Temporary Guardianship Form New Mexico: Fill & Download for Free

The abuses are unacceptable. Even if most guardianships do serve to help elders in need, the loopholes in the system have created nightmares. Here’s just one of the many reasons they can occur. In emergency guardianships, for example, an elder is sometimes given no due process before they are taken over. They might not even know that they have been put in this situation without their consent, or their own family’s consent. This is supposed to be a “temporary” situation until the elder is assessed, but most temporary guardianship become permanent according to what has been reported. Let’s say the elder has millions of dollars. The estate is now out of their personal control,and their family’s control. Those assets can foot all of the guardian’s fees and any fees for attorneys—and that can mean any and all legal expenses easily trumped up with outrageous charges. These charges can sometimes be seemingly limitless (I’ve seen cases where millions of dollars are “spent down” in a few years)— because there is little accountability or oversight of what these professional guardians and conservators do. They can hire a staff of people to help you and pay those people out of your estate. There are no truly objective, independent audits required, for example, and some appointees are known not to even bother submitting accounting to the court and the court doesn’t even have the manpower to keep track of whether they do or not. (We have discovered this to be true in my state, New Mexico.) This is occurring in many states because states either can’t commit to doing things right or don’t have the funds to even try. There is no record system keeping track of each guardianship case on a national basis. Plus most states don’t know how many active guardianships there really are. Meanwhile, these court-appointed saviors have an enormous amount of power over a person who no longer has ownership of resources or rights to fight back. This is just plain dangerous. Regulation need to include serious oversight over the professionals put in control of people whose fundamental rights to fight back have been taken away. (Their families also lose standing with the court to help their loved one in any successful way.) It’s also way too easy to get certified to rule another person’s rights and assets. Many states don’t require criminal background checks. In what other field is it acceptable not to be held fully responsible for diligent care of another person’s life and assets? Many “protected” people have their homes sold out from under them for below market prices (efforts are going into finding out what’s going on with THAT wild west business) and they are shoved into nursing homes and drugged as they are financially lose everything. I.e. they are truly “unpersoned” to the full extent. It’s even acceptable for the Guardian to put the elder on Medicaid after the assets are depleted. Who foots the bill in the long run to cover for this abuse? We, the taxpayers do. There also is a far better solution for many cases that exists outside of the court’s control. It comes from the Persons with Disabilities community. A remarkable young woman who has Down’s Syndrome started a new movement to respect the rights of those who cannot fully make decisions on their own. Jenny Hatch Justice Project in the News. But consider this: are those who are making money, by using the guardianship system to do it, incentivized to want things to change? Imagine how strong the guardianship lobby really is when it comes keeping things as dysfunctional as they are. Billions of dollars are passing through this system. I’ve certainly seen this very problem in New Mexico. It wasn’t until an investigative series uncovered many millions of dollars stolen from wards that things started to change even though endless complaints from families and national advocates have existed for years. We, at NASGA, feel that the new ULC Adult Guardianship Act of 2017 is our best solution to date. It brings guardianship into the 21st century by respecting more rights and offering solutions other than guardianship. There are still problems with the final bill—a few serious ones in my own personal opinion, but the document is far more comprehensive than any we’ve seen so far. I personally believe that plenary (full) guardianship shouldn’t be allowed because the all-encompassing restrictions truly do leave a person with fewer rights than a convicted felon. Many of the guardianships in this country aren’t even necessary but due to having no simple recourse, people languish in them for years and years. Germany learned a lesson about too much control the hard way through history. Full guardianships don’t exist in Germany. Why can’t that be true for us? And why can’t Federal dollars be spent to really provide safety for elders rather than allow them to be exploited in a system that is supposed to be protecting them? Makes zero sense to me.