What Is Conservatorship And What Are The Steps To Become A Conservator?
Everyone wants to secure their loved ones from financial, physical as well as emotional crisis. While people don’t have control over emotional health, they can do their bit for their loved ones by offering financial help. Estate planning allows people to plan their estate by mentioning the details of their estate distribution among suitable heirs. On the other hand, conservatorship is a legal responsibility over a person who is unable to make his own decisions. While it is usually established by court order, it can also be created by family members to manage the financial affairs of a person who is no longer able to manage them. Though, families often use conservatorship to protect the elderly in their family, but it can also be created for other dependent adults in a family, who have been physically or mentally disabled in accidents or due to illness.
Who is a conservator and how to become one?
A conservator is the person appointed by a judge as someone’s guardian to manage his/her finances due to their physical or mental limitations. You can become a conservator by getting help of a conservatorship attorney Long Beach. Once you ask the judge to appoint you a conservator and he grants you the legal authority, you will be supervised by the court about your legal responsibilities towards the person and how you will be legally held accountable for all decisions made in that person’s name. Following are the basic steps that one needs to know about to become a conservator.
· Make request: You need to initiate the process of becoming a conservator via making a request to a good attorney that offers services of conservatorship in Long Beach. A person can also request to get a conservator by filing a petition in the probate court. In such case, hiring a good probate attorney in Long Beach can be really helpful.
· Provide documentation: After making request, you need to provide documents that prove that the adult is unable to manage his/her financial matters.
· Investigation by the court: Now the courts will review the documents and do proper investigation about you as the person to approach court to be the conservator.
· Court hearing: At this step, you need to attend court hearing to get its decision. You will be legally appointed as a conservator once court determines that the person is incapable of handling his/her own financial affairs and you have successfully been through all the background checks. Once you finally get appointed as conservator, you will have all or partial control over that person’s income, saving and property.
Apart from these basic steps to become a conservator, laws of conservatorship may contain complex situational conditions that you should be aware about. You should hire a reputed conservatorship attorney in Long Beach to have complete information about the process. Medical decisions along with other terms can be involved under complex laws of conservatorship in Long Beach. Depending on your desire, you can also avoid a conservatorship, for which you will need to have proper guidance of an expert. You must get conservatorship only if you’re ready for it to keep up to the responsibilities; and a good lawyer can help you out in understanding the laws better.
