How the Guardianship Process Works Step by Step

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:02]I always educated people on how to how guardianship is set up. It's a two-part uh process. You have incapacity on one side, on the other side you have guardianship. Um it begins by filing a petition to determine incapacity and a petition for appointment of guardian.

[00:00:16]I've seen it where sometimes the courts, even before we had Zoom and video conferencing, um you would get to the incapacity hearing and the judge would ask you, "Did you file the guardianship documents?" And you'd say, "Your honor, uh we're we're in the process of doing that." Now they want everything done all at once. So you can actually file the the petition for incapacity, get a case number, it's a mental health case number, and then also file the appointment for guardianship, the petition for appointment of guardian, and the court will probably sign it right after the order determining capacity is signed.

[00:00:44]Um the court appoints for the AIP, you cannot call that person a ward yet. It's called alleged incapacitated person, and no doctor can determine if a person is capacitated. I know there are doctor reports, but nevertheless, the only way a person can do that is a judge. And of course they have a three-member examining committee, which evaluates them. So they have Most of the time it's one MD doctor um and two psychologists. And uh a hearing is done within or scheduled within 30 days. They're pretty fast about that. Um and then of course it typically takes 60 to 90 days in total by the time the guardian is appointed.

[00:01:17]So we don't we don't like to promise anything before that.