Criteria for placing older adults in public conservatorship: age as proxy for need

This study was conducted on a sample of 589 adult public conservatees in Los Angeles County, California, to determine whether the process used to assign them into conservatorship is age-blind, as California law suggests. Findings indicate that age is not associated with the amount of time spent evaluating adults for conservatorship but that increasing age, rather than need, is associated with assignment into Probate conservatorship. The association of age with Probate conservatorship appears to result from the vagueness of the criteria for Probate conservatorship-unable to manage-resulting in the use of age as a proxy for need in the case of decisionally impaired older adults.