The Florida Guardianship Examining Committee: What the Three Reports Actually Decide

Three people examine your parent. Each one writes a separate report. Two of them are not required to be doctors.

That is the Florida guardianship examining committee, and it does more than confirm what the petition already claims. Under Florida Statute 744.331, the court appoints the committee within 5 days after a petition to determine incapacity is filed. Each member has 15 days to file a report with the clerk. If a majority of them conclude the person is not incapacitated in any respect, the court must dismiss the petition. No hearing. No weighing of testimony.

Most families find that out after the exams are over. Here is who serves, what each exam covers, which rights every report has to address, and when paying for your own evaluator makes sense.

A Florida guardianship examining committee is a three-member panel the court appoints under Florida Statute 744.331 to examine an adult whose capacity is in question. One member must be a psychiatrist or other physician. Each member conducts a physical examination, a mental health examination, and a functional assessment, then files a separate written report within 15 days.

Guardianship filings in Florida rose 34 percent across ten fiscal years, from 6,930 in FY 2014-15 to 9,269 in FY 2023-24, according to the Florida Legislature’s OPPAGA Report 25-05, published in October 2025. That same report counted 6,478 active professional guardianship cases as of July 1, 2025, concentrated in Miami-Dade (916), Pinellas (707), Orange (692), Hillsborough (433), and Sarasota (408). More filings means more committee appointments, and more reports written under a 15-day clock.

Our founder, Dr. Cathy Colet, has taken court appointments in Florida since 2008, across the 1st, 15th, 17th, 19th, and 20th Judicial Circuits. That is 5 of Florida’s 20 circuits, covering 15 counties from Escambia in the panhandle to Collier in the southwest. Roughly 75 percent of her practice is forensic. Eighteen years of that work teaches you something the statute does not say out loud: the written law is identical in all 20 circuits, and the practice around it is not.

Who Serves On A Florida Examining Committee?

One member must be a psychiatrist or other physician. The other two come from a much wider pool.

Section 744.331(3)(a) lets the court fill the remaining two seats with a psychologist, a gerontologist, a psychiatrist, a physician, an advanced practice registered nurse, a registered nurse, a licensed social worker, a person holding an advanced degree in gerontology, or any other person who by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education can advise the court on the alleged incapacity.

At least one of the three must have knowledge of the type of incapacity alleged in the petition. Read that carefully. One out of three. If the petition alleges vascular dementia, the statute is satisfied when a single member knows dementia. The other two can be generalists.

Members are drawn from circuit registries, and the bar to join one is lower than most families assume. Four hours of initial training is the standard entry requirement, and it can be completed after the first appointment rather than before it.

Conflict rules are strict, though. A member cannot be related to or associated with any other member, the alleged incapacitated person, the petitioner, the proposed guardian, or the petitioner’s attorney. A member cannot be employed by an agency providing services to that person, and cannot be the person’s attending physician.

Does It Matter Which Circuit Your Case Is In?

Yes, more than most families expect. Chapter 744 is statewide, but three things that shape the reports are set locally.

Who gets appointed comes from a circuit registry, and each circuit runs its own. Compensation is set by administrative order circuit by circuit, not by a statewide schedule. And the training rules differ. The Fifth Judicial Circuit registry wants four hours within four months of a member’s first appointment plus two hours of continuing education every two years. The Thirteenth in Hillsborough County waives initial training entirely for anyone with more than five years of committee service somewhere else, which means a member can be appointed in Tampa on the strength of training taken in another county years earlier.

Dr. Colet’s appointments span the 1st Circuit (Escambia, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Walton), the 15th (Palm Beach), the 17th (Broward), the 19th (Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, St. Lucie), and the 20th (Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry, Lee). Working across that spread is how you learn that a report accepted without comment in one county draws a records request in another.

Practical version: before you assume the process works the way an article describes it, call the probate division in the county where the petition was filed and ask for its local rules and its registry.

The Florida Guardianship Examining Committee Runs On A 50-day Clock

Florida’s incapacity timeline is short and the deadlines are stacked. Miss the shape of it and you miss your window to respond.

Step	Deadline	Statute
Court appoints the examining committee	Within 5 days of the petition	744.331(3)(a)
Each member files a separate report with the clerk	Within 15 days of appointment	744.331(3)(e)
Adjudicatory hearing held	At least 10 days (waivable) and no more than 30 days after the last report is filed	744.331(5)(a)
Petition dismissed if a majority finds no incapacity	On the reports alone	744.331(4)

From filing to hearing, a contested guardianship can move from petition to adjudication in under 50 days. The examinations themselves usually happen inside a two-week block in the middle of that.

What Actually Happens During The Examination?

Each member examines the person individually. There is no single joint appointment where all three sit in a room together.

Section 744.331(3)(e) puts it plainly: each member of the examining committee shall examine the person. So the family typically coordinates three separate visits, often in three different settings, over roughly two weeks. A visit may happen at a hospital bedside, in a memory care unit, or at the kitchen table.

Section 744.331(3)(f) requires each examination to include three parts:

• A physical examination
• A mental health examination, which is where a clinical psychological evaluation does its work
• A functional assessment

If one of the three is not indicated or cannot be accomplished, the statute requires the written report to explain the reasons for its omission. That omission clause matters more than it looks. A report that skips the functional assessment without explaining why is a report with a hole in it, and that hole is visible to any attorney reading it.

One practical detail almost nobody mentions: when the court-appointed attorney requests it, section 744.331(3)(e) allows a person to assist in communicating with the examinee. For someone who is deaf, aphasic after a stroke, or more fluent in Spanish or Creole than in English, that request has to be made through counsel before the visits happen. It is not automatic, and the committee will not arrange it for you.

Every report must also list the names of all persons present during that member’s examination, under 744.331(3)(g)(5). If a petitioning adult child sat in the room during all three exams and a sibling contests the petition later, that name in the report becomes evidence.

Eight Rights, Eight Separate Questions

The report is not a yes-or-no verdict on capacity. It is a rights-by-rights audit, and each right is a different question.

Section 744.331(3)(g) requires every committee member to evaluate the person’s ability to retain specific rights. Florida Statute 744.3215 then splits those rights into two groups: rights that can be removed but never handed to a guardian, and rights that can be removed and delegated to a guardian.

This is where evaluations most often go thin. A member finds moderate dementia, and the report reads as though one diagnosis answers all eight questions. It does not. Someone can lack the capacity to manage a securities portfolio and retain the capacity to decide where to live. That gap is visible in testing well before it is visible in conversation, which is why early dementia shows up in neuropsychological data before a family notices it at the dinner table. The framework below is how our clinicians think about separating them.

Right at issue	The functional question	Evidence that answers it
Vote	Can the person express a preference for a candidate or issue?	Direct interview, not a cognitive score
Marry	Does the person understand the obligations a marriage creates?	Structured interview on financial and caregiving consequences
Hold a driver license	Are reaction time, visuospatial processing, and judgment intact?	Neuropsychological testing plus driving history
Travel	Can the person find their way and respond to disruption?	Recent wandering or elopement history, orientation testing
Seek or keep employment	Can the person meet the actual demands of the job?	Job description compared to functional performance
Enter contracts and manage property	Does the person grasp the transaction and its consequences?	Financial capacity testing, bank and transaction records
Determine residence	Can the person weigh safety risks against preference?	Home visit, ADL and IADL assessment
Consent to medical treatment	Can the person understand, appreciate, reason, and express a choice?	Structured capacity interview on the specific decision at hand

Rights in the first group, including voting, marriage, a driver license, travel, and employment, can be removed but cannot be delegated to a guardian under 744.3215(2). The rights in the second group can be removed and delegated under 744.3215(3). That distinction is the whole point of a limited guardianship, and it lives or dies in the wording of these reports.

Why A MoCa Score Is Not A Capacity Finding

A cognitive screening score tells you about general cognition. It does not tell you whether a person can consent to surgery, and Florida’s statute never asks for it.

This is where we part company with a lot of what gets written about guardianship evaluations. Articles on this topic routinely describe the process as the evaluator administering a standard cognitive test, usually the MoCA or the SLUMS, and reaching a conclusion. Read 744.331(3)(f) again. It requires a physical examination, a mental health examination, and a functional assessment. A screening instrument is one input into the second of those three. It is not the assessment.

The ABA Commission on Law and Aging and the American Psychological Association built a nine-element model for capacity assessment across three handbooks, including Assessment of Older Adults with Diminished Capacity: A Handbook for Psychologists (2008) and Determination of Capacity of Older Adults in Guardianship Proceedings: A Handbook for Judges (2006). Their framework starts with identifying the applicable legal standard, then evaluating the functional elements of that specific capacity, and only then moves to diagnosis and cognitive functioning. Values, risk, and ways to improve the person’s capacity all come before the final clinical judgment. Cognitive testing is element four of nine.

The handbooks are explicit that a screening test measures general cognition, while a capacity determination needs an evaluation built around functioning on the specific task in question. A 19 out of 30 on the MoCA is a reason to look harder. It is not a finding that someone cannot choose where to live.

In practice, that is why neuropsychological testing does the heavy lifting in these cases. Screening tools flag a problem. Full testing separates the memory failure from the executive dysfunction from the language deficit, and only that separation tells you which of the eight rights is actually at risk. Our team covers what a full battery involves in the stages of a neuropsychological assessment.

A Majority No-incapacity Finding Ends The Case

If two of the three members conclude the person is not incapacitated in any respect, the court shall dismiss the petition. Section 744.331(4) leaves the judge no discretion.

That single sentence reorders the whole proceeding. The adjudicatory hearing gets treated as the decision point in nearly everything written about Florida guardianship. Statutorily, it is the fallback. The reports decide first, and the hearing only happens if the committee leaves something to argue about.

It also explains why report quality is worth fighting over. Three clinicians working independently on a 15-day clock, in three different settings, sometimes with three different amounts of medical record access, will not always agree. When they split two to one, the case goes to a hearing and the reports become exhibits. When they split two to one the other way, it is over.

The Ward’s Estate Pays, Win Or Lose

The ward’s property pays, unless the person is indigent, in which case the state does.

Section 744.331(7) entitles both the examining committee and the court-appointed attorney to reasonable fees, in an amount the court determines. Those fees come out of the alleged incapacitated person’s property. If the court finds the person indigent, the state covers them. Fees are set circuit by circuit through administrative order rather than by a statewide schedule, so the amount varies depending on where the petition is filed.

Two things follow from that. First, a petition that fails still costs the person money, because the committee gets paid either way. Second, an independent evaluation you retain yourself is a separate expense, paid by whoever hires it, and it is not reimbursed out of the estate.

Should You Hire Your Own Evaluator?

Sometimes, and the deciding factor is usually whether the committee reports actually addressed the rights in dispute.

Nothing in Chapter 744 stops a family, an alleged incapacitated person, or an attorney on either side from retaining an independent evaluator. Objections to committee reports have their own deadline in a contested proceeding, so this decision gets made fast. Here is how the two differ.

	Examining committee evaluation	Independent retained evaluation
Who selects the evaluator	The court, from a circuit registry	You or your attorney
Who pays	Ward’s property, or the state if indigent	Whoever retains the evaluator
Timeline	15 days from appointment, fixed by statute	Our standard is 30 days from the final assessment session, with rush work under 14 days
Scope	All eight rights, all three examination components	Targeted at the specific rights in dispute
Records reviewed	Whatever is available inside the window	Full medical, financial, and collateral records
Testing depth	Varies by member and profession	Full neuropsychological battery where indicated
Role at hearing	Report is filed with the clerk; member may testify	Retained expert testimony

An independent evaluation earns its cost in a narrow set of situations. When the reports rely on a screening score with no functional assessment behind it. When the person was examined during a delirium, right after surgery, or mid-UTI, and the picture has since changed. When financial exploitation is alleged and nobody tested financial capacity specifically. When the petition seeks plenary guardianship and the reports never separate the eight rights. And when the person’s first language is not English and no interpreter appears in the list of persons present.

FC PsychExperts performs evaluations supporting petitions under Chapter 744, along with testamentary capacity, capacity to execute a power of attorney, and contractual capacity, out of offices in Jupiter and Fort Lauderdale. Our standard turnaround is 30 days from the final assessment session, and rush work under 14 days is available depending on complexity and schedule. Engagement is a flat-fee retainer covering records review, clinical interviews, testing, scoring, report writing, and one round of attorney consultation. Deposition and trial testimony bill separately.

That flat fee matters for a reason specific to this work. A capacity evaluation lives or dies on records: hospital charts, bank statements, medication logs, prior neuropsychological testing. When the fee structure discourages records review, the report gets thinner. When it does not, the report is built on documents rather than on a single visit.

One caution. An independent evaluation that only reaches a friendlier conclusion is worth nothing. Opposing counsel will test whether the examiner considered effort and symptom validity, and an evaluation without that layer does not survive a competent cross-examination. Attorneys who have watched a forensic psychological evaluation hold up under cross know the difference is almost always in the functional data, not the diagnosis. The same is true of the person delivering it, which is why expert witness qualification gets tested before the opinion does.

How Capacity Gets Restored

A guardianship is not permanent, and restoration runs on a lighter process than the one that created it.

Under Florida Statute 744.464, any interested person, including the ward, may file a suggestion of capacity asserting that the ward can exercise some or all of the rights that were removed. The court then appoints a single physician, not a three-member committee, and that physician files a report within 20 days. Interested persons have 20 days after service to object. A hearing follows if objections are filed on time or if the examination suggests full restoration is not appropriate, and the ward carries the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence.

Restoration comes up most often after a stroke, a traumatic brain injury, or a treated depression that looked like dementia at the time of the original petition. Neuropsychological evaluation after a stroke frequently documents recovery that the original committee could not have anticipated. If a partial restoration is granted, an amended guardianship report is due within 60 days.

The eight rights come back one at a time, the same way they were taken.

If you are facing a Florida guardianship examining committee appointment and the rights at stake are not the ones the reports addressed, talk to our office at 561-870-0411 before the objection deadline runs.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Florida guardianship examining committee?

A Florida guardianship examining committee is a three-member panel the court appoints under Florida Statute 744.331 within 5 days after a petition to determine incapacity is filed. One member must be a psychiatrist or other physician. Each member examines the person separately and files an individual written report with the clerk within 15 days.

Who can serve on the committee besides a physician?

The other two seats can be filled by a psychologist, gerontologist, psychiatrist, physician, advanced practice registered nurse, registered nurse, licensed social worker, a person with an advanced degree in gerontology, or another person qualified by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education. At least one of the three members must have knowledge of the type of incapacity alleged in the petition.

How long does a Florida guardianship examining committee evaluation take?

Each member must file a report within 15 days of appointment, so the three examinations are usually completed inside a two-week window. The adjudicatory hearing follows at least 10 days and no more than 30 days after the last report is filed, under 744.331(5)(a).

What happens if the examining committee finds no incapacity?

If a majority of the three members concludes the person is not incapacitated in any respect, the court must dismiss the petition under 744.331(4). The judge has no discretion on that point, and no hearing is required.

What rights does the committee evaluate?

Each report must address the person’s ability to retain specific rights, which Florida Statute 744.3215 divides into rights that can be removed but not delegated to a guardian, including voting, marriage, a driver license, travel, and employment, and rights that can be removed and delegated, including contracting, managing property, determining residence, and consenting to medical treatment.

Who pays for the examining committee in Florida?

The alleged incapacitated person’s property pays the committee’s fees, and the state pays if the court finds the person indigent, under 744.331(7). Fees are set by administrative order in each judicial circuit rather than by a statewide schedule, so the amount varies by county. The committee is paid whether or not the petition succeeds.

Can you get a second opinion on a guardianship evaluation?

Yes. Nothing in Chapter 744 prevents a family, the alleged incapacitated person, or an attorney from retaining an independent evaluator. An independent evaluation is most useful when the committee reports rest on a cognitive screening score without a functional assessment, when the person was examined during an acute medical episode, or when the petition seeks plenary guardianship without separating the eight rights.