Join the Maine Justice Foundation Bar Fellows for a Virtual Lunch & Learn Event
Thursday, January 16,2025
11:30AM-12:30pm
Disability Rights Maine Guardianship Report: Overprotected and Underrepresented
Despite the deprivation of fundamental rights that adult guardianship imposes upon a person, it is not something that is widely considered by the public at large, or even within the legal community. It may be because generally, people assume that when a person’s most basic decision-making ability is removed, there was surely a good reason to do so that was meaningfully considered. Disability Rights Maine has worked on guardianship reform for decades, and much of this work is directly with people subject to guardianship. In many, if not most of the cases we see, we have concerns about due process, and whether there was a robust consideration of less restrictive alternatives prior to courts imposing guardianship. Because there is not much data on adult guardianship, in Maine and nationwide, DRM decided to collect information in order to see if what we were seeing in individual cases was indicative of the larger landscape. Our hope is that this report could serve as a guidepost for further data collection in order to drive policy change on guardianship reform.
This talk will cover the findings of DRM’s guardianship report. It will briefly cover basics about the system of adult guardianship, including the role of the attorney. We will discuss the findings of the report, which uncovered that the vast majority of people who are ordered under guardianship have no legal representation, and that when attorneys are involved to advocate for Respondents, the outcomes are starkly different in that less restrictive alternatives are used far more often. We will also discuss reactions to the report, and why the need for legal representation in these matters is an integral part of the access-to-justice conversation.
Lauren Wille, Legal Director
Lauren Wille is the Legal Director of Disability Rights Maine. She joined DRM in 2017 and has primarily worked with clients who have developmental disabilities. She has worked on cases involving Medicaid, employment, and other matters involving the civil rights of individuals with disabilities. One of Lauren’s primary focus is guardianship reform. She has represented dozens of individuals in successfully terminating or defending against adult guardianship, and has advocated for policy change to prevent the overuse of guardianship and to ensure due process in the system. Most recently, Lauren was the primary drafter of a recently released report on guardianship data, titled Overprotected and Underrepresented: An Analysis of Adult Guardianship in Maine. Prior to joining DRM, Lauren was an attorney in a small law office in Portland, representing clients in the areas of criminal defense, child protective matters, and appeals. She has worked on dozens of appeals, in both state and federal court, and has argued many cases before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
Staci Converse, Managing Attorney, DD Advocacy
Staci leads DRM’s developmental disabilities team and has litigated significant cases involving Medicaid, the Americans with Disabilities Act, guardianship, and civil rights. For the past 15 years, Staci has been a leader in guardianship reform in Maine, working in collaboration with self-advocates with developmental disabilities. Her efforts have included raising the evidentiary standard for guardianship from a preponderance of the evidence to clear and convincing, advocating for the implementation of Supported Decision-Making in Maine, and collaborating with the Judiciary Committee, the Probate and Trust Law Advisory Commission (PATLAC), and other stakeholders to bring the Uniform Guardianship, Conservatorship, and Other Protective Arrangements Act to Maine. Staci has also trained extensively on guardianship, Supported Decision-Making, and other less restrictive alternatives both in Maine and nationally. Before joining DRM in 2008, Staci was an associate attorney at a Portland law firm specializing in special education law, a member of DRM’s Board of Directors, and served as a law clerk to Justice Susan Calkins of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Staci earned her law degree from the University of Maine School of Law and holds a degree from the University of Texas at Austin.