Plan To Be 100

The question is this: When a person who is the subject of a petition for guardianship or conservatorship nominates an individual they want to serve in those capacities, to what extent is the court required to grant the nominated individual a priority of appointment?  A new unpublished opinion discusses that question, and while I think the opinion falls short in some respects, the issue comes up routinely in contested guardianship and conservatorship matters and this case offers the opportunity to delve into the law.  So here we go:

Let’s start with the law.

MCL 700.5313(2) provides the order of appointment for a guardianship. Its relevant provisions say:

(2) In appointing a guardian under this section, the court shall appoint a person, if suitable and willing to serve, in the following order of priority:

(a) A person previously appointed, qualified, and serving in good standing as guardian for the legally incapacitated individual in another state.

(b) A person the individual subject to the petition chooses to serve as guardian.

(c) A person nominated as guardian in a durable power of attorney or other writing by the individual subject to the petition.

(d) A person named by the individual as a patient advocate or attorney in fact in a durable power of attorney.

For a conservatorship the relevant language is in MCL 700.5409(1), which says:

(1) The court may appoint an individual, a corporation authorized to exercise fiduciary powers, or a professional conservator described in section 5106 to serve as conservator of a protected individual’s estate. The following are entitled to consideration for appointment in the following order of priority:

(a) A conservator, guardian of property, or similar fiduciary appointed or recognized by the appropriate court of another jurisdiction in which the protected individual resides.

(b) An individual or corporation nominated by the protected individual if he or she is 14 years of age or older and of sufficient mental capacity to make an intelligent choice, including a nomination made in a durable power of attorney.

These provisions are similar, but importantly different:

While both statutes provide that, unless someone has already been appointed to serve as guardian or conservator by another state, the highest priority goes the person nominated by the proposed ward. But in the guardianship context, the law provides that the court “shall appoint” the person with priority if they are suitable and willing to serve. In a conservatorship proceeding, the court “may appoint” and having a priority merely provides that such persons “are entitled to consideration.”

Interestingly, the conservatorship statute says that before considering a person nominated by the proposed ward, the court must find that the proposed ward “is of sufficient mental capacity to make an intelligent choice.” In the guardianship context there is no requirement that the proposed ward be capable of making a good choice.

The guardianship law also elevates the person nominated by the proposed ward at the hearing above a person previously nominated in a power of attorney or patient advocate designation. In the conservatorship context, those two forms of priority are equal.

For the record, both statutes are further buttressed by MCL 700.5106 which more specifically addresses the limitations placed on a court with respect to the appointment of a public fiduciary.

All three cited statutes are linked to the law, which can be read in their entirety by clicking on the statute.

Now let’s look at the case of  In Re Guardianship and Conservatorship of David P. VanPoppelen.  Click on the name to read the opinion.  Click here to read the concurrence/dissent which goes into an interesting issue about suitability, which, for the sake of brevity, I won’t discuss in this post.

In this case, the proposed ward (“David”) nominated June to be his guardian and conservator.  He did so both in his power of attorney and patient advocate designation, and he did so when he was questioned by the court-appointed guardian ad litem.  But the trial court bypassed June by finding that the David was not competent to execute the patient advocate designation and power of attorney when they were executed, and further, the court says “He was similarly incompetent to informally select his fiduciary.”

So my complaint with this holding is that while I think the court was certainly within its power to invalidate a power of attorney and patient advocate designation based on a finding of lack of capacity at the time of execution; and to bypass June as conservator by finding, in accordance with MCL 700.5409, that David lacked the ability to “make an intelligent choice” at the time of his verbal nomination; because MCL 700.5313 (the guardianship law) does not include a provision that allows the court to make a verbal nomination contingent on the existing mental capacity of the proposed ward, to my thinking, June should have been given the priority in the guardianship matter.

In conclusion, although I think this court provided an imperfect analysis, I appreciate the opportunity to review the law as it relates to this important question.