Young Journalists Expose an Outrage
Eight students at Northeastern University, overseen by journalism professor Walter V. Robinson, have produced an outstanding article for the Boston Globe, "Courts Strip Elders of Their Independence." The students reviewed hundreds of guardianship cases in Massachusetts' Suffolk Probate Court, and performed scores of interviews with judges, lawyers and court officials. They found serious shortcomings in the system that's supposed to ensure that mentally ill or otherwise incapacitated elders receive competent care.
After the court declares someone mentally ill and appoints a guardian, for all practical purposes most of the patients officially vanish. Almost none of the state's probate courts have any mechanism to track their whereabouts, monitor their treatment, determine whether they have recovered enough to reclaim their freedom and autonomy, or even learn whether they are dead or alive.
Handcuffed by an antiquated computer system, the courts know how many cases are filed but do not know how many people judges put under the control of guardians each year. The number in Massachusetts each year almost certainly exceeds 2,000.
Virtually unregulated, guardians, many of them lawyers and social workers, regularly ignore requirements that they file an initial inventory of assets of the people they are responsible for and an annual accounting of how they managed a person's finances. In Suffolk Probate Court, where five years of guardianship filings were examined, there were no financial reports in 85 percent of the cases. boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/01/13/courts_strip_elders_of_their_independence/