News Reports Spotlight Guardianship Issues in the Sunshine State

Recent news reports in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune have focused on “elder guardianships” in Florida.  The articles include:

• The Kindness of Strangers: Inside Elder Guardianship in Florida, a three part “special project.”
• A Civil Dispute Over Guardianship, detailing a conflict between co-trustees for a man in his 90s over costs of care.  One trustee was concerned about what appear to be charities named as remainder beneficiaries and was described as making “imaginative” use of a guardianship to challenge the wife’s role as the other named trustee.  A sidebar in this article describes bills pending in the Florida legislature seeking to clarify the legal effect of a “power of attorney” when a guardianship petition is filed. 
• Film to Detail Horror Stories from Florida Guardianship, describing a video project to share “stories about Florida’s adult guardianship system,” supported by a local “nonprofit organization called Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianship.”