Why Put Leo in the Nursing Home
I don't get why Mike did not use Leo's money to keep him home and pay for his home care, and who paid for the nursing home> Confusing....
sharePossible Spoilers:
He didn't want to take the time and do the work involved to oversee Leo's affairs, making certain he was taking care of himself, eating properly, paying his bills, taking his meds, etc. - as he had agreed to do in becoming Leo's guardian, so he took the easy way out by putting Leo in the nursing home where he knew Leo would be cared for properly without any effort on his part, and he could collect an easy $1500/mo payment for services as his guardian...unethical.
yeah but the question remains, who paid for the nursing home?
the place looked like a palace, is that supposed to be "state care" i.e paid for by general taxation?
if it is they must be living in a socialist utopia.
the money must have comed from leos estate, he was loaded
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I shoot when I see the whites of the eyes.
This movie hinges on this one issue and it really doesn't make sense. This message board is proof that the film is utterly incomprehensible on this issue.
Mike (Paul Giamati) sets things up so that he is the guardian of Leo. For this service he gets paid $1500 a month.
Leo is wealthy enough to pay for any kind of care he wants. At the begining of the film Leo lives in his own home and has a live-in nurse who takes care of him (the black woman who he is sitting with in his first scene).
Mike tells the court that he will be Leo's gurdian. He really just wants the money. He tells the court he wants Leo to stay in his home.
But, once he is the guardian he puts Leo in the retirement home, which Leo pays for.
Mike gets $1500 per month no matter where Leo is. Whether Leo is in the retirement home or his own house Leo is paying for his own care.
Why would Mike pick the retirement home? It doesn't make any sense. The only answer is that he is a gigantic a-hole.
Mike picked the retirement home because then all he wouldn't have to do very much to earn the $1,500. If Leo stay in his own home then Mike would've had to check in on him and make sure everything was going all right.
shareHere's the trouble with that.
He already had a home health aide to take care of all the day-to-day care.
All Mike needed to do was take over his finances.
A. Which he still needed to do... ie water bill, etc.
B. Which his hung over assistant at work would actually do.
The trouble was the movie hinged on two incompatible points.
1. Mike was uncaring enough to put him in the home
2. Mike was caring enough to come by the house, presumably to check the water, but plot wise to introduce the grandson.
Methinks the director was not brave enough to push the loser side of the lovable looser character.
Giamati is up for it, his Harvey Pekar was terribly repulsive, but interestingly still likeable.
I have worked in this field and I found the premise very believable. An aid that helps during the day is very different than a 24 hour nurse. Also, it is just that much "easier" and comfortable to put someone in a home... out of sight, out of mind.
Clearly Mike was conflicted as evidenced by his response to the grandson. Mike convinced himself he was doing what was best for his client while at the same time scoring some much needed cash. We can all convince ourselves that we mean well when it fits within our plans.
Checking on the water is much different than having to deal with his client on a - possibly daily - basis.
"Why would Mike pick the retirement home? It doesn't make any sense. The only answer is that he is a gigantic a-hole."
I think the reason is that when Leo is first meeting with Mike, there's some talk about how he's been wandering off and stuff. Being his guardian would mean that he'd really have to be on top of the guy, making sure he's not out on the streets, forgetting where he is, why he went out, getting lost, etc.
Now, that being said, he did have the home health aide - and they come very cheap, like $8-9 an hour. But she could only be there 40 hours a week. There are 168 hours in a week, so you need 4 people. What Mike could have done to keep Leo in his home would have been to keep the home health aide he had, and hired three more so he could have round the clock care.
But that's a lotta work to manage over that - now he's got a staff of 4, who call in sick, take vacations, come in late, take personal days, who Leo might not like, who Leo might accuse of stealing from him when they're not, etc., etc. Mike's gotta be responsible for all of those people. And on top of that, he's gotta manage Leo's all of finances, the house, watering the lawn, turning off the water, the mail, buying food, etc.
Mike avoids almost all of that by just putting Leo in the home. He just has to do the finances stuff, and the house.
Is it still a scumbag move? Yeah, absolutely, no question. But at least you could see why he's doing it. Managing Leo's care is practically a full-time job. And that's what live-in nursing homes are for.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
I still don't quite get it though - did he take the money to pay for the nursing home out of Leo's estate? Instead of using the $1500?
And surely if he was stealing from the estate anyway, he could have stolen in order to get four nurses for round-the-clock care, to make it look like he was letting him stay in his home?
The $1508 per month - $18 grand a year, which ain't chicken feed - is his statutory fee for being appointed by the Court to be Leo's guardian. He gets that no matter what he does with Leo - whether Leo's at home, or at the nursing home, he still gets that fee like clockwork, every month.
He puts Leo into the nursing home and has Leo's estate pay for it. (Which technically isn't an estate, because Leo's not dead yet.) He isn't stealing anything from anybody.
If he's gotta oversee a staff of 4 or 5 home health attendants (not nurses), that's a major hassle, for all the reasons I pointed out above. So he isn't going to do that.
The thing that he's done here that's bad is really "only" unethical - he baldfacedly lied to the court, and it's on the record. That's not illegal, that's not criminal, he hasn't stolen anything from anyone. It's "just" unethical. That's why her attorney was saying "Shame on you, counselor" when they were about to go into court. That could result in disciplinary action against him if they cared to pursue it. Disciplinary action means that whatever body it is that polices lawyers in New Jersey (in New York, where I work, it's called the Disciplinary Committee or the Grievance Committee), would take action against his license. That could mean censure, suspension, or disbarment, but I would guess - total guess - that it would mean that he would be suspended from the practice of law for a year or more. That's pretty severe; he can't work. Period. Now, as it turns out, he goes and becomes a bartender at the end of the movie anyway. Maybe disciplinary action was taken against him, and he was suspended, and he had to take that job - who knows?
By the way, the whole point of approaching the bench like that at the beginning of the movie and talking with the judge informally is to have a discussion that is off the record, precisely so that there wouldn't be a paper trail that would come back to haunt you. But that's easy to ignore for the sake of the movie.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
What's stopping him from hiring a manager that will oversee the 4-5 home health attendants?
The idea that keeping Leo at home is any more of a hassle than putting him in a nursing home makes no sense whatsoever.
Um, the fact that that's his job, and he's getting paid "only" $1508 per month.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
Damn. You must be stupid if you cannot understand the difference between hiring an employee to do a job and outsourcing the job altogether to a vendor company.
Obviously in almost all situation, the latter would involve less time usage. Why do you think people hire/outsource to a event management company instead of hiring additional employees to handle it? MNCs do this all the time even when they can easily hire their own employees to do it.
Well done. Here's an interesting article on the movie by John Roberts, who I think is an elder law attorney.
http://masshealthhelp.com/pdf/Movie%20Review%20WinWin%20NAELA%20News%202011%2008.pdf
Mr. Roberts writes, "The screenplay was co-written by Joe Tiboni, a NAELA
member who practices estate planning and Elder Law in New Providence, N.J. On his blog (www.tiboni.com),..."
Thanks to both, for such a timely movie and review. I really enjoyed the movie.
I really liked this movie but I gotta say, I was slightly confused on this point. I didn't know he'd collect the $1500 whether he put Leo in the home or not...so thanks for clearing that up.
It seems dumb that he'd get paid the same amount for either option imo, but I'm not a lawyer or an expert in estate planning.
I used to be a home/nurse/aid for an elderly lady who was completely dependent...and I got paid about $12-13/hr. I worked at night...she had complete care 24/7. It's true though that she had a "guardian" (who was a family friend) who had to still do a LOT of work for her. I guess I can see why it would have been a lot of work for Mike to let Leo stay at home (even if he did have 24/7 care).
Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.
He lied in order to get the guardian job. He had no intentions of actually doing the work.
shareI think what he did was illegal. He asked the judge to let him be the guardian on the premise that his client wanted to stay in his house yet he left his client at the nursing home. Clearly not just unethical. If the judge found out about this she would not just say "shame on you counselor".
In my view it was fraud. Clear and simple.
He convinced the judge to let him be the guardian because his client wanted to stay in his home. Yet he didn't let his client stay in his home.
If this went to court he would be convicted.
Everyone's entitled to their own view.
The law says otherwise.
We know he went straight from the court to put Leo in the home, because that's the way the movie was written. The District Attorney wouldn't be able to prove it - because he hasn't seen the movie.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
Why wouldn't they be able to prove it. The nursing home would have records and the court would have records.
the other lawyer had the transcript and she said that's enough to hang him.
I thought this too.
shareWouldn't this qualify as fraud? Don't think it's just unethical.
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