Not too long ago the New Yorker published a piece on court-appointed “guardians” who steal from the elderly (“How the Elderly Lose Their Rights”). The article was full of heartbreaking personal stories and troubling legal shenanigans, many of them enabled by laws which seem to have been designed without the best interests of the elderly in mind. As the story drew near its close, I found myself quickly reviewing where my and my husband’s grandparents lived, and how they were situated, and breathing a sigh of relief at the consideration that nothing like that was likely to happen to them.
But the piece was troubling to say the least; and for hours after I had set it aside, one lingering sentence struck me as especially poignant: the notion, trumpeted by a particularly appalling “guardian,” that family members, even when present in an elderly person’s life, were not to be trusted. “They just want the money,” was the quote attributed to him. (And guardians don’t? Hm …)
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