My mother is cognitively incapacitated by dementia and will not admit it. My sister and I are going through the process of having a court appointed evaluator, a "Guardian Ad Litem" (GAL), determine if our mother is cognitively capable of taking care of herself. The answer is clearly not. Our mother is contesting the issue and so what is normally a mutually agreed upon process is now an adversarial process in the legal system by proxy of lawyer vs. lawyer. This puts our mother in the unenviable position of paying for 3 different attorneys to fight amongst themselves over whether or not she needs a guardian to protect her from being ripped-off by those who prey on the incapacitated elderly.
It would be nice if our mother manifested more rational behavior. That is not going to happen.
The good news is that the system works. I went to family court today to watch the process as the GAL filed for the court's permission to have a psychological evaluation of our mother along with reasonable requests for more time and money. Court started close to on-time and we were the second case called. 5-10 minutes was spent in a semi-private conversation with the judge (technically a "Commissioner" in this matter).
I had a hard time finding the courtroom since it was not merely in room 325, but in w325. Fortunately parking had gone well and I was able to find my way to the room before court started. The GAL explained the process to me in a kindly way. My mother's attorney badgered the GAL about obvious legal points of procedure. The GAL repeatedly stated she had sent the information to his office and did not want to answer his questions. Finally she was so annoyed by his badgering with basic questions she walked left the courtroom.
What I was impressed by is how well the system works. Even in tough economic conditions with homeless people sleeping on the lawn outside the courthouse, the inside of the courthouse was clean, uncrowded and seemingly well-staffed with competent workers taking their job seriously. I felt reassured that justice would be served fairly even if it was a little slower than what I wanted.
I am grateful for legal system that is not completely overrun with corruption based on a rule of law instead of literally who has the most big guns.
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