Last month, the government adopted a bill in the Diet to overhaul the adult guardianship system, which allows family courts to appoint guardians for elderly people whose cognitive functions have diminished to the point that they cannot be expected to handle their affairs responsibly. Over the years, the guardianship system, which was implemented in 2000, has been criticized for its complexity and lack of transparency, especially by families who feel that they have been cut off from elderly loved ones who happen to fall under the sway of the law. 

A recent news story highlighted this lack of transparency in a stark way. Asahi Shimbun explained how a man, living by himself in a condominium he owned in Minato Ward, Tokyo, was brought by ambulance in March 2022 to a hospital in Saitama Prefecture. The man did not request the ambulance and, in fact, did not seem to report any health problems to anyone with medical authority. The action was carried out by Minato Ward officials under the auspices of something called a Medical Rescue Hospitalization. Two months later, the man’s daughter, who lives in the Tokyo metropolitan area, first became aware of her father’s hospitalization after receiving a letter from Minato Ward, which explained that her father’s mental faculties were deemed “insufficient.” The daughter immediately contacted Minato Ward, which told her that they were not required to inform her of where her father actually was. 

According to the law, if a local government suspects that an elderly person if being subjected to abuse by their family, the local government has the right to isolate that person from their family. However, in this case, the person who was “isolated” did not live with anybody, so the matter of who was abusing the man is not clear. The daughter, unable to gain any information about her father’s whereabouts from the relevant Minato Ward officials, started calling every hospital and elder care facility in the Tokyo metropolitan area (Minato Ward would not even tell her in which prefecture her father was). After about 100 phone calls she finally located him. 

In July 2022 she went to the hospital accompanied by a lawyer and managed to get her father discharged. Minato Ward then went to Tokyo Family Court in order to apply for a guardian to be appointed to her father based on a diagnosis carried out by the Saitama hospital that said her father suffered from “Alzheimer’s type dementia.” In September 2022, the family court approved the “search for a guardian” requested by Minato Ward based on the hospital’s diagnosis. However, the daughter reported that her father manifested no particular cognitive problems and that he seemed to be perfectly capable of taking care of himself. To prove her point, she had her father examined by five physicians who said, at worst, he displayed only “mild cognitive impairment” that was actually less serious than what a man his age usually displayed. She brought these findings to the Saitama doctor who made the original diagnosis and he changed his mind, saying that the loss of cognitive function detected was obviously “momentary.” Consequently, she asked the Tokyo High Court to vacate the family court decision to appoint a guardian. 

In October, the high court accepted the daughter’s claim and told the family court to reconsider its decision. The family court then halted its search for a guardian, saying that the original diagnosis submitted by Minato Ward had undergone an “unnatural correction.” Depending on the cognitive function of the subject, the local government will provide three levels of supplementary living support. The original application received by the court recommended the most serious level of support, though a lesser level of support was originally recommended and then crossed out, with the diagnosing doctor’s seal attached to the correction. The doctor told the high court that he does not remember changing the recommendation to the more severe level, which effectively indicated that the man could not take care of himself at all. 

Eventually, in February of this year, the daughter contacted local police saying that she suspects Minato Ward of fraud for forging the diagnosis and the recommendation for the highest level of support, thus placing her father under the ward’s authority. The police accepted her complaint. When Asahi contacted relevant officials in the Minato Ward office for a comment, the officials said they do not discuss individual cases. However, the ward mayor told the newspaper that local governments are required to refer to family court seniors who are suspected of either being either abused or neglected by their families.

Apparently, this is not an isolated case. Minato Ward has become the target of a number of similar suits brought by families who say their senior members have been referred to family court to appoint guardians for them even though there is no real proof that they need guardians. The matter is now supposedly being discussed by the ward assembly, with third parties appointed to investigate the matter. 

Asahi does not speculate as to why exactly Minato Ward would want to secure guardianships for seniors without contacting their families first. Usually in such cases, family courts appoint lawyers or notaries as guardians, and in the past there have been many cases of these guardians abusing the system to appropriate assets of the seniors they’ve been appointed to help. But once a family court appoints a guardian it is almost impossible to reverse the decision, even when the subject’s family sues to regain control of the subject’s life and assets. That’s supposedly why the government is now trying to change the law to make it easier for families to challenge the system.