In re Guardianship of Spangler, Slip Opinion No. 2010-Ohio-2471.
Geauga App. Nos. 2007-G-2800 and 2007-G-2802, 2008-Ohio-6978. Judgment of the court of appeals affirmed in part and vacated in part, and cause remanded to the court of appeals.
Lundberg Stratton, O'Connor, Lanzinger, and Cupp, JJ., concur.
Pfeifer and O'Donnell, JJ., concur in part and dissent in part.
Brown, C.J., not participating.
Opinion: http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2010/2010-Ohio-2471.pdf
(June 9, 2010) The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today that although a county board of developmental disabilities does not have legal standing to file a motion in probate court seeking the removal of a court-appointed guardian for an incompetent adult, the probate court has plenary authority to sua sponte (on its own initiative) conduct proceedings to remove a guardian based on information received from that board.
The Court’s 4-2 majority opinion, authored by Justice Judith A. Lanzinger, partially affirmed and partially vacated a decision of the 11th District Court of Appeals, and remanded the case to the appellate court for further proceedings.
The case involved John Spangler of Geauga County, a young adult male who suffers from autism, mitochondrial disease and mild mental retardation. After John turned 18, his parents, Gabriele and Joseph Spangler, applied to the local probate court to be appointed John’s permanent guardians. The Geauga County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (renamed the Board of Developmental Disabilities in 2009) participated in the hearings on the matter and supported the parents’ application. At one of those hearings, the probate court warned the mother that if the court learned that she and her husband were not “making decisions that are in your son’s best interest, in terms of placement,” the court would consider appointing someone else as John’s guardian. In July 2006, the court appointed the parents as John’s unlimited guardians.
Three months later, the developmental disabilities board filed a motion to remove the parents as John’s guardians and to appoint a local social services agency, Advocacy and Protective Services, Inc. (APSI) as successor guardian. The motion alleged that the mother had created conflict with John’s service providers and had threatened to remove him from their care. The motion was supported by a letter from John’s current provider, who stated that there was “an immediate danger to the welfare and safety of John.” The probate court granted the motion to remove on a temporary basis, appointed APSI as temporary guardian for John, and set the matter for hearing the following week. At that hearing, the board and the parents agreed to a six-month continuance of the hearing and the appointment of APSI as temporary guardian.
Before the stipulated six-month period had elapsed, however, the Spanglers entered a new motion asking the probate court to terminate APSI as John’s guardian and instead appoint his father. The Spanglers also asked the probate court to dismiss the board’s still-pending motion to remove them as guardians, arguing that the board had no legal authority or standing to initiate such an action. Following several hearings, the probate court entered a judgment holding that the board had legal standing to file a motion for guardianship removal, that there was good cause and it was in John’s best interest to remove the parents, and that APSI’s legal guardianship over John would continue.
The Spanglers appealed the probate court’s ruling. In a split decision with three separate opinions, the appellate court reversed. The lead opinion concluded that the board had not been granted the statutory authority, express or implied, to file a motion to remove a guardian and thus lacked general standing to petition the court for removal. A separate concurrence focused on R.C. Chapters 2109 and 2111 and determined that because the board was not the real party in interest, it lacked standing. A third, dissenting opinion viewed the general duties of the board as sufficient to establish the board as an “interested party,” allowing it to object to the guardian. The court of appeals did not address additional claims of the Spanglers that the evidence considered at the probate proceedings was insufficient to remove them as John’s guardians because its ruling on lack of standing vacated the probate order.
The Supreme Court agreed to review: 1) whether a developmental disabilities board has the authority and standing to request that a probate court remove a guardian, and 2) whether a probate court has the authority to conduct proceedings to remove a guardian based on the board’s request.
Writing for the majority in today’s decision, Justice Lanzinger agreed with the 11th District’s majority holding that nothing in the statutes creating and defining the powers and duties of county boards of developmental disabilities empowers them to initiate a court action seeking the removal of a guardian. She wrote: “Because the board is governed by statute, there must be an express or implied grant of authority allowing county boards of developmental disabilities to file a motion to remove a guardian. The general duty under R.C. 5126.055(A)(4) ‘to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of individuals receiving services from a county board of developmental disabilities’ does not equate to or imply a grant of authority to interfere with the appointment of a guardian by the probate court. Similarly, the board’s reliance on R.C. 305.14(C) as authority to file such a motion is misplaced. That statute allows the board to hire legal counsel without authorization from the common pleas court; it does not allow the board to initiate any legal action it so chooses. We therefore hold that a county board of developmental disabilities does not have the statutory authority to file a motion in the probate court to remove a guardian.”
In reviewing the remainder of the 11th District’s decision, Justice Lanzinger wrote: “Amicus curiae (friend of the court) the state of Ohio and the board in its third proposition of law urge that, irrespective of the powers and duties of a county developmental disabilities board, the probate court has plenary authority to act upon the information brought before it and to remove the parents as guardians for their son. We agree. … The general grant of jurisdiction to probate courts regarding guardians is comprehensive. R.C. 2101.24 states: ‘(A)(1) Except as otherwise provided by law, the probate court has exclusive jurisdiction: … ‘(e) To appoint and remove guardians, conservators, and testamentary trustees, direct and control their conduct, and settle their accounts.’ In addition, the probate court is the ‘superior guardian,’ and other guardians must obey all probate orders. … It is also clear that the probate court has the plenary authority to investigate guardians.”
In this case, Justice Lanzinger observed, “(t)he parents do not contest that, had the board sent a letter to the probate court, the court could have sua sponte initiated a hearing on whether to remove them as guardians. Instead, they seem to argue that because the information came in the form of a motion from the board, the probate court was barred from acting. Form, however, should not be allowed to triumph over the substance of the issue involved. … The board had participated in the hearings on the parents’ request to be appointed guardians, and although the board ultimately supported the application, it expressed concern over several of the mother’s decisions regarding her son. Information obtained from the board actually led the probate court to warn the mother that the court would not hesitate to appoint another guardian if she failed to make good decisions. There was sufficient cause for the probate court to call the guardian in for a hearing after it heard allegations that, three months later, one of the guardians arrived unexpectedly late at night and intoxicated at the home of John’s service providers and threatening to remove him from a stable placement.”
“We hold that the General Assembly has not granted a county board of developmental disabilities the express or implied power to file a motion to remove a guardian. Nonetheless, the plenary power of the probate court as the superior guardian allows it to investigate whether a guardian should be removed upon receipt of sufficient information that the guardian is not acting in the ward’s best interest. Thus, the court of appeals erred when, based on its holding that the board lacked standing, it summarily ruled that the trial court erred in removing the parents as guardians and when it mooted the assignment of error challenging the removal order as being against the manifest weight of the evidence. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Eleventh District in part, vacate it in part, and remand the matter to the court of appeals for resolution of the parents’ second and third assignments of error.”
Justice Lanzinger’s opinion was joined by Justices Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, Maureen O’Connor and Robert R. Cupp.
Justice Terrence O’Donnell entered a separate opinion, joined by Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, in which he agreed with the majority’s holding that the statutes defining the powers of county boards of developmental disabilities do not give them authority to initiate a motion to remove a guardian, but dissented from the majority’s holding that in exercising its plenary power as superior guardian, a probate court may, upon notice from a county board, conduct proceedings to remove a guardian.
Pointing out that the Geauga County developmental disabilities board did not raise the latter issue in its memorandum seeking Supreme Court review of the case, Justice O’Donnell wrote: “As the board did not raise this issue in its memorandum in support of jurisdiction, it is not properly before us and we should decline to address it now. … (E)ven if the issue were properly before us, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that a probate court has plenary authority to act upon the information brought before it irrespective of the powers and duties of a county board. … The matter before the probate court in this case concerned a motion to remove John’s parents as his guardians filed by the Geauga County Board of Developmental Disabilities. Thus, the question for this court’s determination would be whether the board’s motion was properly before the probate court. Because a county board of developmental disabilities does not have the express or implied authority to file a motion to remove the guardian of an incompetent, its motion to remove the Spanglers as John’s guardians was never properly before the court. Consequently, the court lacked the plenary power to remove John’s parents as his guardians, and in doing so, the court exceeded its limited statutory jurisdiction.”
Chief Justice Eric Brown did not participate in the Court’s deliberations or decision in this case.
Contacts
Judith A. Miedema, 440.279.2100, for the Geauga County Board of Developmental Disabilities.
Pamela W. Makowski, 614.245.0488, for Joseph and Gabriele Spangler.
Derek S. Hamalian, 614.466.7264, for John Spangler.
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