Texts and Lies- April 15, 2016

So as I've mentioned before Mike, the son of Carol who eventually became her conservator because of the financial (and who know what else) abuse by the daughter Sonya, is very loyal. Loyalty will make you believe lies. Mike also felt guilty about not being there for his sister Sonya or for his mother Carol, so Sonya could send him on a guilt trip and he'd take it.

During the time Sonya was the POA..... maybe also before, when Sonya would call Mike, it was usually a long one sided rant. In April, Mike did manage to find some steel for his spine and refuse to take his sister's calls and demand that she text. Sonya seems to have an abusive personality, and well abusers don't take well when the people they want to abuse stand up and refuse to take it.

So let me explain this exchange. So Sonya was screaming and ranting at Mike on the phone. In that rant she was complaining about how hard her life was and that she had a client with her. Mike, Mr. Thoughtful, thought, Sonya should be focused on the client and not screaming at him, so he hung up. She speaks of "everyones secrecy and lies" but that was just projecting as she was the one being secretive behind a veil of 'woe is me' and lies... .most of this blog is about her lies.

I'm not blocking the phone number because this was several phone numbers ago. She seems to go through phone numbers like drug dealers avoiding a wire tap. There is nothing stable about Sonya, not her addresses, and surely not her phone numbers.

May 2016- The end of Sonya's spending party

It wasn't until June 1st when the bank, credit union actually, finally, finally, cut Sonya off from her mother's accounts. The conservatorship wasn't wine and roses for Mike, the brother of Sonya and the son of Carol. But what it did do was end Sonya's POA over Carol, allow Mike to talk to the bank, and in the beginning get some limited access to the money in those accounts. There was a lot of back and forth with the bank in June and it was all painfully slow, and add the fact that this (finances, Medicare, elder care, the legal stuff) was not in Mike's wheelhouse.

Despite knowing the end was near, Sonya kept spending the money, her mother's money as if it were hers, which it was not, all though May 2016.

To see a better image, click the individual picture.

April 2016- Still spending

Mike, the brother of Sonya who had POA over their mother Carol, was still in the dark in April 2016. The bank, because Mike had no legal standing at that time, was being very vague about their mother's finances. All he knew was that there was about $20,000 in the account. He was hoping to become the emergency conservator of Carol in May if not earlier, and with that money get his mother out of Kirkwood Villa and maybe back to the Atria, where she was before Sonya got her hands on their mother's money. At this point he was still believing the lie that she was simply mismanaging the funds. With Sonya no longer caring for their mother Carol, he thought that money would still be there when he took over Carol's care, he was wrong.
Below are images from the April 2016 bank statement. I will focus on this and May 2016 in a later post. To see a larger view, click on the individual images.

March 2016- Token amounts, an accidental MF'er and theories

In March $16,216.12 was spent. Sonya, since it appears she hadn't gotten her mother Carol's CalSTRs pension to direct deposit into this new account Sonya created at the end of December 2015, is the only one depositing.  She covered about 10% of that month's spending. Little matter, because this account had Carol's money in it and Sonya was spending, squandering, her mother's retirement fund with purchases and charges that had nothing to do with the care of her mother.  Of that $16K, $3300 (check #107) went to cover Carol's care at Kirkwood Villa, one of the cheapest place to dump and old woman in San Jose. But all those other charges, wasting away her mother's money and making a bad situation worse.

When Sonya closed the account in December and opened up a new one in her mother's name, it messed up a few reoccurring charges that later came to bite Mike (Carol's son & Sonya's brother) in the butt when he became their mother's conservator. Besides screwing up the CalSTRs pension, it also ended the payments to Medicare. Most people on social security, it seems, have their monthly payment taken out of their SS payments. Because Carol was on a pension and did not have SS payments her monthly Medicare payments came out of the account Sonya closed, for whatever reason. After 6 months of no payments, or as soon as Mike became the conservator in June, Carol, the diabetic with Parkinson's lost her medicare, particularly the parts that cover prescriptions and doctors visits. That was the first of many crises. Kaiser Permanente wasn't getting paid for their Medicare parts either. This endangered their mother's health. For about a week Carol was fcuked, because Mike had no clue of how to get insulin to his mom from the opposite side of the country with no Medicare. Sonya had fcuked over her mother, she thus was a motherfcuker.

At the time Mike was unaware of this in March. He thought, he believed his sister was trying to do right by their mother. He even bought her BS excuses of why she was leasing or whatever a luxury SUV. I can't find any texts from this month that are a complete sentence. But it was in this month we looked up Sonya's cosmetology license. We discovered her license was suspended due to "Family Support". She lied about that to her brother, said it was a mistake. He, wanting to make up for all the years he doubted her and other baggage issues, chose to believe her blatant lies. Folks, this is family and you'd rather believe a lie than know you're related to a horrible human being.

 

So theories...

Looking at the March 2016 bank statement, it looks as if Sonya might have given access to the account to her teenage son, that would explain all the Uber rides and iTunes purchases. That's one theory. Another theory is that Sonya was mentally delusional and believed that this was her account, with her money.

March 2016

These are images from the March 2016 bank statement. At this point in time Carol, the mother and victim is no longer living in the same house as Sonya, the retirement fund stealing daughter. There is no excuse for this much activity with Carol's account, considering the majority of the funds are not being spent on Carol.
For a better view, click on the images below.

The world ending option- making your parent a ward of the state

I'm going to take a break from proving what Sonya did was a horrible thing and give some advice.

The option of making your elderly parent a ward of the state is always an option, an option of last resort.

It was first presented when Adult Protective Services (APS) were asking Mike, Carol's son, my husband, to get more involved. Mike was annoyed with APS because, the way he saw it, this government agency was trying to drive a wedge between him and his sister. He didn't trust them. So their suggestion that they become the conservator of Carol was one way for Mike to step away and let the state take over. That would have been easier. That would have saved us lots of money in legal fees and bonds, stupid $1,000 and $1,500 a year, non-refunded bonds. But if this route was taken, the state would have charged Sonya (yay) for what she did but Mike would not have any input in her care and whatever assets she still had would have been seized by the state. Our concern was that APS seemed more interested in prosecuting Sonya (a good thing) than helping Carol get out of the situation she was in. So we were concerned that Carol's care would fall through the cracks, and that she would remain in the poor living conditions of Kirkwood Villa with no change.

Thankfully, Mike did not need to travel to San Jose to appear before a judge to become the conservator of his mother's person and estate. He was on a conference call sort of thing. Because of the nature of the call Mike could hear other cases. There was another case before his where the family came before the judge to explain they could no longer care for an adult relative, and wanted the state to take over. So we were very aware that if it became too much or too hard, this was an option. And it did get too hard, it damaged our marriage (has since been repaired) and it put our adoption plans on hold (we now have an adopted son), but we did not pull that trigger. There was a moment, when Carol was feeling horribly low and she suggested that Mike give up on her and let the state take over. We knew she was speaking from a place of depression. Kirkwood was just a place to watch TV and wait for the end.

Mike made many mistakes in Carol's care, mainly due to the overly complicated nature of conservatorships and being on the other side of the country... most of it being on the other side of the country. We do not regret not making Carol a ward of California. Once we got her on the east coast it got easier. There were still health crises but it was comparatively easier in Maryland compared to when these things happened in California.

The state will take whatever assets are in the person's estate and there is no inheritance for the remaining family members. Now whether those assets will be used to better the situation of the depends. In Carol's case the cost of her care was more than what she was getting from her remaining investments that Sonya didn't steal, and her pension. If she didn't die, she was going to run out of money to cover the cost of her care by this summer, and we were going to have to figure out how to cover the costs. So it is hard to imagine that the state would put her in a better facility.

The state would have also put Sonya in prison if Carol became their ward. At the time, we didn't know, what we now know, and Mike is unreasonably loyal. This whole blog is a reminder of why he should press charges against his sister. But at the time we thought she had custody of her minor children and we were concerned about what would happen with them if she was put away. The kids were already traumatized by the separation of their parents, we didn't want to add to the sorrow. Now one kid is going to college and I think the other would be better off with her biological father.

Useful Links:
 Having an Adult Made Ward of the State-  ExpertLaw.com
Guardianship of Incapacitated or Disabled Persons- FindLaw.com
How to Make an Adult a Ward of the State-  LegalBeagle.com

Lies, lies and more lies- Hawaii trip

So in January 2016, Sonya went to Hawaii and below is the text exchange she had with her brother Mike about it.

016-01-11 21:04:56			How are you doing? What is it like not having mom in the house?
			->	2016-01-13 13:49:30	Hi it's been fine I actually took advantage of my week with no one to care for and took a fight to Hawaii where I came to my friends house where I am sta
			->	2016-01-13 13:49:31	ying I'll be returning on Saturday.. This trip has cost in total 600.00
			->	2016-01-13 13:49:43	Free food and lodging ..
			<-	2016-01-13 15:21:16			That's great. You really deserve that rest and relaxation. Have a great time. Love , Mike
			->	2016-01-13 15:55:09	Thanks so much! I said wait a minute N Kim and Mike1 are going to dads.... Mom's in her new place... KAY back at school...??!? You mean I will be by m
			->	2016-01-13 15:55:10	yself for a whole week??!!? I had to seize the moment!
			->	2016-01-19 22:57:39	Hi mike I'm home and went to visit mom and she's crying that she's miserable there... And wants to come home I think .. But where she is is affordable an
			->	2016-01-19 22:57:40	d the woman is very nice... Mom is complaining of being bored and neglected.. Same thing she complained of at home with us
			->	2016-01-19 22:58:10	I believe it's not the people and the places... It's her situation, she's unhappy with.
			->	2016-01-19 23:01:41	She being very difficult causing commotions and stirring up stuff... Crying for attention like a child.. She acts as if she's got some medical problem an
			->	2016-01-19 23:01:42	d goes to ER and nothing is wrong.. It's more her mental state. She complains of being abused as in neglect not physical, but it's simply not true..

However the bank statements say something different. However we didn't get the bank statements until after Mike became their mother's conservator, because of the financial eldercare abuse by Sonya. And I didn't notice the Hawaii expenses, until preparing the material for posting on this blog.
On January 13th she wrote -"Hi it's been fine I actually took advantage of my week with no one to care for and took a fight to Hawaii where I came to my friends house where I am staying I'll be returning on Saturday.. This trip has cost in total 600.00. Free food and lodging .." Well free for Sonya because she was using her mother's money. Maybe the token amount she was putting in was the $600. I don't know. 
Sonya, goes on a vacation to Hawaii while Carol was stuck in a cheap miserable place with no activities. It was just a place to sit and watch TV and wait to die, which I guess was what Sonya was waiting for. Sonya doesn't get that neglect IS ABUSE, in her January 19, 2016 text to her brother.