by Una Tiers
“The accounts weren’t split?”
“No, no they said the accounts were hers and I didn’t have money to get a lawyer because the accounts were closed. I thought it would blow over and they would be fair after they looked at the paperwork and what I told them. They changed the locks on the house, I can’t get inside. I lived there too, my clothes and tools are inside.
Well we were treated like dirt by the judge and the lawyer and the Department on Senior Services.” Liam looked disgusted.
“Did you talk to Sue’s attorney?”
“Yes and no. She said she would interview me but wouldn’t answer questions. She said I should get a lawyer if I wanted questions answered.”
“She did interview Sue, didn’t she?”
“Sue said she came a few times during lunch, when everyone was listening.”
“Do you know if Sue has any letters from the lawyer?”
“Letters? No I don’t think so but I need to ask her.” He smiled sweetly as a lone tear worked its way past his wrinkles to his lapel.
“I’ll see if I can get a look at the court file. This area of law is pretty new to me.”
“Can I see it too,” he asked.
“Sure, when you’re at the Daley Center go to the 12th floor on the west end. Give them the file number and ask to see the file.”
“But I’ve asked and they said I can’t see the file.”
“Who told you that?”
“Her lawyer said the file was private.”
“The file is a public record.” I repeated how to look at a file.
The frustration was coming to a head for Liam. His voice cracked and he cried without shame. “I miss her. I don’t like to sleep alone and I don’t like to wake up without her. It’s like one of us died and we never had a funeral to say goodbye.”
I nodded, “I’m sorry.”
“That judge was on the take,” he growled shifting emotions quickly.
“Which one?” I asked.
He looked around before he whispered, “R. Etapage.”
Would he ever be surprised that she was at the same nursing home as Sue?
“Can’t you do something to help?” His tears built up again.
I was careful not to make any promises.
Before we left, he said there was another patient at the nursing home that needed my help.
Nessie lived at Know Acres and her sister Chessie asked to speak to me. Liam didn’t know their last name.
I was in way over my head, but no one else would help these folks and I wanted to at least try. My fear was that I would make things worse. Maybe if I heard enough stories the answer would appear in a ball of fire or in a potato chip.
Chapter Thirteen
Chessie answered before the phone finished the full first ring.
“Oh Ms. Gavelle, I’m so glad to hear from you, we need your help,” her voice cracked and she blew her nose loudly.
“How can I help,” I asked.
“Well, my sister, Nessie, has a guardian because of that stupid judge. They told us things wouldn’t really be different and that she should agree to the guardianship. They promised it would mean more services for her. We were foolish enough to listen to her.
But they never said she would have to stay in the nursing home after she was better. They never said that to us. We hoped they could help us with a visiting nurse and maybe some other government services. You know it’s hard when you’re old. It’s hard to get around, to carry groceries, to understand what you can get from the government.”
“How did your sister get into the guardianship system?”
“Nessie fell at home. It happens, there isn’t blame you have to assign. Well when she got done with therapy, they said she couldn’t leave the nursing home and that her social security and pension would go to pay for her care.”
“Does she need nursing care?”
“No, not now, she needed the rehab care so she could walk around again. Now she walks, although slower than before she fell. Now she uses her cane almost all of the time. But living there at a nursing home is a prison for her. She can’t go out to the store. She has to eat what they prepare. Here, we helped each other. We lived together for most of our adult lives. Neither of us married. We used to get a movie from the library once a week and make popcorn. We went for walks. We went to church on Sundays. We went to see friends together.
Now I have to go to court to get permission to see her. It’s inhuman. I don’t know how the government can do this. They told me I could see her for one hour, one hour after dinner! Well it gets dark and I don’t drive. What are they thinking?” Her voice had a shift from pleading to anger.
“I’m sorry, Miss Chessie. This is an area of law that is fairly new to me.”
“But what about your grandfather? I have the picture from the paper, I saved your picture. He’s a judge. Surely he could help us.”
“My grandfather? Oh, no, the newspaper made a mistake. Judge Curie is my friend, not my grandfather.” Apparently a lot of people read the obituaries.
“But he’s a judge and a senior,” she complained.
“He is a judge but I can’t talk to him about a pending matter.”
“Why not?”
“It isn’t allowed.”
“He must know how hard it is to get old. Would it do any good if I talked to him? Now that the witch is dead, we should be able to live our lives. I’ve even straightened our condo a little. I let go of all the coffee cans. Every last one of them is gone. Well of course I have one full can of coffee in the refrigerator and three in the freezer with coffee. But all the others are gone.”
“Coffee cans?” I asked with trepidation.
“My sister and I love coffee, we made it every morning and she could not throw the empty cans away. She said they would be good to hold things. So when the social worker came in she tagged us as hoarders because we had quite a collection. But they were all washed and dried and clean.”
My silence made her continue. I didn’t think on the larger scale of things, coffee cans did not seem so bad.
“What can we do then? Go to the newspapers? Call our senator? Do you think they would be able to help us? What about the governor?” she scrambled for ideas. “We’ve tried so many people who say they will look into the matter. But they never get back to me and stop taking my calls after I make a follow up call.”
“Who did you talk to?” I asked.
“Oh the Alderman, we left messages for the congressman. They never call back. I spent a fortune copying the papers from court for them, but that didn’t work either. I had to go on the bus to the library to make copies and postage is very high. All the money was wasted. When they wouldn’t take my calls, I decided to show them the court papers. After I sent them the papers, no one called me back. It isn’t right. They ignore us.”
“I don’t know if I could make things worse.”
“Ms. Gavelle, Fiona, it really could not get worse than it already is. My heart is broken. I can’t see my sister, she cries and we have nothing to live for alone like this.”
I started to think being a lawyer was part of a really lousy messed up part of our society.
Chapter Fourteen
Refreshed or maybe wired after five hours of sleep, I had a new plan. Court. I would go to court and listen for ideas.
Maybe I could find some attorney willing to help me.
Being a wee bit early, I stopped at the law library to read the Legal Beagle, our daily law newspaper.
There was an article about the recent increase in guardianship courtrooms. Two new courtroom calendars were added for a total of five judges hearing adult guardianship matters. Apparently, the court administration anticipated that baby boomers would not make plans and would fall into the clutches of guardianship court.
What wasn’t explained was why all of the guardianship cases were handled only at the Daley Center. With a population of over five million people in the county, you would expect the courts to s
erve them to be convenient geographically. People in guardianship from the far ends of the county have to travel downtown to Chicago to go to court. Many of these litigants are a little older and have mobility issues.
There are five or six suburban courts spaced around the county where it would be easier for the people at the center of these cases to travel to court.
The article suggested that politics and pressure from downtown lawyers limited guardianship to what was convenient for them.
After sitting in court listening for two hours, I couldn’t peg one attorney as approachable. They hurled themselves in and out of the courtroom with overblown importance. The music from Jaws played in my head like it was on a loop.
The judge, Dorothy Wizard, seemed to glance my way now and then. I was sitting at the back of the room where litigants and witnesses sat, and not at the lawyer tables. Could she remember me from the case where I appeared one time? She was handling two calendar calls, hers and of the late Judge R. Etapage.
Calendars are the list of cases assigned to a particular judge.
The ten AM call was hectic. I listened but couldn’t follow much of what was said. What I could hear seemed like a lot of baloney. There had to be cases like Eddy’s. Didn’t every nursing home resident want to go home?
The eleven AM call was different. The dweebs from the Department on Aging that I battled with about four months ago on another case were there and glared at me. I tried to sneer back.
The judge was methodical and articulate, taking documents in a particular order and reading critical parts of them into the record.
In a flash the court room emptied out and I was the only one left. The judge, clerk and court reporter glared politely at me, the lone person keeping them from being done for the morning. A spotlight wouldn’t have made me more uncomfortable or conspicuous. The sheriff materialized and stood next to my bench, blocking my exit while motioning me to step up.
“Counsel?” the judge called out to me. “Please step up.”
Running away didn’t seem to be an option. I stepped up and admitted that I was observing court to learn how it worked.
“You were in my court room once before, I believe?”
I smiled.
“So you aren’t here on a case this morning?” the judge asked politely.
I mumbled something about a new client, Eddy Szem. As soon as I spoke I knew it was a mistake.
“Szem? S-Z-E-M? Edward Szem?”
I nodded yes.
“That’s on the 2 PM call counsel, who do you represent?”
I mumbled that Mr. Szem called me about representation but that I was told I could not meet with him by the Department on Aging.”
“You were told you couldn’t meet with your client?” The judge was trying more to clarify than to issue an opinion. My inarticulateness wasn’t helping.
“Yes.”
“I see, that is troubling. If you can join us at 2 PM, I will see that you will be able to meet with your client. Do you have a contract with him?”
“No.” Didn’t I read that a person under a guardianship didn’t have the legal ability to contract. I copied it word for word. So, to maintain the allusion that I knew what I was talking about I kept my mouth shut.
Instead of returning to the office, I spent the next two hours in the law library at the Daley Center. After an hour, my mind crashed. Bla bla bla. The things I thought I understood were now completely unclear. Deep breathing didn’t help me.
At 2 PM I went to the courtroom convinced it was the worst idea I ever had. I was greeted with glares from the attorney who likely wrote the snotty letter. I was in deep water and he knew.
As soon as Judge Wizard was seated, the scary attorney launched into his attack. “Good afternoon, Michael Wrigley for the Department of Senior services, we ask that the courtroom be closed and that this attorney be prevented from addressing the court.” He pointed at me like a felon convicted of multiple murders of widows and orphans.
For a jerk, Michael was well dressed. His skin looked bad, it looked like he overused tanning salons. His skin had a horse saddle appearance. It aged him at least ten years if not eleven.
Judge Dorothy asked me to introduce myself for the record and I did.
Michael attacked again, “Judge I am handing you a copy of a letter directed to Ms. Gavelle outlining a serious situation wherein she has harmed Mr. Edward Szem and…”
“Wait a minute, Ms. Gavelle, do you have an appearance on file?”
“No not yet Judge, I would ask for court permission to file one on behalf of Eddy Szem.” The judge didn’t need to know this was my first appearance in a matter already pending, but I would not be bullied even if I was without a clue about how to proceed.
“Okay, since Mr. Szem has retained counsel, we’ll set this matter over for a few weeks to allow Ms. Gavelle to meet with her client and see the file. Ms. Gavelle, please let the Department on Senior Services know when you want to see your client so it doesn’t interfere with any medical appointments. Is there anything else we need to address this afternoon?”
The Judge looked tired, sick and tired of this courtroom nonsense.
“Judge,” Attorney Wrigley boomed, “the house, the house has to be sold. We put this petition in weeks ago. It was up several times before Judge R. Etapage. This cannot be delayed. It has to be sold. We need permission to sell it today.”
“The respondent, Mr. Szem, has retained private counsel,” the judge reminded old leather face.
“But we gave notice a long time ago. And this should not be delayed. This ward can never return home. It must be sold,” Michael mewed. “He needs nursing home care, he has dementia. And the house does belong to the estate.”
“I will give counsel time to review your petition, the file and to talk to her client. Consider your letter about Ms. Gavelle not meeting with Mr. Szem stricken by the court. Wasn’t there a guardian ad litem (GAL) appointed in this matter?”
“Judge, we believe the GAL was appointed as counsel, so this person can’t be counsel,” Wrigley added with a sneer in my direction.
“Au contrar, if Mr. Szem wants private counsel, I will dismiss the court appointed counsel. Do you have a copy of that order? I don’t see one in the court file. This was on Judge R. Etapage’s calendar and I’m not familiar with the case.”
Wrigley made a big deal leafing through his file that had about five or six pieces of paper. He examined each sheet as if he was translating it from French to English and back again. A fifth grader would move faster.
We waited and Michael continued to fumble.
One of the problems I see with court is that we are not allowed to shout LIAR.
“And counsel, while you are looking for that order, why isn’t the GAL or court appointed counsel here this afternoon?” the judge inquired.
“We have no idea, we haven’t heard from him in weeks,” Wrigley answered while he continued to paw through his file.
“Did you send notice to him of today’s court date?”
Wrigley looked at the judge blankly. “That’s a secretarial function.”
The judge was not happy. I guess she saw this lie if not the others spewed by this law demon.
“But we always comply with the court requirements,” Wrigley added trying to catch the vase before it hit the ground.
“Well I will make it easy for you then counsel,” the judge smiled.
Wrigley beamed too soon.
“Ms. Gavelle is appointed as counsel for Mr. Szem, she will not need to file a written appearance. Second, you are directed to send her a copy of all the court filings. Third, if there is a court appointed counsel, or a GAL, I will dismiss that person. Fourth, Ms. Gavelle will be allowed to meet with her client, and you will not interfere with his right to counsel. Is any of that not clear Mr. Wrigley?”
“Judge, we will accept part of your proposal but will not allow this person to meet with the ward without supervision.”
Before I could pull up a
smart sounding argument, the judge did.
“That is my ruling counsel, I’m not bargaining with you. I’m the judge.” Judge Dorothy was angry but her voice was calm.
“But we don’t want her to meet with him unless we are present or have a representative present,” Wrigley argued.
“Mr. Szem is my client, by definition as his attorney I am entitled to meet with him. Privately,” I emphasized with careful enunciation.
“No, no, we won’t allow it. We are the guardian and…” Wrigley sputtered.
“Hold it counsel,” the judge interrupted.
We stopped and looked at Judge Wizard with anticipation. We both hoped and wanted to win this skirmish.
“My ruling stands and I will order a transcript if it doesn’t suit you. The court will prepare the order and my clerk will mail it out to you in the next five days. Mr. Wrigley I want to be clear, Mr. Szem is entitled to counsel, and you will not interfere.”
Although I wanted to do a cartwheel, I first needed to figure out what to do on the case.
Chapter Fifteen
It took a week of daily calls to the Senior Department to set an appointment to see Eddy. The fifth day I called three times, and that was when I got a response that I could see him the next afternoon, on a Saturday.
Nearly skipping, I was anxious to tell him we had a toehold. We would object to the sale of his house. My keenness to talk to Eddy plunged into despair when I found him sound asleep in the middle of the afternoon. He was wearing pajamas and was covered with a few blankets.
Was a nap appropriate? What did I know about being eighty years old? And wouldn’t you take a nap in your street clothes? Judge Curie was around the same age and he was still working. Maybe he took afternoon naps. Maybe Eddy didn’t sleep well the night before. Maybe he had a hard day fighting off the lady residents who had him outnumbered.
I tiptoed into the room and whispered his name several times, a little louder each time. He didn’t stir. I jiggled his arm and he smiled but didn’t open his eyes. I opened the blinds a little to let the sun come in. He hadn’t shaved in several days and looked like Moses.