Category: Trusts & Estates Category: Trusts & Estates (show less)

Attorneys appointed to represent conservatees and proposed conservatees in California’s courts are knee-deep in important personal and constitutional issues. Every day across the state, private citizens use the courts to deprive other private citizens of control of property and other freedoms. Although a conservatorship proceeding is classified as a “protective proceeding,”1 a conservatorship case is fundamentally adversarial, and a court’s imposition of a conservatorship of the person or estate on an individual has been described as, “in one short sentence, the most punitive civil penalty that can be levied against an American citizen . . . .”2