Too many elders like my dad are relentlessly denied visitation with their closest family members at their end of life. This can happen to any elder, in fact, after they become too frail to live in their own home and open their own door.   

I created this petition to tell state lawmakers and bar organizations that ANYONE who controls access to an elder must be LEGALLY OBLIGATED NOT to disrupt that elder's loving and longstanding family visitation.

This obligation must apply whether the isolator holds court-appointed guardianship, power of attorney (PoA), ownership of the elder's domicile, or is in some shared living/helping arrangement with the elder. None of these formal or informal powers must provide legal impunity for exploiting an elder's age-related vulnerabilities to keep them in isolation and under control.  

With the right laws, Adult Protective Services could actually investigate and make legally actionable findings of abusive elder isolation, state's attorneys could criminally prosecute it, and/or family members could get to court expeditiously for an enforceable order of visitation.

But even the new Kasem-Baksys Visitation law that I spearheaded in Illinois in 2018 couldn't restore my 98-year-old father's right to receive my visits. That's because the Illinois State Bar Association inserted a "safe harbor" for isolators who hold an elder's power of attorney. And exempting PoAs from my law leaves a loophole big enough to drive a truck through.

As in my father's case, anybody who can use an elder's frailty to keep them emotionally and/or physically isolated will have no trouble getting the elder's signature on a downloadable form. Yet the Illinois State Bar continues to force loving daughters like me into complex, costly litigation over a scrap of paper made meaningless by an isolator's undue influence--while barring us from bringing even the most obvious facts of elder isolation before a judge.  

How long does the bar think our elders have to live? At more than 90 years old, how much quality time does the bar think an elder has left?

Please sign to help loving family protect lifelong relationships that our elders can no longer protect for themselves. Please sign to demand laws that define elder isolation as elder abuse and open our courts to the immediate facts of elder abuse in real time.

Thank you!