Consider these facts: Your grandmother is 90 years old and lives in New Jersey (where she's lived her whole life and where your parents grew up). Her reasonably good health is shattered when she is felled by a stroke. She has become incompetent and needs to enter a nursing home. The homes near her are not well-regarded, plus, your parents, who now live in Wisconsin, would like her to live closer to them (and to you). Your parents can get her into a top-notch nursing home near their home in Madison. And, thanks to a lifetime of saving and long-term care insurance, your grandmother can pay whatever it costs. That's the good news.
Now the bad news.
Your parents can't bring your grandmother to Wisconsin. Under Wisconsin law, your grandmother needs a guardian and what's known as a protective placement order from a judge. But only Wisconsin residents are permitted to apply for guardians and protective placements. The legislature designed the law in order to keep people like your grandmother-people who are old, mentally ill or developmentally disabled and otherwise so sick they can live safely only in a nursing home-from moving to Wisconsin.
On Feb. 4, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments about the constitutionality of this law. If the court strikes down the law, it won't be the first time.
Eight years ago, the federal courts held the statute unconstitutional. I know; I litigated the case and won. That should have ended it, but the state and some counties are disobeying the federal court ruling. They can't justify the residency law by any reasonable state interest.
In fact, when asked by the federal court in the case I won what justification he could offer to support this violation of what's known as the Right to Travel, the assistant attorney general shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn't think of any.
Watch what the Wisconsin Supreme Court does, but contact your legislator and the governor, too. Ask them why your grandmother is not allowed to move to Wisconsin.
