Sell Your Home: It' S The Law
Sun Herald
Sunday December 7, 1997
A STATE agency has threatened a Sydney woman with divorce laws that could strip her of her home - despite still being married to her husband.
The 77-year-old woman is in remission from breast cancer and says she is devastated by the prospect of being "virtually divorced" against her will from her husband, who has Alzheimer's disease.
Her husband, whom she married in the mid-1980s, has been placed under the care of the Guardianship Board and the Office of the Protective Commissioner and has been placed in a nursing home against the woman's wishes.
The woman's solicitor, Alan Jessup, told The Sun-Herald he was advised that the Protective Commissioner intended commencing legal action for a property settlement against her using the Family Law Act.
The commissioner was seeking $500,000 in assets and her retirement home village unit, worth $325,000, to help pay for the man's upkeep.
Mr Jessup said he found it amazing that the agency would threaten to place such an order on the frail woman and it would be contested because she had not legally separated and visited her husband at the nursing home.
"Do you want to throw her out on the street?" Mr Jessup asked. "She says she doesn't have that money."
But the Protective Commissioner's Office, a body designed to manage the financial affairs of people incapable of making decisions, believes the man had $1 million before his marriage and now has nothing, while the woman lives in the unit which is under her own name.
It could not comment on specific cases, an office spokesman said. But a solicitor for the office said: "All we want is a reasonable solution and for these people to get on with their lives in dignity."
It needed to go through the "legal processes" to check her assets, but had no intention of putting her on the street, the solicitor said.
However the woman, "Joan" - secrecy laws surrounding the Guardianship Board prevent The Sun-Herald from identifying her or her husband - says she lives on the pension.
"I can't believe they are doing this to me - if my husband was all right he would never want to get divorced," she said.
"I visit him three times a week and bring him fruit, mend his clothes, bring him new socks.
"How can they use divorce laws to sell my home?"
A caveat has also been served on her retirement village unit, which is also in her name.
It is understood children from his first marriage are concerned she had kept the man's money, but Joan says any money her husband had was spent during their time together, going overseas on holidays and on general living expenses.
She was married in the Lutheran Church after being a widow for several years.
Campaigner Paddy Costa, who formed the 800-member Carers of Protected Persons Action Group, said the case exposed flaws in the system and called for a parliamentary inquiry into the way the system operated.
© 1997 Sun Herald
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