Today I spoke to an Illinois public prosecutor who confirmed that a power of attorney (PoA) provides no exemption from prosecution on the facts of physical or financial elder abuse.

Yet, having a PoA still continues to shield abusers from being taken to civil court on even the most compelling facts of malicious elder isolation at an elder's end of life.

This is an intolerable double standard. Even more so because we are not asking to make the devastating family violence of elder isolation a criminal offense. Or to collect millions in civil damages for it.

All we want is THE SAME ACCESS to civil court, on the facts and the merits, that criminal prosecutors have for criminal elder abuse--WITHOUT PRE-EMPTION BY AN ABUSER'S POWER OF ATTORNEY. 

All that my 2018 law, the Frail Elderly Family Visitation Protection Act, envisioned was the right for an elder's immediate family member with a longstanding and loving relationship to be able to petition a civil court for an order of visitation. But lawyers groups added an exemption to my law for isolators who hold a PoA, effectively rendering it useless.

Who takes control of an elder and physically isolates them for malice, power, and/or greed without also appropriating the elder's PoA?

Please join me in demanding that the Illinois General Assembly and Governor JB Pritzker REMOVE THE BLANKET EXEMPTION FOR POWERS OF ATTORNEY from the Illinois Frail Elderly Family Visitation Protection Act.  

The facts of elder abuse must be the facts--and they must be pleadable--whether that abuse is financial, physical, or family-destroying. 

An adult son or daughter may win back stolen inheritance funds in probate. But there is no legal afterlife for elder visitation.

No one ever gets back stolen family time: the chance to be that loving and helping presence they intended, and that their parented wanted, at their parent's end of life. Elder isolation is elder abuse.