In Recent Court Ruling Judge Overlooks A Patients Living Will and More

Judge Gertner gave custody to the son of a man who had a living will and medical power of attorney indicating that he did not want his children to have power over his person or property. This leads to the question, "What good is paying for and having these documents if they can be rendered useless without a trial?"

Ocean County residents with estranged children can no longer rest easy after having their final wishes put into writing. Without more than some protest from their children and a lawyer who is willing to make statements that won't be debunked unless challenged in a trial, parents are being forced to give their undeserving children an inheritance. It has always been a parents right to choose to give to a child or not. What has changed?

Next to be seen is how the gentleman's Will is handled. He is still alive, but his children are clearly left out and his reasons are spelled out without question. Does the court have the right to change someones Will?

Revealed in a deposition during one of the attempts to bring this to trial, the attorney that wrote the Will revealed an interesting practice he noted while working in the Surrogates office for many years.

He said "I had strongly suggested they move to a different county which would give them the potential to at least not have the jurisdiction of APS which is Adult Protective Services, or the likelihood of an Ocean County guardianship which traditionally means that when a family fights nobody gets appointed. It's a neutral."
"The court looks for a neutral and (on) a temporary basis and then the Office of the Public Guardian on a permanent basis. There's no other county in this state that follows that same model. There's 21 counties, but Ocean is the only one that follows that model. But most people don't know that unless you work down here, so."

This works out well for the court appointed temporary guardians and attorneys and may explain why it took two and a half years for this patient to even be declared incapacitated.