Perhaps the best reason for every American to consider comprehensive estate planning, including a properly drafted revocable trust, is to reduce and control, to the extent possible, the threat of guardianship. The threat of guardianship is so profound that twice, within the past ten years, the United States Senate has conducted hearings exposing the systems of guardianship and conservatorship as threats to seniors, their liberties, their rights, and their families.
Every year, millions of elderly Americans lose virtually every freedom we hold dear in this country to guardianship. Every year, millions of dollars in assets are lost, countless millions of families torn asunder, and untold millions of lives literally stolen, legally, through living probate. The Senate, and investigative reporters throughout the U.S., have exposed a system that threatens the rights of every citizen.
Many have concluded that the archaic system of guardianship and conservatorship affords seniors citizens and their families less rights than if the senior citizen was accused of murder. The result is devastating, personally, to those whose lives are stolen from them. Many have begun to fight from their guardianship imposed nursing homes to attempt to regain their freedoms. Their consistent testimony, their enduring legacy, is that guardianship is an unimaginable threat, and that only careful, comprehensive, and skilled planning can protect you.
To fully appreciate the threat, please visit the main guardianship page, and read carefully. But perhaps more importantly, watch the videos of those affected directly, and indirectly, by this incredible threat to personal rights and liberties.
Oh, and by the way, if you have been told that your general durable power of attorney does the trick, you have been misled. It is true that a power of attorney, if accepted by every financial and government institution, can eliminate one risk of guardianship, that being the need for a decision maker at a time of illness, or incapacity, but it does nothing to discourage court imposed guardianship or prevent a guardian’s control of your assets. Please view the images on the Power of Revocable Living Trusts page for more information.
