February 1, 2020
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families, financial exploitation, Guardianship Abuse, The PPJ Gazette
BAR unions, elder abuse, elder rights, estate theft, Estates and Trusts, families, guardian abuse, guardian ad litem, HEALTH, incapacitated person, isolating elders, The PPJ Gazette, VCU Health, Virginia BAR Association, virginia state guardianship laws, wills
By Bridget Balch
For the third year, Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria, proposed a bill intended to strengthen family members’ and loved ones’ rights to visit adults who are under legal guardianship. After spending a year working with numerous stakeholder groups to refine the bill into something everyone agreed upon, he was surprised when a lawyer from the Virginia Bar Association stood in opposition during the bill’s subcommittee hearing.
Levine’s first attempt at the bill was inspired by a constituent, Mike Jacobs, who came to Levine with a story about how he had been unfairly banned from seeing his longtime partner, Jane Lopez, who had Alzheimer’s disease, by an attorney serving as Lopez’s legal guardian, Levine said.
Shannon Laymon-Pecoraro, an elder attorney representing the Wills, Estates and Trusts Section of the state bar, objected to several parts of the bill. Among them is a provision that would place greater emphasis on the guardian ad litem determining whether any conflicts of interest exist among the parties in the guardianship case. A guardian ad litem is an attorney appointed by the court to investigate a guardianship case and represent the allegedly incapacitated person’s best interests.
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