Opinion ID: 1852842
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Need for Guardianship and Conservatorship

Text: The first assignment claims that the courts below erred in failing to hold that the guardianship law is unconstitutional as applied to the constitutionally protected conduct of Mrs. Sim because she has already fulfilled the only permissible purpose for guardianship by moving into a nursing home and establishing a durable power of attorney and an irrevocable trust with herself as the lifetime beneficiary. In this connection Sim's attorneys argue in general terms that Sim is a person who has a right to liberty, property, association, travel, privacy, a good reputation, and to due process and the equal protection of the laws. The question, however, is not whether Sim possesses those rights but whether the State of Nebraska has a legitimate interest in protecting Sim's person and property and whether it has asserted that interest in a constitutionally permissible manner. In beginning the analysis of this assignment, it is appropriate to recall that attached to every constitutional challenge is the presumption that acts of the Nebraska Unicameral are constitutional, with all reasonable doubts resolved in favor of constitutionality. State ex rel. Wright v. Pepperl, 221 Neb. 664, 380 N.W.2d 259 (1986); State v. Mayhew Products Corp., 211 Neb. 300, 318 N.W.2d 280 (1982). This presumption continues until the statute under review clearly appears to contravene some constitutional provision. Lenstrom v. Thone, 209 Neb. 783, 311 N.W.2d 884 (1981); Prendergast v. Nelson, 199 Neb. 97, 256 N.W.2d 657 (1977). Because statutes are presumed to be constitutional, the burden of establishing the unconstitutionality of a statute is on the one attacking its validity. State v. Mayhew Products Corp., supra. The relevant statutes embody separate systems of guardianship to protect persons of minors and mental incompetents, and also include provisions for a type of power of attorney that does not terminate on disability of the principal, which adults may use when approaching senility or incompetence to obviate the need for other kinds of protective regimes. Neb. Rev.Stat. ch. 30, art. 26 general comment (Reissue 1985). In presenting their position Sim's attorneys place heavy reliance on Matter of Forward, 86 A.D.2d 850, 447 N.Y.S.2d 286 (1982), a proceeding to appoint a conservator under the New York mental hygiene law. Therein, the proposed conservatee, an 88-year-old woman who resided with her family, had recently executed an irrevocable trust with a bank and trust company as trustee and herself as the lifetime beneficiary, to provide for her medical and living expenses. Id. at 851, 447 N.Y.S.2d at 287. The court noted that even if the woman's ability to care for her property were found to be substantially impaired, as the distributees had alleged, the trust would continue in force and the care of her property would be assured for the duration of her life. The court concluded that under the circumstances of that case there was no need to appoint a conservator, and there were no triable issues of fact which would alter the result. There are, however, a number of features which distinguish the present case from Forward. First, since the Forward court was able to describe the trust provisions, we must conclude that the court had the trust before it. In the present case we have before us only the drafter's representations concerning the existence of certain selected terms of the trust. Second, the absence of other triable issues of fact signals that there were in Forward no concerns that the settlor lacked capacity or made her own decisions. Third, as the county court in the present case noted, The trustee in Forward was a trust company and the very brief opinion does not touch upon the subject of accounting. Apparently accounting was not a problem in Forward.  Fourth, the Forward decision does not disclose whether the trust was executed before or after the conservatorship proceedings had been commenced. Sim's attorneys also cite Matter of Waxman, 96 A.D.2d 906, 466 N.Y.S.2d 85 (1983), wherein an application to appoint a conservator was dismissed because, among other things, the appellant had recently executed an irrevocable trust, with his attorney as trustee and himself as lifetime beneficiary for the purpose of providing for his lifetime medical and living expenses. Id. at 907, 466 N.Y.S.2d at 87. The Waxman court, however, remanded the proposed conservatee's counterclaim, which included issues of fraud, duress, and the unlawful withholding of property by his wife and her attorneys. Sim's attorneys failed to call our attention to the result on appeal after remand of that case. In Matter of Waxman, 110 A.D.2d 644, 487 N.Y. S.2d 381 (1985), the same court noted that the previous decision did not reach the validity of the inter vivos trust, and again remanded the case for hearing because of conflicting evidence as to Waxman's state of mind at the time of the trust's execution and as to whether Waxman had received a proper explanation of the trust, including a clause which waived the settlor's statutory rights to revoke the trust. Sim's attorneys do not relate the dispersive constitutional attack they make under this assignment of error to any particular statutory provision employed in this proceeding; rather, they seem to assault the application of the entire guardianship and conservatorship statutory schemes to Sim on vaguely articulated grounds that the schemes violate portions of the federal Bill of Rights. Nothing has been called to our attention, nor do we find anything, which supports such an attack to the application of the pertinent portions of the statutory schemes to Sim. Accordingly, this assignment of error fails.