How Families Lose
​Their Rights
by Jerry D. Pipes
Retired Superintendent of Schools,
​Northwest Tuscon, AZ

Picturephoto from commons

“Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it.”

“Guardianship derives from the state’s parents patriae power, its duty to act as a parent for those considered too vulnerable to care for themselves. “The King shall have the custody of the lands of natural fools, taking the profits of them without waste or destruction, and shall find them their necessaries,” reads the English statute De Prerogative Regis, from 1324. The law was imported to the colonies—guardianship is still controlled by state, not federal, law—and has remained largely intact for the past eight hundred years. It establishes a relationship between ward and guardian that is rooted in trust.” Rachel Aviv New Yorker Magazine. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

The October 9, 2017 New Yorker Magazine is a must read for all who have families and assets earned over a life well lived. Guardianship is not just for elders. It is a form or human trafficking that can seize your children and grandchildren and it is a legal practice that amounts to the sale of human cargo and a conspiracy Once the hooks of social worker and lawyers close in on your loved ones and your assets, it is usually too late. The courts rarely intervene and Congress is not often willing to legislate matters that belong to the states

A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act. --Don DeLillo, Libra

My wife and I were shocked when we were threatened with arrest by the guardians of a friend who was a retired police lieutenant.  We were told that we could not talk to the police and were threatened with an $80,000 fine if we violated the judge’s gag order. This can happen to anyone who has assets, slips and falls in a public place, or is a parent of a child who is disruptive in public.

Dr. Jerry D. Pipes
Retired Superintendent of Schools
Northwest Tucson

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