In 2015 people move around a lot. Lets say you have an eldery parent that you feel requires a partial guardianship (as opposed to full guardianship) over some part of their lives, maybe medical decisions or large financial decisions etc. Well maybe Mom lives up in New York during the summer and spends her winters down here in Palm Beach or Boca. Once more she still owns that old ski house in Boulder that she takes her friends to for vacations. OK, so where do you file for guardianship. The truth is it depends because not all States have the same guardiansip laws.
- Florida’s guardianship code is not uniform with all other states and the intricacies are vast.
- Certain parties may find advantages in something called forum shopping where by a party files in whatever jurisdiction is most convenient for them either because of proximity or more commonly because of the way these laws vary.
- Florida has existing legal theories for resolving multi-jurisdictinal guardianship disputes but its largely case by case analysis and can be unpredictable for even an experienced Florida guardianship attorney.
- There is a proposed solution to this that is endorsed by probate judges and practicioners alike and that is the adoption of the Uniform Adult Guardianship and Protective Proceedings Jurisdiction Act: which would institute the Uniform Guardianship Act inFLorida, which is used in many other states.
- This uniformity would get rid of the forum shopping advantages discussed above, eliminating biased jurisdiction choices.
- But forum shopping sounds great right? Pick the Court that is right for you? Not so much when you consider the reality that this means people could be dragging the disabled and young wards all across the country simply to get favorable rulings based on procedural differences in the law, all in all that is not good public policy and could be avoidedthrough the adoption of a Uniform Approach to Guardianship Law.
You may be asking yourself is a uniform law a good idea but many practicioners can tell you, this is a common practice and has worked great in other fields:
- The Model Penal Code has made uniform large areas of criminal law in many states. This Code has had the benefit on an entire nations elite thinkers to modernize the criminal code based on public policy that is favorable to society and grounded in statitstics rather than the impassioned ad hoc criminal penal codes many states (including Florida) have developed over the last three hundred some years.
- The Uniform Commercial Code has been adopted almost verbatim in Florida, this has been paramount in allowing interstate commerce to flourish as companies can predict uniformly what the law will be in most states. Now a manufacturer in New England knows that their obligaitons are largely the same whereever in the country they go, a layman can learn the law of one jurisdiction and with relative ease conduct business properly in another.
- The Florida Probate Code is an adoption of a Uniform Probate Code as well and has done great at minimizing probate disputes and elevating the importance of public policy in Probate Courts.
Are you considering filing for a guardianship then only an experienced Florida Guardianship Attorney can really tell you the advantages and disadvantages of Florida Guardianship. Still want to learn more? Check out our FAQ video library here.