Later Life
As a resident of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Boston, Massachusetts, she has worked with children's charities, remains an accomplished pianist and has taught children classical music.
In 1992, she published the book The Joy of Classical Music: A Guide for You and Your Family.
Her later years have been shaped by chronic alcoholism, which had appeared during her marriage. It escalated with sporadic, uneven sobriety, repeated drunk-driving arrests, court-ordered rehabilitation, and a return to drinking. This ultimately led to kidney damage, with the possibility of dialysis and protracted complications from increasingly strict legal guardianship.
In 2005, she was hospitalized with a concussion and a broken shoulder after being found lying in a Boston street near her home.
In July 2004, her son Edward had been appointed her legal guardian; in 2005 her children were granted temporary guardianship.
At her request in 2005, her second cousin, financial planner Webster E. Janssen of Connecticut, established a trust controlling her estate in violation of her sons' guardianship. Her children later took successful legal action against Janssen, removing him as trustee and later filing a complaint against him with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. She agreed to strict court-ordered guardianship and her estate has since been placed in a new trust overseen by two court-appointed trustees.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery in October 2005.
Apart from a brief relationship shortly after her divorce, she has neither remarried nor pursued another relationship. She attended the funeral mass for Senator Edward Kennedy at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port.
Read more about this topic: Joan Bennett Kennedy
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