Court Opinion

ID: 9534666
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:41:51.950981+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:30:59.754897
License: Public Domain

FIDEL, Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the conclusion of the majority. I write to state my separate rationale.
First, I do not believe that our decision is supported by Arizona’s marital and domestic relations laws. One cannot attribute to the legislature that adopted the marital dissolution provisions of A.R.S. Title 25 the intent either to permit or to forbid guardians to sue for dissolution on behalf of incapacitated wards. Rather, it appears from reading the dissolution statutes that the legislature did not contemplate that subject at all.
In Title 14, however, the legislature defined guardianship powers broadly with the evident intent to give guardians the flexibility to assert whatever legal interests their wards cannot assert for themselves. In A.R.S. section 14-5312(A), the legislature enumerated among a guardian’s specific powers: to take physical custody of the ward, to establish the ward’s abode, to make medical decisions for the ward, and, in the absence of a conservator, to control the ward’s estate. Within the same statute, the legislature provided generally that guardians shall have “the same powers, rights and duties ... that a parent has respecting his unemancipated minor child.”
Moreover, the legislature defined in even broader terms the superior court’s power to protect the incapacitated. A.R.S. section 14-1302(A) (1975) gives the superior court jurisdiction “over all subject matter relating to ... [protection of ... incapacitated persons.” (emphasis added). And section 14-1302(B) gives the superior court “full power to make orders, judgments and decrees and take all other action necessary and proper to administer justice” in matters relating to the incapacitated. I find these laws broadly enough drafted to include marital dissolution among the needs that a guardian may assert and that the superior court may meet.
The trial court concluded otherwise, based on a restrictive reading of A.R.S. section 14-5312(A). A guardian, according to the trial court’s reading of that statute, can exercise no power on behalf of a ward that a parent cannot exercise for an un-emancipated minor child. The trial court reasoned that a parent cannot seek dissolution for an unemancipated minor child “because if the child is validly married, the child is no longer an unemancipated minor.” Accordingly, the trial court concluded, a guardian lacks authority to seek dissolution for a ward.
I do not find the trial court’s reading of section 14-5312(A) implausible. I do find it inconsistent, however — for a reason the majority does not discuss — with our supreme court’s Rasmussen decision. 154 Ariz. at 221 n. 20, 741 P.2d at 688 n. 20. In Rasmussen, the supreme court permitted a guardian to refuse vital medical care on behalf of an incapacitated ward, but expressly declined to hold that a parent can refuse such care on behalf of an unemanci-pated minor child. Id. Had the Rasmussen court regarded parental authority as the test of a guardian’s authority to act for a ward, the court would have necessarily faced as a threshold issue whether a parent *447can refuse vital medical treatment on behalf of a child. Instead, the court sidestepped the threshold and construed the guardian’s power as potentially broader than the parent’s. Given Rasmussen, I join the majority in concluding that the analogy to a parent’s power in section 14-5312 merely conveys “the general breadth of a legal guardian’s powers ... [and does not] precisely define the outer limits of those powers.” Majority Opinion, at 440, 850 P.2d 678.
I thus agree, up to a point, with the majority’s treatment of a guardian’s ability to file for marital dissolution as an important means of protecting an incapacitated ward against a competent spouse’s exploitation or abuse. It would be inaccurate, however, to conclude from the court’s opinion that dissolution is the only legal means of achieving such protection. The court has erected a rather steep evidentiary hurdle for a guardian who seeks to dissolve the marriage of a ward. Guardians unable to produce clear and convincing evidence of the ward’s intent or attitude toward the marriage1, or reluctant for other reasons to pursue dissolution, have a range of alternative protective options.
For example, in the absence of a conservator, a guardian may take control of the ward’s estate, including the ward’s share of community property,2 and petition the superior court for orders protecting that property and providing for the ward’s support. See A.R.S. § 14-5312(A)(2), (4), and (5). A guardian may also file for an order of protection, see A.R.S. § 13-3602 (1992), or a decree of legal separation, see A.R.S. § 25-313 (1991). Further, as previously noted, the superior court has “jurisdiction over all subject matter” and “full power to ... take all ... action necessary and proper to administer justice” in matters of the incapacitated. A.R.S. § 14-1302; see also A.R.S. § 14-5402 (1975) (jurisdiction of the court to determine how the protected person’s estate “shall be managed, expended or distributed”); A.R.S. § 14-5409 (1975) (authority of the court to take various measures relating to the protected person’s estate and to provide for the protected person’s “security, service or care”); § 14-5408(A)(3) (1992) (authority of the court to exercise, with certain exceptions, “all the powers over [the protected person’s] estate and affairs which he could exercise if present and not under disability.”).
Dissolution, in short, is not the only protective option that a guardian may pursue. However, with due consideration for the values and wishes of the ward, see A.R.S. § 14-5312(A)(11), it is one among the broad and flexible range of protective orders and decrees that Title 14 permits the superior court to issue and a guardian to seek.
Because our decision does not rest on the dissolution provisions of Title 25, but rather on the broad guardianship provisions of Title 14, I regard it less as a matter of statutory interpretation than of filling a statutory gap. But in such a gap-filling exercise it is best to acknowledge the limits of the judicial role. If the legislature has not yet focused on the problem of pursuing dissolution for an incompetent ward, it ought to do so now. Although the court today approves a substituted-judgment standard (requiring proof of the ward’s intent when competent) for a guardian’s dissolution suit, it prudently abstains from deciding whether a guardian, unable to meet that standard, might achieve dissolution by proving the ward’s best interest. While it is unnecessary in this case to decide that question, litigation abhors a vacuum; it will need to be decided before long. There is a range of experts and a community of interests that might contribute to an informed examination of the problems and requirements of dissolution actions for those too incapacitated to indicate their *448present intent. The legislature can draw on that community of interests far more effectively than the courts. Accordingly, before the courts are drawn by necessity further into the statutory gap, this subject is ripe for legislative attention.

. A.R.S. section 14-5312(A)(11) provides, "In making decisions concerning his ward, a guardian shall take into consideration the ward’s values and wishes.”

. A.R.S. section 14-1201(13) (1992) defines "estate” to include "all of the property of the ... [protected] person.” It further provides as to married persons, "In the case of a husband or wife, the estate includes only the separate property and the share of the community property belonging to the ... [protected] person.” (emphasis added).