Opinion ID: 1826501
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: growth of limited guardianships

Text: When North Dakota adopted the 1969 Uniform Probate Code (UPC) in 1973, Chapters 30.1-26 through 30.1-30 in Article V dealt with Protection of Persons under Disability and Their Property. These chapters contained many provisions designed to minimize or avoid the necessity of guardianship and protective proceedings, as well as provisions designed to simplify and minimize arrangements which become necessary for care of persons or their property. 6 NDCC at p. 204 (1976). Yet a guardian had the same powers, rights, and duties respecting his ward that a parent has respecting his unemancipated minor child ... and was entitled to custody... of his ward.... NDCC 30.1-28-12 (1976). The UPC did not originally authorize a limited guardianship. Limited guardianships grew out of improving norms for treatment of developmentally disabled persons, exemplified by Judge Bruce Van Sickle's decision in Association for Retarded Citizens v. Olson, 561 F.Supp. 473, 494 (D.N.D.1982), aff'd, 713 F.2d 1384 (8th Cir.1983), deinstitutionalizing most of the persons sheltered at Grafton unless it can be demonstrated that there is no less restrictive appropriate setting available to meet the needs of the individual. A Legislative Council Judiciary Committee hurriedly studied many laws affecting developmentally disabled persons. Report of the North Dakota Legislative Council to the Forty-Eighth Legislative Assembly at 81 (1983); Melvin L. Webster, A Study of Guardianship in North Dakota, 60 N.D.L.Rev. 45, 56-57 (1984). The Legislative Council recommended a bill for a limited type of guardianship and conservatorship. Report, supra, at 84. The Legislature acted and amended NDCC 30.1-28-04(1) to direct: The court shall exercise the authority conferred in this chapter consistent with the maximum self-reliance and independence of the incapacitated person and make appointive and other orders only to the extent necessitated by the incapacitated person's actual mental and adaptive limitations or other conditions warranting the procedure. 1983 ND Laws ch. 313, § 7. The source of this modest beginning is not apparent in the legislative history. Still, the source is evident from the close similarity of the wording to § 2-206 of the Uniform Guardianship and Protective Proceedings Act, recommended in 1982 and published in 1983 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. This act expands and extends UPC, Article V, Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 to include the concept of `limited guardianships.' 8A U.L.A. 437 (1983). The Commissioners explained: The impetus for adding a limited guardianship concept to the guardianship and conservator provisions of the Uniform Probate Code grew out of the recommendations of an American Bar Association project, the ABA Commission on the Mentally Disabled, which, in relation to guardianship other than for minors, recommended that state laws be changed to avoid an asserted overkill implicit in standard guardianship proceedings. In part, this occurs, it was asserted, because a finding of non compos mentis or incompetence has been the traditional threshold for the appointment of a guardian. As a result, in consequence of the appointment of a guardian, all personal and legal autonomy is stripped from the ward and vested in the appointing court and guardian. The call for limited guardianship was a call for more sensitive procedures and for appointments fashioned so that the authority of the protector would intrude only to the degree necessary on the liberties and prerogatives of the protected person. In short, rather than permitting an all-or-none status, there should be an intermediate status available to the courts through which the protected person will have personal liberties and prerogatives restricted only to the extent necessary under the circumstances. The court should be admonished to look for a least-restrictive protection approach. .... ... Idaho, the first state to adopt the Uniform Probate Code, and other states acting in response to requests by followers of the ABA Commission's work, have been enacting new limited guardianship statutes. In Idaho, the new limited guardianship legislation was enacted without specific repeal of the provisions of the Uniform Probate Code that were already part of their statutory law. Other states were enacting rather short statutes that adopted the least-intrusive or least-restrictive concept of limited guardianship in skeleton form without further elaboration. These, and other similar instances of confusion, overlap and other problems born of hasty legislative acceptance of limited guardianship language demonstrated that the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws should adjust its formulations on guardianship to include explicit language relative to the concept of limited guardianships. The concept of limited guardianships certainly is consistent with the general policy considerations upon which the Uniform Probate Code, Article V, had been based in 1969. In addition, by making limited-guardianship concepts more explicit in the act, it was and is believed that some confusion could be eliminated and that this act could replace skeleton-type acts to make the concept workable. 8A U.L.A. at 437-38. Limited guardianships thus began. North Dakota continued to expand the concept of limited guardianships. See 1985 ND Laws ch. 369, §§ 3-6; ch. 370. Additional extensive amendments, to increase due process protections and to ensure individual protections are not superficial, were enacted in 1989 ND Laws ch. 405 and became effective on July 1, 1990. See Hearings on HB 1480 Before the House Judiciary Committee, 51st N.D.Leg. (1989) (January 31, 1989 Testimony of Jo Hildebrant, State Long-Term Care Ombudsman). This bill was recommended by a protective arrangements task force, which was set up by Legal Assistance of North Dakota, funded by the Aging Services Division of the Department of Human Services, and assisted by a county judge. Legislative history indicates that some of the 1989 amendments came from a National Conference of the Judiciary on Guardianship Proceedings for the Elderly, in June 1986, co-sponsored by the Commission on Legal Problems of the Elderly, the American Bar Association, and the National Judicial College. See Compilation, Statement of Recommended Judicial Practices, Adopted by the National Conference of the Judiciary on Guardianship Proceedings for the Elderly (June 1986) (Preface, p. viii: Guardianship represents a drastic loss of fundamental human rights.). North Dakota is listed among 14 states that have adopted the Uniform Guardianship and Protective Proceedings Act: While the North Dakota act is a substantial adoption of the major provisions of the Uniform Act, it departs from the official text in such manner that the various instances of substitution, omission, and additional matter cannot be clearly indicated by statutory notes. 8A U.L.A. Supplementary Pamphlet 128 (1993). The variations unique to this state are mostly in the 1989 amendments, which compel the use of limited guardians to a greater degree than does the uniform act. We conclude that the appointment of general guardians for Diane in this case does not conform to the legislative mandate to maximize the autonomy of an incapacitated person by the least restrictive appointment of limited guardians.