By: Teresa N. Phillips, Esq., ForsterBoughman
Welcome to the second part of our introduction article to this blog wherein we explore the weaponization of Florida Guardianships. Today, we continue to take a look at when guardianships go wrong and seek to understand what went wrong and look at preventive measures people can take in an effort to avoid being a victim of such a scenario.
In our last post, we were looking at the curious case of Douglas Arthur Keegan. Based on news articles and limited available court records, it appears Mr. Keegan is a former engineer who in 2014 found himself being declared to be incapacitated and being appointed a professional guardian—all against his express wishes.1
In 2014, according to Mr. Keegan, he married a woman he had been involved romantically with for about a year. She was Nigerian. And his adult children did not like it. The marriage sparked a series of events that has led to what may just be a terrible miscarriage of justice if the allegations made by Mr. Keegan turn out to be true.
After being declared incapacitated and having a permanent guardian appointed in 2015, Mr. Keegan’s then professional guardian petitioned for divorce on his behalf and in 2016, a final judgment of dissolution was entered. Since then, he has been in assisted living facilities and dementia wards, many of which he has actively broken out of and ran away from, sometimes leading to legal detainment.
Today, Mr. Keegan is seeking to get his life back. He filed a Suggestion of Capacity pro se just last month. It is a 31 page document that details allegations of misconduct by his own son who he described as being “financially strapped” and who perceived his father’s marriage to equal a disinheritance.2 This latest filing is after many years of Mr. Keegan contacting various watchdog agencies, governmental agencies, police authorities and attorneys and enlisting their help in his struggle to regain control of his life. He makes allegations that a substantial portion of his assets have been consumed by various attorney’s fees, court fees and guardian related fees, he has had important documents, computers and phones removed from him at the insistence or behest of his court appointed guardian and that he has never been properly heard in the Court. 3 He freely admits he suffers from alcoholism but contends that does not make him legally incapacitated.
Are his allegations true? I honestly do not know. I recognize many of the names of legal and guardian professionals he raised in his recent filing and I have never personally known them to act any way except ethical and lawful. But whether his allegations are true or not, I think this case nonetheless highlights a major shortfall in our current system. What is the solution when in the pursuit of its objectives of protection, the guardianship process leaves a ward financially depleted and/or in mental anguish due to the loss of control?!
It seems apparent Mr. Keegan has some high-level cognitive function and comprehension. Afterall, he has been living in a motel for two years by himself, working on his legal case from his own laptop and cooking for himself. More importantly, and notwithstanding the accuracy of his allegations, he perceives he has been wronged and ignored by the guardianship system which is supposed to protect him. He feels as if the individual players involved (including attorneys, guardians and judges) have conspired to ignore him, institutionalize him against his will, take his assets and use them to their own advantage. The fact he passionately believes this to be true and is able to communicate those feelings in writing, verbally in press interviews and other phone communications leads to one disturbing conclusion: Mr. Keegan is living in a hellish state. In his mind, he went from being a newlywed to being divorced, penniless and with no power or control over his own life. Could he be wrong about the actual facts he alleges? Of course he could be absolutely mistaken. But what peace and protection has the system really given Mr. Keegan if nearly seven years after the guardianship proceedings were initiated, he is living a sad, lonely life from a Kissimmee, FL motel and does not think there is one person involved in the guardianship system who actually cares about him or is looking out for him?!