Conservatorship
A conservatorship is a court appointment giving someone authority over the property and financial affairs of a person who cannot manage them.
It is the property counterpart to guardianship.
What a conservator handles#
Bank accounts, income, benefits, bills, investments, and real property.
The conservator manages the protected person's assets for their benefit, and is accountable to the court — typically through inventories and periodic accountings.
It is a fiduciary role with real obligations, and a conservator who mismanages assets can be personally liable.
Selling real estate requires more#
The point that surprises appointed conservators.
The appointment gives authority over property generally. Conveying real estate generally requires further court authority — a license to sell — and a title company will check for it before insuring the conveyance.
That means a conservator planning to sell a house should establish the authority requirement early, because the application involves notice and takes time.
Why the constraint exists#
Because the protected person is alive and the property is theirs.
A personal representative deals with a dead person's estate, distributing to people entitled to it. A conservator is managing a living person's assets, and selling their home is a significant and sometimes irreversible act.
The court's involvement reflects that difference.
The cheaper alternative#
A power of attorney, executed while the person still had capacity, drafted broadly enough to cover real property.
Where one exists, it frequently makes a conservatorship unnecessary — the attorney-in-fact can deal with the property directly, without a court, without notice periods, and without accountings.
Where one does not, and capacity has gone, the court route is the only one.
The whole difference between those two situations is a document that costs an afternoon and must be created before it is needed. That is worth saying to anybody with an aging parent who owns a house.
Where it intersects with distressed property#
An owner losing capacity, with no power of attorney and no conservatorship, owns property nobody can deal with.
Taxes go unpaid because nobody has authority to pay them from the owner's funds. Insurance lapses. Maintenance stops. The property deteriorates while the owner is in care and their family has no standing.
Three years of unpaid taxes ends in forfeiture, of a property belonging to a living person who simply could not manage it and whose family could not act for them.
That sequence is preventable at two points: a power of attorney before capacity goes, or a conservatorship promptly afterwards.