Filing for Guardianship or Conservatorship? It’s Harder Than You Think

To open a guardianship and conservatorship matter in Arizona with the courts is an extremely complicated process. I know I struggled with it at first, being a trained paralegal. I had to get comfortable with what the courts are wanting, what the judges are wanting. That does change from six months to a year. You'll file everything, and then the next time you're in, they want something completely different. And it's constantly evolving, and there's really no good way to go find that information. Even for us as a law firm, it is very trial and error communicating with the judicial assistants. It's very kind of informal how this information gets distributed, and it's almost trial and error.

So when you are somebody who's unrepresented and you're trying to fill out this mountain of documents to basically tell the court, like, "Hey, I need to be involved for this person who's still alive," you're under a vast amount of scrutiny. And one little typo, one little oopsie, the court will just say, "Nope, start over. I don't want any of it. Toss it."

And so we see people, like you said, get into almost a negative position to start, rather than starting from the starting gate, which is already a mountain to climb. Now we're starting, you know, in the valley. And so we have to explain to them, like, unfortunately, now it is going to cost you more time and funds to get you caught up and then proceed.