CA case highlights how estate planning docs can be disregarded

An Unlikely Plaintiff. At Issue? He Dares Not Speak Its Name.
Scott James
May 6, 2010
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/us/07sfmetro.html?ref=us
When Clay M. Greene remembered the events of June 2008, he clenched his teeth, his hands tightened into fists and his body shook. “They grabbed them by their necks and tossed them in a car,” he said last week, recalling the fate of his beloved cats, Sassy and Tiger. He never saw them again.

Mr. Greene, 78, named both the people he believes are his tormentors and what he feared would happen now. “The county workers will come and shoot me, knock on the door, and blow my head off,” he said.

Paranoia, fear and anger are Mr. Greene’s constant companions in his tiny Guerneville studio apartment. His mind is slipping, not always tethered to the present or reality.

Yet it is this failing, frightened man who has suddenly found himself thrust into the national spotlight in a legal battle where some would like to make him a martyr for same-sex marriage.

Anne N. Dennis, Mr. Greene’s lawyer, said, “He’s a scared little rabbit.”

In April 2008 Mr. Greene’s partner of 25 years, Harold Scull, then 88, fell and was hospitalized. Sonoma County became involved, and the two men were separated into different nursing homes and prevented from seeing each other. Their belongings were sold at auction, and their cats were taken away. Mr. Scull died a few months later.

A lawsuit Mr. Greene filed asserts that the men’s wills and wishes were not honored and that their relationship was not treated equitably because they were a same-sex couple. The county has said there was a concern about domestic violence, although no criminal charges were pursued. A civil trial over the county’s actions is scheduled to begin July 16.

When news of the lawsuit emerged last month, it grabbed headlines, and gay rights advocates — including the National Center of Lesbian Rights, which has added its legal resources to the case — said it was a textbook example of discrimination against same-sex couples.

Ms. Dennis said, “Because they were gay, the county was able to do things they would not be able to do to a married couple.”

After all, how often are married heterosexual couples separated against their will?

But if Mr. Greene is to become a poster boy for legalizing same-sex marriage, he is an unwitting one. In one of his rare interviews, he did not refer to himself as gay. Having come from a generation when one’s homosexuality was hidden for fear of arrest or rebuke, he speaks in euphemisms.

“Just because my friend was 10 years older than me and fell down in the driveway,” Mr. Greene said. “They have to make a big deal out of it.”

Friend. Not lover. Not partner.

He beamed as he flipped through an album of old photographs, black and whites of handsome athletic men in taut bathing suits on the beach. Yes, they were more than just friends, the pictures said.

“We weren’t a married couple,” Mr. Greene corrected. “Why are you making a big deal out of this? We were just roommates.”

Ms. Dennis said Mr. Greene, for the most part, remained “closeted” about his orientation, adding, “This is a very private man who wanted to have a very quiet life with his partner and his cats.”

Jannette Biggerstaff, 76, a close friend of the couple for decades, said Mr. Greene came from an age where “you disguised that were gay; you hid it.”

“He could not admit that he was gay, could he?” she said.

Losing Mr. Scull, their pets, and a lifetime of belongings have left Mr. Greene “an absolute shell of the person I knew three years ago,” Ms. Biggerstaff said. “He has absolutely been terrorized. He was subject to a situation that I don’t think many people would be able to withstand.”

Ms. Dennis said Mr. Greene, who moved out of the nursing home about a year ago, sometimes wandered around Guerneville, asking passers-by if they had seen his truck, the one the county confiscated and sold, or Mr. Scull. Then he remembers.

His finger is wrapped in a large bandage. He knows the tip of was cut off, but cannot recall how it happened. His apartment is neat, with a miniature Christmas tree, fully decorated, by the door.

Mr. Greene said he had never heard of the same-sex-marriage debate or Proposition 8, the referendum that outlawed such marriages. He was surprised to learn that his case was of interest to gay rights advocates.

But when asked about what the county had done to him, he was instantly engaged, and the anger and fear returned.

“I was trash” to them, he said. “I’m going to end up in the Dumpster.”

Scott James is an Emmy-winning television journalist and novelist who lives in San Francisco.

Meet Harold and Clay
Kate Kendell
April 20, 2010
Bilerico.com
http://www.bilerico.com/2010/04/meet_harold_greene_and_clay_scull.php
The response to the horrific story of Clay Greene and Harold Scull has been very gratifying and inspiring. Clearly, their story struck a chord in all of us. To some degree we can’t help imagining ourselves in exactly this situation. Forty-eight hours ago, few people knew their names, and now a Facebook page in their honor has more than 7,000 fans. Quite simply, this case demonstrates how our relationships as LGBT people are so fragile, especially when we reach our later years. Just one small incident, in this case a fall down some steps, sends the world crashing down.

Harold and Clay were in a committed relationship for twenty-five years, and they lived together for twenty years. Both Harold and Clay had worked in Hollywood and were passionate collectors of film memorabilia. Harold had worked for MGM studios in the 1950s and was a favorite of Louis B. Mayer in the studio’s heyday. At the same time, Clay worked in television with many popular stars of that period. In addition to his film industry career, Harold was an accomplished artist and avid collector, especially of Mexican and Central American Santos religious art and artifacts. Art, heirlooms, and memorabilia graced the walls of their leased home, in which they planned to live together until their deaths.

Several folks have commented about the legal status of Clay and Harold’s relationship. These tragic events began in April 2008, one month before the California Supreme Court’s historic marriage ruling. By the time the California Supreme Court ruled and marriages began for that brief six months, Harold was already hospitalized and Clay imprisoned in a nursing home.

The two men had not registered as Domestic Partners, and they may not have even known that option existed. But they had filled out all the paperwork that attorneys advise same-sex couples to create, including wills and powers of attorney for health care.

In every case our clients are human beings, and they are not perfect, which is why we all identify so fiercely with those we represent. At the time of Harold’s fall he had already been experiencing some degree of mental impairment, and had been drinking. He fell down the stairs and became angry when Clay wanted to call an ambulance because he was afraid of what the result might be. (And as it turned out, he had good reason to be.) The paramedics who arrived on the scene suspected the possibility of abuse. But that suspicion was false. What happened over the next two months is when the nightmare truly began. Once Harold was released from the hospital to a nursing home, the county refused to tell Clay where Harold had been placed, forced Clay into a nursing home where he did not need to be, auctioned all of his possessions, including treasured and valuable works of art and family memorabilia, and took away his two beloved cats. The level of inhumanity is staggering.

After 25 years of a rich and shared life of devoted commitment, a couple at least deserves being able to be at each other’s bedside at the last moments of life. Not only was Harold denied that comfort, and Clay denied the ability to be there to say goodbye to his life partner, but Clay was stripped of everything that mattered and gave him stability in his life.

We can’t change what happened to Harold and Clay, but we can do what we try to do every day: to create a world where what happened to Harold and Clay never happens again.

Greene v. County of Sonoma et al.: Download a copy of the complaint

Sonoma County CA separates elderly gay couple and sells all of their worldly possessions
Kate Kendell
April 17, 2010
Bilerico.com
http://www.bilerico.com/2010/04/sonoma_county_ca_separates_elderly_gay_couple_and.php
Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place–wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling.

Without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold’s lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. The only memento Clay has is a photo album that Harold painstakingly put together for Clay during the last three months of his life.

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O’Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O’Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.