#FreeNichelle
Welcome to yet another conservatorship case, this time coming from the USS Enterprise.
Besides the Star Trek element, the story I’m about to share is a familiar one: a famous woman caught in a conservatorship where multiple people have stakes in her estate. Sci-Fi isn’t my usual segment of pop culture, but I’m ready to boldly go where this woman hasn’t gone before.
Beam me up, Scotty!
Live Long and Prosper
Nichelle Nichols is best known for her role as Lt. Nyota Uhura on Star Trek: The Original Series. In the 1960s she was one of the first Black women to play a major role on primetime, and she is widely credited with having the first interracial on-screen kiss.
Having explored the galaxy for decades, Nichelle found an additional role with NASA recruiting women and people of colour. Sally Ride, the first female American astronaut, is often cited as one of her recruits.
Nichelle’s career has had a major impact on the advancement of Black rights, gender equality, and diversity in STEM. I like to think of her as an advocacy triple threat. Today, however, she is caught up in a three-way legal battle over her legacy.
As an 88-year-old woman, Nichelle is dealing with a new frontier. In 2013 she collapsed and was diagnosed with pancreatitis, a condition largely attributed to her alcohol use. A few years later it was announced that she had dementia, though there are varying reports on the severity of her condition.
Her son, Kyle Johnson, filed for a conservatorship in 2018 and has been her legal guardian ever since. Now her old manager, Gilbert Bell, and friend, Angelique Fawcette are rallying against her situation.
Resistance is Futile
For any new readers, a conservatorship is meant to provide support for those who are deemed unfit to care for themselves. A conserved person is appointed a legal guardian (or conservator) who is supposed to act in their best interest, be it financially, medically, or in personal affairs.
Not all conservatorships are bad, but the system is undoubtedly failing many vulnerable people, Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes included.
At their core, conservatorships strip away an individual’s basic human rights. A conserved person cannot sign legal documents, make their own medical decisions, vote, or, until recently, choose their own legal representation. The arrangement gives full control of one human being to another.
What could go wrong?
Naturally, there are circumstances where this makes sense. Children with severe disabilities tend to remain in the care of their parents as adults. Ageing people who can no longer make informed decisions for their care are often put in conservatorships. Dementia is generally a good example of when these arrangements are necessary.
That said, conservatorship should be a last resort, and there is rarely a path to freedom once it is legally in place. For someone like Nichelle, the court has decided that her son will legally care for her throughout the last years of her life.
Where guardianships become morally dubious is in defining “the best interest” of the conservatee. Who is morally the right person to make these decisions for another human being? Professional guardians exist, but they profit off the conservatorships they work on. On the flip side, family members often aren’t equipped for the undertaking. Recently the attention on Britney’s case has caused scrutiny on the whole system. How is it that someone as chaotic as Jamie Spears is able to control the life and finances of his successful daughter?
Dementia patients are particularly tough to manage. Often they object to someone else making decisions for them. The power to choose is a hard agency to lose, especially when the world is becoming confusing.
My grandmother is also losing her memory. She wants a dog, she wants to stay alone in her house, and she wants to host the family for holidays. None of these are possibilities in her current state, so her wishes amount to a lot of “no’s.” This is the dark side of being a guardian, and exactly why “best interest” is so highly interpretive.
Another subjective piece in granting conservatorships is capacity. If someone argues that you are unfit to care for yourself, it’s extremely challenging to combat in court. Once you believe someone is out of their mind, their logic stops sounding as concrete. Refusing care can sometimes reinforce that care is needed.
There are many instances where this control goes too far. In the United States, there are around 1.5 million people held under conservatorships. While several are protecting vulnerable people, others are cover-ups for fraud. This haunting story from the New Yorker highlights an elderly couple forced from their home without notice. The professional guardian swept in out of nowhere, assuring the distraught relatives that “it’s legal,” while simultaneously profiting off their family home.
Technically all conservatorships are legal. Just because it went through the probate court, however, doesn’t mean it’s ethical. To put on my Trekkie hat:
You can use logic to justify almost anything. That's its power. And its flaw.
Red, Gold, and Blue Shirts
In Nichelle’s case, there are three interested parties: Kyle Johnson, Gilbert Bell, and Angelique Fawcette. Time to pick your player….
Johnson is currently in control, and he claims that Gilbert Bell is guilty of elder abuse. Bell was extremely close to Nichelle for years, often acting more as a friend than a manager. Until recently he was living on her property and paying next to no rent.
While hospitalized with pancreatitis in 2013, Nichelle gave Bell power of attorney. This directive allowed him to make healthcare and financial decisions for the five years prior to the establishment of her conservatorship. Johnson alleges that Bell acted against the family’s wishes in helping Nichelle get discharged in the first place and claimed in a 2020 lawsuit that Bell had mismanaged her finances throughout that time.
In a creepy twist, Bell attempted to marry Nichelle in 2018 as a “business partnership” to ensure she was “financially protected.” The year before he had transferred Nichelle’s house to his name, which is cited as the impetus for Johnson to seek guardianship. The main argument for the establishment of the conservatorship was that her dementia made her susceptible to exploitation and Bell’s influence.
According to Bell, however, Johnson has been manipulating Nichelle’s estate against her wishes. He also filed a lawsuit claiming that Johnson has tried to force him out of his home with “aggressive and combative behaviour.” A former court-appointed conservator testified that Johnson has a history of violent outbursts that could impact his judgement as a conservator.
Bell further claims that Johnson let her house fall into disrepair in recent years. He allegedly stopped paying utilities, causing the sewer to back up into the bathtub.
Ew.
Along with his lawsuit, Bell released a video of Nichelle screaming at guardianship documents initially filed by her son. In the video, she cries out. "I didn't give permission to have conservatorship over me. I didn't know what he was doing.”
Her friend, Angelique Fawcette, saw the video and became concerned about Johnson’s involvement. In 2018 Fawcette objected to the conservatorship filing, claiming that Nichelle was still of sound mind. Back in 2013 Fawcette recorded a video of Nichelle describing her wishes for care after she had been discharged from the hospital. You can watch the whole video on YouTube. In the video Nichelle talks about her son, saying that he had tried to stop her from working. She, by contrast, wants to continue her career as long as possible.
Fawcette used the video as evidence that Nichelle should be able to remain without a guardian. At the time of the conservatorship hearings, Nichelle was still involved in the film industry, attending multiple conventions, interviews, and acting in new projects. To her, Nichelle’s ability to work directly contradicts the need for her to be conserved. Fawcette further accused Johnson of seeking guardianship as a way to control Nichelle’s estate and income.
In August 2021 the LA Times reported that Johnson had sold Nichelle’s home, a practical museum of her accomplishments in film and space exploration. Both Fawcette and Bell are outraged, noting that Nichelle loved her house. According to Bell, she would come home from every convention and sing 'Hello, home. Hello, house. I'm home.'"
Johnson has now moved his mother to a smaller place in New Mexico. Since the initial conservatorship was granted in LA, Nichelle’s situation is pending in the new state. Bell and Fawcette have been fighting the approval, but Johnson does have some support. Nichelle’s own sister has submitted court documents advocating for the move and guardianship.
Presently Nichelle is on a kind of farewell tour despite Johnson’s claims of her worsening condition. In March she was on set of a pilot that is promoted on Kickstarter as her final project before retirement.
While working is something Nichelle loves to do, the fear is that this project is exploitative. How can she be well enough to work, but not able to stay in her own home or see her friends? Since the conservatorship, neither Bell nor Fawcette have been allowed to visit Nichelle. Fawcette says her criticism of the situation has blacklisted her from Nichelle’s guestlist, something that Johnson has full control over as her guardian.
This isolation begs the question, is limiting visitors in Nichelle’s best interest, or her son’s?
Fawcette’s main goal is to see Nichelle have the last years that she wants. She also wants visitation rights to see her friend. She’s started a Facebook group called “Save Uhura” with his description:
This is a group to mobilize awareness about the Elder Abuse Situation that our dear friend and Hero Nichelle Nichols finds herself in. This will be a place to share stories and articles to help get the word out. It’s time for the Trekkies to unite for our friend.
They currently have 161 members fighting for the cause.
Trying to understand the court’s rulings…
Highly Illogical
In the middle of this legal triangle is Nichelle, a woman whose legacy is being forgotten in the assessment of her capacity. The reality is that she likely needs a guardian of sorts. She’s 88, has dementia, and maintains a large financial estate. The question is whether or not her son is the appropriate person to be in charge.
It’s not my place to speculate on Nichelle’s health, but there’s a possibility that a conservatorship is overkill. Many elders spend their final days with support that’s not nearly as restrictive as a legal guardian.
A piece that can’t be overlooked is her gender. In both Britney and Nichelle’s cases, a conservatorship was ultimately granted because they were surrounded by “bad influences” like Gilbert Bell. How often do you hear of men being swayed by exploitative figures? Generally, we’d say that they made a dumb choice, or picked shitty friends. The idea that an outsider might cause bad decisions is reserved for “impressionable” women. Somehow that allows the court to step in as “protection” by stripping away their legal rights.
Sam Lutfi is largely credited for Britney’s demise in 2008. Her parents claimed Lutfi was secretly drugging Britney, though there is no evidence they brought that information to any authority besides TMZ…..
Recent documentaries have painted Lutfi in a different light: the scapegoat. In saying that Britney was in immediate danger, the court approved her father’s conservatorship filing without giving her the standard five-day notice to contest. Instead, her rights were stripped immediately out from under her and Sam was cast out.
Ironically, the argument that Bell and Lutfi were a danger to these women allowed potentially worse evils to make their way in. Why is it even the court’s business if Britney wanted to blow all her money? Likewise, why weren’t there background checks done on Jamie Spears and Kyle Johnson, both of whom have violent tendencies, before giving them full access to the personal lives and estates of these women?
Being family doesn’t automatically make someone qualified to provide care.
Seeing the similarities, Angelique Fawcette has become extremely involved in the #FreeBritney movement. She even helped organize the last rally at one of Britney’s LA hearings. Lutfi has also joined her fight to freedom. After Britney’s bombshell testimony on June 23rd, he tweeted:
Just sitting here listening to that court recording, if she hates me after she's free I won't blame her... I failed her, I was supposed to protect her from all this, I let her down and we both paid dearly for it - - head in hands..I'm so sorry
Now he’s been extremely active on Twitter throwing major blame on Lynne Spears for her role in setting up the conservatorship.
Both these cases show how easy it is to take advantage of our vulnerable: the disabled, the elderly, and, apparently, the slandered child stars. If this can happen in the public eye, imagine what’s going on behind the closed doors of regular people.
Britney’s next hearing is on November 12th, where it’s anticipated her conservatorship will be terminated outright. For Nichelle, the outcome is less clear. I’m optimistic that Angelique will be able to see her friend again, and I hope that Nichelle is able to live out her final years however she wants.
Remember: Things are only impossible until they're not.
