When pop star Britney Spears was freed from her 13-year conservatorship in California, public pressure reached a boiling point, convincing many that the era of court-appointed guardianships was coming to an end.
Yet, television personality Wendy Williams remains under a financial and personal conservatorship in New York managed by court-appointed guardian Sabrina Morrissey and the National Center for State Courts estimates that at least 1.3 million American adults nationwide are under a court-appointed guardianship with the Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianship (AAAPG) alleging the number is grossly underreported.
Under President Donald Trump’s administration, guardianship schemes are facing unprecedented legal crackdowns.
The Department of Justice’s Elder Justice Initiative has begun leveraging federal indictments to bypass state probate court immunity, treating fiduciary abuse as federal organized white-collar crime while local lawmakers in New York and Michigan are taking action at the state level.
The fictional narrative follows Georgina Dillard, a devoted daughter desperate to protect her elderly father, Ben Dillard, a partially blind retired military veteran. Held against his will at an assisted living facility, Ben is being isolated, systemically starved, and deprived of adequate medical care, including a prescription he needs to treat glaucoma.
Ben’s plight prompts Georgina to hire an undercover investigator Larry Limine to expose the court-appointed guardian and facility’s unconstitutional restrictions, and the movie tracks him as he goes undercover into the care center to find out why Ben is being denied visits with his daughter.
Blending the tension of a crime thriller with an urgent human rights message, Fatal Negligence aims to give voice to exploited veterans and families fighting to reclaim their loved ones’ rights from predatory legal systems.
The short is screening during the same block as Joan’s Teeth starring Kathleen Turner.
Photo courtesy of Fatal Negligence
Joan’s Teeth is about a lady living in an assisted living facility who wakes with blood in her mouth and wonders where it came from.
In recent years, there has been growing public concern about the use of conservatorships to effectively deprive individuals of personal freedoms at the behest of others through the manipulation of the courts, according to members of Congress.
“A project funded by the US Department of Justice to examine conservative exploitation found that financial exploitation by conservators often goes unchecked by courts, and there is a de – dire need for guardianship conservatorship reform,” a coalition of Republican members of Congress said in a 2021 letter to the Judiciary Committee.
