Abstract
Approximately fifteen million adults live with severe mental illness in the United States. They are our neighbors, family, and friends. Often, concerned family members or professionals initiate guardianship proceedings to protect the assets and health of people experiencing severe mental illness. But guardianships subject people to a severe removal of individual rights. Guardians can decide where their ward lives, what medical care they can receive, and who they can associate with.
People experiencing severe mental illness are uniquely ill-suited for an arrangement that restricts their autonomy because it exacerbates their illnesses, and their symptoms are more likely to go into remission as compared to people under guardianships for other reasons (e.g., old age, intellectual and developmental disabilities). Most people under guardianship do not experience improved health outcomes. As such, this Note argues to import a due process protection from civil commitment law to guardianship law to reduce instances of forced guardianships for people with severe mental illness.
In civil commitment law, the imminence requirement limits the stateÊs ability to institutionalize people with severe mental illness; harm to self or others must be „imminent‰ for people experiencing severe mental illness to be civilly committed. This Note argues that the shared purpose, history, and effect of both legal doctrines justify importing the imminence requirement from civil commitment law to guardianship law. Using the imminence requirement in guardianship law would reduce instances of guardianship for people with severe mental illness and better identify only the most extreme cases·those who are the most likely to benefit from guardianship. At a time when the rights of people with disabilities are under a great attack, states should shore up protection against unnecessary and harmful guardianships for people experiencing severe mental illness.
Volume
110
Issue
4
Page
1893
Year
2026
Recommended Citation
Sophia Antonio,
Imminent Harm as a Requirement for Forcing Guardianship: Why Guardianship Law Should Follow Civil Commitment Law,
110
Minn. L. Rev.
1893
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/minnlrev/vol110/iss4/1
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
Publication Abbreviation
Minn. L. Rev.
