Yesterday, in part one, we offered a brief synopsis of the movie, which revolves around Marla Grayson, a crooked professional fiduciary who makes her living by preying on vulnerable seniors, and we then outlined the true events that inspired the fictional account. The film’s writer and director, J. Blakeson, came up with the idea after reading news stories of a similar scam involving a corrupt professional guardianship agency in Las Vegas.

In that case, a real-life Marla Grayson named April Parks, who owned a company called A Private Professional Guardian, was sentenced up to 40 years in prison in 2018 after being indicted on more than 200 felonies for using her guardianship status to swindle more than 150 seniors out of their life savings. While I Care a Lot is fictional, the Parks case also inspired the 2018 documentary, The Guardians, directed by award-winning filmmaker Billie Mintz, and his film details the true events that ravaged the Nevada guardianship industry.

In a Facebook post, Mintz praises I Care a Lot as “a perfect introduction to guardianship,” but worries that because of the movie’s heavy focus on violence and Russian mobsters, “people won’t believe it’s real.” However, as Mintz points out, “I assure you that everything you see about guardianship is true.”

Indeed, while the Parks case is the most famous, similar cases of senior abuse by conservators and guardians are on the rise across the country. A2010 report by the Government Accountability Office found hundreds of cases where conservators were involved in the abuse, exploitation, and neglect of seniors placed under their supervision. And given the country’s exploding elderly population and our overloaded court system, such abuse will almost certainly become more common.

The Netflix movie I Care a Lot provides a dark, violent, and somewhat comedic take on the real life and not-at-all funny dangers of the legal (and sometimes corrupt) guardianship system. While the film’s twisting plot may seem far-fetched, it sheds light on a tragic phenomenon — the abuse of seniors at the hands of crooked “professional” conservators or guardians.

In this two-part series, we’ll discuss how the movie depicts such abuse, how this can occur in real life, and what you can do to prevent something similar from happening to you or your loved ones by using proactive estate planning and our Family Wealth Planning process. For support in putting airtight, protective planning vehicles in place, meet with our Personal Family Lawyer®.