There have been a growing number of mainstream articles about the abuses being visited upon the elderly and disabled through court-authorized guardianship, although most of these articles tend to focus on a few "bad apple" guardians and to cut a wide detour around any implications that judges are involved in the wholesale theft, civil rights violations and in some cases, even the murder of those subjected to their adjudication.

Guardianships are generally initiated through court proceedings when there is an allegation that an individual is forgetful or otherwise lacks capacity. Upon the initiation of a guardianship, the target loses many, if not all, of his civil rights and all access to his monies.

Those who have been following the thread of judicial corruption, however, know that judges are deeply embedded in this process. Judges are the linchpin, the glue that holds the entire abuse-by-guardianship scheme together. Without a judge's stamp of approval, none of the isolation, the embezzlement and the inappropriate medical decisions are even possible.

And now, judges in these proceedings have gone a step further into the legal Twilight Zone and are attacking the marriages of those under guardianship.These acts of intrusion by the state into family privacy and the sanctity of marital life are taking place both explicitly and implicitly.

Explicitly, Judge JoAnn Johnson launched a wrecking ball into the 74-year marriage of 102-year-old Stanley Zurko and his wife, Irene (Judgment 9.145.2020 PDF). Neither spouse requested the legal separation nor were either in the courtroom when the judge entered this decision . Why did Judge Johnson take this off-the-high-dive leap? According to the pair's daughter, the separation was done in order to facilitate the robbery of the Zurkos' assets. Stanley Zurko was under a court-authorized guardianship at the time that the court made its order. His wife, Irene, was not.