Protect Our Parents

🛑ABDUL, YOUR RÉSUMÉ NEEDS A FOOTNOTE. Medical degree? Yes. Completed residency? No. Medical License? No. Then explain your actual role when telling voters you diagnosed patients. You’re selling Medicare for All and asking voters to trust your experience. We’re allowed to ask exactly what that experience involved. Give us the full résumé—not the campaign edition. 🎤If your credentials are part of the sales pitch, the full context belongs in the pitch too. Medicare For All: Who pays, how is seniors’ access to care protected, and what safeguards prevent vulnerable adults from losing control over their care and their lives? #justiceforBettyHayes #MedicareForAll #WhoPays #HealthcareAccountability #ProtectOurSeniors #ElderRights #StopGuardianshipAbuse #GuardianshipReform #PatientsBeforePolitics #DemandTransparency

🚨 I HAVE LAUNCHED A PETITION TO DEMAND CHANGE IN MICHIGAN PROBATE COURTS. What happened to my mother, Betty Hayes, is why I fight. Protecting other families is why I’m asking you to join me. We are calling for: ✔️ Independent selection of paid probate professionals. ✔️ Independent scrutiny of fees and accounts. ✔️ Compliance with EPIC and protection of families’ rights. ✔️ Meaningful consequences for proven judicial misconduct—including removal when warranted. A vulnerable person’s life savings should pay for their care—not unnecessary litigation and unchecked professional fees. This petition is for families across ALL 83 Michigan counties. ✍️ Please SIGN and SHARE: c.org/xkBgS5Tzzh Follow the law. End favoritism. Protect Michigan families.

🙄REP. KATHY SCHMALTZ JUST MADE MY POINT FOR ME I read Rep. Kathy Schmaltz’s op-ed claiming Michigan must do more to protect vulnerable adults from financial exploitation, and I couldn’t help but notice the contradiction. She writes that families trust court-appointed guardians and conservators because they believe the system will protect their loved ones. She acknowledges that vulnerable people are being financially exploited. She acknowledges that safeguards have failed. She even writes that families should not have to wonder whether the system designed to protect their loved one is adequately watching over their interests. Exactly. So why does the solution continue to be MORE LAWS without addressing what happens when the people responsible for enforcing those laws — including probate judges — fail to follow them? I personally spoke to Rep. Schmaltz during a Families and Veterans Committee meeting and told her exactly this: We don’t simply need more laws. We need accountability when the laws already on the books are ignored. That is the part I believe Lansing continues to avoid. Schmaltz congratulates the House for passing HB 5739 and HB 5740 and says these bills will provide additional financial safeguards and accountability. But accountability for whom? What happens when a guardian violates the law? What happens when a conservator fails to protect someone’s assets? And most importantly, what happens when a probate judge approves it, overlooks it, or fails to enforce the safeguards already required by law? Passing another bill does not answer that question. You can require another notice. You can require another accounting. You can establish another financial threshold. You can require another court approval. But if the ultimate safeguard is still “the judge will make sure the law is followed,” what protection does that provide to a family whose complaint is that the court itself failed to enforce the law? That is the disconnect I have been trying to explain. And I say this as someone who lived through the probate system with my own mother. I am not arguing that every new safeguard is bad. I am saying a safeguard without enforcement is only words on paper. Where is the independent oversight? Where is the meaningful review when a probate court gets it wrong? Where are the consequences when statutory protections are ignored? Where is the fast, affordable remedy for a vulnerable adult whose money, home or rights are being lost while a family spends years trying to appeal? Rep. Schmaltz ends her article by saying: “Families should not have to wonder whether the system designed to protect their loved one is adequately watching over their interests.” On that, I completely agree. But that means we have to be willing to examine the entire system — including the courts themselves. Passing more laws and then congratulating legislators for passing them does not solve the underlying problem if nobody is willing to address what happens when those laws aren’t followed. Real reform is not measured by how many bills Lansing passes. It is measured by whether the vulnerable person standing at the center of a probate case is actually protected. And until we have meaningful judicial oversight and accountability, families like mine are going to keep asking: Who holds the court accountable when the court fails to follow the law? 🤯⚖️ #Michigan #probate #guardianship #abuseofpower #isolation #dementia #accountability #justiceforbettyhayes

I know what it feels like to fight for your mother while professionals hold the authority and your family bears the consequences. I refuse to accept that asking these questions is somehow more offensive than the suffering that makes us ask them. A probate court holds power over someone’s freedom, money, home and family relationships. That demands extraordinary transparency. The public deserves a court whose independence can withstand scrutiny. When a family challenges a professional fiduciary’s fees, conduct or treatment of a loved one in probate court, how can that family feel confident that longstanding professional loyalties will carry no weight? “Trust us” is not an oversight system. These are not merely historical connections. The people involved were fired as public administrators, yet they remain connected through the same professional network. They have been in the fortress since 2019—and they are still connected today. And now look at the campaign connections. Elisabeth Dery’s own endorsement page lists Judge Daniel O’Brien, John Yun, Jon Munger and Jennifer Carney, alongside attorneys from Kemp Klein. It identifies Yun as a partner at Yun Dery & Morgan. Jon Munger was a senior partner at Kemp Klein. Alan May is listed as a shareholder there, with a practice involving guardianships and conservatorships. Jennifer Carney also worked at Munger’s firm. Judge Linda Hallmark previously worked at May & May. Her longtime judicial staff attorney, Ryan Deel, is married to attorney Melinda Deel, whose guardian-ad-litem work is documented in court records. Ryan joined their private practice in January 2025 after Hallmark retired. Judge Jennifer Callaghan worked for John Yun. Her own 2016 candidate statement identified her as a public administrator working at his firm, taking appointments as guardian, conservator, trustee and personal representative. In my view, this is an incestuous professional circle—and families have every right to question it. Our loved ones are human beings. Their lives must never become business as usual for a tightly connected legal circle—especially one that has remained connected inside the fortress since 2019. If this touches your heart and you want to understand what families endure when guardianship becomes abuse, please order a copy of Julie Belshe and Gretchen Rachel Hammond’s American UnPeople. These are real people, real families, and devastating stories that deserve to be heard. It’s a powerful read that will stay with you long after the last page. #JusticeForBettyHayes #ProbateAccountability #GuardianshipReform #Michigan #AmericanUnPeople #LasVegas