The mandates of Rule 7.1103 of the California Rules of Court became effective on January 1, 2020. For years, some of us had pushed for better educational programs for court appointed counsel in these cases.  We wanted crucial topics to be included in training curricula as well as performance standards to ensure that trainings would not misinform attorneys or inadvertently encourage malpractice.  We got half a loaf.  The Judicial Council […]

By Thomas F. Coleman The State of New Hampshire has just enacted Senate Bill 134 — a supported decision-making (SDM) statute.  The law could help some adults with mental or developmental disabilities avoid being placed under an order of guardianship.  A set of legislative “findings” expresses a clear preference by the Legislature for less restrictive alternatives to guardianship to be considered before the state encroaches on an individual’s liberties.  One of the findings states: “Supported decision-making is a process which preserves the self-determination of adults with disabilities by providing them with accommodations and supports to enable them to make life […]