Welcome back to Good Day Dateline
Tim Mahoney back with us tonight.
So we're talking about the differences
and probably some similarities.
I'm guessing there's something between
very popular conservatorships, you know, about Britney Spears,
but maybe you don't know as much about Amanda Bynes.
So the big difference that everybody's
talking about with Amanda
Bynes is conservatorship is that it went very smoothly.
Yeah.
And and a lot of the people that are involved in this
now that are trying to change the laws in California
and the conversation that's really going on around
the country are saying, you know, this isn't the norm.
So Amanda Bynes had a situation happened at her house
her parents came in and took conservatorship.
Her mom being the conservator.
She was conservator for a period of time.
By all accounts, it went very smoothly.
And now the conservatorship is over.
But the people from the ACLU and places like that are saying,
you know, that's not, again, the norm as to how it all works.
And they want to create new laws.
And in fact, there's a new law
that is in the House of Representatives in California
right now
to create kind of a hybrid between conservatorships
or guardianships.
In Illinois, they're called guardianships
and a power of attorney
to do something
that's a little bit of a hybrid between both of those things.
Now, it's interesting to try to figure out
how you want to do that, because,
I mean, with a conservatorship
or a guardianship, you have court oversight.
I mean, the person
who's the conservator or the guardian
is an officer of the court.
They've taken an oath to the court.
And they have to report to the court
as to what they're doing.
Plus, they have a level of power.
Right.
I mean, one of the things
that was talked about with Britney was,
well, she can't make her medical decisions.
Well, that's kind of the point
of a conservatorship or a guardianship.
I mean, if you have somebody that has lot of health issues,
if you have somebody that has addiction problems, many times
that the treatment or the the the medical medical attention
that they need
may not be what they want to do or are willing to do.
So that's the point of the conservatorship, is that you can
then say this person is going to go get this medical attention
and then you
got to report to the court and the person has an attorney
and the attorney has to report to the court,
you know, with a power of attorney.
If I give you
my power of attorney, you can do anything
I can do with my signature.
If it's just a blanket power of attorney,
anything, you can borrow money, you can sell property.
I can also set up that power of attorney.
So it takes effect when a doctor says
I can no longer make my decisions,
but there's no court oversight.
And and if it's just
a regular power of attorney, I can revoke it at any time.
So if I give you my health care power of attorney,
that typically only kicks in
if a doctor says I can't make my decisions.
But if I come in and say I decide,
even if a doctor has said I can't make my decisions,
if I say I don't want to stay in this hospital,
most hospitals aren't going to keep me there
unless there's a guardianship in place.
OK, they're going to say we're not
we're not going to get in the middle of that.
This person gets to leave
until there's an actual guardianship so.
So to create a hybrid
between these things, I think is going to be
really interesting for a legislature to try to do.
I think the better approach is to just have a have
a conscious awareness
among the judges that once there's a conservatorship
or a guardianship, it isn't forever.
Or these women were both very young
and that is not normal as well.
Right.
Aren't most of these guardianship
and conservatorship placed on older people? Correct.
Normally, it's either people with dementia or Alzheimer's,
that type of situation, or any adult
with developmental disabilities typically needs a guardianship.
Once they turn 18, they need a guardianship.
But that's probably
that developmental disability
is likely to be in place for the rest of their life
is probably it's likely to not go away.
So that,
you know,
the idea was these things typically kind of go on forever,
but just an awareness by judges, you know, a new set of judges
with a new approach that, OK, just because
we enter a guardianship or conservative ship
doesn't mean that that's going to go on forever is
is can easily happen.
I mean what they did in divorce cases with visitation
and custody
50 years ago was much different
than what was done 25 years ago, which is much
different than what's done now.
And honestly a lot of times
the legislature writes a bunch of new laws
and all they really kind of do is make it more complicated
and we end up doing the same thing.
But the cutting edge is going to be done.
You know, there's three states
that are really, really great at writing laws,
and it's New York, Illinois and California, where spectacular
writing laws.
And so will be on the cutting edge of this.
What's what's great about this is that this conversation
is happening
is that these two celebrities brought awareness to the issue,
and now there's going
to be a conversation about how should we deal with this?
And remember, also, the more complicated we make it,
I mean, these people have resources
so that they can hire their own lawyers.
And many times that's not the case.
And so then you have to have court appointed attorneys.
There's got to be
you know, like right now, every adult with developmental
disabilities in Illinois should have a guardianship.
There's no system for putting that in place.
A buddy of mine and I, Robert Fagan
and I 29 years ago in Stevenson County,
along with Malcolm
King Enterprises, started a program where
if you're an adult with developmental disabilities
and you reside in Stevenson County,
we will do a guardianship for you for free.
And we've done almost 200 of them in 29 years.
And that's just because we we were involved with that
particular agency and looked around
and said, you know, nobody's doing this.
So just because they pass a law doesn't mean that there's
going to be resources available to do it.
So it's really good
that there's a conversation happening on the topic.
All right.
Our last question from producer Emily,
which is really a yes or no question,
was the ending
to Amanda's
conservatorship easier because of what happened
with Britney or were they not even related?
By my opinion, yes, much easier because Britney
Britney's ending was a surprise yeah.
That the judge just said we're done.
So I absolutely know.
I think it definitely had an impact.
So did Melanie knows everything, especially when it comes to
a law.
I mean, I don't know if you know
everything we'll find out someday.
You can reach over my phone.
He's got your back dot com or just scan that QR code.
Coming up next,
we're checking out a beautiful mansion with Gambino realtors.
And then it's Earth Week game day. We'll be right back.