Adult Guardianship in Georgia: Are the Rights of Proposed Wards Being Protected? Can We Tell?

National scrutiny of guardianship policies and practice by scholars and legal, health, and social service practitioners followed. This resulted in a succession of forums, studies, and recommendations aimed at improving the guardianship system. One such forum was the Wingspread conference, convened by the American Bar Association (ABA) in 1988. Experts from a variety of fields met to produce a groundbreaking set of recommendations for reforming guardianship. Wingspan, a second national guardianship conference addressing reform issues in 2001, produced in a second series of recommendations. The recommendations from these two conferences proposed greater protection for the proposed ward's liberty interests and right to self-determination, to the extent possible that it is consistent with one's functional abilities. The recommendations also point to the need for zealous advocacy by counsel on behalf of the proposed ward. The National Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in the Uniform Guardianship and Protective Proceedings Act (UGPPA) incorporated these and other recommendations, and a majority of states revised their statutes to implement many of these recommendations. Against this backdrop, guardianship reform also began in Georgia. This article recounts Georgia's reform efforts and examines the current guardianship code and practice in light of the considerable constitutional and policy interests at stake. For the latter, we rely upon information gathered in two statewide guardianship surveys examining guardianship files from 1994 and 2000.