Guardianship

The state of Florida is in need of money. I understand that. They are raising some of their fees to get more money. I understand that also. Taxation is a complicated issue. "User fees" are justified because they burden those who use specific resources with their costs. This is the principle behind toll roads. The people who drive on THAT road pay for its cost. The people who go fishing pay for whatever the state does to provide fish (I'm not really sure what that is). In reality the system doesn't work all that well. The money all goes into one pot. Also, people who buy lottery tickets don't really require any more education than those who don't buy lottery tickets. Furthermore, the services that the state provide are supposed to all "work out in the wash". In other words, we all need a "state". Some of us use some things more, others use other things more. So we may not have a child in school, but the presence of a school helps us anyway. That's because we don't use the school but we do use the grocery store. There is a connection. The person in the grocery store has a child in the public school. This is why they can afford to work there for so little. If there was no school, that person couldn't live in this state. They would live in a state where there were public schools. That means there couldn't be a grocery store in this state. Grocery stores can't afford to pay the checkout people enough money to send their kids to private school. They need the state to provide certain services to their employees. So if I eat food, I need a public school. The "non-users" of public schools get "indirect" benefits. It's the same for the toll roads. Even if I don't actually drive on the toll road, I still need it. I need it because someone else who is in my state needs it. I need everyone here to succeed so that they don't end up on welfare (which comes out of my taxes). Therefore that road helps me every time it helps anyone to do their job or be more productive. This is the essence of the state. We are all in it together. Now we can debate how together we want to be and how separate we want to be. We pretty much all agree that we need roads. Some of us think we don't need schools, but most of us think that we do. Most of us want to pay for that - one way or another. On the other hand, most of us want someone else to pick up more of the tab because it seems like our share is too high. So this is where things get a little tricky.

There is now a proposal for the state of florida to increase some of its fees. One of these is the fee to apply for guardianship. There is a proposal to increase this fee to $2000.00! This is a "user fee". If you want to be a guardian for someone it will cost $2000 to "use the court". Most court services are fee based. Every time we use the court for something, there is some sort of fee. This fee is insane. If someone is incompetent they need a guardian. That is a person who can legally control another person, just like a parent controlling a child. Very often it is a child controlling a parent. When a person with dementia is told not to drive they may listen; or they may drive. If they lack the capacity to drive and lack the capacity to understand this a person who loves them may want to force them to stop. However no one has that right. In order to sell someone else's property or force them to act against their will a guardianship is required. CLEARLY this helps the "non-users". It helps me when John Doe gets a guardianship in order to stop his demented father from driving around and killing me.

This fee is clearly going to stop some people from obtaining guardianships. It is a big mistake.