You need a conservatorship when an adult cannot manage their own affairs or resist undue influence, and there is no valid power of attorney or other arrangement already in place. That second half is where most inquiries end.
If your mother signed a durable power of attorney while she still had capacity, you very likely already have what a conservatorship would give you, without the court.
The threshold question
Before anything else, search for documents. A durable power of attorney for finances, an advance health care directive, a trust naming a successor trustee. Check the safe deposit box, the attorney who did the will in 2009, the filing cabinet. Families skip this step and spend thousands finding out the papers were in a drawer.
A conservatorship is what you do when those documents do not exist, or when the person named will not or cannot act, or when someone is exerting influence that the existing documents cannot stop.
What it costs the person
A probate conservatorship removes rights from an adult. Control over their money, in some cases where they live, decisions they have made for themselves for sixty years. Courts treat it as a last resort and so should you. That framing is not softness, it is the standard the judge will apply to your petition.
The situations where it is genuinely the answer
- Advanced dementia with no power of attorney and assets that need managing
- A new person in the picture moving money, where existing documents cannot stop it
- A bank refusing to honor a power of attorney that is defective or too old to rely on
- Someone incapacitated suddenly, by stroke or injury, with no planning documents at all
- A person who cannot resist undue influence and is being actively worked on
That fifth item deserves emphasis because California's standard expressly includes the inability to resist undue influence, not just the inability to manage money. A parent who is technically capable of writing a check but cannot say no to whoever is standing next to them is squarely within what the process addresses.
“About half the people who call me about a conservatorship do not need one, and I tell them so in the first fifteen minutes. That is a bad business model and a good policy. The other half usually needed one two months ago.”
Delia Vasquez-HartWhat it will actually be like
You file a petition. A court investigator interviews the proposed conservatee and reports to the court. Relatives get notice, including the ones you have not spoken to in eleven years, and they can object. Los Angeles County probate matters are heard at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse at 111 North Hill Street. If you are appointed, the supervision does not end, because you file accountings and the court keeps reviewing what you do.
It is public, it is slow, and it is ongoing. None of that means do not do it. It means do not do it casually.
Questions we get asked
My mother has dementia but signed a power of attorney in 2015. Do we need a conservatorship?
Probably not, if the document is valid, durable, and broad enough for what needs doing. Bring it in. A twenty-minute read can save you months.
Can my father sign a power of attorney now instead?
Only if he still has capacity to sign one, which is a real standard and not a formality. If he does, do it this week. That window closes and does not reopen.
How fast can this happen?
Ordinary petitions take months. There is a temporary track for genuine emergencies, which is narrower than most families hope and should be discussed with actual facts in hand.
My brother will fight it. Does that stop us?
No, but it changes everything about cost and timeline. Contested conservatorships are litigation. Say so at the first meeting rather than discovering it at the hearing.
Spend an hour searching for existing documents before you call. Then bring whatever you find, even if it looks outdated, to the free 45-minute consultation. Sometimes the meeting ends with you not needing us.