When my father-in-law died 11 years ago there was nothing to suggest that the close relationship my husband and I had had with his wife, Naoko, would not continue for many years to come. Naoko was Samuel's third wife, a former student of his. When he died in 1991, my husband, Dan, was the executor of his will. He arranged the funeral, helped Naoko with the legal papers and, since she had no family and few friends in England, became her main emotional support. That year he even invited her for Christmas at his mother's house in East Anglia.
We had suspected some kind of mental illness for some time. During the last five years of Samuel's life, Naoko had coaxed this normally sociable man into leading a more isolated life as increasingly she took irrational dislikes to his friends. She was also convinced that the neighbours upstairs were sending laser beams through the floorboards which were weakening her wrists. To us, however, she was always amenable, cheerful and good-hearted, not least because she never once complained about having to look after an elderly man increasingly incapacitated by emphysema.
But Christmas 1991 was the last time we saw Naoko. Every time we phoned to invite her over she found an excuse. Finally she stopped answering the phone altogether. It was obvious she didn't want to see us. She had become a recluse and, while we worried about her wellbeing, we foolishly assumed that since she was financially secure she would be able to look after herself. Samuel had left his wife the bulk of his estate - a large sum in the bank, plus a flat in Hampstead with a small mortgage and not many years left to repay.
It wasn't until September 2001 that we next heard of Naoko. The Royal Free hospital, in north London, rang to say that she was in their psychiatric ward. They were trying to piece the jigsaw puzzle together and needed some help. When Dan was invited to a case meeting with the senior psychiatric consultant and other members of her care team, he discovered that Naoko had been in arrears on her mortgage for a long time, was suffering from severe mental health problems (probably schizophrenia, though no one said) and - presumably after some warnings - had been evicted by Abbey National and locked out of her flat. She was found by the police sleeping rough in a car close to where she lived and taken to hospital. The locks had been changed, her flat repossessed and all her belongings dumped on a rubbish tip in Essex. As far as we know there was no solicitor in court to represent her.
My husband tried to discover the exact whereabouts of this dump because these possessions - so ruthlessly disposed of - included some of his own. Also flung out (or possibly sold) were an extensive collection of his father's books, including many valuable art books, paintings - old and contemporary, a Bauhaus coffee table which he had brought with him when fleeing Nazi Germany, plus his life's work of books and plays in manuscript form and unpublished. In a moment of madness, Dan actually imagined he might find the dump and scour it to retrieve these family mementoes and treasures. But in fact, by the time he even heard about Naoko's slide into homelessness, it was too late. Everything had gone. Naoko lost all she owned and loved. Even the urn with her husband's ashes had been thrown on the tip.
Dan wrote to Abbey National to complain about the way she had been treated. "You have thrown a mentally ill woman out of her home and disposed her of everything she ever owned in one foul go. All my father's possessions, including some of my own, all of Naoko's possessions, her whole life and my father's ashes dumped on a tip in Colchester," he wrote in an impassioned attempt to find out how it had been allowed to happen without anyone intervening.
But Abbey National, like her GP, and like the hospital, kept a tight lid on things. We were not blood relatives, nor did we have power of attorney, and confidentiality laws therefore prohibited anyone telling us anything about what had happened. We had no lawful claim to that information. Their head of litigation and property sales wrote: "Under the terms of the Data Protection Act, I am unable to disclose confidential information to unauthorised persons."
It appeared that no one had been there advising her, no one had known she was ill, no one had bothered to find out why she was in arrears with her mortgage. She had simply fallen through a net because she was too ill to know how grave her financial situation had become. I suspect that there was money there to pay her tiny mortgage. I know we could and would have got her out of this dire situation had we been told.
This is how lives untangle when people with mental health problems live alone and become socially isolated. Those who are incapable of actively seeking help receive none. According to Simon Foster, the official solicitor for Mind, the mental health chairty: "There is no system in place to help someone like this. When a person goes into arrears, eventually the building society or bank sends an application to court for a possession hearing. The person concerned is then sent notification of when that hearing is, but if they fail to turn up, the judge is entitled to make an order anyway. However, if they are mentally ill, they may not even know about the hearing; they may have left the summons unopened on the kitchen table. The trouble is, unless someone informs the court of these mental health problems, the judge is likely to assume that person is simply avoiding paying. Repossession can then take place very quickly." The problem highlights the vulnerability of people with mental illness. Though they are among the most socially excluded in Britain today, there is no automatic process for them to be legally represented in court. "Legal representation has to be sought," says Foster, "and, although the court should make sure they get it, time is short and it often doesn't happen."
Those who are aware of their vulnerability may have what is called a "litigation friend" - someone responsible for representing their interests in court. But it is time-consuming and, therefore, such people are hard to find. Equally, while the court has the discretion to call in the official solicitor (who is authorised to intervene in cases like this) it is not obliged to. Often the official solicitor isn't even contacted and people's cases go by default. If a problem is picked up early enough, there is also the machinery in place to apply to the court of protection, which exists to protect and manage the property and affairs of those unable to manage their own. However it is more likely that the problem won't be picked up in time for such intervention because the very nature of mental illness is that it often remains invisible to those on the outside.
The law also says that if someone is taken into hospital leaving property unprotected it is the duty of the local authority to safeguard the property and possessions. For Naoko this was clearly too late. The Council of Mortgage Lenders told me: "If possessions are not removed by the time completion on a property has taken place, then the lender has to make arrangements to have them removed. They are then sold and the proceeds go to pay the shortfall." But we were told by Abbey National that nothing of Naoko's had been sold - it had all ended up on the tip. This disregard for a person's belongings is what particularly concerns Mind, which claims that her possessions should have been held in safe-keeping for her. Had anyone helped her sell these belongings in an intelligent way, there would probably have been enough cash to pay off the arrears.
A spokesperson for Abbey National, commenting on general policy, says: "In the best-case scenario, if someone is mentally ill they will normally have a nominated carer - often the social services. Most repossessions take nine months of litigation so there's plenty of time to get this in motion. It's very, very rare indeed that we would have to clear the house."
Naoko's was clearly one of those very rare cases. Help the Aged sees a case like this as typical of what happens when someone is too ill or too old to ask for help. "Where were the social services in the equation? If the GP knew, why did that person fall through the net?" asked a spokesperson.
And now, because Naoko has refused to see us (too ill and too proud to want us to see her in this dreadful predicament) we can do nothing but walk away. We want to help but legally we are powerless. Who knows where Naoko is now?
