My mother, who’d spent her last years under the control of a commercial guardian, had made me promise her that I’d tell what happened. After my father died, I’d become her confidante and handled her business affairs for more than nine years, until dementia overtook her. A former anthropology professor, Mama had always wanted to move to New Mexico. We all moved down from New York. My husband and I lived in one Albuquerque home; Mama in another. Things seemed to be going well until I walked into Mama’s house to take her out to lunch one day and found her bleeding in the kitchen, having sliced off part of her thumb. She’d thought she was cutting food, but nothing was on the counter. After almost nine years as the ward of a commercial guardian, Mama passed away in 2012.

Two years later, here was a judge, who’d never met either of us, ordering me not to keep my promise to her. This was an ordinary probate court case whose hearings are normally open to the public. How was the judge planning to convince the twelve jury members to stay silent?

On August 22, 2014, an attorney opposing my mother’s estate in a lawsuit had written, “Plaintiff [meaning me] has appeared before various [state] Senate subcommittees advocating for guardianship reform…[and] has advocated…that confidentiality under the Uniform Probate Code be eliminated…” He also complained that I was preparing a documentary film on the subject of guardianship and asked the judge to prevent me from issuing it. It seemed to me that, in New Mexico, political action might lead to outright censorship. He missed that back in 2013, I’d also appeared on two podcasts hosted by Marti Oakley, an outspoken advocate for guardianship reform. If he’d known that I’d used those opportunities to oppose a new bill (then pending in the New Mexico Legislature) that essentially allowed anyone to force anyone else to undergo a competency evaluation and potentially lose all civil rights, I’m sure he’d have carped about those guest appearances as well. Such cases have become scandals in states like Florida and have given a generic name to similar legislation: “Baker Acts.”

“Further hearing on this matter is not necessary,” the Judge in New Mexico wrote a week later, even though he’d never held a hearing in the case. “The parties,” he continued, “shall keep confidential all materials and information…inappropriate disclosure of the same may be deemed contumacious conduct by this court with appropriate penalties.” Who would decide what “information” must remain secret—“sequestered” they called it— he didn’t say. Other people might already know information. But I couldn’t tell them. There were no standards, in the judge’s order, so I couldn’t figure out what someone on the other side might consider “related.”

By 2014 I’d been a professional author for years. Books. Articles. Translations. Textbooks. Even record liner notes. I’d written and edited all sorts of published nonfiction. All I wanted was my freedom of speech, ability to write, produce a film, and to regain my freedom of association. My attorney, David A. Garcia and I had both lost some of our basic civil rights. We wanted them back. David immediately appealed to the New Mexico State Supreme Court, arguing the unconstitutionality of prior censorship. Within days, they’d refused to hear his arguments.

Staying up long nights and doing painstaking research, we always seemed to find ways to keep the case viable during the struggle. If I hadn’t had David , I’d have lost my most basic rights forever, because the gag order had no expiration date. It didn’t say “until September 10, 2021 all information is confidential.” Although I could still vote, I felt as though I’d lost my citizenship. By then I’d met a number of others in New Mexico, who’d had similar rights taken from them because they’d had the bad luck to be the friends, lovers, spouses or relatives of someone under commercial guardianship, a situation in which a person makes a living off taking care of strangers and gives the court periodic reports on that person’s situation. The people who do this work like to call themselves “professional guardians.” I don’t like this because it makes family members who are guardians sound as if they’re amateurs. Usually state law defines “professional guardians” as those appointed by the court to care for three or more unrelated individuals.

Television legal dramas resolve neatly in an hour or so; movies might take ninety minutes to two hours. Even the most rapidly- pursued of legal cases, however, can inch along for years. That’s not human time, it’s “legal time.” Arguments, deadlines, and postponements all swarm around the attorneys like harpies. If you don’t give the other side a postponement, they won’t give you one when you need it.

Trying to avoid the judge’s wrath, I went into hiding after the gag order was imposed. I didn’t come out until October of 2017. I couldn’t have writing published, then, but the judge said nothing about studying writing. So, I did. I attended NYU writing courses online and avoided social occasions.

One of my friends, irritated by my silence about anything relating to my life or the court case, complained that I was “no fun, anymore.” Others stopped calling. On the extreme opposite end of the spectrum was a now-ex-friend who kept saying she wanted me to tell her “everything” so she could post it on an exposé website. When she said that, she was already on the secret “witness list” (information the gag order prevented me from giving her). Telling her anything at all would have subjected me to penalties for contempt of court the moment she testified to the discussion we’d have had if I’d satisfied her curiosity. Another friend, realizing how lonely I must have been feeling after the death of my husband, and now even more so that I was in seclusion, had a friend of hers call me for a date. When it turned out that he was an attorney, I had to end the conversation. If anyone was going to be curious about the legal machinations of these court proceedings, wouldn’t an attorney? The case shattered my social life and changed my beliefs about who my friends really were in ways I could never have predicted.

Legally, however, the judge couldn’t stop me from having conversations with my attorney. David, as it turned out, was a thus-far-frustrated-but-still-hopeful author. He had read a good selection of all kinds of books. He made a great audience for my articles and short stories, an attempt at a movie script, and even a couple of draft chapters of a sci-fi novel.

For months, I kept myself busy with writing assignments and trying to keep track of all the legal maneuvers. At one point, David and his team had to file seven arguments in the same day. This case became famous for its 40,000 pages of documents produced during the legal discovery process. Probably a record for a case not involving large corporations.

David, at that point a solo practitioner, collaborated with other attorneys and paraprofessionals. Attempts by a paralegal to deal with that volume of documents ended in total failure. Fortunately, I had training in research and eventually David allowed me to do much of the basic classification and analysis of documents myself. Going through these items—many of which were handwritten and could not be searched by computer—repeatedly to find material David needed forced me to relive the almost-nine-year succession of calculated manipulations. In 2016 and 2017, prizewinning exposés of guardianship abuse appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. These articles are still appearing, because improprieties continue to surface. Colleen Heild, a Journal investigative reporter and Diane Dimond, the syndicated columnist who had earlier worked on Entertainment Tonight both won awards for their work on the subject.

Still in seclusion and under the gag order, I was beginning to believe that I’d have to keep silent forever. One day, I returned home from grocery shopping to find a message. ”This is Sam Donaldson,“ the familiar voice said, “Please call me about your case.” Then he gave his phone number. The gag order forbade me to return his call.

The other journalists also tried to contact me. “I don’t have a country, “ I thought. “I have no rights anymore.” All of them must have heard about me from others who knew I’d disappeared many months earlier. The day after the Albuquerque Journal hosted a symposium on guardianship, one of my friends called me. She said that, after that event (which I didn’t attend because of the judge’s order) the newspaper’s editor had been speaking to them all about my case. I’d never met him or spoken to him, so I’m still not sure how he knew about me.

Shortly before that public meeting, we’d reached the time to start taking witnesses’ depositions. The courts I’d started to think, had been designed for corporations, not individuals. Exhausted, I wondered whether anything—even keeping my promise to Mama—could be worth this sort of emotional drain.

My deposition, by convention, would come first. All that reading of the documents helped.We had some funny exchanges. “What’s this?” their lead attorney would ask. “I know there’s a document in that pile that answers your question,” I’d answer. And he’d agree it was actually the next document in his stack to ask me about.

On March 29, 2017, we were at a deposition—the court reporter, five people on their side with David, our expert who was testifying, and I on the other. Suddenly, an agitated-looking underling at one of the large law firms representing the other side, entered the room. He whispered to the first person sitting on the other side of the table. That person turned pale, then pointed to the computer screen of the person seated next to him, with the same results.

Within a minute or so, all the people on the other side of the table looked ashen. Without saying one word to us, they jumped up and left the room. The attorney deposing my expert stopped in mid-sentence to flee leaving me, the court reporter, David, and my expert witness staring at each other. The witness and I followed David out of the room into the private one next door.

After we left, I learned that was the moment when the Albuquerque Journal had emailed all the attorneys including David, telling them it was entering the case. They were supporting David’s ongoing efforts to get the gag order lifted, as a matter of public interest. Two days later, Colleen Heild wrote a feature article about the Journal’s position in favor of lifting the gag order. Our own renewed request that the judge reconsider and lift the gag order was still pending, so the judge agreed to hear both petitions at the same time.

Heild and Dimond continued publishing stories on guardianship abuses. The State of New Mexico responded by appointing a commission during the spring of 2017 to inquire into abuses on behalf of the State Supreme Court. The retired judge who chaired that Commission admitted to the press that family members of wards were expected to maintain silence. She held only secret discussions with them and never used their names, or the names of their loved ones, in her public discussions. Of course I couldn’t even speak with her privately; I was still living under the gag order. “Why are the family members of wards non-people?” I kept asking myself.

Only one family member even sat on the commission. In such groups, “experts” (social workers and attorneys, mostly) far outnumbered family members. At one such public meeting, a partner from a guardianship company insisted that guardians were saintly and family members were only unjustified malcontents. (She sounded like the judge in my case, in all interviews on the subject that I’ve ever heard with him.) She sounded a lot like my late mother’s guardian too.

Around that time we received information that the judge might not be entirely impartial. This discovery meant that David was now ethically required to file a motion asking the judge to recuse himself. Strangely,the judge allowed an audience at the two hearings he finally scheduled in this case, despite the fact that he technically considered all information about the case “gagged.” The first of the motions to be heard was the request that the judge recuse himself. A friend, in the audience during the hearing, told me that she saw the University of New Mexico’s entire first year law class in attendance. Recusals midtrial are almost unheard of; David had never asked for one before. Because a recusal of this kind is so rare, their professors assigned them to see this event as part of their homework; it’s unlikely the law class students would ever witness anything like it again.

David and I had both seen a transcript of a meeting where the judge in my case had spoken. He had said very negative things about plaintiffs like me. The judge denied he was prejudiced. He insisted on continuing to sit on the case. Which is something that almost never happens; any suggestion that they might lack impartiality and most judges resign with no need for a hearing.

After the hearing on the gag order, he lifted it completely. Granting not only the Journal’s request for limited access to documents, but my own on behalf of my mother’s estate, for free use of them. Oddly, he said that he couldn’t deny it because, as Personal Representative (the equivalent of Executor in other states) he now, in July of 2017, had noticed that, back in 2013, I’d filed a waiver of confidentiality with the court, on behalf of Mama’s estate.

If I’d spoken out before the case was settled, the other side could have argued that I’d “prejudiced” their case and gotten the suit dismissed. Which would have meant I’d have had to pay for the then eight attorneys on their side (including three from different insurance companies). By the judge’s reaction to our request that he recuse himself, it seemed to me that I would have to spend many more years appealing his decision. I didn’t want to spend my whole life on this lawsuit; I had made a promise to my mother that I intended to fulfill.

After the gag order was lifted, I could legally publish again. In 2020, I received awards from both SouthWest Writers for non- fiction and New Mexico Press Women for fiction. In 2021, New Mexico Press Women gave me two awards for fiction and another for nonfiction.

I wanted to give to others what David had found a way to give me. I’ve now seen how, sometimes the secrecy surrounding one person’s guardianship has taken away the civil rights of a dozen others. It’s terrifying and infuriating to realize how easily people can lose their liberty. I’ve decided to carry on with David’s work (he died in April 2020). I’m now preparing online courses and a summit to help others struggling with incapacitated loved ones regain their freedom of speech. My book Pretense of Protection: My Mother’s Nightmare Journey through Legal Guardianship, based both on my own experiences and my mother’s, is scheduled for publication by Wisdom Editions (an imprint of Calumet Editions) on June 1, 2021.

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