By order of the awards jury the $750,000 had been put into a trust reserved to pay for Terri's rehabilitative therapies. Not one dollar out of this fund was used for the intended purpose.
Michael Schiavo successfully petitioned Judge Greer for permission to break the trust and to use it instead for legal expenses, meaning that it would pay for George Felos' and Barbara Bushnell's services in having Terri's feeding tube removed. George Felos received in excess of half a million dollars of Terri's trust money, and Barbara Bushnell in excess of $100,000.
Interestingly, some of the billable hours George Felos submitted were for "dealing with the press." In other words, the press campaign Felos conducted to weigh public opinion in favor of the feeding tube removal was financed out of Terri's medical trust fund. Felos, by the way, received other payment as well. It seems that when Terri's trust money ran out, the ACLU provided funds for George Felos to continue litigating in re Terri's feeding tube removal. The extent of those payments is unknown.
Michael Schiavo also got Judge Greer's permission to pay himself out of Terri's medical trust fund for expenses incurred in the effort of getting the feeding tube removed. In addition, he obtained permission to use trust money for paying off an old loan he had taken out during the time that he was still living with a healthy Terri.
It seems that it did not occur to Judge Greer to ask Michael Schiavo why he had not used the $300,000 + that he himself received as part of the malpractice award. That money presumably had gone toward purchasing the house in which he still lives with his fiance Jody Centonze and their two children.
To the question about who paid for Terri's upkeep since the 1982 malpractice award, the simple answer is the taxpayers. With characteristic disingenuousness Michael Schiavo answers press questions as to whether the trust money was wiped out by medical costs in the affirmative. (See recent interview with Larry King.)
Here is what the Constitution state concerning counsel.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Now I have not heard, nor would I expect from any rational person, that the above right would be met by anything other than an attorney working directly for the accused. People have be set free even having this assistance because that assistance was judged faulty.
This, as we know, is what the Florida Law states.
744.3215 Rights of persons determined incapacitated.-- (1) A person who has been determined to be incapacitated retains the right: ... (l) To counsel.
Somehow this was met by some invisible entity when Judge Greer pronounced the death sentence on Terri.