Speakes estate ruling disputed
Miss. native’s daughter given control; wife appeals
Jerry Mitchell
December 6, 2009
The Clarion-Ledger
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20091206/NEWS/912060352/1001/news
Was former White House press secretary Larry Speakes, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, abducted from his wife’s care in 2008? Or had she already neglected and abandoned him?

The state Supreme Court could hear the family feud over who oversees the care and $1 million estate of this Mississippi native. It depends on whether justices agree to hear the appeal by Speakes’ wife, who is fighting a Bolivar County Chancery Court ruling that awarded conservatorship to Speakes’ daughter, Sondra Lanell Speakes Huerta of Cleveland.

Jack Andrews of Kentucky, one of the attorneys for Speakes’ wife, said she was never notified of an August 2008 hearing in which the judge granted the conservatorship. Speakes, 70, has hardly been able to speak to his wife since he’s been abducted, he said. “The spouse of a prisoner on death row has greater rights than the wife has been given to communicate with her husband in this case.”

Jamie Jacks of Cleveland, Huerta’s attorney, said Speakes’ wife, Aleta Sindelar, previously agreed to terms that limited her contact to two phone calls a week and a 30-day written notice for any supervised visitation in exchange for forgiving most of the $120,000 Sindelar took from Speakes’ accounts or borrowed after he was diagnosed in February 2008 with Alzheimer’s.

Speakes - who worked in the 1960s as a Mississippi newspaper reporter and editor - served longer as a presidential press secretary than anyone in modern history. He worked for seven years under President Ronald Reagan, taking over the position in 1981 after press secretary James Brady and Reagan were shot in an assassination attempt.

“He was a really great press secretary,” said longtime friend Ed Meek of Oxford, who ran a journalism business with Speakes when they were students at the University of Mississippi in the early 1960s. “He had a great sense of humor and understanding of the press.”

Speakes resigned from the White House in 1987 and wrote a controversial memoir, Speaking Out, that cost him his job with Merrill Lynch after he admitted he twice put words in Reagan’s mouth.

The book was the biggest mistake,” Meek said. “He told me he had hired a ghost writer and just wasn’t paying attention.”

Speakes finished his career working in public relations for the Postal Service. He married three times, the most recent in 2001 to Sindelar, who continued using her last name as a nurse and employee of the National Institutes of Health and of the Food and Drug Administration. They had no children together.

Andrews said Speakes initially moved into Sindelar’s home in Bethesda, Md., but the three-hour commute to his job in Washington proved too taxing.

He said Speakes rented a condominium in Arlington, Va., near his workplace, spending weekends with his wife.

Because of the onset of dementia, Speakes retired in December 2007. On Feb. 15, 2008, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

His doctor recommended he get his legal affairs in order, Andrews said. Speakes made a will and signed power of attorney to his wife.

In that will, Speakes said his wife would get 60 percent of his estate and his three children would split the rest.

“He kept his three children in the dark about his Alzheimer’s diagnosis,” Sindelar’s attorneys wrote. “Mrs. Speakes eventually informed them of their father’s dementia, but begged them not to let Larry know she was the one who had told them.”

But Jacks said the children never knew. In fact, she said when Speakes’ son, Scott, showed up in July 2008, he was horrified to find his father in such a mental state and his condo in deplorable condition.

It was clear to Scott his father was living alone with Alzheimer’s, Jacks said.

As previously planned, Scott went with his father to an Atlanta Braves baseball game and to Mississippi to visit family, Jacks said. “In a little more than a month here, the children realized he was in a medical situation and needed 24-hour supervision. He couldn’t even write a check. He didn’t know how to make change.”

On Aug. 11, 2008, Bolivar County Chancery Judge William Willard Jr. awarded Speakes’ daughter conservatorship - power over all of Speakes’ estate, money and affairs - after she told the judge Sindelar convinced Speakes to transfer “the majority of his assets to her name even though they are separated and not living together,” according to court documents.

At one point during the hearing, Willard asked Speakes if he was OK with this, and he said yes, Jacks said. “Unfortunately there’s no transcript of this.”

Sindelar never knew of the hearing until after the judge had awarded conservatorship to the daughter.

Jacks said all Mississippi requires is for one child to be present along with the conservator and the person in question. “A spouse is not required to be given notice of conservatorship unless that spouse is a resident of Mississippi,” she said.

Jacks said a copy of the conservatorship papers was e-mailed to Sindelar, who then sought to set aside that conservatorship.

Speakes’ children set out to learn about their father’s finances, discovering Sindelar used Speakes’ account to take out a $75,000 home equity loan, Jacks said. “She said she did this to make her home handicap accessible, but she redid the basement and put in marble tile and granite.”

Because Speakes isn’t in a wheelchair or disabled, “We felt this was not a move made for the benefit of Mr. Speakes,” Jacks said. But Andrews said, “Larry is the one who designed the apartment.”

The family also found $14,000 withdrawn from Speakes’ investment account and other large withdrawals “we knew Mr. Speakes wasn’t spending,” she said.

In return for forgiving those debts, Sindelar agreed to limited visitation with Speakes, Jacks said. “And she also agreed if we found any other withdrawals, she would pay them back.”

After the family discovered a $25,000 CD Sindelar had cashed out, she hired a new lawyer to challenge the conservatorship again, Jacks said.

Sindelar’s first attorney kept her in the dark about agreements made with Speakes’ children, Andrews said. “She never signed anything and never saw these orders.”

He said the claim Sindelar “abandoned Larry is a blatant falsehood.”

Speakes’ physician had no problems with his patient staying at home alone and “was not a risk to wander off,” he said.

Another attorney for Sindelar, T.K. Moffett of Tupelo, said the court order permits reasonable visitation, but she “hasn’t been able to see her husband in a year and a half privately. She can’t visit with him.”

The Speakes’ children’s attorney said she asked Moffett for a proposed visitation schedule and didn’t receive anything until Thursday.

Moffett said the original Aug. 11, 2008, hearing was held without any kind of notice to Sindelar. “The law says a five-day notice,” he said.

Months after conservatorship was granted, Sindelar finally saw Speakes with lawyers and family members standing around, and he said, “Take me home,” according to Andrews.

The next time she was able to talk with Speakes, his children were there, and he told Sindelar he wanted to go home, Andrews said.

The conversation ended quickly after that, he said.

At a July 16 hearing, Sindelar was able to tell her side of the story, Andrews said.

Months later at a Sept. 8 hearing, she spoke briefly to Speakes during a break - while a nursing home official watched.

“They hugged and talked,” Andrews said. “He clearly remembered his wife and told her, ‘Take me home,’ and she replied, ‘I can’t do that, dear. I’m working on it.’ ”

Jacks said the court authorized only supervised visitation for Sindelar and that Sindelar had violated the court orders by trying to talk about the past with Speakes.

“I hope the Supreme Court will take a look at it,” Moffett said. “The law leans in favor of wives taking care of their husbands. She is being denied access to him.”