Courtesy Chalmers Butterfield.jpg via Wikimedia

As my colleague Gretchen Rachel Hammond says in this piece just published by Daily Kos, the biggest fear many of us face about becoming older isn’t death — it’s ending up in a nursing home.

In Michigan, this fate isn’t just reserved for people who are too ill to live alone and/or who haven’t taken precautions, like executing a power of attorney, to preserve their independence. Instead, at least in Oakland County, it can happen to anyone who catches the eye of a greedy nursing home, the wrong public “guardian,” and an uncaring probate court judge.

That’s what happened to Virgina Wahab, who spent the majority of the last three years of her life locked up, against her will, by an Oakland County nursing home under the authority of a court-appointed guardian whom she had never met.

Virginia had a power of attorney naming her daughter, Mimi, as her legal representative. But when Mimi was traveling between her homes in the US and France to settle her own affairs so she could come home and take care of Virginia, the nursing home bill was paid late. And so the nursing home, Lourdes Senior Community, decided to hold Virginia hostage until Mimi paid up.

Mimi spent roughly two years trying to save her mom. During most of that time she was forbidden from even seeing Virginia. Then, just eight months after Virginia was finally freed, she passed away. Now, Mimi is suing, and I can only hope that everyone involved in this atrocity is made to pay in the only way they’ll understand: from the bottom of their corrupt little pockets.

This is what happened when Mimi and Virginia were reunited for the first time in two years during one of the court hearings where Mimi was fighting for Virginia’s release. Watch how callously the attorney for Virginia’s “guardian” separates them. What would you do if your mother was kidnapped to pay a nursing home bill?

Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office is among the participants in a new Elder Abuse Task Force that’s supposed to look into, and correct, the many ways our elders are abused in Michigan. But they have seemed reluctant to actively investigate, let alone charge, probate judges who are ignoring the laws designed to protect our state’s elderly citizens.

Virginia and Mimi are far from the only elders and families caught in this hideous web of greed and possible corruption. This case in Macomb County, in which a for-profit guardian company BUILT A WALL around an elderly couple’s house to keep them separated from their adult children, seems to be coming to a happy ending thanks to coverage from WXYZ. Guardian abuse nationwide was covered in a major piece by The New Yorker just two years ago.

Very soon now, Gretchen Rachel Hammond will publish the results of her two-year investigation of the guardian abuse shitshow that takes place in Oakland County’s probate courts every day. But we don’t have to wait to demand #justiceforvirginia.

Call Attorney General Nessel’s office today: 517–335–7622. Ask when her office will open the statewide investigation we need into the workings of our 83 county probate courts to make sure every court is obeying the law and protecting our elders.

Remember — if you live long enough, you’re going to get old. And if you live in Michigan (at least in Oakland and Macomb counties), you can’t count on the legal system to follow the law and respect your rights.