I just saw an article in the New York Times about a 91-year-old woman who just wanted to be able to go back home. It reminded me of a couple of cases I’ve had.
In one case, several years ago, a man’s health was deteriorating rapidly and the people helping him were his ex-wife and her new husband. They were all close, and the ex and her husband were the only people whom my client truly trusted.
Several months after we prepared his estate plan, my client called me from the hospital and clearly told me some changes that he wanted to make. I agreed and told him that I’d get everything ready, and that he needed to let me know in advance when he could come to the office to sign.
He called a few days later and said the changes were now urgent. He wanted to leave the hospital, and the doctors were fighting that plan. He told me that the doctors had said that if he left, he’d be dead by the time he got to the sidewalk.
He told me that he didn’t care what the doctors said, and that I needed to get his papers ready and meet him at the hospital sidewalk. He told me that his ex-wife had his ID with her so that I could notarize his signature on the sidewalk, and then she was whisking him away.
I grabbed his documents and made the 45 minute drive to the hospital, and everything worked just like clockwork. I just parked in the five-minute patient loading zone and he was waiting in a wheelchair on the sidewalk while his ex-wife waited to load him into her car.
My client signed the docs, I notarized them and then his ex-wife zipped him away. And he didn’t die that day. In fact, he lived another three years, where he wanted to be in his own home.
In a more recent case, I had a client, Walt (not his real name), in his mid-80s who, like many others, had become more cranky as he aged and his health declined. He ended up with an infection on his leg, and his son had him put into a nursing facility near the son, but an hour away from the man’s own home and friends.
After a few days, and then a week or so, my client started ranting more that I needed to get him out of there. It got to the point where he was mad enough and mentally strong enough to call my office five or six times a day and ask for help.
I told him that he had the right to check himself out, but he explained that he had no money to pay for a taxi to come back home because his son had stolen his wallet and refused to give it back. He also complained that every time he walked near the exit, the nursing home staff would appear out of nowhere and block the door.
A couple of days later, Bob showed up at my office. He was one of Walt’s closest friends, and I had met him years earlier. He wanted to know what he could do to get Walt back home. I explained that the nursing home couldn’t keep Walt there against his own will, so Bob should just drive up there again to see Walt and try walking him out to the car to see what would happen.
It worked. Walt told me that there were no employees around when Bob showed up, so they just walked out together and Bob brought him home.
That was more than a year ago. Walt’s still cranky, but he’s also mentally strong and laughing a lot and making jokes with me. He came in recently and was shocked to hear that his granddaughter hadn’t paid his bill with me from six months earlier, so he pulled out his check book and paid me on the spot. He’s aging, but he’s still laughing a lot and he’s very happy to be in his own home.
James Ward is a longtime South Valley resident. He has offices in South Valley and Willow Glen, and he also owns J. Ward Financial in Morgan Hill for wealth management services.
