Gov., put guardianship on your 2018 legislative call

The evidence is irrefutable. New Mexico’s system of guardianships for the elderly and otherwise incapacitated is a throwback to darker times, operating in secrecy with little effective oversight and dominated by professional insiders who have too often put their own interests ahead of the people they are supposed to protect.

Some of these insiders have pilfered client accounts, leaving their wards penniless — all this taking place under the noses of both courts and state agencies that are supposed to protect them. Guardians and conservators have dismissed with impunity complaints by loved ones of the people they are supposed to protect, cutting family members off from visitation should they prove to be too much of a “problem” in complaining about how Mom or Dad is being treated.

A commission appointed by the state Supreme Court and chaired by retired District Judge Wendy York after the Journal published its series “Who Guards the Guardians?” last year has come up with important recommendations that would significantly improve the system by requiring closer monitoring of court-appointed guardians and conservators.

Some of the commission’s proposals, which include common-sense fixes like requiring guardians and conservators to attach bank statements to their annual reports, could be implemented through court rule. Other commission proposals, such as setting up special masters who could hear and act on complaints from families in a timely matter, would require legislation.

And as York’s group heard last Friday, the national Uniform Law Commission has crafted a model reform package that would address many of the other problems in New Mexico’s system.

For starters, the model reforms are based on the premise that proceedings are open to the public unless the respondent wants them closed and the judge approves.

University of Missouri professor David English, who has spent 30 years studying guardianships nationally, has worked on the new code and said he was surprised at the secrecy of the New Mexico system. “It’s very important that the public have some access to what’s going on in guardianship cases,” he said.

Financial and other documents could still be secret, but under the model code, family members would be guaranteed access to annual reports and other filings. Another important provision in the model code: guardians couldn’t cut off family visitation without first getting a judge to approve that restriction.

The model code also allows for measures short of a full guardianship, such as a provision limited to a single transaction, such as selling a vacant house. “Guardianships can be a really blunt instrument compared to something less sweeping,” English told the commission.

And guardians and conservators would be required to present a plan, including their projected fees, to the court within 60 days of appointment. In New Mexico, fees run up by professionals and paid from the ward’s assets have tended to be reviewed after the fact, if at all.

But for the Legislature to act next year, Gov. Susana Martinez would have to include the topic on her call for the 2018 budget session. If that doesn’t happen, many meaningful reforms that require legislative action would be pushed back at least a year, and then would take additional time to be realistically and fully implemented.

There is no guarantee what lawmakers would do — this is a lucrative industry with plenty of lobbying clout — but there is growing consensus that New Mexico’s system is a national embarrassment and needs to change. The governor should give lawmakers a chance to fix it and call on them to do so.

Thousands of our most vulnerable lives depend on it.