Guardianship Summit

Gathering for Guardianship

Our Summit Mission

We develop consensus recommendations for the enhancement and reform of state guardianship and conservatorship systems.

We bring together advocates, family guardians, judges, lawyers, scholars, and other stakeholders to discuss the current state of the nation’s adult guardianship system. We develop recommendations for reform and improvement around the theme of maximizing autonomy and ensuring accountability.

Summit History

50 years of summit history

Approximately every decade guardianship reform advocates have convened national summits to make recommendations for improvements in guardianship policy and practice.

The first summit was convened in 1988 by the American Bar Association. Thirty-eight experts from around the country assembled at the Johnson Foundation’ famed “Wingspread Conference Center in Wisconsin. They agreed on 31 sweeping recommendations to better safeguard the rights and provide for the needs of adults within the guardianship system. Wingspread-the First National Guardianship Conference Recommendations and Report.

The second national conference, called Wingspan, was held in 2001 at the Stetson University Law School. Participants made 68 recommendations in six broad areas: overarching needs, diversion and mediation, due process, agency guardianship and guardianship standard, monitoring and accountability, and lawyers as fiduciaries or counsel to fiduciaries. Wingspan Recommendations.

The third National Guardianship Summit, hosted by the National Guardianship Network, was held at the S.J. Quinney College of Law of the University of Utah in 2011. This summit focused on recommending standards for guardians that emphasize self-determination and person-centered planning in making medical, residential, and financial decisions. All of the background papers commissioned for the summit as well as the official Summit Standards and Recommendations are found in a special issue of the Utah Law Review.

The National Guardianship Network sponsored the Fourth National Guardianship Summit in 2021. Due to the pandemic, this summit was held virtually in collaboration with the Syracuse University College of Law. 125 advocates, family guardians, judges, lawyers, scholars and other stakeholders gathered virtually over four days to discuss the current state of the nation’s adult guardianship system and develop recommendations for improvement around the theme of maximizing autonomy and ensuring accountability. Twenty-two recommendations covered the rights of adults with a guardian, supporting decision-making, limited guardianships, diverting guardianship pipelines, rethinking monitoring, addressing abuse by guardians, fiduciary responsibilities, and developing guardianship court improvement programs. Recommendations of the Fourth National Guardianship Summit.

2021 Summit-Autonomy and Accountability

The latest Summit was convened in May 2021 and was conducted virtually. 125 stakeholders met virtually for four days to discussion reform to the guardianship court system. Much of the discussion focused on improving autonomy and greater accountability within the court system. The latest Summit had several working groups that discussed recommendations, including supported decision making, limited guardianships, and greater monitoring across courts.

At the end of the Summit, stakeholders worked to draft and approve 22 final recommendations.

2004 Wingspan Implementation Session

In 2004, the National College of Probate Judges, the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and the National Guardianship Association held a joint meeting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on implementation of the Wingspan recommendations, which resulted in a set of Action Steps. 2004 Wingspan Action Steps

2001 Wingspan Conference

Over a decade after the Wingspread Conference, a second national conference entitled “Wingspan” assessed progress in the interim and offered recommendations for the future. Over 80 national experts gathered at the Stetson College of Law in Florida to take a hard look at the adult guardianship system.

Primary sponsors of the Wingspan Conference were the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys; Stetson University College of Law, host of the conference; and the Borchard Center on Law and Aging, a program of the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation. Co-sponsors included the ABA Commission on Legal Problems of the Elderly, the National College of Probate Judges, the Supervisory Council of the ABA Section on Real Property, Probate and Trusts, the National Guardianship Association, the Center for Medicare Advocacy, the Arc of the United States, and the Center for Social Gerontology.

The Wingspan Conference produced 68 key recommendations in law, practice, education and research.

The recommendations, an introduction, seven key law review articles prepared for the conference, and two additional comments are included in Wingspan – the Second National Guardianship Conference, at 31 Stetson Law Review, No. 3, Spring 2002.

2011 Third National Guardianship Summit

The National Guardianship Network convened the Third National Guardianship Summit: Standards of Excellence at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2011.

With 92 delegates, observers, authors, funders, and facilitators participating, the Summit was a consensus conference on post-appointment guardian performance and decision-making for adults.

The Summit delegates adopted a far-reaching set of recommendations for guardian standards, as well as additional recommendations for action by courts, legislatures, and other entitles. These documents from the Summit offered the groundwork for nationally recognized standards for guardians of adults, and formed a foundation for changes in the Uniform Guardianship and Protective Proceedings Act. View the recommendations here.

1988 Wingspread Conference

In 1988, following the release of the historic 1987 Associated Press report on Guardianship of the Elderly: An Ailing System, the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging and Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law sponsored a landmark multidisciplinary guardianship symposium at the Wingspread conference facility in Wisconsin. The Conference assembled 38 multidisciplinary experts from across the country, who agreed on 31 sweeping recommendations. The Wingspread recommendations became a fundamental element in reform of the system to better preserve the rights while providing for the needs of society’s most vulnerable at-risk adults.