Supporting Autonomy While Acting as Fiduciary

Supporting autonomy is an important goal for fiduciaries. Whether acting as guardian (of the person), conservator (of the estate), agent or trustee, a fiduciary‘s role should focus on the principal’s self-determination. That can be a challenge. The first difficulty may be figuring out what the principal would want — or would have wanted, if they had anticipated the current situation. And then there’s the problem of fiduciaries who disagree with their principals’ wishes. There’s plenty of information available describing the fiduciary duty in a financial environment. There’s far less information or direction when the fiduciary duty involves health care, social decisions, placement and the like. But the duties are similar in both contexts. In this week’s podcast, we discuss the fiduciary’s duty to support autonomy of the principal. Join us for a discussion of that duty, and what supporting autonomy (and self-determination) actually means. We talk about how we make decisions when we act as fiduciary, and what you should do when you act in a similar role.