County approves guardianship pay for indigent wards

by Kortny Hahn

At the July 13 Cheboygan County Board of Commissioners meeting, the board approved pay for county guardians who have been appointed to represent wards who are indigent, which means they are suffering from extreme poverty.

This topic was something that had been brought before the county commissioners at the request of Cheboygan County Probate Court Judge Daryl Vizina.

"We're one of the few counties that do not, at this time, pay for indigents, to cover for guardian services," said Cheboygan County Administrator Jeff Lawson. "So if an individual goes from probate court and they can afford to pay guardianship, the individual pays for that. But in the cases where they do not, we have volunteers throughout the years who actually volunteer their time to cover that."

Cheboygan County Administrator Jeff Lawson
Jennifer Patselas

The probate court has indicated to the county administration they are currently having a difficult time finding people to volunteer to offer these services. There are also several people who are currently volunteering and have many different wards of which they are keeping track, some with as many as 10 assigned to them at one time.

This is being done without any sort of compensation.

"The judge asked for the ability to use a portion of his budget this year to cover the rest of the year, to pay $83 per month, per client that is under the indigent standing," said Lawson. "In the future, we would have to work that into the budget."

This additional cost to pay those who are representatives of the indigent wards would be around $6,000 annually. The funds being used would come out of the probate court budget this year and Vizina has asked it be worked into the budget moving forward.

Cheboygan County Board of Commissioners Chair John Wallace said he thought this was a very good idea, for the county to start paying these representatives of the indigent wards.

When Wallace was studying for his social work program, he interned at the Cheboygan County Probate Court. He was charged with reviewing the adult foster care homes in the county and then making a report to the judge. While he was performing this review, he found out there were some guardians who were not receiving any pay for the work they were doing.

"There's some people that are very dedicated and some had maybe 15 different wards," said Wallace. "They're just not being reimbursed for it. It's not fair, I just don't think. They spend a lot of time."

Wallace said he felt it was proper to start paying these people for their hard work.

Many of the counties around Cheboygan County — with the exception of Presque Isle County — have public guardians that are being paid $83 a month to represent the wards who cannot pay for the services themselves. Wards who can pay for these services themselves are charged $83 per month.

In Cheboygan County, until the motion was passed by the board members, they had been doing this free of charge. The duties of this position include attending court, handling finances, applying for medical health care benefits, scheduling doctor and dental appointments and many others, including assisting with criminal, civil and family court matters.

The guardians are also responsible for issues such as getting a storage unit for their wards' personal belongings if they are placed in some sort of a foster care home, filing income tax returns and signing all legal documents on behalf of the ward.

These guardians are on call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year, in case there is an emergency.

The county commissioners voted unanimously to approve the request to start paying the guardians of the indigent wards at a rate of $83 per month, per ward.

Full Article & Source:

County approves guardianship pay for indigent wards