Guardianships

The Senate Special Committee on Aging asked GAO to follow up on its 2004 report, Guardianships: Collaboration Needed to Protect Incapacitated Elderly People, GAO-04-655. This report covered what state courts do to ensure that guardians fulfill their responsibilities, what exemplary guardianship programs look like, and how state courts and federal agencies work together to protect incapacitated elderly people. For this testimony, GAO agreed to (1) provide an overview and update of the findings of this prior work; (2) discuss the status of a series of recommendations GAO made in that report; and (3) discuss the prospects for progress in efforts to strengthen protections for incapacitated elderly people through guardianships. To complete this work, GAO interviewed lawyers and agency officials who have been actively involved in guardianship and representative payee programs, and spoke with officials at some of the courts identified as exemplary in the report.

GAO's 2004 report had three principal findings. First, all states have laws requiring courts to oversee guardianships, but court implementation of these laws varies. Second, those courts recognized as exemplary in the area of guardianships focused on training and monitoring. Third, there is little coordination between state courts and federal agencies or among federal agencies regarding guardianships. At present, these findings remain largely the same, but there are some new developments to report. Since GAO's report was issued, some states have strengthened their guardianship programs. For example, Alaska established requirements for licensing of private guardianships and New Jersey and Texas established requirements for the registration of professional guardians. However, there continues to be little coordination between state courts and federal agencies or among federal agencies in the protection of incapacitated people. GAO's report made recommendations to federal agencies, but to date little progress has been made. GAO recommended that SSA convene an interagency study group to increase the ability of representative payee programs to protect federal benefit payments from misuse. Although VA, HHS, and OPM indicated their willingness to participate in such a study group, SSA disagreed with this recommendation, and its position has not changed. Second, GAO recommended that HHS work with national organizations involved in guardianship programs to provide support and leadership to the states for cost-effective pilot and demonstration projects to facilitate state efforts to improve oversight of guardianships and to aid guardians in the fulfillment of their responsibilities. HHS did support a study that surveyed the status of states' guardianship data collection practices. HHS also supported a National Center on Elder Abuse survey of adult protective services agencies to collect information including the extent to which guardians are the alleged perpetrators or the sources of reports about elder abuse. Third, GAO recommended a review of state policies and procedures concerning interstate transfer and recognition of guardianship appointments. A National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, held in July of this year, issued a discussion draft for a uniform state law addressing these issues. Following issuance of GAO's 2004 report, a joint conference of professional guardianship organizations agreed on a set of action steps to implement previously-released recommendations from a group of experts on adult guardianship, known as the Wingspan recommendations. Among other things, these action steps call for licensing, certifying, or registering professional guardians.