Talking About Conservatorships Without Breaking The Ban

I have received lots of e-mails about the current proceedings in regards to she who shall not be named. Without mentioning her name, lets take a minute and talk about conservatorships. For the sake of clarity, lets call our subject BS. I know some of you don't really know much about conservatorships, but honestly, you can get a much more elementary definition of one somewhere else other than here. This is what fascinates me legally about this case, and something which happened which is very rare.

The first thing you need to know about anything is that a person can do whatever the hell they want with their money and their life as long as they are competent to do so. You might think that your 80 year old dad is crazy for spending millions on the 22 year old hooker he met in Vegas, but unless he is crazy the court isn't going to stop dear old dad from blowing his millions. Yes, someone might come on here and say something about him being influenced and yada yada yada. Yes, it is in the code, but it is not reality.

Therefore that brings us to BS. She can do whatever the hell she wants with her money and do whatever the hell she wants to do to herself. The only chance you have is to have someone declare her incompetent or get her to check into a mental facility on her own. Voila. They talked her into it. Now comes the very rare part.

The way it works with conservatorship hearings in LA is this. If there is an emergency you file an ex-parte application with the court and 99.999999999999999% of the time the court schedules a hearing for within 5 days of the application. 99.999999999999999999999% of the time they deny the temporary conservatorship until AFTER this hearing within 5 days. Why do they deny it? Because the court is taking away the rights of someone and that someone isn't there to say no. You can do a ton of damage in 5 days. In BS' case though, the court said yes, and then set a hearing for a few days later. They said yes. I have NEVER heard a yes until this case. Granted I don't do very many, but it is freaking rare.

Now, during that 5 days you let BS know what is going on, and the court sends out an attorney who is there for the crazy person. Most of the time the crazy person can't afford a lawyer and so the court sends someone out to determine if they are indeed crazy and to make sure they are represented. This is a very quick turnaround. In BS' case I believe it was 3 days, 2 of which were the weekend.

We call the attorney representing the crazy person a PVP attorney. At some point BS hired her own attorney, BUT the report of the PVP attorney will still carry the most weight. The PVP attorney in this case though BS was crazy and so allowed BS' dad and his lawyer to act as temporary conservators of the person and estate. That means they get to be in charge of her medical decisions (person) and money (estate).

A temporary conservatorship generally expires within 90 days, but actually expires at the time of the permanent conservatorship hearing. That hearing is more like a trial and the arguments of the attorneys will be supplemented by the report of a probate investigator. That person normally checks out the house of the conservator (BS' dad) and the living conditions of the conservatee (BS). They want to make sure that the conservatee is not being locked up in the cupboard under the stairs.

At this point BS' dad won't have to account for any money he is spending or anything like that. It will just be a decision whether to keep the Conservatorship in place permanently. When I say permanently, what I mean is until BS can find enough doctors who say she isn't crazy. Then she would ask to have the Conservatorship terminated. At that point she would also ask for an accounting of everything dad did, and attorneys would all clamor for their fees. An accounting would also be required if it lasts longer than a year.

This conservatorship will not last long at all. Courts hate them unless they are totally necessary. BS will find 100 doctors who will testify she is sane. At the very worst what will happen is that it may stay in place, but an independent person would be named conservator. Now I kept using the word crazy, but it can be as simple as a person who doesn't remember what they own or what they have or how to manage it. You usually see that with the elderly. BS isn't old and crazy is much easier to type.