Life Care’s ‘existence’ fretted as owner’s son seeks conservatorship, alleging gross abuses by gun-packing stepmother
James M. Berklan
@jimberklan
November 1, 2024
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A son of billionaire Life Care Centers owner Forrest Preston has filed for conservatorship of his disabled 91-year-old father, whom he says has been physically and financially abused by his stepmother, to the point of putting the giant nursing home chain’s “very existence” in peril.
In addition to allegedly funneling millions of dollars worth of real estate and cash to herself, her sister and brother, Preston’s third wife also may have her eyes on control of the largest privately owned nursing home chain in the country, Aubrey B. Preston said in a Tennessee county chancery court filing Tuesday.
As a result of the filing, a Bradley County judge ordered the elder Preston to undergo a pair of medical exams. He also will be interviewed out of range of his wife and her family members by a court-appointed attorney acting as his guardian. They, too, will be interviewed individually, along with other key witnesses in Aubrey Preston’s 28-page complaint.
A hearing on the findings is scheduled for Nov. 12.
Forrest Preston founded Cleveland, TN-based Life Care Centers in 1970 and remains the board chairman and sole owner. His net worth was estimated by Forbes at $1.2 billion last year. Life Care consists of more than 200 skilled nursing facilities and assisted living communities in 28 states and has more than 30,000 employees.
‘Secret’ wedding
Wednesday’s legal complaint claims he has suffered from various stages of dementia since the mid-2010s and is currently unable to care for himself or his affairs. In 2022, he filed papers to avert giving an oral deposition in California due to his precarious health, saying it could put him at risk of “a heart attack, stroke or even death.”
In 2018, some 18 months after his second wife died, and without the knowledge of any family members, the 85-year-old “inexplicably” married Kim Phuong Nguyen, a 49-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who was the recently passed wife’s former caregiver. She and family members have a history of grifting “that spans several decades” in several states, according to research by Aubrey Preston’s legal team cited in the complaint.
In the period immediately before the pandemic and then during it, she increasingly isolated her new husband from his four children, and company officials. She screens his calls and inserts herself into board meetings and business decisions, despite having no training or experience in long-term care or any other notable business matters, the complaint reads.
Once, while showing off a 9mm pistol tucked into her waistband, she told family members she would use it to protect her and Forrest, the legal filing said. Her tactics reportedly included accusing employees of having extramarital affairs, accepting bribes and other malfeasance. In one instance, it said, she threatened to kill a “high-level Life Care executive” who challenged her about something; the employee was one of numerous fired at her behest, the complaint says.
“Kim and her siblings … have regularly injected themselves into Life Care board meetings, and Kim regularly terrorizes and threatens Life Care employees in a show of power and control,” attorney Gary R. Patrick wrote in introductory remarks to the filing, which was brought under the Tennessee Adult Protection Act.
Bad business
Such erratic behavior led a LCCA lender with more than $300 million in outstanding loans to stipulate there would be no further assistance until it could approve of an acceptable company succession plan. Currently, Life Care needs more than $100 million to cover deferred maintenance, facility improvements and depreciated equipment, the Oct. 29 filing said. It added that the company has had to sell or close facilities to raise cash and reduce expenses since the start of the pandemic.LCCA executives are “frequently” not able to talk to Forrest Preston, sometimes for more than a month, even when important decisions or his signature on important documents is required, his son’s complaint reads.
Aubrey Preston calls himself a reluctant litigant. He is the founder and chairman of the Leiper’s Fork Foundation, where he is described as an entrepreneur, philanthropist and preservationist. He and his mother, Cora, Forrest’s first wife, were original land donors to conserve acreage in Leiper’s Fork through The Land Trust for Tennessee.
Aubrey owns a pair of facilities in Colorado that Life Care Centers manages; decades ago, he was employed by the company as its acquisitions leader. As a result, although he is no longer employed there, he knows the company and business relatively well.
He said he became compelled to pursue the conservatorship after company executives and board members “began to inform him of the ever-growing threat of the possibility of systemic failure.”
“[T]ens of millions of dollars or real estate and cash are still not enough for Kim and her family,” attorney Patrick wrote. “They have a much grander scheme involving Forrest’s most valuable assets: Life Care Centers of America … and its affiliates.”
A rough decade
Life Care suffered a spate of bad publicity when its Kirkland, WA, facility became the site of the first known US mass COVID-19 outbreak in February 2020. It was later vindicated in a subsequent wrongful death case that received much less publicity. The company also paid $145 million in a federal overbilling case settlement, one factor cited in Preston’s net worth dropping from a peak of $2 billion in 2015, according to leading financial analysts.But all of that is nothing compared to the threat now posed from within, claims Aubrey Preston. He became most alarmed perhaps when his father confided at one point that he intended to appoint his new wife as Life Care’s CEO.
“ … because he believed she had ‘earned the position,’ despite Kim having no experience in the business, no experience in the field, no relevant education, and never having an official role with Life Care,” the complaint reads. Such a statement “is evidence both of his mental disability and Kim’s undue influence over Forest.”
Multiple efforts by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News to contact Forrest and Kim Preston on Thursday were unsuccessful. One of the last times his photo was seen publicly appears to have been two years ago when he visited a facility with his wife at his side.
He seemed nonplussed when contacted by phone by a member of the local media on Tuesday.
“It all hit today. When you have blood against blood, it’s a stupid thing to do,” Preston told a Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter. “It sounds like the whole world is ending, but not so.”
When contacted Thursday, Life Care officials said little more than the company was aware of a legal matter involving its owner, founder and CEO/chairman.
“Regardless of any legal proceedings, Life Care’s leadership and associates both in Cleveland and around the country remain committed to fulfilling their mission of providing excellent care to the residents in the communities they serve,” Life Care President Todd Fletcher said in a statement emailed to McKnight’s.
