Why do we warehouse our elderly? It is a tragic situation that our society cannot develop a better way to deal with the elderly than removing them from their homes and families to imprison them, isolating them from a normal existence, to live the remainder of their lives institutionalized.

Would you want to live a week, a month, perhaps years in a nursing home? Or would you prefer in home care should the need arise? Should not every citizen have a right to determine their own fate, to direct how they will be treated should they become incapacitated or incompetent?

Rosa Parks has dementia. Her family and care providers are involved in a bitter fight. This makes the news because Rosa Parks is the singular personality who was largely responsible for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and events which propelled Martin Luther King, Jr. to prominence. Yet when the average person grows old and begins to have problems with their memory or cognition, we warehouse them, the courts take away their rights and their estates are raided without any serious consideration of what these individuals wanted for themselves.

What is needed is a constitutional amendment to guarantee all citizens the right to appoint their own guardian/conservator and direct their own health care. As it is this power is given to probate court judges in Alabama. The many Rosa Parks who are our cherished parents and grandparents have been told by the courts to sit at the back of the bus because they are old, have dementia and are second class citizens!

By having created a system of elderly care which is tied into the probate courts, a formula for disaster has been created. Corrupt and greedy lawyers and judges are profiting by raiding the estates of the elderly, taking the power to direct their own affairs away from the elderly and their families, giving it to non-family members, who have no love and base all their decisions upon a tangled mess of laws, deceit and deception.

The judges and lawyers involved in this corruption are often paid high fees for their service, serve on the board of directors of hospitals, nursing homes or other public agencies which contributes to their power and prestige. Thus they are not neutral parties but power brokers stepping upon our elderly for their own benefit.

What this does is destroy families. When you create a system of elderly care which does not let each person plan and direct their own health care, does not even let every citizen appoint their own guardian/conservator, you deny everyone from Rosa Parks to the First Lady of our state their God given right to self determination. Allowing the courts to reign supreme over our elderly takes love out of the equation and promotes the inhumane warehousing of our elderly. It demands our constitution be amended to permit every citizen the right to appoint their own guardians and conservators and direct their own health care.

Sincerely,
Terry Lynch