If you are seeking guardianship of a child, you need to enlist the help of a New Jersey guardianship lawyer. Ensuring the establishment of legal guardianship is a major step in establishing care for minor children, permanently disabled individuals, or for the elderly.
To be the legal guardian of an individual means that you have the rights to act on their behalf to ensure that their welfare, safety, and health needs are properly addressed and that their rights and interests are properly protected. A guardian’s duties include making decisions for the individual they represent and allows them to give consent on their behalf in specific matters. The guardian is required to get the input of the adult or child in question in the decision-making matters to the extent possible.
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There are different kinds of guardianship and whether you need to seek guardianship of an individual is dependent on the particular situation. When it comes to disabled individuals or the elderly, sometimes power of attorney might be sufficient but at other times, it may not be adequate. If Power of Attorney was done when the individual was agreeable and mentally competent to make that decision and haven’t revoked the agreement, you might be fine.
However, if you are concerned about an individual who didn’t execute power of attorney documents before they were unable to do so, they cannot legally do so at this point. Sometimes the problems onset suddenly, leaving the individual obtuse and belligerent while being a threat to themselves as well as others. In those situations, the caregiver needs to establish some form of guardianship that allows them to control either all or a few of the individual’s affairs.