Home for the Holiday's ... Gather Critical Information on Your Aging Parents
Written by Kevin K. Johnson, CSA
Many years ago I was recruited out of my home town of Cleveland, Ohio and for the next 18 years I only saw my parents periodically; holidays, mother’s day, father’s day, etc… When I called my parents from out-of-town, they always said they were “fine”, “wonderful”, “doing well”. After a few years, when I visited them for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas, it became clear to me that they were NOT “fine”, “wonderful”, and “doing well”!
Blogger Awards for You and Me!
Thank you “Let’s Talk About Family” fellow-blogger for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger Award. That’s the kind of feedback I like! More importantly, everyone should check out her Blog because her insights into the ups, and downs, of caring for parents is very insightful and well worth following.
I have been so blessed by the input I receive from the many Blogs that I follow.
How The iPad Is Saving The Elderly From Dementia | Cult of Mac
See on Scoop.it – Mobile Social Work
While most of us use our iPads for browsing the web, watching YouTube videos, or playing Words With Friends, others actually put Apple’s popular tablet to good use. Cambridge Cognition, a U.K.-based company that delivers the world’s leading cognitive tests, has developed an app called CANTABmobile which helps doctors detect dementia in its earliest stages, when treatment is most beneficial.
Dementia friendly?
The idea of society being dementia friendly, in the same way it accommodates others with disabilities, for example the sight impaired or people in wheelchairs, is something to aspire to. In a report Creating Dementia Friendly Physical & Social Environments: A new resource for residential & respite care facilities funded by the Victorian government it says a dementia friendly environment is one that is…
Art Therapy
Inclusion of art therapy in the Assisted Living Facilities has positive effects on the elderly. Socialization, self-esteem, and memory retrieval are enhanced by the art experience. In addition, the staff and administrators of the Assisted Living Facility find art therapy to be valuable and arranged to continue the program. Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that encourages self-expression through an art for like painting or drawing.
Elder Abuse Epidemic
Elder abuse has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. Due to social isolation, mental and physical impairment, elders are more vulnerable than others. Locations of abuse are many and include the home, nursing homes, assisted living facilities or the public. Due to the occasionally stressful demands of caregivers for the elderly, caregivers sometimes find relief in taking advantage of someone that is more vulnerable.
Blogger Awards for You and Me!
Thank you “Let’s Talk About Family” fellow-blogger for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger Award. That’s the kind of feedback I like! More importantly, everyone should check out her Blog because her insights into the ups, and downs, of caring for parents is very insightful and well worth following.
I have been so blessed by the input I receive from the many Blogs that I follow.
Guardianship Fraud Hotline - Clerk & Comptroller, Palm Beach County
Special Thanks to Clerk Bock of the Division of Inspector General for combatting this problem ! Finally there is a light at the end of the tunnel !
Guardianship Fraud Hotline in Palm Beach County !
“Using the Guardianship Fraud Hotline, you can anonymously report potential incidents of financial fraud or waste involving court-appointed guardianships over elderly, minor children and incapacitated individuals.
Muhlenberg Woman Beaten By Daughter With Meat Tenderizing Mallet
Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Lehigh County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Editor’s note: Nothing says I love you Mom like a couple whacks with a mallet! WTH!
A 79-year-old Muhlenberg Township woman was beaten by her 55-year-old daughter with a meat tenderizing mallet in the daughter’s Lehigh County residence, state police said Tuesday.
Teresa Kauffman was taken by ambulance to Lehigh Valley Hospital…
Second Parent Dies From Fire Reportedly Set By Developmentally-Disabled Daughter
RIVERSIDE (CBS) — A second parent has died as the result of a fire officials in Riverside say was set by the couple’s developmentally-disabled daughter.
Linda Clark, 73, died Friday morning from injuries suffered in the April 20 fire at the home she shared with her husband, Harley R. Clark, who died in the blaze.
Daughter, Deborah Marie Clark, 46, was arrested after returning to the residence, according to Riverside police Sgt.
You Gotta Believe! But What’s the Legal Standard for Putative Spouses?
Greed, Elder Abuse, or Both?
A lottery win has spawned a financial elder abuse claim: A mother is accusing her son of stealing her $51 million lottery jackpot. As ABCnews.com reports, financial elder abuse is a growing problem and, this lottery case notwithstanding, often in the shadows because the elderly are too embarrassed to admit they’ve been scammed.
Wear Purple and Support World Elder Abuse Awareness Day!
June 15th is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. Take an active role in protecting vulnerable and older adults! Click here to watch a video of DHHS Secretary, Al Delia, speak on Elder Abuse awareness.
The NC Division of Aging and Adult Services posted these suggestions on their website:
Show the world that you care. Wear something purple to observe World Elder Abuse Awareness Day on June 15, 2012.
Who will protect your Mom or Dad?
courtesy of www.robertreeveslaw.com
Every one of our mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, sisters and brothers, children, friends, and colleagues will get old. So will you and I. We will have lived but then sadly, we will die. Did our names make it into a book, a billboard, the newspaper, or get carved into a stone? Will it matter to anyone now or when we are gone?
Looking Out for Elder Abuse
Knowing the facts about elder abuse is an essential part of having an elderly loved one receiving care. It comes in many forms, and being able to recognize this can help your loved one to remain safe and happy. Elder abuse goes far beyond physical abuse. While bruises, limping, and broken bones might be the hallmark signs of physical abuse, the majority of actual abuse is more silent and invisible.
California Courts Officially Recognize a new Wrong: Intentional Interference with an Expected Inheritance
Here is a scenario to consider: *
Molly and Sandy have been sharing their lives together for ten years. Molly suddenly learns that she has a rare, life-threatening disease. It is extremely likely that Molly will die within one week. Molly elects to undergo radical surgery which, if successful, would likely increase her life expectancy by as much as a year.
Dotty the Artist : A video
Related articles
- Dotty Colors, On Her Own! (babyboomersandmore.com)
- Memory Enhancers for Someone With Alzheimer’s (How to prolong independence for someone with early signs of dementia) (laurenwatral.wordpress.com)
- Dementia Journal (allthingsdementia.com)
- Book report: “The 36-Hour Day” (the-military-guide.com)
- Caregiver’s anguish: ‘I need to be 2 people’ (ajc.com)
- Alzheimer\’s Reading Room: Learning How to Use Alzheimer\’s World to Your Advantage (babyboomersandmore.com)
- The Contentious Alzheimers Patient: You Can Be Right or You Can Have Peace (babyboomersandmore.com)
- Alzheimers Test, the Alzheimers Questionnaire Alzheimers Reading Room (babyboomersandmore.com)
- The Everyday “I Love You” (patheos.com)
- Communicating in Alzheimer\’s World | Alzheimer\’s Reading Room (babyboomersandmore.com)
Like this:
Fear of Living by Ron Kirkwood
Until recently, I never understood the name my Dad chose for his book.
Like this:
“Do my father’s memory problems prevent him from writing a legally binding Will?” Dr.Jane Lonie
For any will to be legally binding, its author must have (or be deemed to have had) the ability to understand the nature and effect of their will at the time of it’s writing. The capacity to understand the nature and effect of a will at the time of writing is referred to as ‘Testamentary Capacity’.
The same applies where an individual is looking to amend an existing will. He or she must be deemed to have testamentary capacity in order to make such changes in a legally binding manner.
Testamentary capacity is therefore determined by an individual’s ability to understand the nature and the effect of their will at the time that the will is made. In the vast majority of cases where the integrity of brain function is not in question, there is no need for an individual to undergo formal assessment of their testamentary capacity. However, where further evaluation is required in order to establish testamentary capacity, Clinical Neuropsychologists are arguably best placed of all clinicians to perform this type of evaluation and to provide expert opinion.
Having a diagnosis of dementia or any other condition affecting your thinking ability does not automatically negate your ability to write a legally binding will. The testamentary capacity of an individual with dementia will depend on a number of matters including:
- How long they have suffered with dementia.
- The severity of their cognitive losses.
- The type of thinking difficulties they experience (i.e. whether these relate to memory or language function).
- The level of complexity of their estate.
In some cases, it may be possible to facilitate the testamentary capacity of an individual via the adoption of strategies to support their function in the affected area of thinking.
Some people get help from friends or family or simply write their will themselves. The advantage of seeking professional advice is that a proper capacity assessment can be undertaken at or close to the time that the will is written, forming a safeguard against any future challenges on grounds of incapacity.
Where wills are challenged on grounds of an absence of testamentary capacity, Clinical Neuropsychologists may be called upon to provide an expert opinion on a retrospective basis. In such cases, Clinical Neuropsychologists integrate specialist knowledge of the symptoms and course of brain diseases with details / circumstances of their client, to infer the likelihood of testamentary capacity at the time the will was written.
Like this:
Top Weekend Reading Picks
My Mother’s Caregiver Top Weekend Reading Picks for this week are:
Interesting info about the brain and how it works:
http://www.mindcafe.org/2008/10/02/9-brain-habits-you-did-not-realize-you-had/
A great resource for our American readers about elder issues, caregiving and elder abuse, a blog dedicated to a father’s memory. Lots of good reading here:
http://larkkirkwood.wordpress.com/
Issues faced by long distance caregivers:
http://thedailynewsonline.com/lifestyles/article_e7dcf266-6f12-11e1-90c9-0019bb2963f4.html
New legislation proposed in Canada to create tougher sentences for crimes committed against vulnerable seniors:
State Bar rejects complaint against lawyer Richard Horne in fake will case
Reblogged from http://blog.al.com/live/2012/04/state_bar_rejects_complaint_ag.html#comment-20095839
MOBILE, Alabama — The Alabama State Bar has determined that there is insufficient evidence to discipline lawyer Richard Horne, whom a local insurance agent had accused of ethical lapses related to a will that a jury determined was a fake. A one-page letter from the general counsel’s office of the State Bar informed the complainant, David Stroecker, that it was not taking action.
Missouri Senate Backs Expansion of Elder Abuse Law
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – The Missouri Senate has endorsed a bill expanding the state’s elder abuse law to protect older citizens from financial exploitation.
The chamber gave the measure first-round approval Tuesday.
The bill makes it a crime for those with authority over an elderly person to take advantage of that person’s state of mind for financial gain. The provision would apply to people who have guardianship, power of attorney or some other financial management role for seniors.
Amazing! Missouri has very little compassion, in general, from what I have seen at least for its' senior population.
Human trafficking: It ain’t just for sex anymore : Marti Oakley
Marti Oakley (c)copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
“Again, once this “guardianship” has been sanctioned by the cooperating probate judge, the victim loses all rights of any kind whatsoever and is for all intents and purposes “dead in the law”. The guardian/conservator now legally owns the victim and can avail themselves of all of the victim’s assets of any kind. ”
When we think of human trafficking most of us immediately assume that this occurs only in the arena of sexual exploitation. At some point in time this may have been true. Today, human trafficking encompasses many forms and there is not one of us who can safely assume that we would somehow be exempt from any type of human trafficking.
While the sexual exploitation and trafficking for the purposes of sex is often highlighted in MSM, rarely do they ever report on the trafficking that occurs courtesy of our courts, unscrupulous politicians and yes, even those demi-gods….doctors, therapists and psychiatrists. There is money to be made exploiting the vulnerable, the sick, the weak, the aging (with assets) and even children who have been unfortunate enough to become wards of the state and forced into foster care. While sexual activity may not be the cause and concern in these instances, what happens to these individuals is no less a form of human trafficking for profit.
In each of the above stated groups, the trafficking of human beings for profit is facilitated by social service agencies, corrupt probate courts, and family courts. To be declared a “ward of the state”, is to be housed by, and to receive necessities and protection of the government. It also means to lose any and all rights of any kind, whatsoever. The “state” now owns what has become a chattel property and may do with that property whatever it desires to do. This oftentimes includes a form of leasing out the ward for pharmaceutical experimentation and profit, as was exposed in Florida and Alaska, just to name two, over the last several years resulting in the exposure of massive Medicaid fraud as foster children are routinely forced to take off-label high gear psychotropic drugs and vaccines. In a May, 2009 article, :author Evelyn Pringle notes:
“It is hard to come up with an adjective that adequately conveys the horror this is inflicting on America’s children and youth. Suffice it to say that when the country wakes up to the carnage this has caused, it will be recognized as the largest iatrogenic (doctor caused) public health disaster in history.”
These days, it seems more evident that the concern for children is not so much their safety and well-being, but rather; How much are they worth in the foster care system? As with our public school systems, big pharma is more than willing to pay for every child added to the forced drugging programs.
- Trafficking of the elderly (with assets)
The human trafficking of the elderly (with assets) has become a national epidemic and disgrace. Probate courts routinely work with predatory professional guardians, payrolling attorneys, owners of notoriously abusive care facilities and social agencies to target and then obtain guardianship/conservatorship of the elderly whose only crime was to age with assets. These predatory professional guardians, strangers to the victim and their families, make their living robbing the estates of their victims.
Again, once this “guardianship” has been sanctioned by the cooperating probate judge, the victim loses all rights of any kind whatsoever and is for all intents and purposes “dead in the law”. The guardian/conservator now legally owns the victim and can avail themselves of all of the victim’s assets of any kind. These predators can and do instruct doctors to begin the administering of psychotropic medications not approved for use on the elderly, and many of the doctors who are also tapping the estate for inflated billing charges, comply with these requests.
Once legally kidnapped with the help of the cooperating probate judge and the local police department who conduct the kidnapping as a swat team raid, the victim is quickly housed in a participating facility and started on a drug regime that is seldom called for.
The drugs are especially useful when administered just prior to what is laughingly called a “competency hearing”.
The profits from human trafficking of the aging (with assets) was documented in the 2007 GAO report with estimates well over a billion in stolen assets obtained by professional predatory guardians/conservators and some family members across 48 states, although the GAO focused on only 20 cases:
“The GAO focused on cases in which a family member, agency, or private business was appointed as a guardian. In 20 cases, guardians appointed and approved by courts stole $5.4 million in assets from 158 incapacitated adults. ”
The recent Committee on Aging hearing very carefully orchestrated and scripted the public hearing to make it appear that the abuse is most always at the hands of family and friends. In truth, the largest percentage of cases of exploitation are committed by professional strangers who have a well established system in place with the same predators routinely involved in these deadly guardianships as is exemplified when examining the cases in a specific geographical area. The same judges, the same predatory professional guardians, the same payrolling attorneys and the same doctors and participating facilities, all involved in one predatory case after another. The staged committee hearing barely touched on this aspect of exploitation of the elderly, if at all.
What are you worth as a prisoner?
When John Ashcroft, the former Attorney General for the US under GW Bush, handed down sentencing guidelines to the states, not one state refused those guidelines even though Ashcroft was not lawfully empowered to make such demands. The result has been a explosion in the number of individuals held in federal and state prisons, many for what should have been short term sentences for minor crimes. This allowed Merrill Lynch to begin selling prisoner bonds, globally. And ML isn’t the only company engaged in the profitable human trafficking trade of selling human beings on the open market.
The sentencing guidelines were needed to confirm that prisoner X would be available for exploitation and forced labor for a guaranteed length of time. The whole system is run by
C.J.T.S. a corporation dedicated to the tracking and coding of prisoners and provides the software to do it. Using this system and one called CUSIP:
From Owners of the American Prison System
“a nine digit number (called Ordnance Number) is issued for the Certificate of Stocks going internationally to ANNA (Lynn’s note: see link for ANNA which is in Brussels, Belgium at www.cusip.com ). These Securities are sold through the Commodity and Security Exchange. The bottom line is they are selling stocks in the prison system. The jails are referred to as Warehouses and the prisoners are called Goods”
“From the moment a person is arrested for any reason, the prisoner cash register starts ringing. This can be for something as simple as a traffic ticket. The law enforcement department making the arrest assigns a pre-defined code to the charges being made. This code has a monetary value and the money starts rolling from this point on all the way through the system. Publicly traded prisoner stocks, took a tumble in 2008, but look as if they will rebound as the Obama Administration along with Senators McCain and Lieberman, and others such as Graham and Shumer devise plans to increase ever greater numbers of US citizens under the false flag of national security.”
Prisoners can also be subjected to forced drugging, pharmaceutical experimentation or exposure to pathogens among many other things.
Are you safe?
Never think for a moment that you are safe from the predator class. If anyone sees the opportunity to make a buck off you, your kids, your parents or anyone for that matter, you can quickly find yourself totally disenfranchised, without rights, without defense and without any means of extricating yourself from the system.
Human trafficking has evolved. We are now all considered commodities to be sold, traded, and used on the global market and as the global demand for organ transplants increases any one of us could be worth more dead than alive. We have been totally devalued as human beings and rendered as commodities. Our own government refers to us as “human capital, or as human expenditures” as if we were used cars sitting on a government sale lot.
___________________
Arizona and exploitation of vulnerable adults in probate courts
- What is a “ward” ?
a. Law A minor or incompetent person placed under the care or protection of a guardian or court.b. A person under the protection or care of another.7. The state of being under guard; custody.8. The act of guarding or protecting; guardianship.
chat·tel
n.
1. Law An article of movable personal property.
2. A slave.
Massive Medicaid Fraud Exposed in Psychiatric Drugging of Kids in US
Legally kidnapped: PBS reports Forced drugging of foster care kids
Prisoners of the system: Corporate organized crime runs the system of human trafficking for profit slave labor in Georgia.
Related articles
- Human Trafficking and the Elderly (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
- The Signs Are Incontrovertible (hopeforslaves.com)
- Expo sheds light on prevalence of human trafficking in NC (charlotte.news14.com)
- Human Trafficking Is… (hopeforslaves.com)
- Facts about human trafficking (hopeforslaves.com)
- Google Trends Say Human Trafficking is Gaining Attention; Author Tackles this Difficult Subject in New Novel (prweb.com)
Lark E. Kirkwood
