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.

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