Trapped in the system

Once in a guardianship, few get out — courts tend to ignore people labeled incompetent

Getting into a guardianship is far easier than getting out. By its very nature, a guardianship establishes that an adult doesn’t have the mental capacity to make proper decisions, creating an almost impossible hurdle for those declared incompetent to prove otherwise.

The path to a guardianship begins with an evaluation from a health-care expert detailing why the adult needs

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someone to manage his or her affairs.

A Dispatch analysis of more than 700 Franklin County guardianship cases opened during a three-year span beginning in 2007 found that in more than a third of the cases, a medical or mental-health professional determined that a patient was incompetent in less than 30 minutes.

More than 1 in 5 of them had never before seen the patient.

Stancin was judged on issues that don’t affect decision-making, as this court report shows.

Stancin had multiple complaints about her court-appointed guardians.

Stancin made what seem like rational requests. The court filed away her letters. any of them.

“Stancin was intensely vulnerable,” Vore said. “I was open to everything, but in the end, the guardianship and getting her into Medicaid was the only way she could get the care she needed.”.

DISPATCH BROOKE LAVALLEY Geralyn Stancin spent years fighting a court ruling that she was incompetent. In that time, she was locked in a nursing home and forced to take medicine. Her assets were liquidated, including her $212,000 home. She has more reason to...