Questionable bills
Kormanik audit
Kormanik appeared at an April 15 hearing about the court audit of his cases but was not in court for a second hearing scheduled for May 6.
Montgomery wants him to explain why he has collected guardian fees from both a ward’s assets and from the county’s Indigent Guardianship Fund, public money set aside to pay attorneys $420 a year to serve as guardians for poor adults. To collect from both the ward and the county is double-dipping and not allowed.
The Dispatch reviewed six of the cases under investigation by Probate Court. In each case, Kormanik found money belonging to the ward, paid himself and then did not fully reimburse the indigent fund. Or he repaid the money from accounts that did not belong to him, such as a ward’s account at a nursing home where Social Security checks were deposited or financial gifts from loved ones were held.
“I think it is wise and prudent for the court to review these cases to make sure all is in order and to learn more about the repayment practices so that recommendations and improvements can be made in the process,” Kormanik said in an email on Friday. “I welcome the additional review.”
After the April 15 hearing, a magistrate ordered Kormanik to repay more than $3,000 to the indigent fund.
Kormanik also was ordered to provide an accounting by the end of this month on the sources of assets he found for his poor wards. Kormanik used those funds to pay himself more than $12,300 in fees with no explanation of the funding source.
“It appears the guardianattorney Kormanik is placing his interests ahead of the ward’s best interest and the court’s best interest in maintaining a functioning” indigent fund, wrote Senior Magistrate Benjamin F. Suffron III.
Suffron removed Kormanik as the guardian of an estate in one case because he failed to report to the court that the ward had an annuity worth more than $130,000 even as he collected $1,680 from the indigent fund over four years.
The ward, Ginger Leppert, has long been suspicious of her guardian. In 2011, she asked the court to remove him because of “neglect. I am upset over my money and no visitation rights with my family,” she wrote.
A different magistrate dismissed her complaint as “not credible.”
Probate courts generally allow guardians to charge wards two types of fees— a guardian fee and an attorney fee.
Guardian fees are determined by formula and amount to a small percentage of the ward’s estate. That fee is meant to be a reasonable charge to cover a guardian’s time and costs to set up and travel to doctors’ appointments and review mail and pay bills, but it should be much lower than legal fees.
Attorney fees are supposed to be for legal work only. The court technically requires a hearing any time a lawyer submits a bill, but it is often waived.
Montgomery said holding hearings is nearly impossible because of the high number of fee applications. Instead, he said, the court’s nine magistrates, who have judicial powers, review the bills on the spot and can question attorneys then.
“They do get reviewed; it’s not a rubber stamp,” the judge said.
Some attorneys don’t submit their bills in person. They send assistants for approval and charge wards $100 to $200 for filing their bills with the court.
Magistrates told The Dispatch that they have encouraged attorneys to file bills even when a ward has no assets, just in case the ward eventually receives an inheritance or wins cash. Because of that pre-approval, some also appear to be tapping small funds their poor wards receive from Social Security or as gifts.
The court’s inability to follow its own rules has led to hundreds of questionable bills.
Kevin A. Craine, an Upper Arlington lawyer with about 90 wards, has for years charged a majority of them fees for time spent buying them Christmas presents with their own money.
Craine’s practice is to charge the ward between $500 and $600 for a gift. That includes $300 to shop for the gift, $100 for his daughter or a staff member to deliver it, and about $150 in legal fees to file a paper in court to withdraw funds. He does not provide the court with receipts to show what he bought.
Craine said he feels that wards who have money deserve a good Christmas.
“Some of these people have no involvement from anybody at Christmastime, and you get them a planter, you get them whatever, and there’s a little bit of Christmas given to that person,” he said. “It sounds schmaltzy, but that’s what it’s all about.”
In another instance, he turned in a bill for nearly $15,000 that included a “wholesale” or catchall fee of $5,900 — a charge for any phone calls, emails or other correspondence throughout the year for which he had not accounted earlier.
“We don’t do this anymore,” he said. “The court specifically told us, ‘Don’t do that,’ and we don’t.”
But court documents show that magistrates approved such catch-all charges as recently as January.
Some judges in other Ohio counties who saw copies of bills from Kormanik and Craine said they would not accept them.
Thomas A. Swift, probate judge in Trumbull County since 1979 and former chairman of the Ohio Judicial Conference, said lawyers should know better than to bill wards legal rates for guardianship work.
He said he occasionally receives bills with legal fees attached to what he considers guardian work, such as meeting with the ward or coming to the court to file paperwork.
“It comes right off” the bill, Swift said. “That’s not legal work.”
Tangled web ‘looks bad’
Jane Bevington was convinced that distant family members were after her money.
She had been in good shape and independent until just before her 90th birthday, when she began to fall down.
A family member near Detroit contacted Craine and asked that he become Bevington’s guardian for medical and financial needs, including managing her nearly $3.5 million estate.
Bevington, a former clerk in the Ohio attorney general’s office, was skeptical, so she asked attorney Lorelei M. Lanier to be co-guardian. Bevington did not realize the lawyers would charge nearly $204,000 in fees in four years.
The lawyers billed her thousands just to talk to each other. Lanier charged Bevington a $300 attorney rate to visit and have cookies with her.
Lanier could not be reached for comment.
Craine said he couldn’t explain a clear legal service provided for his fees.
Bevington was living in a Columbus nursing home in June 2011 when Craine wrote the court that she was falling. He hired an outside-care facility, Nightingale Home Care, that placed a specialist in her nursing home at a private-pay rate of $22 an hour. But he didn’t tell the court that he’s on the board of that company.
Craine incorporated Nightingale in 1994, state records show, and he serves as board chairman for the nonprofit company with $1.5 million to $2.5 million in annual revenue.
In one year, Nightingale billed Bevington more than $211,000 on top of the $58,000 a year she was paying the nursing home.
Several of Craine’s wards have been served by Nightingale.
In 2008, Craine was appointed guardian of Peggy Barton, an 80-year-old widow who had more than $705,000 in assets. In three years, Barton’s estate paid more than $500,000 for Nightingale’s around-the-clock care at her Columbus home.
Craine said he doesn’t know why he didn’t disclose his Nightingale connection in his letter to the court about Bevington, but he said he has mentioned his association to the court.
He said he has no financial stake in the company. As board chairman, Craine said he and the other board members have the ability to hire and fire the executive director, who works for the board.
His involvement raises significant questions about conflicts of interest outlined in the Ohio Rules for Professional Conduct. The rules say that a conflict could exist if a lawyer is a board member of a corporation at the same time he represents a client served by that organization.
Craine’s relationship with his ward and Nightingale also could come into conflict in cases of attorney-client privilege. The rules state that a lawyer should not allow or give the appearance that his business interests affect his representation of a client.
“It looks bad, I understand that,” Craine said. “But I assure you it’s, frankly, thankless work working for that agency. It’s completely volunteer, and I look at it as community involvement.”
Montgomery, who would not discuss specific cases, said lawyers should stay away from things that look bad.
“Even if he or she was not benefiting from that financially, the appearance of impropriety as a lawyer is something we typically try to avoid,” he said.
Bevington’s family expressed frustration with the guardianship system and her guardians, but they declined to answer questions about her estate.
Bevington died in July. In one of Craine’s final bills approved by the court, he charged her estate more than $1,200 in legal fees for five hours of work to call the funeral home and talk with her family about the funeral.
“Somebody has to commit dollars for the service, and that’s where the legal services came in,” he said.
‘Social worker’
Kormanik said last month that nursing homes and hospitals often contact him about people who need guardians. It’s in part how he has amassed about 400 wards.
“Where these cases come from is we don’t take care of the mentally ill well in our society,” Kormanik said. “So these people are out there walking the streets or not doing very well, and they face some sort of physical breakdown, and that is normally when I get the referral.”
Experts on guardianship, including some judges, say they are stunned that a guardian such as Kormanik is allowed to operate, saying it is nearly impossible for one lawyer to handle the needs of so many.
Kormanik described himself
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