The Casey Kasem Legacy? States Adopt “Notice, Communication and Visitation” Laws

In the last months before the death of Casey Kasem, children from his first marriage and his second wife engaged in a high profile struggle over where, how and with whom the aging celebrity would spend time, with the disputes — and the famous disc jockey himself — crossing state borders. The controversies lasted even after his death on June 15, 2014, as his second wife reportedly flew his body out of the U.S. for burial in Oslow, Norway.  

Drawing upon these traumatic experiences, one daughter, Kerri Kasem, advocates for passage of state legislation in an effort to better define family members’ rights of access and communication in such complicated family matters. Her foundation, Kasem Cares, will host a “Conference on Aging“ on April 21-23, 2016 in Orange County California and it seems likely from the agenda that proposed better practices will be discussed.  

To date, at least three states have adopted new laws that appear to reflect the legal issues in the Casey Kasem family disputes, including:

• Iowa, I.C.A. Section 635.635 (amended) and Section 633.637A (added), providing that all adult wards subject to a court-ordered guardianship continue to have the right to communicate, visit and interact with other persons, and that a court will approve a guardian’s denial of such interaction “only upon a showing of good cause.”  Changes to the law became effective on July 1, 2015.
• Texas, Estates Code, Section 1151.055, “Application by Certain Relatives for Access to Ward; Hearing and Court Order, and Section 1151.056 on “Guardian’s Duty to Inform Certain Relatives About Ward’s Health and Residence,” effective June 19, 2015. Together these guardianship-connected rules permit designated family members to apply for a court order permitting communication or visitation with a ward, and obligate a guardian to give family members notice of the ward’s admission to medical facilities, change of residence, or death, unless the family member makes a written “waiver” of such communications.  For more see the Texas Guardianship Law Update in the September/October 2015 issue of The Houston Lawyer.
• California, Assembly  Bill No. 1085, amended Cal. Prob. Code Section 2351, to provide that not only does a person who is the subject of a guardianship or conservatorship continue to have “personal rights” such as the “right to receive visitors,” but that the court may issue an order that “grants the conservator the power to limit or enforce the conservatee’s rights, or that “directs the conservator to allow those visitors, telephone calls and personal mail.”  The California Probate Code was further changed to add provisions, Section 2361 and Section 4691, expressly providing that conservators shall mail notice of a conservatee’s death to any spouse, domestic partner or, in essence, any person who has “requested special notice,” and imposing a similar duty of notice regarding death of a principal, for certain agents acting under specified powers in a power of attorney for health care.  For more on the California legislation, signed by California  Governor Brown on July 14, 2015, and made effective on January 1, 2016, see the Los Angeles Times article, Casey Kasem Controversy Leads to New Rights for Children of Ill Parents.

These three new pieces of legislation, despite similarities in purpose — i.e., recognition of family members’ interest in continued communications with a loved one who has become a “court ward,” — are quite different in effect.  It will be important to see whether such provisions can be used to ease family tensions or instead serve as a frustrating, procedural gauntlet for warring factions. The Texas law seems to me to go the furthest in recognizing an affirmative right of a family member to challenge an attempt by a guardian or conservator to limit access.

What ultimately was enacted in California seems like a compromise, with the revised law continuing to give conservators or guardians primary authority for decisions about access.  An earlier proposal in California, Assembly Bill 2034 (2013-14), would have gone much further, requiring not only that conservators give notice of a ward’s death, but of funeral arrangements, and also of “admission to a medical facility for acute care for a period of three days or more.”  That bill would have expressly permitted “adult relatives in the first degree” to petition for a visitation order.  

In a fourth state, Washington, additional “family access” litigation is under consideration, inspired at least in part by the Casey Kasem saga, as well as another high profile family battle over access to t.v. actor Peter Falk after he became incapacitated due to dementia.  For more on those proposals read the Seattle Times recent article, “Daughters of Casey Kasem, Peter Falk Tackle Elder Visitation in Washington State.”

For a detailed, recent discussion of laws involved in guardian disputes, from the perspective of an experienced elder law attorney, see Georgia attorney David L. McGuffey’s “Adult Guardianships, Conservatorships & Litigation” (2015).