Looking for my birth certificate, I dug a dusty box out of the closet, and started to go through it. I failed to find my birth certificate, but I found a birthday card that my mom wrote to me, probably when I was at Notre Dame. “I am proud of the man that you have become,” she wrote to me. My knees buckled when I read that, because it reminded me how much I miss her, and how uniquely powerful a mom’s love can be. The incredible and relentless strength of a mom’s love is a recurring feature in my elder law practice.
The most memorable examples of mom’s love have occurred in these oft-repeated guardianship scenarios: Adult child suffers from mental illness, and is in the midst of a psychotic break. The police pick her up and bring her to the hospital where she is placed in the psychiatric unit on a five day hold after doctors determine that she is a danger to herself or to others. Hospital social workers tell mom that child will need longer than five days to stabilize. They warn mom that the State almost never extends the hold, even as sick as child is, and that child will leave the hospital when the five day hold terminates. The social workers urge mom to seek emergency guardianship so that she, as guardian, will have authority to extend the hospitalization over child’s objection.
Even before mom calls me to learn about guardianship, here is what she has just witnessed:
1. Her daughter’s psychotic break, maybe her first one. These breaks can manifest in paranoid delusions about mom poisoning child, or fasting that reduces daughter to skin and bones, or voices that cause child to yell or scream or flee in response, or to silence them with drugs or alcohol.
2. Her daughter’s (perhaps undiagnosed) mental illness. Her daughter is unrecognizable. Reasoning with her is not an option. Mom’s research about mental illness is frightening. What does this mean for the future of her child? Will mom ever see the daughter that she raised – so different from this person in the hospital – again?
3. Her daughter’s vulnerability. If daughter leaves the hospital in this condition, she will accept no shelter and most likely be on the street.
With all of this on her shoulders, mom calls me, and all I do is add to her burden by telling her:
1. The guardianship process is expensive. When no one objects to mom’s petition for guardianship, it usually costs $2,500 - $3,500. When someone objects – as the person in child’s position often does – the cost of the process could be $5,000 - $10,000.
2. Guardianship will solve some problems, but probably not all of them. If daughter is denying mom access to medical information, guardianship will solve that problem. As guardian, mom may extend the hospitalization of daughter. If daughter is out of the hospital, and does not want to go to the hospital or take her medication, guardianship will not help mom get daughter into the car to go to the hospital or force daughter to take medications. Also, if daughter flees the state, mom’s guardianship authority may not be effective in the state to which daughter flees.
3. The guardianship process, in which mom tells a court that daughter is incapable of managing her own care, could intensify daughter’s paranoia and make mom an enemy. After all, daughter’s mental illness deprives her of insight to her condition. From daughter’s perspective, she has no need for a guardian.
Mom hears this from me while receiving a voice mail message from the hospital social worker, asking whether she has begun the guardianship process yet.
Some of these moms have become my clients and hired me to help them to become guardians for their daughters. Others have not called me back after our initial conversation. I understand both perspectives. Some of those that hired me had to participate in court hearings in which daughter articulated unspeakable delusions in which mom was an abuser. Some of these moms asked to terminate guardianship after a couple of years, concluding that the resistance that it generated in the child did more harm than good. Some of these moms remain guardians, and use their authority to make the crises that occur from time to time less traumatic.
This elder law world is so hard it can even put a mom’s love to the test. In these guardianship cases, I have seen moms endure this fire or, more accurately, walk into the burning building and pull their child out of it, regardless of the pain of the effort. I grew up feeling the intensity of my mom’s love, and I am honored to witness it so often in my work.
