N.J. program to monitor guardians of elderly

TRENTON - Amid reports of ongoing financial abuse and spotty oversight, Stuart Rabner, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, has launched a statewide program to monitor court-appointed guardians of the elderly and disabled.

Volunteers will visit courthouses to monitor financial reports of guardians and assist in establishing a database for guardianship records. The program was begun in Hunterdon, Passaic, Mercer, and Burlington Counties and could be expanded to the rest of the state by the end of the year.

While there are no strict professional or educational criteria for volunteers, authorities have set their sights on people with business, legal, or other professional backgrounds.

"Practices were not consistent throughout the state," Rabner said. "In a number of instances, [financial] reports were not filed, and in some cases when they were filed, they were not reviewed."

Rabner said the projected growth in New Jersey's elderly population - by 2030, 20 percent of the state's population will be 65 or older - and individual reports of abuse drew his attention to the issue.

Rabner and other court officials have pointed to the case of Brian Swedberg, an Ocean County-based minister who served as court-appointed guardian for 19 people and allegedly stole $200,000 from them. Swedberg was indicted in 2006 and later was admitted into a pretrial intervention program.

New Jersey judges approved some 2,400 guardianships last year and Rabner said he expected that the number will grow.

Because the state is only now establishing a statewide database of guardianship records, authorities have no idea of how many guardianships there are in New Jersey. But based on the number of guardianships established last year alone, the total is likely in the tens of thousands.

"It has resonated with people, and that is quite healthy," Rabner said of the program, which has attracted 277 volunteers since the end of January. "I think it is because, as one person said to me, we have parents and we are looking to the future."

Volunteers must pass a criminal-background check, have basic computer skills, and agree to abide by judicial rules governing conduct and ethics. There are no educational requirements, but Rabner said the courts are especially eager to attract people with accounting skills.

The caliber of the volunteers is high, a court official said. In Burlington County, participants include two accountants with their own firms and a former FBI agent, said Kristi Robinson, an official of the state Administrative Office of the Courts who is overseeing the program.

Courts typically establish guardianships for elderly and disabled people when they can no longer manage their own affairs. It is a sweeping power. Not only can guardians control a person's finances, they can make decisions concerning health, living arrangements, and other matters. The opportunities for abuse are huge.

"We know that most legal guardians by far are loving family members and true professionals," Rabner said recently to the New Jersey State Bar Association. "But that is not always the case. We've seen notorious cases in New Jersey and elsewhere in which individual guardians have stolen hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars from those in their care."

The few national studies that have been done on financial exploitation of the elderly and disabled paint a grim picture.

Rabner cited an AARP survey finding that there were hundreds of reports of financial and physical abuse by guardians of elderly people from 1990 through 2010.

More telling data were reported in a study by University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite and her colleagues for the National Institutes of Health in 2008. Waite and her team surveyed more than 3,000 people ages 57 to 85 and reported that 3.5 percent said their money was improperly taken in the preceding year.

Waite said the actual percentage was likely higher because people with obvious mental decline had been screened out.