A tattered safety net
A Propublica investigation turned up shocking gaps in the state’s guardianship system.
A civil society should be judged on how it treats its most vulnerable — the very young and very old, as well as the homeless, the mentally ill and those grappling with significant disability. For many adults, New York has created a guardianship system that is meant to ensure that people who face challenges caring for themselves have someone looking out for their best interests.
In practice, however, the state’s system is suffering from the classic collision between demand and available resources. Oversight of the system — the alwaysfraught watching of the watchers — is “a total and utter disaster,” according to Kristin Booth Glen, a former judge who three decades ago helped craft Article 81 of the state Mental Hygiene Law, the statute that guides guardianship in New York.
Ms. Glen was interviewed by Propublica’s Jake Pearson as part of his investigation of the guardianship system, specifically the care of those without relatives or close friends who can step up and serve in the role. The spine of his article was the mind-boggling experience of Judith Zbiegniewicz, whose decade-long transit through the system included years in which she was living in a Queens apartment infested with rats and bedbugs, sometimes with no heat and at one point with a partially collapsed roof. All of these Dickensian conditions should have raised alarms with the private firm assigned by a judge to serve as her guardian. Instead, the situation persisted for years.
Part of the problem was a private operator that continued to collect $450 a month even as Ms. Zbiegniewicz battled vermin and other breakdowns in her living conditions; the outfit pitched itself in court documents as a nonprofit but doesn’t appear to actually hold that tax status. Propublica’s reporting revealed that the court-appointed examiners intended to ensure guardians are doing their job also appeared to fall well short of sufficient due diligence. And the judges who are the ultimate backstop for the proper care of those in guardianships are overmatched by crushing caseloads that make it difficult to address breakdowns (or wrongdoing) in time to pull someone out of potentially harmful circumstances.
This is not a situation that should be addressed in Whac-a-mole fashion; a more comprehensive response is needed. The state Office of Court Administration is on record in Mr. Pearson’s article noting high caseloads, each requiring years or even decades of attention. It appears to be time for the state Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul to respond to Propublica’s reporting and either argue that the current statute is working just fine or begin to work toward a set of solutions to make it function as its framers intended.
Those solutions should include setting more stringent training requirements for guardians and the examiners who review their work; expanding the number of judges dedicated exclusively to managing guardianships; putting teeth in reporting requirements; and establishing caseload limits for everyone involved.
These are neither easy nor cheap solutions. But without putting them in place, every New Yorker becomes complicit in the human suffering resulting from the status quo.