Guardianship: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

senior citizen to the people who stay active by playing shuffleboard going on walks or performing their hit song I can't get no satisfaction in front of packed arenas around the world many senior citizens remain active and independent like this woman who CNN interviewed when she was a hundred and four and who shared her secret for good health are you drinking dr. pepper right now she's exactly what this stuff is good it's got sugar in it and three two doctors have told me that if I drink it I will die but they died first did you kill those two doctors cause he seemed awfully proud of that fact I'm not saying that you did it I'm just saying serial killers always want recognition for their crimes now we currently have a lot of senior citizens right now over 49 million Americans are 65 and older and that number is expected to sharply increase in a democratic surge that some have called the silver tsunami which is also apparently the nickname that Christopher Plummer goes by and his underground cage fighting ring he's 57 and oh if you get caught in the silver tsunamis Floria fists you're waking up in the hospital but the truth is not everyone is going to remain as sharp and self-sufficient in their old age as that murderer laughing at her dead doctors unavoidably some of us are going to wind up needing extra care and that could place as an assistant called guardianship and I'll let a Maryland judge explain it to you as a camera pushes relentlessly into his face a guardian is someone appointed by the court who act on behalf of an individual who is under a mental or physical disability and as a result is unable to make responsible decisions about his or her care or property he's right and you should know that zoom wasn't actually planned the cameraman was just so taken by the judges animal magnetism he couldn't resist moving in closer and closer the phone was shot was just the camera pressed up against his mustache but the fact the fact is guardianship is an important valuable tool and here is how it works basically let's say an elderly person who lives alone is showing signs of dementia any concerns person could petition the court which might decide to appoint a guardian to help them make important decisions that Guardian could be a family member or if there is no family or if the families fighting the court might appoint a private Guardian a professional who is paid to manage their affairs and when this system works it's great but it probably won't surprise you that that is not what this story is about that's simply not what we do on I just wanted to watch a comedy show and go to sleep but now I'm sad with Johnny joy killing because because let me show you what can happen when guardianship goes wrong take the case of Rudy and Rennie North they were living together happily in Las Vegas when one day there was a knock on their door and not let Rudy take it from here so I opened door and they said that they were officers of the court Rudy says the officers gave the couple three options one we call the police - we have you go to a psychiatric ward choice 3 an assisted living facility well that is three terrible options there it's like playing [ __ ] marry kill with the chipmunks none of them none of that from any other I'll kill myself I'm taking the easy way out but but it is true there was a knock on the North's door and they were suddenly moved to a facility by a woman they had never met before who was given control of them by a judge who they had also never met and by the time they got out from under that Guardians control two years later most of their money was gone something that Rudy is still understandably furious about they're strippers they strip your clothes they strip everything from you we have nothing left no money no assets nothing nothing left and you know what I really feel for him although I also must defend strippers here because they get rid of their own clothes not somebody else's because somebody walks around getting rid of other people's clothes is either a criminal or tan France from the reboot of queer so so tonight let's talk about our system of guardianship and the first thing you should know is that far more people are under it than you may think one study estimated the figure to be around 1.3 million people and and the next thing you should know is that guardians can have a huge amount of power over people under their care or their wards now because they may have to make financial and health decisions they can have access to everything from wards bank accounts to their health records and as for the wards themselves they can lose a lot of their rights from being able to vote in elections to being able to get married so this is no small thing as one judge who Awards guardianship will tell you guardianship is a massive intrusion into a person's life they lose a lot of rights in fact they lose more rights than someone who goes to prison less rights than someone in prison that is pretty shocking basically the only things that you do have the right to do in prison are sleep eat workout and occasionally play backgammon with Phil Spector he's he's really good at it it's all he does now he's finished with the killing that was that was just a phase for Phil and the fact that Guardians gained control of their wards finances is where things can get problematic because private guardians can bill for each individual service they provide from leaving voice messages to just opening the mail and it can take payment directly out of their Ward's estate and those charges can accumulate fast and sometimes seem ridiculous for instance the family of a woman named Marie long objected to her Guardians taking her on a weirdly expensive outing just look at what Sun Valley charged morita sent her and their worker to a Phoenix Suns basketball game over $1,000 for research phone calls a limo Sun Valley even charged Marie 228 dollars to determine the effect of the game on her mood exactly they charged her 228 dollars to figure out how a Phoenix Suns game affected her mood which is absurd because I'll tell you that for free it was a Phoenix Suns game it made her sad try it yourself go to a game and see if it improves your mood to see dragon bender put up four points and one and a half rebounds spoiler alert it won't and I went Rudy and Reni's Guardian a woman named April parks was confronted over some of what she charged them for she didn't exactly stand her ground Rudy and Reni were charged seven hundred eighty dollars each for court filings and travel time to court on the same days in 2013 that's over fifteen hundred dollars you're absolutely right couple you're absolutely right who you're saying doesn't even have enough money already will happily reverse those out those charges out how about $108 parks charged ready to buy her a pair of stretch pants does 108 bucks for stretch pants no it doesn't and and I'm happy to reverse that yep but you can't just do a bunch of shitty things and then say I'll reverse it this is someone's life not a [ __ ] Missy Elliott song although in fairness you do probably need good stretch pants if you're going to put your thing down flip it and reverse it the only ones who had questions about April parks is bully practices she had up to 800 wards at a single time and in a court case involving a different Ward a curious fact emerged parks was a no-show in court but her voice was heard through her own financial records which are almost laughable some days were over a hundred hours of billing that's not physically possible yeah a hundred hours a day is not physically possible unless she was working on the planet Mercury whereas we all know each day last 1400 and 7 earth hours I'll be honest that's a joke exclusively designed for Neil deGrasse Tyson so I do hope you enjoyed it dr. Tarr think is absolutely nobody else it actually out of interest did you enjoy yeah but the time you gave was the rotation rate of mercury that's not the same thing as a day a day on Mercury would be from sunrise to sunrise of course and on Mercury that lasts three times longer than what you just gave shut up Neil shut up what drive to ruin everything just enjoy something for once in your [ __ ] life what is wrong with you you feckless I'll never mind it's not working it's not working bad idea boxes Cavalier approach through her wards continued even after some of them died because when this guy this guy here bought a storage unit at auction you will never guess what he found 27 urns 27 sets of different ashes some a few years old others from the early 2000s somebody had the gall to store a family member in a storage unit like that that's somebody according to Valley funeral home directors was this woman April Parkes it's true she just left earns full of other people's family members in a storage unit and the only way that could have been in worse taste was if she poured them into a pinata for a nine year olds birthday party happy birthday Matthew knives of fun age now now Parks was eventually arrested not for the urn thing by the way which was completely legal and she is currently facing trial on over 200 felony charges including racketeering theft exploitation and perjury but you're probably wondering well how did she even get so many wards in the first place why didn't the Federal Bureau of Guardian oversight step in to stop her well that's mainly because that agency doesn't exist we just made it up and the fact that one of the symbols on that logo was just Harvey Keitel's face should have really been a giveaway for you the fact is though guardianship is the responsibility of state and local courts meeting in most places everything about it from who becomes one to who they oversee to what they can charge is up to local judges who may be elected and may have no legal training for instance in much of Texas guardianship decisions are made by county judges and only 29 of the judges in those 211 counties are lawyers the rest as one judge put it off farmers car dealers and insurance salesmen and those courts can be so overworked they do not have the resources to monitor cases properly when Texas recently audited their guardianship they found that over 3,000 wards had died without the court knowing and are they alive or dead is the absolutely least you should know about someone under your care if a zookeeper didn't know that 3,000 of his animals were dead you'd put someone else in charge of that [ __ ] Zoo or the very least rebranded as an open-air exotic meat market and on top of all this only 12 states require professional Guardians to be certified at all so just about anyone can become one and when the Government Accountability Office looked into this a few years ago their findings were truly troubling most jobs handling even small amounts of cash requires some sort of criminal background check and or a credit check but the GAO found in most cases guardians for the elderly can handle millions of dollars and states have failed to require either and it's like putting the you know Fox and chicken coop basically and of course they're going to steal money exactly although I will say not every Fox is out to steal from you that's just an offensive stereotype based on Swiper from Dora the Explorer it's not all Fox's hash tag not all foxes actually you know now I'm looking at this that also says note all foxes but I do agree with that as well at all fox would be very very scary and awareness must be raised hashtag denote all foxes and all of these lack of oversight is worrying in a system that can be easy to fall into and very difficult to get out of remember it took Rudy and Renny nearly two years to get out from under April parks and it was not easy although luckily for them Rudy was pretty determined we're going to pursue it all their way and we're going for their balls just so they know it's their balls where you want okay okay that's fine Rudi's seems determined and he also seems like the first person in human history actually interested in balls because generally balls are to the human body what stars is to a cable package it comes with it we understand that but it's not nice to look at and nobody really knows what to do with it and again okay I am NOT saying that guardianship as a system is inherently bad there are people who need it and there are going to be more of them as the silver tsunami approaches but that is all the more reason for us to improve its checks and balances from greater regulation to more funding for oversight and on the personal level there are steps that everyone can take to avoid being taken advantage of in the future most experts tell us it is important to have honest conversations with your family and I know that sounds like a [ __ ] nightmare but where you have to have these conversations about about how you want to you and your finances to be taken care of should the need arise that will help prevent a court from having to step in and appointing a private Guardian that could turn out to be an April Parkes plus there are some concrete legal steps that you can take and I know that if you're a little older you may not want to hear advice from a fresh-faced holy-shit is he really only 41 year old so so we've we've actually enlisted some help to get the message across look we all get old eventually it's just part of life and someday you will too obviously you won't age as well as us we're glamorous celebrities with access to skin care technology but won't be on the market for decades look how supple my cheeks are you might not age at all you might die tonight young by getting hit by lightening or eating too many Tide Pods or getting killed by a hippo that's actually a lot more likely than you think they kill hundreds of people each year oh you think they're cute oh they're [ __ ] killing machines hippos are terrible but we're not here to talk about hippos I am meet you I love hippos what do you need we're not talking about hippos I thought this was a whole hippo thing getting older can mean needing someone to help look after you and your affairs you should make sure that that's someone you know and not some random person you've never met who just wants to spend all your money on [ __ ] stretch pants that's why it's important to select someone to serve as your health care representative and someone who can make decisions for you under a durable power of attorney named people you trust like your son or daughter Oh close friend or mr. Tom Hanks Tom Hanks is the best it's a nice boy Jimmy Stewart would have been my go-to guy but that was in the past just make sure they're people you'd be comfortable with making financial or health decisions on your behalf I hereby make Tom Hanks mr. Tom Jefferson Hanks my health care representative if clipboard I felt they signed yours truly done I remember to always share these documents with your friends and family and discuss your plans so everyone's on the same page and even if this feels far off you've got to start planning for the future now now now now now also hippos are killing machines that's the real message here [ __ ] hippos [ __ ] hippos [ __ ] hippos what is wrong with you people you you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 6,322,096

Rating: 4.9143729 out of 5

Keywords: last week tonight guardianship, john oliver guardianship, last week tonight guardians, john oliver guardians, lily tomlin, cloris leachman, william shatner, fred willard, rita moreno

Id: nG2pEffLEJo

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 03 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/violue]

that April Parks woman is a straight up monster

[u/BloodOrca]

That Neil Degrasse Tyson bit got me.

[u/t-poke]

The thing that I didn't understand after watching that is why was that couple placed under guardianship? They seem like they're all there physically and mentally, and I thought it was reserved for seniors who couldn't take care of themselves. Anyone know the backstory?

[u/TheTrueMilo]

Kudos to John Oliver for covering a very unglamorous issue, and one that is very outside his audience demographic.

Unfortunately, elder abuse is very common in banking and finance, and this is one of many avenues for it to take place. The guy at the end of the video is right - you want to set up a durable power of attorney agreement for someone you trust to manage your finances when or if you ever become incapacitated.

[u/Frank_the_Mighty]

This is the Last Week Tonight that I know and love.

His best segments:

1. Are something I or the general audience would be unfamiliar with

2. Convincing and informative enough to make me care

[u/rattleandhum]

Made some streamable Mirrors:

https://streamable.com/qx7r3

https://streamable.com/qlld9

enjoy

[u/Sisiwakanamaru]

Rita Moreno is 86 and she is still stunning.

Also, Feckless.....

[u/themanifoldcuriosity]

The ONLY possible explanation for Thomas J. Mace-Archer-Mills, Esq. managing to get away with his hilarious scheme for so long is that British interviewers were too polite to call him out. As a Brit myself, the first thing I thought when he came on was,

What the hell is wrong with his accent?

...and the second was,

Only American lawyers call themselves "Esquire", what is this dude's deal?

[u/[deleted]]

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