There are favors a financial advisor can safely do for a client or a client’s family without a second thought.

Becoming a guardian is not one of them.

“Becoming a guardian is not a role to be accepted without a considerable amount of thought no matter how well you know the person or his or her family,” said Sally Hurme, author of several books on guardianship for AARP and the American Bar Association.

The danger is not being threatened with fines or jail for alleged or real misdeeds. Chances of that happening are slim because court oversight of guardians tend to be frail and the individual being protected is usually too weak of body and mind to complain to the authorities.  

Instead, the hazard for a financial advisor taking on the responsibilities of guardianship is being swept up in a whirlwind of uncertainties, unfamiliar duties and family feuds.

Even something as seemingly simple as getting the bank records of the senior under a court-approved guardianship arrangement may not be simple.

With a court order, getting the records may take two minutes at one bank and two days at another, said Hurme, a lawyer who once served as the public member of the CFP Board’s Discipline and Ethics Commission.

Her advice: go to a branch manager. Don’t ask a teller.

She cautioned that if the senior is running out of money, a court can reduce the fee a guardian gets.

One often aggravating and time-consuming duty the courts often don’t compensate a guardian for: hours on the phone and in meetings with family members at each other’s throats.

The starting point for becoming a financial guardian (called guardian of the estate or a conservator) or having full responsibilities for an incapacitated individual (guardian of the person) is the courts.

And that is where the problems often begin.

“One of the problems is the duties of a guardian and oversight can vary widely even locally. Even in a single county one judge may not check a guardian’s annual reports, another judge might require a lot of documentation of a guardian’s activities and have an auditor,” said Brenda Uekert, director of the Center for Elders and the Courts of the National Center for State Courts.

Of the types of guardianship activities that are penalized by the court, one of the most common is for outrageous fees for simple activities, she pointed out.

For instance, charging $250 an hour for taking the senior out to lunch.

A guardianship that stretches for years, say for an Alzheimer’s patient, poses the threat of draining a client’s money and the stamina of an advisor.

“The duties can be exhausting,” Uekert said.

In the end, Jane Gildersleeve, who heads the National Guardianship Association, said the foremost problem for a financial advisor considering whether to become a guardian for a client without a family can be a professional bias on what constitutes an individual’s lack of ability to handle his or her financial affairs.

Gildersleeve noted advisors are trained to look at financial decisions dispassionately, and they may be quick to unfairly believe a client has dementia if she spends money in a way that doesn't make sense from a strict accounting point of view. Money is one of the greatest sources of passions in life, and a spending decision may be the result of her passions rather than dementia, she said.