The Maine Monitor

In 2023, The Maine Monitor, in partnership with ProPublica Local Reporting Network, published a six-month-long series on Maine’s probate court, which includes guardianship. Hogan’s series, “Maine’s Part-Time Court” received support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Investigative Editing Corps, and Report for America.

The principal investigative reporter was Samantha Hogan. The Maine probate court investigation cumulated in 11 articles:

• Six takeaways from the Monitor’s probate court investigation. June 4, 2023.

• Calls to overhaul Maine probate courts have stalled for half a century. The most vulnerable people may be at risk. June 4, 2023.

• The decision that can last a lifetime. July 30, 2023.

• Eight deaths raise questions about oversight of Maine’s public guardianships. September 10, 2023.

• GOP lawmaker calls for scrutiny of DHHS after disclosure of eight public guardianship deaths. With David Dahl. September 24, 2023.

• Maine’s constitution says people in guardianships with mental illness cannot vote. Voters can change that in November. October 8, 2023.

• Judges, sheriffs ask Maine Supreme Court to dismiss petition filed by woman held in jail without a lawyer. October 13, 2023.

• Lawmakers eye tighter oversight on guardianships. October 25, 2023.

• Against Their Will: Maine’s probate courts lack a method to detect fraud. Some other states have robust audit systems. December 3, 2023.

• Probate courts ripe for reform. Samantha Hogan. December 17, 2023.

• How we investigated Maine’s probate courts. December 24, 2023.

In a series article about fraud in guardianship, Hogan notes (December 3),

“The antiquated, underfunded and understaffed probate courts have left Mainers vulnerable to being ripped off. A Monitor survey earlier this year of 10 of the state’s [16] probate courts revealed that many do not audit conservators or guardians.”

On June 11, 2024, Hogan received the 2024 Livingston Award for Young Journalists, for local reporting on Maine’s probate courts and guardianship.

As part of Fund for Investigative Journalism’s yearlong webinar series, Inside the Investigation (April 12, 2024), FIJ hosted a webinar “with the investigative journalists behind two award-winning investigations that exposed abuses in government programs meant to help people who are incapacitated.”(September 27, 2024) Journalists included Samantha Hogan’s series, “Maine’s Part-Time Court” (while at the Maine Monitor), and Joshua Ceballos and Daniel Rivero (of WLRN, a NPR member station in South Florida), whose “Unguarded” series investigated Dade County’s guardianship system. The Unguarded series included Part 1: The Guardianship Program of Dade sells properties of ‘incapacitated’ people to a Miami realtor, who reaps big gains(March 7, 2023), Part 2: Buying Guardianship homes turns into family affair(April 5, 2023), and Part 3: How a tight-knit network of Miami real estate players bought and sold Guardianship homes for profit (June 28, 2023). Follow up by Ceballos was reported in Miami-Dade Mayor wants court to change guardianship system after damning audit (August 9, 2024). The WLRN investigations was also supported by a FIJ grant.

The needs and opportunities provided by Hogan’s investigation were discussed in my June 20, 2024, keynote, “Strengthening Elder Justice: A Strategy for Evaluation,” co-sponsored by AARP Maine and Legal Services for Maine Elders.

In 1967, Maine voters amended the state constitution to set up a new probate court system with full-time judges. It repealed the county-based system, established in the 1850s.

The constitutional amendment never went into effect because it was contingent on legislators passing a plan to transition to a new court system.

In December 2021, the Commission to Create a Plan to Incorporate the Probate Courts into the Judicial Branch published its report. The first recommendation was that,

“The county probate court system should be fully incorporated into the state Judicial Branch through the deliberately multi-step process detailed in Recommendations B to F.”

There has been lack of funding, and opposition. In an interview with Samantha Hogan in 2023, State Senator Craig Hickman said (October 25, 2023),

“At some point the Legislature is going to have to find the political will to do something that establishes a probate court system that hires full-time judges, because that’s what the constitution has told the Legislature to do…”

Maine is provided with a mandate, and a way in which needs can be met with opportunities‚

• The opportunity to protect citizens’ rights.

• The opportunity to harness existing state initiatives, resources, and acts so that guardianships will become unnecessary.