We’re Here to Help, When Guardianship Goes Wrong with Author, Diane Dimond

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You are connected and you are listening to specifically for seniors, the podcast for those in the remember when Generation. Today's podcast is available everywhere you listen to podcasts and with video at specifically for seniors YouTube channel. Now, here's your host, Dr. Larry Barsh.

Larry (01:12):

And in Contest News, there were no winners in last week's contest. But the answer to the question, what are the only four words in the English language that end in the letters d o u s is horrendous, tremendous, hazardous, and stupendous. We have lots more planned for you, specifically for seniors. So subscribe. Don't miss an episode and stay connected. We originally introduced you to Diane Diamond on this podcast in May of 2022. Diane is back with us today to talk about her new book. We're Here to Help When Guardianship goes Wrong. Diane has enjoyed an award-winning career in radio and television news. Perhaps you'll remember her from her coverage of some of the nation's biggest stories, including the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the Michael Jackson case, the OJ Simpson murder case, and the Bush Gore election recount in Florida. Welcome back to specifically for seniors. Diane.

Diane Dimond (02:32):

Thank you. You're, you are dating me now with all those old cases, <laugh>. I've done some since then. <Laugh> as well.

Larry (02:39):

I'm sorry, forgive me.

Diane Dimond (02:42):

That's fine. <Laugh>,

Larry (02:44):

We, we talked extensively about guardianship on our May, 2022, our first conversation on this podcast. Right. And I'd like to encourage anyone who hasn't listened to watch to go back and take a look. But for now, let's start off by reviewing what guardianship is when it pertains to seniors.

Diane Dimond (03:08):

Well, guardianship is a system that the courts in each state have set up to protect people who need protection. Vulnerable seniors, people who may not have any family and are experiencing some memory loss, maybe Alzheimer's, some other health issues. It it's not just seniors that get guardian, but that seems to be the majority of the so-called wards of the court, elderly people. In, in the book, Larry I explain exactly how one can become guardian, what that means, and how to try to get out of it or protect yourself from being put in it if you don't think you belong.

Larry (03:53):

What's right about guardianship?

Diane Dimond (03:56):

Guardianship is it's a system that we need in society. I mean, we have, because children grow up, they move away, they move to other countries, leaving their parents to fend for themselves in many instances. And guardianship is great on paper. Guardianship works perfectly when a loving, trusting family member or other trusted friend is named as the guardian. What I discovered after eight long years of looking into this topic is that judges now aren't always assigning a, a loving family member, excuse me. They are instead deciding that if a case comes to their courtroom, well, the family must be dysfunctional. They can't figure out what to do on their own. So the judges turn to complete strangers people who call themselves a guardian or a conservator, they call it in some states. And so a total stranger becomes appointed to take care of the at-risk person, and that's when the problems can start.

Larry (05:07):

What inspired you to, to study this problem and write about it?

Diane Dimond (05:13):

Well, a, a friend called me and told me what was happening to her father that that case happened to be in the state of New Mexico. And I tried to look into it and I couldn't because guardianship conservatorship, again, it's called in some states is very secretive. It's a closed door situation. The courtroom door is closed, the case files are sealed. There's frequently a gag order put in place by the judge, because under the cloak of HIPAA medical protection, that federal law called hipaa a person's medical information is not allowed to be released. So it's, it's good in some instances, but it can also be used as a cloak to keep out prying eyes. Like a journalist who wants to know how come this doctor in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been guardian eyes, by the way, he happened to have a $7 million estate, and all of his money is being drained by court appointees so that his children are being di denied their inheritance.

Diane Dimond (06:25):

Frankly of the $7 million that he had in the beginning, there wasn't a whole lot of that left to give to his surviving children. So that was the beginning of it, Larry. And then I just, once I started writing about a case that I could get documents, that that was the case of Betty Win Stanley all the way in another state, Pennsylvania. The, the cases were so similar it just, it struck me that this must be a nationwide problem. So I got the documents in the Betty Win Stanley case. I went to a hearing. I actually snuck into a court hearing, heard enough before they kicked me out to understand the way the system works. The, the guardian eyes person, if anyone complains about the Guardian, any family member, they can be banned from seeing their loved one. The, the people who are guardians are frequently overmedicated by their guardians and the caretakers to, to keep them compliant.

Diane Dimond (07:30):

Funds that are spent on nonsensical things, you can read about it on the, on the Guardian's audits. You know, they hire dog walkers and separate pooper scoopers and personal shoppers and pool people to come and take care of a pool that nobody swims in. And so the diminishment of their estates was just astounding. And the minute I started to write about the, when Stanley case, in my syndicated column, I got flooded with people writing me from states across the country saying, please write about our case. It's very similar. I'm not allowed to see my mother. She's gonna die all alone. And it just broke my heart. So I kept digging <laugh> as simple as that.

Larry (08:16):

Can you tell us more about that case?

Diane Dimond (08:19):

The Betty Win Stanley case? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> was a a lovely woman in her early nineties. Very conversant, very conversational. I spoke to her hours on the telephone. She was a, a member of the Daughters of American Revolution. She was a chemist by trade, which was very unusual for a woman of that age. Her husband had died after 70 years of marriage, and she lived in the Masonic Masonic Village in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And after her husband died there, she didn't wanna stay. She wanted to go and live with two of her children in Maryland. Another son who lived in upstate Pennsylvania had apparently a simmering grudge against his siblings. And he, in effect, said, over my dead body. And he filed for his mother to be guardian within three weeks of her becoming a, a widow. So the state of Pennsylvania had a hold on her and would not let her go. And it came as no surprise to me. She had a $2 million estate. You know, people who don't have money aren't guardian. Apparently the guardian system doesn't really care about the myriad of people sleeping on the streets here in New York City or in Los Angeles or Chicago. They care about people with money mm-hmm.

Larry (09:45):

<Affirmative>.

Diane Dimond (09:45):

And as I followed the case, and I got court documents from her attorney probably shouldn't have given them to me, but she did. I could track the number of dollars that was going and going and going out of that estate. The guardian herself was charging $600 an hour, and that was to open Betty's mail, take phone calls from Betty's family if the phone call took 12 minutes, she charged for the whole hour, et cetera, et cetera. So, I, I wr I wrote several columns about that particular case. And I, I'm sad to say that Betty died alone at the Masonic Village during the Covid Pandemic.

Larry (10:35):

Wow.

Diane Dimond (10:36):

Yeah.

Larry (10:37):

What, what court handles conservatorship.

Diane Dimond (10:42):

That's such an important question. I'm glad you asked it. It's, it's called a Court of Equity. And in Pennsylvania, they called it the Widows and Orphans Court. In other places, they call it the probate court or the surrogate court, but it's, it, it operates under equity court rules. And astonishingly, I have to tell you, I've been writing about crime and justice for a long time. I'd never heard of that in an equity court. It's not like a civil court. It's not like a criminal court. No due process is guaranteed. There's no trial, often there's no witnesses called. And it really pretty much runs under whatever the judge wants to do. It's called a Ponte order. I'm just gonna order this, and I I'm doing it because I can. And that's the problem as I see it with guardianship, you know, a judge gets a petition for guardianship and mostly just rubber stamps.

Diane Dimond (11:40):

It, oh, this person needs protection. Okay. They're in guardianship. But you see when that happens, Larry, the ward of the court is they lose all their civil rights. They're declared incapacitated. They can't hire their own lawyer to fight for them because they're incapacitated. They can't vote, they can't sign a contract, they can't decide where they are going to live or what doctors they see. All of that is decided by the guardian. And again, it's good if a family member is appointed guardian and can help them because they know what the elder person wants out of life. But when a stranger is appointed, it's very different.

Larry (12:23):

So the process is sort of a jumble of whatever the court decides it wants to do.

Diane Dimond (12:30):

Yes. And every state is different. It was a real challenge to write this book. I tell you, that's why I guess it took me eight years of investigation, because every state has different rules, and there's not one federal law to govern how this stuff should work. Some states, guardians don't have to be licensed or certified. They just have to be 18 years old. In a high school graduate, I found guardians who had been convicted felons. I found guardians who had 450 wards all at the same time. Now, how can one guardian take care of 450 people? The answer is they can't. So yeah, it, it is a mishmash. You're exactly right.

Larry (13:14):

So it, it's not a, a federal court, it's a state court. Right. And every state court can be different.

Diane Dimond (13:23):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Larry (13:24):

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, there's no, just to emphasize, again, there's no real process to this.

Diane Dimond (13:32):

Right. It depends on what state you're in. And, but I have to tell you, in every state that I looked into, and that was just about every state from Alaska to every, all the states it's very ill regulated. The, the guardians, the conservators, the people who are appointed by the court are largely unsupervised. They're supposed to put an audit in once a year to explain where did the ward's money go. Well, you know, lots of times those audits are never, never filed for years and years. Or if they are filed, there's no one to check them to say, wait a minute, that looks weird. We're gonna look, you know, $50,000 for what? So it's, it's it's a terrible jumble. And I'll tell you, there are a lot of activists working in this space that I can tell you, you can find out more about them on my website.

Diane Dimond (14:26):

And, and I think largely they would like the federal government to get involved. You know, the federal government will tell you, many of them will say, well, it's a state's, state's rights program. It's, it's up to the states. But the Department of Justice sends investigators into state police departments across the country that they think are violating people's civil rights. And they lay down the law and they tell them them what they have to do to fix things. Well, why can't they do that with guardianship? It just, they haven't, they hold hearings about it. Very heartbreaking hearings about it. But nothing ever gets passed.

Larry (15:05):

And it's not just a court system system. There's a guardianship business.

Diane Dimond (15:14):

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, it, i, it pains me to say, because there are some really good guardians, I, I do not condemn all guardians. And in this book, I tell you about some guardianships that work and they work well. But the, there, there is this cadre that somebody called it a cottage industry. I think that's too cute. It's, it's a cadre. It's a, it's an organized group that a lot of people say is like organized crime. It's a racket. A lot of it, you know, the conservators and the guardians and the court visitors and the guardian ad litems, and the judges and the lawyers, they all work together in specific pacs. And they do these cases over and over and over and over and over again. Many of them contribute campaign funds to the judges in the case. And lo and behold, they get the most lucrative guardianship cases. So it is, it is an industry, as you say, and it's not a positive industry. It's an a predatory group of people that nobody within the group ever stands up and points a finger of blame at someone who's doing something wrong, because they lose their place at the trough, so to speak, if they did speak up.

Larry (16:33):

So it seems like there is networking, there are referrals, there are visits to senior centers. The real estate agents and, and the guardians themselves. There are criminal guardians.

Diane Dimond (16:51):

Well, to my mind, they act in criminal ways. They take, they extort money from people. They say, you know, I'm not gonna let you see your mother if you go back to the court and complain about me. Or, or they, they charge for unreasonable amounts of money. And if someone complains about the guardian, someone in the family complains about the guardian. The guardian is entitled to hire their own lawyer to fight the family. And who pays for it? All the ward of the court, the ward's estate is literally siphoned from all sorts of different ways. And I, I'll tell you, I learned that you're talking about an industry and how they all work together. They have big conferences, these guardians, and again, many of them are very compassionate, wonderful people. But I, I heard about this system where when a, when a ward of the court becomes a ward, a guardian, a total stranger is appointed.

Diane Dimond (17:55):

They can spend their liquid money any way they want. And then when all the liquid money is gone, the checking account, the savings account, the IRAs, the whatever, they go back to the judge and they say, your Honor, she's out of money, or he is out of money, so I need to sell their house and everything in it because I need the money to pay for their care. Well, no matter that that house is bequeathed to somebody in a will, or it's part of an irrevocable trust, but the judges say, okay, break the will, break the irrevocable trust. Go ahead, sell whatever you need to sell. And so the house goes up for sale. And I've discovered that during these conferences, guardians have, it was discovered that, hey, if you also become a real estate agent, then you can get a commission on the sale of that house. So they double dip on the estate. There's a judge in Polk County, Florida, for example, this is another part of the racket, as far as I'm concerned, who has, it's, it's been reported that he buys up these houses of wards that come up for sale at vastly reduced prices, and then he flips 'em and makes a huge profit. So this is the underbelly of this protective system we have in America that really victimizes the people it's supposed to be protecting.

Larry (19:27):

Can you tell a story about one of the worst guardians?

Diane Dimond (19:33):

Oh, boy. You know, some of the worst guardians are family members. And, and the professional guardians in this racket will say, oh, you know, we're just, we are, we are here to help. You know, 'cause the, the families are so dysfunctional, and it's the families that are wrong, and we are the protectors. That's not always so, but one of the worst cases I heard of was a, a disabled man. Mickey CIO was his name, and his parents were named as the Guardians. And they didn't, he was, he was profoundly disabled, autistic, and unable to really communicate well, but they kept him locked up in his room. They would take him out into the backyard. I have photographs of it, they're not in the book, but I got them as part of my research. They take him out in the backyard naked and hose him off.

Diane Dimond (20:24):

They were reported to the welfare people, the social workers. And Mickey was taken into the hospital, severely dehydrated, malnutritioned. He, he had sepsis. It was a terrible thing. But then the judge sent him back to his parents, and within two months he was dead. That's one. Here's another one. And it's quick. There's a mechanic, a car mechanic in Texas. He was doing work on a wealthy man's fleet of classic cars. And the elderly man, a a millionaire, forgot to pay him like to the tune of 30 or $40,000. And so the mechanic went to a lawyer there in Texas and said, which, what can I do to make him pay? And the lawyer said, why don't you guardian him? You can become the guardian. And the mechanic became the guardian of this multimillionaire in Texas. He, he now was in control of all of the man's money, property, trusts, everything. And it took that multimillionaire's family a couple of years, and a lot, a lot of money to get him out of guardianship.

Larry (21:36):

It's

Diane Dimond (21:36):

Really dysfunctional.

Larry (21:37):

So there can be no rhyme or reason for someone being appointed as a guardian,

Diane Dimond (21:44):

Right? That's right. And, and some of them, I'll tell you, a lot of people need help because memory issues and whatnot. But a lot of people I talked to, like Betty Win Stanley, she wasn't an incapacitated person. She needed hearing aids, but she was not an incapacitated person. She was one of the most brilliant conversationalists I ever spoke to. So it all depends. It comes back to Larry, what's in that petition that is presented to the judge. And I discovered in case, after case after case, that those petitions frequently included great exaggerations and sometimes downright lies. And the judge, they don't have time to have a hearing and figure out if this is true or not. An officer or the court presented it to the judge, and so they take it at face value. There's a case in which a daughter was accused of stealing $1 million from her mother and refusing to take her to a doctor. Well, I looked into that case, and that was a pile of bss that mother did not have liquid. One, $1 million. All of her $5 million estate was in a horse ranch. She owned it. It was impossible to steal a million dollars. But the judge in the case took it at face value and said, okay, guardianship. And the woman was in guardianship until she died.

Larry (23:15):

So there are no laws that protect people.

Diane Dimond (23:22):

Well, there are ethical standards for lawyers aren't there, but who's gonna complain? I mean, the families complain all the time. They file ethics violation requests with the American Bar Association or with the State Judicial Board, or with the state bar Association, and nothing ever becomes of it. I, I have never seen the American Bar Association discipline or remove a member for being a a, a culprit in a guardianship case. Never. and the, the Guardianship, national Guardianship Association, same thing. The guardians get caught, they get a slap on the wrist. The judge doesn't wanna call attention to it because he or she appointed this person. And so it's like, you know, you shouldn't have done that. And then the case goes on. So the fact that people are not punished makes this a perpetuating cycle. Unfortunately. That's not to say that some guardians haven't been convicted. They have, but it, it's very few and far, far between.

Larry (24:28):

And who judges? The judges?

Diane Dimond (24:33):

Boy, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it? Who judges? The judges, I guess voters do at the time of the election. But in such a secretive system, how do you know what the judge is doing behind closed doors? He or she has perhaps put a gag order on the case. I had a case of a woman who she told there was a gag order in her case. She went and told her best friend what was happening to her. It was a common law husband. They had been together 20 years, and she said, this is what's happening to him. The friend put a little snippet on Facebook about it, and the woman was fined $25,000 for breaking the gag order. So who judges? The judges? I don't know. Where's the national Association of Jurists or there's gotta be some group somewhere. But you see, judges have immunity from prosecution. Anything they do on the bench, they cannot be prosecuted for. They can be removed. And there's a case in California, I have, where one judge was just an outrageous control freak in several different conservatorship cases. One of them involved Walt Disney's grandson. That's a fascinating case. But this jurist was finally removed from the guardianship area of court, but he wasn't fired. He was put into the family court system, <laugh>. So now he's being his control freak self over there instead of in guardianship cases.

Larry (26:10):

What about the Americans with Disabilities Act? Can't that protect people?

Diane Dimond (26:17):

Well, it's supposed to. It's supposed to. There's a wonderful organization for anyone watching this who has a disabled person in their family. It's called the Spectrum Institute. Tom Coleman is the founder of it. It's out of California, and he is a staunch supporter of the American With Disabilities Act. Anyone with a disability is supposed to get equal treatment under the law, but they don't. They, they routinely get a label of incapacitation, their civil rights taken away, and the rest is history. I'll give you a quick example. There's a young man in Staten Island, New York. When he was born, he was deprived of oxygen for a time, and he developed ce a mild case of cerebral palsy. His parents won a 1.8 or $9 million settlement for him as an infant. So because he was an infant, the court appointed a guardian for him to make sure it's the Shirley Temple Law, you know, to make sure the parents don't spend all the money.

Diane Dimond (27:21):

So the kid has a guardian until he is 18 years old. At 18, he wants to go to college. He's a a high school graduate with very good grades. Yes, he walks a little funny and he talks a little funny, but cerebral palsy doesn't affect your intellect, it just affects your motor skills. So he wants his money. He's got some plans to go to college and whatnot. And the guardian goes back to court and says to the judge, look at him, your Honor. He walks funny. And he talks, I, he, you gotta keep me on as the guardian. And the guardian did, or the judge did, kept the guardian on for seven more years, earning these fees for virtually doing nothing because he's a self-sufficient person. His name is Michael Lag. Michael didn't need a guardian. He was living his life. He was just fine.

Diane Dimond (28:14):

He wanted some money so he could get an surgery on his hand that had been deformed from Cerebral palsy. And the guardian wouldn't give him that money. So last Christmas, Michael Leg called me and he said, it's over. It's finally over. I said, Michael, what happened? He said, well, the Guardian held me up for 56,000 more dollars, and I was resisting for months and months, but I finally decided I was just gonna pay him that stupid fee and get out from under it. So there's a person with a disability protected under the American Disability Act, but for seven extra years, the judge in the case said, Nope, I'm gonna keep you in guardianship. I know. It just makes you shake your head. I'm sorry. I'm kind of a downer here. There,

Larry (29:04):

There, there are no questions to ask. I, I know. 'cause It, it just goes around in circles.

Diane Dimond (29:13):

It is a catch 22. And it's, it's sort of, it's the reason, whoops, I dropped something. The reason I picked this for a, a, a cover is that it's a double cross. You know, in your family, you might have a little disagreement about what to do with a widowed parent and the brothers and sisters. You, you can't decide. So somebody goes to a lawyer. Well, the lawyer is gonna tell you to go the legal route, you know, guardianship, it's a panacea. But the double cross happens when you get to court and you think you are gonna be named as a guardian and you aren't. And it's a terrible catch 22. You're right. And, and the biggest question, I guess is why, why isn't, why isn't this changed? Why does it keep going on like this for decades? I have cases in the book that go back to 1970s.

Diane Dimond (30:08):

And the reason is lobbyists, lobbyists from the legal community, the guardianship community, hospital community, you know, when a hospital has a patient, elderly patient who's running out of insurance, they want that person out of there. So the hospital can petition for a guardianship and frequently do so the hospital lobbyists, the, the caretakers lobbyists, the conservator lobbyists, they're all at the state houses knocking on the doors at the judiciary committee saying, Hey, no, no, no, let's keep the status quo. We are here to help. We are here to protect these people. It's the terrible families that are causing the problems. And of course, we all know that's disingenuous in a lot of cases, but that's why laws don't get changed to fix this system. And the first thing that needs to happen is make guardianship harder to establish, you know, a a piece of paper in front of a judge and all your civil rights are gone. Come on. That's gotta change. But no state has done that yet.

Larry (31:16):

Is there, is there any hope, any prospect for things to change?

Diane Dimond (31:22):

That's a real good question too. Yeah, I think over the last eight years where I've been looking at this issue there's a real grassroots movement. There's a group I told you about the Spectrum Institute. There's a group called seer, C E A r the Center for a State Administration Reform, sort of a clumsy title, but you can find 'em on Facebook. It's run by a wonderful couple. Rick and Terry Black, her father had been in a bad guardianship in Nevada, and they are astounding warriors in this fight. They go to Capitol Hill and Washington. They live in North Carolina, but they go to Washington, they go down to Florida. The worst state. Florida is the worst state for abusive guardianships. 'cause There's so many wealthy old people down there. They go to the free Britney movement in California for the Britney Spears case. They just were recently in New Mexico with me at a book signing. I had they fly all across the country, spreading the word. They, they've counseled at more than 5,000 families in how to fight this. So there, there's another group called the National Association to Stop Guardianship Abuse Nasca. It's run by a woman named Elaine Renoir. You can also find them on Facebook or go to my website. I have a,

Larry (32:48):

A

Diane Dimond (32:48):

Tab at the top that says Guardianship Central. And I've got all sorts of resources there for people who wanna know more about this, read other books about it. Although there, there isn't another book that looks at the nationwide issue, lots of articles. I have a glossary there, because when you get into the system, all these phrases are thrown at you and all these titles, and you, it, it's mind boggling. So I try to answer, you know, what each position in guardianship is. I have a frequently asked questions section. Anyway you can find information on the Spectrum Institute, seer and the National Association to stop guardianship abuse there and join, join the Fight. I wish all these groups would band together because they'd be all so much more powerful. But they have all their, their own agendas and are working toward the same thing to change the system, to make it, make it better, make it, make it so that the criminal element isn't attracted to it. You know, Larry, in states across the country, $50 billion is confiscated every single year from wards of the court. $50 billion in money trusts, property heirlooms, and expensive collections. Queen collection, everything that you own is confiscated by the court when you are put into guardianship. So <laugh>, $50 billion. Are we surprised that criminally minded have flocked to work in this system? It's money that's up for grabs in many instances because they're just unsupervised.

Larry (34:38):

You mentioned your website. What's the u r L?

Diane Dimond (34:43):

It's easy diane diamond.com, but there's no a and my last name, it's d i m o n D, so I guess www diane diamond.com. I've got lots of my past writings on this issue there. Some series that I've written, award-winning series I've written in newspapers and magazines. And so there's lots there if you really wanna educate yourself on the system. And the book includes how to protect yourself. You know, there, there are alternatives to guardianship. And while the judge doesn't really want to hear from you in court about your elderly parent or your elderly wife or husband, if you hire a lawyer and they start giving the judge alternatives to a full-blown, very strict guardianship, maybe the judge will accept one of those alternatives. There's also ways to counsel families, excuse me again, there's way ways to counsel families that no matter what your quarrel is, sit down and talk about it.

Diane Dimond (35:55):

It's so important because when you quarrel, the person who's hurt the most is the person you're trying to protect. If you go to a lawyer, you may hurt your elderly mother or father more than you can ever imagine if they get caught up in a abusive guardianship. So sit down and talk amongst yourselves. Go to family mediation. First of all, it'd be a lot cheaper because once you start getting lawyers involved, you've gotta pay a lawyer. Your siblings will probably get a lawyer, then the court provides a lawyer. I mean, it just, it becomes so expensive and you're really fighting and using up your own potential inheritance because the guardian's gonna fight you and they're gonna use your mother or father's money to fight you. And that's money that should be going to you or your children for their college education or to pay off your mortgage. This is really the largest transfer of generational wealth we've ever seen in this country. And nobody's talking about it. Nobody's talking about the civil rights violations, the American With Disability Act violations. So that's why I wrote the book. Larry,

Larry (37:11):

What do you hope the book accomplishes?

Diane Dimond (37:16):

Oh, you know, Tom Coleman, who I mentioned before, wrote a wonderful review of the book online at Good reads.com, and he said, the next time Senator Carey of the Senate Select Committee on Aging has one of these guardianship hearings. He should call Diane Diamond to the stand. Well, that I'd be glad to go testify in front of Congress, but what I really hope is that a national dialogue starts on this to make it shameful. It's shameful what is happening. And most of all, I hope that judges, lawyers, guardians, law enforcement, reads this book because if we start punishing the people who are preying on our elderly, they'll stop it. Criminals are really smart and crafty and resourceful. If something over here is going to cause me pain and punish me, then I'm gonna go do it something else. So, punish the people who are, have bastardized this system and are preying on the vulnerable.

Diane Dimond (38:29):

There is a, a guardian in Albuquerque, by the way, who she and her company, her husband was in the company. They stole $11 million from their wards, and they were finally stopped. And she went, as is in prison. Now for 47 years, there's another guardian in Nevada who was sentenced to 16 to 40 years. This woman was so mean. In fact, she was the basis for the movie. I Care a lot with Rosamond Pike. This woman, April Parks was her name, the Guardian in Nevada. She was such a battleax, that's the best word I can think of. That when she went to prison, somebody bought up her abandoned storage, storage locker. And inside, you know, they don't know what they're gonna find. They found the cremation urns of more than two dozen of her wards. She just had people cremated, didn't tell their families what was going on, didn't respectfully ship the cremains to the family.

Diane Dimond (39:35):

She put 'em in a storage locker and just left them there. So there've been a few cases in Florida where guardians have been convicted. One got eight and a half years. Another one who she had 450 wards. She put do not resuscitates on all of them. Why? Because she already had control of all their money. And if they died, who caress? I still control their money. Well, one of them needlessly died because there was a D N R on him, and she got charges filed against her. Many, many, many charges. But by the time it got to court, Larry, there was one misdemeanor count left. And that was neglect of an elderly person. And you know what she got? This is a woman who not only put a d n R on a problem ward, she put an order to cap his feeding tube. He had a swallowing issue, and he began to choke in the hospital. And the staff couldn't do anything for him because there was a D N R and there was a capped feeding tube on the guardian's order. She finally comes up for trial. One lousy misdemeanor count. She got four months probation. This is why the horrors, the human toll continues because we don't punish these people. So that's what I, that was a very long answer to your question. What do I hope to achieve with the book? That's what I hope to achieve.

Speaker 5 (41:10):

But that's why you wrote the book.

Diane Dimond (41:12):

Yeah, I don't like bullies. I don't like people who take advantage of weaker people. And that's what I saw over and over again. You know, it's like a, it's a dense topic to talk about, but the bottom line is, it's one human being preying on another. It's predators with a dollar signs in their eyes saying, oh, I gotta attach myself to this case. What can I get? I can get a house and before I sell the house, I'll just take that expensive piece of art and I'll take this coin collection. And I, I won't tell the court that I have that. It's those kind of people that just, they need to be stopped. They need to be punished.

Larry (41:57):

And the book is available

Diane Dimond (42:00):

Everywhere. <Laugh> <laugh>, you can get it online, amazon.com. Goodreads also has it for sale. I think you can get it a little bit cheaper if you go to thrift books or I always like to support independent book sellers. So go to the, your local bookstore and just ask for the book and, and they can order it. Again. It's, we are here to help when guardianship goes wrong. Thanks. Thanks for letting me do a little sales pitch there.

Larry (42:30):

Anytime. Thank you Diane, for coming on. Thank you. And bringing this topic out to the listeners, and I hope there's some action from our audience as well.

Diane Dimond (42:45):

Well, I, I know it's, it's a, it's a hard topic to hear about, but it's really important. And I thank you for giving me all this time. Nice to be with you again.

Larry (42:54):

Thank you. Thank you so much, Diane.

Diane Dimond (42:57):

See you soon.

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