How the Elderly Lose Their Rights

Rachel Aviv, How the Elderly Lose Their Rights. Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent–and reap a profit from it. The New Yorker, 9 October 2017. “For years, Rudy North woke up at 9 A.M. and read the Las Vegas Review-Journal while eating a piece of toast…. Rennie, his wife of fifty-seven years, was slower to rise. She was recovering from lymphoma and suffered from neuropathy so severe that her legs felt like sausages…. On the Friday before Labor Day, 2013, the Norths had just finished their toast when a nurse, who visited five times a week to help Rennie bathe and dress, came to their house, in Sun City Aliante, an ‘active adult’ community in Las Vegas…. Rudy chatted with the nurse in the kitchen for twenty minutes, joking about marriage and laundry, until there was a knock at the door. A stocky woman with shiny black hair introduced herself as April Parks, the owner of the company A Private Professional Guardian. She was accompanied by three colleagues, who didn’t give their names. Parks told the Norths that she had an order from the Clark County Family Court to ‘remove’ them from their home. She would be taking them to an assisted-living facility. ‘Go and gather your things,’ she said. Rennie began crying. ‘This is my home,’ she said.”

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