Here Comes the Son
      by Michael Dare
       
       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      November 4, 1992
           Election day. It is a crowded funeral, full of friends, relatives, and my sister’s ex-tennis partners. To my surprise, everyone keeps describing her as generous. This makes no sense. I have known her longer than anyone in the room, and throughout our entire forty year relationship, I have never seen her display the slightest amount of generosity. To me, generous is when you are asked for five dollars and you give ten. Stingy is when you are asked for five dollars and you give one. There was no request I had ever made of my sister that she had granted more than half way. Apparently my sister was this incredible angel to everyone around her, but when she was alone at home at night, she would take this dog out of the closet and kick it. My whole life, I was that dog.
           If the people who testify at her funeral are to be believed, Sandy was a good tennis player and a great sport. It is another shock to discover what an incredible portion of her life was given over to the game of tennis, especially since my sister had never asked me to play tennis with her, not once, not our whole lives. This might seem a moot point considering my current paunch. But once upon a time I was a cute little kid who had never been in a lick of trouble, she was a bright and energetic teenager, and even then she never felt the impulse to teach her younger brother the game. It was a part of her life from which I was totally excluded.
           No biggie. There are certainly large expanses of my life from which my sister is totally excluded, including my music and my art, for which she had always shown total disregard. What hurt was that she had put so much effort into condemning me for spending my time on artistic activities that had brought little monetary reward, whereas it was okay for her to spend every second of the day involved in an athletic activity that brought her no monetary reward. She had decided to throw me into the street, to deny me all access to my mother’s money, because she thought athletics was morally superior to art.
           Dozens of people I never knew offer me their condolences. As I throw a shovel full of dirt into her grave, I strive to understood my sister’s attitude towards me. Just because she was 16 years older, why should she treat my birth as nothing more than an annoyance? Someone takes me aside and confides in me.
           “Did you ever wonder if your sister was your mother?”
           I laugh, then picture the whole thing; my sister pregnant in high school, missing school for a few months, having a child, and her mother raising it as her own. It is preposterous, but it explains a lot. Let’s see, that makes my mother my grandmother, my father my grandfather, my sister my mother, and my nephews my half brothers. Given this new configuration, suddenly everybody’s attitudes make sense. My father hated me because I wasn’t his. My sister considered me a grim reminder of one old mistake, a mistake that her mother was going to make her face for the rest of her life.
           My mind swirls in a dervish of confusion. I try to think of one single incident in my whole life that firmly disproves this ridiculous theory, but there are none. Everything I can think of, every single family memory, only confirms it. When I get home, I look at my birth certificate, which has fingerprints of my feet and my mother’s thumbs, but the thumbs are smudged and unreadable. Could it have been deliberate? Was the doctor in on this diabolical scheme? Was there a rabbi involved?
           I talk to others and they all consider it a possibility. I start doing imitations of Faye Dunaway in Chinatown, turning my head back and forth going “My sister, my mother, my sister, my mother.” It’s not that I really believe it, it’s just that I can’t totally dismiss it. I could ask the woman I’ve always thought of as my mother whether she was actually my grandmother, but I know I’ll never figure out how to bring up the subject. Until I see proof that it’s not true, in the interactive movie of my life, the mother/sister scenario is still a potential alternate ending. It doesn’t really change anything, except if I really wanted to piss off my nephews, I could show up at my sister’s probate hearing, contest my sister’s will, tell my stupid tale, and demand her body be exhumed for a genetic test.
           After the funeral, my nephews cancel our meeting. On the day we are supposed to meet, instead of being confronted face to face, I am informed by long distance telephone that Scott has already gone behind my back and filed a petition to the court for a third party conservatorship over my mother. He is simply going to hand over all of my mother’s assets to a firm called Muir and Singh who will handle her affairs till she dies, then execute her will. Period. They have already put down $10,000 (The exact amount I needed!) to start the conservatorship. That was that. I don’t have to bother with my mother. Isn’t that nice? Good-bye.
           I had acted honestly and honorably towards him, but it is now clear that their only intent was to deceive. At my sister’s house, he had even told me that he might be able to help me get my daughters back. The $10,000 would have done that. Instead, he wasted it on lawyer’s fees, failing to explain how taking my mother from me now would help me get my kids back. He’s acting as though my mother needs protection from me. He is, in actuality, trying to prevent me from improving my mother’s life.
           My sister and I were enemies to be sure, but my nephews and I have never had any personal animosity towards each other. I try to explain to him that these are not feudal times, that vendettas do not have to get passed on from generation to generation, that there is no reason at all for him to inherit my sister’s loathsome attitude towards me, which was based upon things that happened long before he was born and which he had no chance of comprehending. He doesn’t hear a word.
           And now I have no choice. I have to hire a lawyer, which has always been one of my least favorite things to do. I think about finding a tenacious hyena who drools when he hears the word probate, a guy who could write a book called How to Make Probate Go On Forever So that Nobody Gets Anything Except the Lawyers. Since I can’t afford to eat, much less just ante up $10 thousand like the Potters, I am forced to hire him on a contingency basis, so that the more he gets, the more he gets.
           I hate appearing in court almost as much as I hate making appearances at family functions like Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, or Thanksgiving dinners. If Scott had just handed over my mother’s possessions and let me take care of her, I would have gone off peaceably with my mother and he would have gone off peaceably with his mother’s estate. We would have been even. When my mother died, we would have all gotten our inheritances. We could have all walked away with dignity. We could even have gone off on good terms and been a semi-friendly if slightly dysfunctional family. There’s nothing I would rather have done than just shaken hands and settled this. We didn’t have to attack each other in court, air our dirty laundry in public, or be bloodsucking scavengers.
           The conservators, Muir and Singh, come very highly recommended. They handle several other people at my mother’s facility. They have a nasty job that someone has to do. Several lawyers know them and think they are great. My mother’s court appointed lawyer, Mr. Goldring, knows they do a fine job. The bondsman I talk to turns out to be their bondsman, for up to a million dollars. Someone from Jewish Family Assistance tells me they send people to them all the time. I am skeptical, but it’s not like Muir and Singh don’t serve a purpose. If someone like my mother had no family or friends, she would absolutely need their help, or someone like them.
           The story is completely different when I talk to the people Muir and Sing actually handle. Their clients all hate Muir and Singh, calling them thieves, ambulance chasers, and grave robbers. One nurse describes them as “hoodlums.” She says they have a strong-armed woman named Blooma Hymen who regularly throws people out when their resources dry up. She had seen it happen, and it wasn’t pretty. These people end up in public facilities, she says, pronouncing the word “public” as an obscenity.
           One woman claims that Muir and Singh had deliberately stopped her from attending her own competency hearing, and another says they forged her name onto real estate papers, selling her house out from under her while she was healing from surgery.
           Either these people are all out of their minds and delusional, (after all, they are in convalescent hospital) or I have accidentally stumbled across a magnificent scam in which old people without any family to protect them simply fall into a diabolically clever system, just like the one my son fell in, another government sponsored meat grinder. Professional conservators never get in trouble because they only handle dying people who are never seen or heard from again. They never get a chance to complain.
           So now it appears my nephews are protecting my mother from me by giving her over to experts who specialize in using up old people’s assets while they’re still alive, throwing them out of their homes, and guaranteeing there’s nothing left after their deaths. Getting our inheritances from these people would be like collecting net points from Paramount Pictures. My nephews had only one job to do when they found themselves in possession of all my mother’s worldly goods, and that was to protect it from scavengers or professional conservators. They’ve hired the fox to guard the henhouse.
           As I prepare for court, I know that if they feel like attacking my credibility, they will be in for a surprise. Since I have just spent five years in custody court fighting for my son’s life, there are no assaults against my character that I have not already responded to and overcome in another court. Wanna call me a drug addict? Sorry, but I’ve got five years of documented, legal, random, negative drug tests. I have an airtight response to every single manner of attack they could decide to make against my character.
           What makes this all so troublesome is that my nephews have no idea what I am really like. The only time they have ever seen me was when I showed up late for dinner at my sister’s once a year. I may have appeared like a flake, but that was because I didn’t give a damn about my sister. My mother has always been another story entirely.
           In my life, I would be taking care of my mother and son right now. We would be living together, eating together, growing old together. My mother would be no more bother to me than my son is. I am in both of their debt, and will be till the day I die. He’s a terror; she’s like a baby, needing little more than food and television. Neither of them bother me at all because our love is unadulterated.
           My mother’s professional care is custodial. It consists of being taken from the bed to the dining room and from the bed to the bathroom. She has no disease, needs no therapy or drugs other than Tylenol. They charge $100 a day at Vista del Sol. In my life, $3,000 a month rents an out-of-the-way four bedroom house for me, Buster, my mother, and a live-in helper. My mother and I could drink wine on the verandah and watch the sunset every night on $3,000 a month outside of the city.
           I am always goading my mother to spend more of her money on herself, to go on trips, to let loose. But now I’m forced to see her money as this commodity that is to be shared between me and my nephews after her death, and I ask myself what I would do with that money if I had it now. The answer is I would share it with my family. I’d take them all to the circus. Since there’s no way I can share my inheritance with my mother after her death, I prefer to share it with her before her death, to take her out while she is still alive rather than let her vegetate. Without me, she has no freedom.
           If only my nephews were not in actual possession of my mother’s belongings. If only I were not flat broke and desperate for cash. Hell, twenty bucks would double all the money I have in the world right now.
           The lawyer who agreed to handle my case calls me up two days before court and tells me he will no longer represent me. He had spoken to Herb Potter. I would have to go it alone.
           I spend a week in the law library reading everything I can about conservatorships. Here’s how it works. In order to be somebody’s guardian, they have to be legally incompetent. That’s why adults are often made the guardians of children. Children are by their nature incompetent. A guardian is totally accountable for another person, and in many ways, acts as their parent. In order to be the guardian of an adult, you have to prove to the court that they are incapable of handling their affairs. Competency hearings are treacherous affairs in which someone’s alcohol use, drug use, or any of a vast range of idiosyncrasies can be used against them. Once somebody has a guardian, they are not legally responsible. They cannot be sued, and they don’t even have the legal right to hire a lawyer in their own behalf, though the court can appoint one.
           But what if an aging person wants to stop worrying about finances and simply wants one of their children to handle their affairs without getting into a competence issue. That’s what a conservator is, a guardian who doesn’t have to prove competence.
           How do you become someone’s conservator? You file a petition with the court that costs $450. The court picks a date for a hearing. There are so many people in the court that it’s treated very much like a traffic ticket. Judges rarely have the opportunity to give a case more than a moment’s thought.
           There are many ways to take advantage of this system. Let’s say you’re leaving the country for a couple of months. I could file a petition to become your conservator, the court would give me a date, and they would notify you to show up. But you’re out of town, you miss the chance to contest the petition at the hearing, and I’m made your conservator. You come home and find that I have sold your house.
           Let’s say you work at a 7/11 that’s owned by your father. There are only the two of you in the family, and in his will, he left his store to you. If he died, the store would be yours, and you could go to work the next morning. But if he was in an accident and became a vegetable, the will would not be executed because he was still alive. Unless you could come up with a bond equal to the worth of the store, you would be out of luck. Even though you were totally capable of going to work the next day and taking control of the store, it would be given to a conservator, who would most likely sell it. Even though your father clearly wanted you to have the store, the next day, you would be out of work.
           Now that I thoroughly understand the wonderful world of conservatorships, there are still no existing forms that fit the exact petition I have to make. Without a lawyer’s help, there is no way to make the proper response to contest someone else’s petition for conservatorship. I have no choice. I write another letter.
      December 16, 1992
      Judge of the Superior Court
      Dept. 11, Room 246

      Your honor,
           I am my mother’s sole surviving child, I’m 41 years old, a professional journalist, and I am ready, willing and able to take care of her needs. I believe I can take better care of her than anyone else because my mother is not completely incompetent, she is incapacitated. I have closely monitored her steady decline, and she communicates with me better than with anyone else.
           My mother has lost her power of speech, and she is clearly in need of a more sophisticated communication device than the crude one I got for her that she is using now. I have spoken with the Speech and Language Therapy Center and they have told me about a wide array of devices, including one called a Vocaid II. It is made by Texas Instruments specifically for people in hospitals who can’t communicate. It connects to a wheelchair, and it has numerous overlays with different symbolism which, when pressed, will create spoken sentences. With a simple press of a button, my mother will be able to say “Yes,” “No,” “I have to go to the bathroom,” “My head hurts,” or any one of thousands of combinations of necessary sentences. My mother desperately needs and wants this device, she can definitely afford it, and no one has bought it for her. I would immediately buy this for her as her conservator.
           If this device proves inefficient, I have also spoken with the Communication Disorders Department of Rancho Los Amigos who specialize in non-oral devices. They have assured me they can help my mother communicate to the best of her capacity. I would unquestionably send my mother there for therapy as her conservator.
           My mother spends much of her time watching a television with a rabbit ear antenna that gives poor reception of only seven channels. She wishes to get cable brought to her room, a very minor expense since the home is already wired, but no one has bothered to buy it for her. I would do so immediately as her conservator.
           My mother loves to get out of the home for trips to the park or the museum, and her physician Dr. Kevin Chamas has recommended to me that she do this as often as possible. I am her only relative who lives in town, I love taking her for outings, and I am the only one willing to get involved in this valuable part of her therapy. Unfortunately, she needs to be accompanied by a nurse, which is a minor expense that I cannot currently afford. If I were her conservator, I would pay a nurse, and take her out of the home at least once a week.
           Your honor, I believe my nephews, Scott and Randall Potter, were acting in good faith when they decided to hire a third party conservator for my mother. They do not live in Los Angeles, and have had very little contact with me or my mother over the years. Their opinion of me is based upon my relationship with my older sister, which was adverse from the moment of my birth, and upon the opinion of her ex-husband, who also lives out of town, and whom I haven’t spoken to in 20 years. They are most likely sincere in their belief that I am incapable of or unwilling to care for my mother.
           I am not a businessman. I have no desire to participate in the daily handling of my mother’s assets. As far as I am concerned, they can all be placed in blocked accounts except for a small weekly cash allowance for my mother’s personal use. If I were my mother’s conservator, I would hire a business consultant to actually handle my mother’s monetary affairs. If the court desired, I would even hire Muir and Singh to do the exact same job they have petitioned the court to do, except not as conservators but as employees of the conservator.
           Unfortunately, I am currently incapable of paying for all of my mother’s miscellaneous personal requirements. That is why I need some form of access to her assets in order to provide her with the help she genuinely needs. I have no doubt that I can increase the quality of her life. That is my only goal here today.
           This petition before the court is simply a misguided attempt to overturn the standard order of priority for appointment of an administrator by placing grandchildren above children. They offer as evidence personal and hostile letters between my sister and I that have absolutely nothing to do with my relationship with my mother, which is entirely loving and trustful. Contrary to the paranoid accusations in their petition, the only “documents” I have ever asked my mother to sign are birthday cards to my children. The Potters are evaluating me based upon hearsay, and as the person I might have been years ago rather than who I am today. They have seriously misjudged me, and I would ask the court not to make the same mistake. I am a completely reliable and responsible person, especially since I became a father.
           Just last month, I was given unconditional legal and physical custody of my son. Enclosed is the minute order. My son is doing fine in school, and enclosed is his report card showing that he has only missed one day of school the entire semester.
           Your honor, if Children’s Court has found me to be a totally competent father, trusting me with the un-monitored custody of a five year old, I fail to see how this court can find me to be anything but a totally competent son.
           I’m currently working for the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Cultural Affairs as a judge in their grants division. Enclosed is a paycheck stub and a letter from the head of Cultural Affairs. Just last week, I was part of a small panel that decided who should get $230,000 worth of cultural grants. If the City of Los Angeles trusts me with the fiscal responsibility of distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars of city funds, I fail to see how this court can find that I would be irresponsible with a much smaller amount of my mother’s funds.
           The bottom line here is that I love my mother deeply and wish to pay her back for all the time she took care of me. She should not be put into the hands of total strangers at the behest of distant relatives from out of town. As her conservator, I will do my job honestly, lovingly, and responsibly.

      Thank you

      ____________
      Michael Dare
       

       

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