6-8-05 An attorney’s assistant related a compelling story to us today.

She had been a good friend of an elderly woman who owned her own house and had good financial security, and was still able to manage her own affairs very nicely. This elderly lady had no one else in her life. A social worker looked in on her from time to time, who recommended that she visit the local Palo Alto Senior Center, Avenida. This was in Santa Clara County. The Senior Center has volunteer attorneys that provide free legal help.

Our paralegal friend told us that she went on a trip and came back only two weeks later and the lady had been conserved by a bank vice president that she had never laid eyes on.. Her house had already been put on the market and her assets taken over, supposedly to pay for the conservatorship costs. This was not a bank repossession of her house. It was a repossession of her. Apparently the lawyer from the senior center set her up, and a judge granted the conservatorship on a fast track, because it normally takes six weeks for the probate investigator to do her report. She was placed in a nursing home, which she ran away from and tried to go back to her house. She couldn’t get in because the house was up for sale. She died two days later. This all happened in the space of two weeks, it was that fast. The bank VP apparently made a lot of money on this because the woman had a large trust fund. If we received any more details about this case we will report them. But from the details we have this was another routine robbery murder in probate court. This story was never told before.