I could not take every case, but I took the ones I could, and I trained others to take more, and slowly, one recovered account and one denied petition at a time, I built out of my own worst experience a small bulwark for people who had no other.

And eventually Judge Bennett himself invited me to speak at a judicial conference about abusive guardianship petitions, and a young attorney there asked me a question I have thought about ever since.

How, he asked, is a family supposed to know when help has become control?

I thought about it for a moment.

“Help,” I said, “gives a person more choices.” The room went quiet.

“Control takes those choices away.” I have repeated that line many times since, to families and to lawyers and to judges, because it is the simplest test I know, and it cuts through nearly every hard case.