Conservatorship

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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Legal guardian. (Discuss)

A conservatorship is an entity established by court order that some property or a person be subject to the legal control of another person or entity, known as a conservator. Many jurisdictions use the term "guardianship of the person" to refer to the same legal principle. A person under conservatorship is a conservatee or protected person; a person under guardianship is a ward. In most states, a court visitor or some other investigatory person or agency must review the facts of the case and submit a report, usually required to be in writing, to the court. Court visitors are often required to be experts in some appropriate field, such as social work or law. Additionally, states may require a "guardian ad litem" to be appointed for the person. The guardian ad litem often is an attorney, but has more expanded duties and powers than an attorney. Procedures for conservatorship of an adult are often different from those for minors.

Procedures for developmentally disabled persons are quite different from other conservatorships. There has been much national debate about the procedural protections for the conservatee/protected person. In many states, the guardian ad litem or court visitor may be picked by the petitioning attorney, rather than by a random process, and may not be truly independent. State law can, but does not always, provide requirements for the actions of the court visitor and guardian ad litem that are designed to protect the rights of the conservatee/protected person.

Conservatorships were used by some concerned relatives of members of New Religious Movements (NRMs) to be removed from their religious communities to be deprogrammed. Lawyers for NRMs such as the Unification Church argued that conservatorships should not be issued without the judge seeing the person in question and giving him or her a chance to produce expert testimony opposing the conservatorship. They argued that deprogrammers were abusing the mechanism of conservatorships to justify what would otherwise be called kidnapping and false imprisonment. The ACLU reports that the temporary conservatorships granted in the Unification Church case violated the conservatee's rights to freedom of religion and association, per the finding of the California appeals court on the case.^[1]