Committee hears wide-ranging testimony on proposed guardianship office and $18.3M funding package

The Senate Judiciary Committee continued hearings on Senate Bill 2029, a major proposal to centralize guardianship oversight in North Dakota and consolidate multiple guardianship programs and appropriations into a single structure.

Judge Phelan (testifying for the court system) described the proposal’s goals: create an Office of Guardianship and Conservatorship (OGC), establish licensing and oversight, address long waiting lists for guardianship services and standardize funding across programs. He told the committee the state is seeing large and rising demand: Catholic Charities’ waiting list for developmental‑disability (DD) corporate guardianship had grown to about 142 people, and total active adult guardianship cases state‑wide rose from 3,482 in 2023 to 3,669 at the end of 2024. The judge explained the bill’s proposed line items and funding rationale: past (public) guardianship funding was increased in 2023 and remains under pressure, and the 2025–27 request for past funding is $8,600,000 based on…