Frumeh Labow

Frumeh Labow buzzes through the double doors of Los Angeles County's main Probate Court, a queen bee in her hive. She has several items to settle. She asks a judge for permission to sell the Beverly Hills home of a 66-year-old man with Parkinson's disease, though he wants to keep it. She asks the judge to order the release of financial records by the girlfriend of another aged client. She asks the court to approve $25,140 in fees, to be paid from the bank account of a third elderly ward.

Frumeh Labow buzzes through the double doors of Los Angeles County's main Probate Court, a queen bee in her hive. She has several items to settle. She asks a judge for permission to sell the Beverly Hills home of a 66-year-old man with Parkinson's disease, though he wants to keep it. She asks the judge to order the release of financial records by the girlfriend of another aged client. She asks the court to approve $25,140 in fees, to be paid from the bank account of a third elderly ward.

Re "Guardians for Profit," a four-part series on professional conservators, Nov. 16 Kudos to staff writers Evelyn Larrubia, Jack Leonard and Robin Fields for bringing this situation to light. Clearly there is a need for conservators, as well as the potential for outrageous abuse. The fact that someone with no relationship to the client and no previous business or accounting background could be responsible for managing more than $1 million in assets, simply by petitioning the court, is a recipe for incompetence at the very least.

Helen Jones sits in a wheelchair, surrounded by strangers who control her life. She is not allowed to answer the telephone. Her mail is screened. She cannot spend her own money. A child of the Depression, Jones, 87, worked hard for decades, driving rivets into World War II fighter planes, making neckties, threading bristles into nail-polish brushes. She saved obsessively, putting away $560,000 for her old age.