Mom is in the hospital, she is not coming home, and the family thinks an emergency temporary guardianship will solve everything by tomorrow. It will not. An ETG is a 90-day stopgap. It does not create a permanent guardianship, and treating it like one is how families end up with no authority on day 91.
This post is a companion to a conversation I had with my partner Jill Ginsberg, who is board certified in elder law. Guardianship is her area. I handle the trust and estate side. What follows comes from how she actually uses §744.3031 in practice.
What the Statute Actually Requires
Florida Statute §744.3031 exists for one reason. There must be an immediate danger to the person or to their property, and there must be no time to wait for the regular guardianship process.
A regular guardianship, without contested litigation, takes 60 to 90 days minimum. An ETG can be granted in days. That speed is the entire point, and courts grant it sparingly because of it.
What counts as immediate danger, in Jill’s practice, is concrete. An adult child has emptied the parent’s bank account and is still pulling money out. A patient is about to be discharged from the hospital with nowhere to go and no one with legal authority to place her. A family member has shown up at the assisted living facility and is trying to remove the resident against medical advice. “We are worried about mom and we want the process to move faster” is not an emergency. It is a regular guardianship petition.
90 Days Means 90 Days
The ETG lasts 90 days. The court can extend it for good cause under §744.3031(5), but it does not convert to a permanent guardianship on its own. It never has, and it never will.
The court requires the regular petition to determine incapacity and the petition for appointment of a guardian to run parallel with the ETG. You file both at the same time. The ETG protects the person while the underlying plenary case runs through the examining committee, the capacity hearing, and the judicial determination.
The ETG is not a finding of incapacity. It is a finding that there is enough evidence of immediate danger to justify temporary intervention while the real case proceeds.
Where Families Get Hurt
The first mistake is waiting too long. Families call after the bank account is already gone or after the discharge has already happened. ETG is fast, but it is not instant. There is still a petition, a hearing, and a judicial order. If you wait until the harm is complete, the emergency order cannot undo it.
The second is treating the ETG as the finish line. Family gets the order, exhales, and lets the regular case sit. Day 91 arrives. The letters of temporary guardianship have expired. The hospital, the bank, and the assisted living facility all want to see current letters. Expired letters mean nothing. Now the family has no authority and no plenary case ready to go.
The Cost Conversation
Families need to hear this on the first call. An ETG plus the underlying plenary guardianship is two filings, multiple hearings, examining committee fees, a bond, and court costs. It is quick to start. It is not quick to finish, and it is not inexpensive.
There is also a credibility cost when the ETG is misused. If you file an emergency petition and the judge does not see an emergency, you have damaged your credibility for the rest of the case. Under §744.331(7), the court can assess fees against a petitioner who files in bad faith. A family disagreement about care, when the parent is safe in a facility, is not an emergency. A theoretical financial concern is not an emergency.
The bottom line: an ETG is for real emergencies, it lasts 90 days, and it does not replace a plenary guardianship. File both petitions together, or do not file at all.