Guardianships, Florida Law, and the Right to Contract

Are you involved in a West Palm Beach guardianship? Does the ward want to hire a guardianship lawyer to represent him or her in the Palm Beach guardianship proceedings? Did you know that, if you are deemed incapacitated by the court, important rights may be removed from you? Can a ward choose which Florida guardianship attorney  he or she wants to hire? A recent Third DCA opinion, Jacobsen v. Busko, answers these questions. 

Here, the ward loses her right to contract when she is deemed incapacitated by the Florida court. Section 744.3215(3)(a) provides that  “rights that may be removed from a person by an order determining incapacity and which may be delegated to the guardian include the right…to contract.”  After, losing her right to contract, the ward  tries to hire a lawyer, and is unable to because it is not the lawyer that her  guardian chose to hire on her behalf. What if the ward had not yet been deemed incapacitated? Would the result of this guardianship case been different? To read the entire opinion, click here.