Guardianship Activist

— Marian Kornicki

The following is what happened to me and my parents and it is going on to this day:

In January, 2005, my father filed a complaint with the Nassau County, New York District Attorney against my sister, who he had discovered had been embezzling millions of dollars from my parents and me. The Nassau DA began an investigation which included a forensic accounting.

Around the same time, an estates attorney recommended that my father and I file a petition to become co-guardians for my mother. We had never heard of guardianship. My dad had a POA for my mother and I was the trustee of the lifetime trust he had set up for her. My mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1997 by her cardiologist and internist and then more formally by a neurologist in 1999.

However, instead of appointing us as co-guardians, a Nassau County Judge first appointed a lawyer for my mother, a bull in a china shop and an examiner. They came to my parents’ house and immediately started attacking us. The lawyer went into my parents’ bedroom where my mom was sleeping in her hospital bed and read a document to my mother who had very advanced dementia. She came back another time with a court-appointed social worker and a translator and bullied her way into the complex and into the house. When my father and I came in from grocery shopping there they were at the dining room table.

They apparently called the lawyer representing us in the guardianship filing and told him they were not going to recommend us as guardians for my mother to the judge. We wanted to withdraw our petition. We were told we could not. Think 1984 and George Orwell or the Handmaiden’s Tale.

Without a hearing, the judge appointed total strangers as my mother’s guardians. Both were private lawyers and one was also the personal needs guardian because while I waiting in a cubicle with my parents’ friend, this lawyer came in and said if I didn’t agree to be co-guardians for personal needs with my sister the judge was appointing the lawyer and so she did.

The judge, the lawyers now controlled all of my parents’ assets and gave my sister access to my parents’ assets and had no interest in seeing that she return what she stole. Nor did they concern themselves with having anything to do with my mother’s needs. My father continued to take care of mother and now lost control of his life’s savings. He had a heart attack. Months later, my sister was arrested for grand larceny, but the court-appointed guardians did not cooperate with the DA. They ignored the Nassau District Attorney.

They created chaos and allowed my sister to continue hers. As the DA said, “she is a professional criminal. Everything in my life and my parents’ life became a nightmare. Different court-appointed guardians, all private lawyers cycled in and out of our lives billing as they cycled. There was nothing for them to do so they billed us for looking at our grocery receipts, they convened hearings, they spoke to each other, they hired their friends as lawyers and accountants. They defamed my parents and me.

My dad had another heart attack and this time died. I returned to New York to plan his funeral. I stayed to care for my mother and decided to file for guardianship. I was sure I would be appointed and bring my mom back to California. I was merely appointed personal needs guardian. The court-appointed lawyers still controlled all of her assets, including the house and continued to pay themselves lavishly in this corrupt industry. For example, they hired their own accountants.

One of them was paid $12,000 in ten months for looking at the same brokerage account. Another billed $100,000 for looking over the forensic accounting my accountant gave him. There was another accountant hired just because he was a friend. They refused to pay my dad’s accountant who presented the most modest bills for preparing my mother’s tax returns after they forced him to explain what he did and what he charged. They then said he needed to submit his bills directly to the judge. They moved accounts to new institutions. Meanwhile my mother’s social security check and her retirement distribution was being deposited into a guardianship checking account, but none of it was being used on behalf of my mother. One took a $90,000 distribution from my mother’s retirement account and my mother’s social security was reduced. She parked money in a CD and opened a checking account at another bank. Over time, the guardians depleted her estate. Every time they wrote a check, they wrote “it is in the best interest of the ward.” They scheduled court proceedings from 2005 to 2018. All of this took place with the approval of all the judges.

There is so much more including the ongoing harassment by my sister and her attorney. She came to the house after I was appointed guardian for personal needs and began throwing a pillow in my mother’s face and threw herself on the floor and called her lawyer. Her lawyer said she was suicidal and going to be hospitalized. I had to call the police because we were at risk from her and her husband who was following me around the house. She didn’t try to visit again for 6 years when there was a new guardian and a new judge and she started again asking to have visits even though it was a judge who said she could.

My parents are gone and they won’t let go. There are 5 lawyers and an accountant they hired and they want 1/3 of my father’s estate, even though my dad had a life time trust for my mom in his will they filed a right of election and have not given me the deed to my parents’ house. They wanted to do a reverse mortgage on the house. The court-appointed guard refused to reimburse me for my mom’s health care aides and wanted to come to the house with one of the court-examiner to do an inventory of what was in the house charging us more than the value of what was in the house.

It is clear that these judges, lawyers and accountants have improperly used my mother’s guardianship as a criminal enterprise to defraud me and my family in violation of the RICO statute. There is abuse of process, theft, fraud, conversion, civil conspiracy, unjust enrichment and negligence.

Guardianship. Abolish. Intervention. Now.

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