Lem Barney's family in foreclosure, may get Dave Bing's financial help to 'bring Dad home'

The Detroit Lions looked strong and smart on Monday Night Football this week.

But despite fans’ upbeat expectations and despite the lopsided score, pro ball is rarely an easy contest. Nor is a contested guardianship.

You could ask former Lions star Lem Barney — except that Barney, now 78, can’t walk, talk, or understand the legal struggle over who should control his money and where he should live out his days. Family members in Houston have repeatedly sought that control, first abusing it, then losing it.

On Tuesday, appearing in Oakland County Probate Court via Zoom, family members in Texas continued their push — led by Barney’s son, and endorsed by Barney’s lifelong friend Dave Bing, Detroit’s former mayor — to have the former football player moved a few miles from a nursing home in Houston to his ex-wife’s house. Yet, that house was revealed, to the judge’s shock, to be in foreclosure.

“I don’t want to move him only to have him evicted,” said Oakland County Probate Judge Daniel O’Brien. The foreclosure threat was revealed by Barney’s guardian, Clarkston attorney Jon Munger, appointed last year by O’Brien to oversee Barney’s financial affairs. Munger took over after family members violated court orders, and after total balances in Barney’s two bank accounts mysteriously dropped from about $350,000 to zero.

Barney’s case presents a perfect example of how family members can fail in their oversight of vulnerable adults and children. After Tuesday’s hearing, Munger told a reporter, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to take over a situation as guardian and conservator because a family hasn’t been responsible, or even ethical, in handling it.”

No one could’ve predicted the turn of events when Barney's daughter took him from his house in Commerce Township to visit his grandchildren in Houston, where he has remained, in violation of O’Brien’s court orders. That surprising change of venue fed online insinuations that Barney had been “kidnapped by his own family in Texas” against the will of his second wife, Jacci Barney, a Michigander.

Since then, Jacci Barney has dropped from sight after developing delusional fears. A prominent target of her fears was another of Barney’s lifelong friends, ex-Lion and now radio commentator Lomas Brown, who was co-guardian of Lem Barney until Jacci Barney began spouting off about her fears, Brown told the Free Press. Jacci Barney is now doing well in an assisted-living center in Oakland County, but suffering from schizophrenia, according to court records. In the time she lived alone in Commerce Township, while her husband languished in Houston, she equipped their house with steel security screens inside every door and window, and even added a sheet of steel to a closet where she told friends that Brown might enter the house with a troop of midgets to persecute her, Munger said.

Of greater concern to the judge is Barney’s ex-wife in Houston, Martha Barney, in whose house the son she had with Lem Barney lives while he goes through a divorce, according to the son’s testimony — and in whose house Lem Barney would live if Barney's son and Bing have their way. Bing, who lives in Franklin, offered in Tuesday’s hearing to financially assist Barney’s family members “with whatever payment plan” their creditor agrees to, although the former Pistons star did not offer to pay off the debt owed on Martha Barney’s house in Houston. The amount was unstated in court documents but probably is not large, as it is unpaid fees owed to a homeowners association.

Besides that foreclosure threat, Martha Barney has displayed hostility to her ex-husband, said Lem Barney’s sister from Mississippi, who told the judge she was in Houston this week on her seventh recent visit to see her brother. Court records confirm that Martha Barney was hostile to her ex-husband even to the point of being accused of physically abusing him during his star-crossed trip to Texas in 2021, which is when he began his now permanent Southern sojourn. It was that allegation of physical abuse that brought representatives of Texas adult protective services to Martha Barney’s house, resulting in the removal of Lem Barney to the nursing home in Houston where he now resides. Caregivers say he's too frail ever to fly home to Michigan, according to court testimony.

Barney is in the late stages of dementia that began a decade ago, and which the former star cornerback blamed on the innumerable concussions he suffered in pro football. Like hundreds of other players who were plaintiffs in a much-publicized class-action lawsuit against the National Football League, Barney received a settlement about six years ago, said to be at least $500,000. Where that money is now, no one can say, Munger told the Free Press. Barney is expected to receive an additional $5,000 to $10,000 for his share in a separate lawsuit against a football helmet manufacturer whose product was implicated in thousands of concussion injuries in the NFL. These days, the NFL, along with Medicare, is paying for the erstwhile superstar’s care, amid the machinations of family members seeking to regain control of his affairs, including his bank accounts.

“This is a catastrophically dysfunctional family, with a streak of mental illness, diagnosed in some cases, only suspected in others. That runs through many of their problems,” Munger said.

To conclude Tuesday’s hearing, O’Brien ordered family members to “work with Mr. Bing” to resolve the foreclosure crisis and to report their results at a future court date. He also said that family members must show that they won’t interfere with the caregivers coming to visit and oversee Lem Barney’s care.

“I want some ground rules” put in writing, O’Brien said. Only then, the judge said, will he consider moving Lem Barney to where the former Lion could spend the rest of his life.

Contact Bill Laytner: blaitner@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ex-Lions player has sport stars trying to help him through dementia