Attorney Mitchell Kitroser’s Letter to Wpec Channel 12 News on Their Nov. 3rd Guardianship Story
On Friday, Nov 3, 2023, our Managing Partner, Mitchell I. Kitroser, watched a story on CBS Channel 12 concerning a guardianship case in Palm Beach County. The reporter covered one specific case and then the report broadened out to a general commentary about guardianship. Mr. Kitroser felt that parts of the story only told one side of guardianship and he has responded to the reporter in writing. Included below is the link to the news report and his letter back to the reporter. At the time of this writing, no one from Channel 12 has responded to his letter.
“I just watched the report about Brian O’Connell on Channel 12 news. As an attorney who has handled guardianship cases in Palm Beach County for over 20 years, I have considerable familiarity with this area of law and with Mr. O’Connell, of whom I am no fan. Nevertheless, I was disappointed to see that the tenor of the story included an overall anti-professional guardian, anti-lawyer and anti-judge viewpoint.
My firm and I represent both professional and non-professional family member guardians. Our clients are good, decent, hard-working people who provide a service to those in our community who cannot take care of themselves. We do not represent exploiters. We and our clients follow the law and are well-aware of the obligations of the guardianship statute and caselaw, which requires that all parties to a guardianship, including the lawyers and the judges, owe a duty of care to the incapacitated individual. Contrary to the implication in the story, our judges are actually fair-minded and seek to do what is right by the incapacitated person. That has been my experience before dozens of guardianship judges in Palm Beach County over my two decades in this practice.
What the story misses is the fact that professional guardians are never the first option. By statute, family has preference over professionals when a guardian is chosen, and our judges know and honor that preference whenever possible. Professional guardians are brought into cases only when there is family discord, neglect, or exploitation. Sadly, we see that all too often. Most guardianship cases that are aggressively litigated are really battles over a person’s wealth. Most of those battles begin when a family member, not a stranger or a professional guardian, takes control over their loved-one’s finances and helps themselves to the money.
The story also ignores the fact that professional guardians in Palm Beach County are often called upon to oversee cases that no one else will step up to help, and to do it for free. This is selfless, dedicated work. It should, by statute, be performed by the Office of the Public Guardian, which is overseen in Palm Beach County by the Legal Aid Society. The problem is that there is insufficient funding and staffing for Legal Aid to handle all the low-income people that need guardians for whom no one, including family members, will step forward.
Professionals are also often asked to handle the most difficult of guardianship cases; younger, mentally ill persons who have no funds to use for their care and who are resistant to or non-compliant with any efforts to help them.
As for the issue of restoration of rights, our guardianship statute requires that all guardians, both professionals and non-professionals, seek restoration of rights whenever appropriate. I have been involved in several cases where rights were restored and several more when an individual who had been adjudicated incapacitated and incorrectly believed that their rights should be restored was afforded a hearing to determine whether some or all of the rights previously removed should be restored.
There have been abuses in guardianship over the years. Those abuses tarnish the entire system and harm the reputations of good guardians, lawyers and judges that work on these cases. Guardianship is not perfect. That is because people are imperfect. Some, a few, professional guardians are unscrupulous. Lawyers too. More often though, we see family members and strangers who are exploiting vulnerable citizens. Personally, I am in favor of greater punishment for those that cheat and steal. Greater punishment equals greater deterrence in my mind. Nevertheless, a one-sided presentation does nothing to assist the public with understanding the broad and nuanced issues involved in what I find to be an interesting and rewarding area of law to work in.”
