Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Daley Center Probate Court: Secret Tribunals? Where is the Inventory and Where is the Accounting? 2 years have passed!

As many of you know, the Probate Court file for Mary G. Sykes is pretty much a complete mess. Documents, Briefs, Pleading and Motions are not in date order, they are all over the place, and many, many important filings appear to be completely missing.
Last week I was looking for the "Inventory" and Accountings. An Inventory is required to be filed by any new Guardian no less than 60 days after opening up an estate. An accounting should be filed at the end of each year from date of appointment.
Carolyn Toerpe was appointed Pleanary Guardian in Dec. 2009. This means the first inventory was due by Jan. 2010 and the first accounting by Jan. 2011. I searched the file thoroughly, but found no Inventory and no Accountings. I found one court Order that referred to the Inventory and a "Current Accounting" but as I recall, it indicated both of these documents to be amazingly late (over a year, if memory serves me right--but I will check and update as I have more time to look at the file. Currently, the court does not allow the file to be transported to the file room and you have to look at it in court as one is able to.)
One of the most hotly contested issues in this guardianship IS the accounting and inventory, and now all those are missing and a second accounting is supposed to be due soon in this case.
I have no idea why Adam Stern and Cynthia Farenga allow for such shenanigans to take place. They are supposed to be actively involved in ensuring a timely and accurate (to the best of their knowledge) accounting has been filed with the court, and if the relatives are making loud protestations that items are missing, they are supposed to take notes, conduct an investigation and report to the court their findings. Ken Ditkowsky was Mary's attorney for many years, if he is asserting items were missing, well he knew Mary and Charles Sykes (deceased) and their affairs the best, and his comments should be taken seriously.
My question, is why are these important documents apparently missing from the file? What happened to them? Why was the entry of one "Current Accounting" and the inventory "entered and continued" at a very late date? This should be all public record so the relatives will know that AS, CF and Judge Stuart are not running "secret tibunals" that do not conform to Illinois Probate Laws and Procedure.

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