Bill would spell out wards’ legal rights in guardianship system

State representatives have drafted legislation to reform Ohio’s guardianship system, using problems exposed in a series of stories in T he Dispatch as a guide, Rep. Dorothy Pelanda said.

“This is about protecting the state’s most vulnerable people,” Pelanda said. “We want to hold those in charge of others responsible and ensure they know what’s expected of them.”

Pelanda, of Marysville, and state Sen. Shannon Jones, of Springboro, both Republicans, are behind House Bill 624, which calls for a ward’s bill of rights. The bill also would require probate courts to give guardians a handbook that specifies how to care for a ward, manage assets and talk with doctors.

A Dispatch investigation in May uncovered unscrupulous lawyers and selfish family members who are court-appointed guardians for people the probate judge has deemed to be incompetent to handle their own affairs. The series, available online at Dispatch.com/unguarded, showed how they are allowed to abuse the wards they are supposed to protect and to steal from them.

Each county probate court has its own rules on how to oversee guardianships. The Dispatch investigation found that there were no statewide standards and that many courts lacked necessary safeguards or ignored their own rules.

The bill proposes to codify 19 separate rights. First, a ward must be “treated with dignity and respect.” Other important rights for wards would force courts to implement changes:

• Wards would be given copies of all medical, financial and treatment records submitted to the court in their case so that they could review them. Nearly all courts surveyed last year by T he Dispatch did not send copies of those documents to wards.

• Wards would be allowed to speak privately with an attorney, ombudsman or other advocate upon request.

• Wards would be able to meet with an attorney and independent expert for evaluation and have the costs for those things paid by the court if the ward were indigent. Some courts do this, but many do not, the investigation found.

• Wards would be able to bring a grievance against their guardian, to ask the court to review a guardian’s actions and to request removal and replacement of a guardian. Wards also could ask a court to restore certain rights (to marry, vote, drive) if they could show they had regained the capacity to make some or all decisions.

Many courts have a process that allows a ward to file a request to remove a guardian. In some courts, such as Franklin County’s, evidence introduced by a ward or concerned family member about a guardian’s actions is put in the ward’s file with some variation of the label “non-evidence, correspondence only.”

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Bill would spell out wards’ legal rights in guardianship system