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Money is just about exhausted
Associated Press
Published March 17, 2005
PINELLAS PARK - As the battle over Terri Schiavo's life rages, the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman lies in a hospice bed, dependent on the institution's charity and Florida taxpayers for her care.
The $1-million received by her and her husband, Michael, in a medical malpractice case in 1993 is nearly gone, attorneys say, spent on her care and the husband's legal quest over the past seven years to stop her artificial feedings so she can die.
Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, want to keep her alive and accuse her husband of wanting Terri dead so he could inherit what was left from the malpractice award. Michael Schiavo has said the rift between him and his in-laws began because he refused to share with them part of the money he received from that award.
But the reality is that hardly anybody is getting paid anymore.
Michael Schiavo's attorneys say they have not been paid in more than two years. Schindler attorney David Gibbs III said he is working for free, although an anti-abortion group, Life Legal Defense Foundation, has paid some of his expenses.
Just $40,000 to $50,000 remains of the money won in the malpractice case after Terri's heart stopped in 1990 and left her in what court-appointed doctors say is a persistent vegetative state. Deborah Bushnell, one of Michael Schiavo's attorneys, said the money is being saved for legal expenses. It is held in a trust fund, and a judge approves all expenditures, from attorneys' fees to the woman's haircuts.
Terri lives at the Woodside Hospice - part of a not-for-profit hospice network in Florida - among terminally ill patients. She is permitted to stay there for free because she is considered indigent, Bushnell said. Patients who can afford it pay roughly $80,000 a year to stay at the hospice.
Terri Schiavo's medical costs - which Bushnell says are relatively small - have been paid for the past couple of years by the state's Medicaid program for needy people.
[Last modified March 17, 2005, 01:34:01]
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