Family Law - Guardianship - The Uniform Adult Guardianship and Protective Proceedings Jurisdiction Act: A Uniform Solution to an Arkansas Problem

INTRODUCTIONAmericans need each other's help.As of 2003, 35.9 million Americans were sixty-five or older, 4.7 million of whom were eighty-five or older.'Approximately 5.3 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease. 2 Another estimated seven to eight million have mental disabilities.3 When members of these and other fragile groups are unable to protect their own interests, courts in all fifty states have procedures to appoint guardians for them.4 Statistics on guardianship are difficult to come by; most courts do not themselves know how many guardianships they are ostensibly monitoring.'The closest thing to a definitive study of the subject, conducted by the Associated Press in 1987, estimated that there were 300,000 to 400,000 adult guardianships in force at the time.6 Meanwhile, the United States is a very mobile society.In 2002 alone, more than forty million Americans moved.7 In a typical year, some seven million Americans move from one state to another.8 When these two groups-the dependent and the mobile-overlap, they expose a hole in the legal system that threatens to swallow the rights of some of our most vulnerable citizens.The mere act of moving a ward across state lines may cost a guardian his or her legal authority.9 Worse, a third party who spirits a ward out of state is often beyond the reach of the guardian and the appointing court.' 0 A major source of these problems is parochial statutory regimes 1. WAN HE ET AL., 65+ IN THE UNITED STATES: 2005 1 (U.S. Census Bureau 2005).2. Alzheimer's Association, 2009 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures, 5 18.Hetman, 2009 Ark. 302, at 10, S.W.3d at _.The Hetman case is discussed at length in notes 32-45 and accompanying text.19.At least eighteen states have enacted new guardianship jurisdiction legislation since 2007.