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I Care a Lotâ is a dark comedy released last year on Netflix that has Rosamund Pike in a decidedly unfunny role. She plays Marla Grayson, an attorney who has discovered an unorthodox specialty in her profession that, with the help of an ethically-challenged physician and a naive judge, has provided a very lucrative income for her and her girlfriend.
The doctor tips her off to well-to-do aging patients with little or no family and offers testimony indicating she believes the patient requires some help. The judge authorizes a court order naming Miss Grayson the legal guardian. She introduces herself at the door, steps in and, while their heads are still spinning, helps them pack a bag and has the nursing home van (theyâre in cahoots also) there to whisk them away. The individual is plied with sedatives, kept isolated and confused. And before you know it, theyâre so foggy they donât remember a former life.
The film is fiction but the story all too familiar to thousands of Americans whose elderly parents have been entrapped by little scrutinised guardianship programmes. Many speak of a sense of helplessness in the face of system rife with the abuse, neglect and profit-driven exploitation of vulnerable people.
The opening scene of I Care a Lot, for example, would strike a chord with Doug Franks. When he and his brother Charles could not agree where their 89-year-old mother Ernestine should live, the dispute led a judge to appoint a guardianship company to take over her care. It was the beginning of a four-year nightmare.