A plain-English look at Georgia guardianship and conservatorship for Metro Atlanta families whose senior parent can no longer safely make her own care or financial decisions.
By ATL Senior Advisor Care Team · September 27, 2026
Most Metro Atlanta families never plan to end up in probate court. It usually starts with a phone call: a fall in a Brookhaven kitchen, a confused wandering episode reported by a Sandy Springs neighbor, or a discharge planner at Emory University Hospital or Piedmont Atlanta Hospital saying, gently, that Mom can no longer safely return to living alone. The adult children step in, assume they can simply start managing things, and then hit a wall. A bank in Marietta won't let a daughter move funds out of her father's account without a document proving she has legal authority. An assisted living community in Dunwoody won't accept a signature on the admission agreement from a son whose name isn't on any legal paperwork. A hospital social worker at Grady Memorial says a patient with worsening dementia cannot legally consent to discharge planning, and nobody else currently can either. This is the point where Georgia's guardianship and conservatorship system stops being an abstract legal term and becomes the only path forward.
Guardianship and conservatorship exist for exactly this gap: when a senior's capacity to understand and communicate decisions has declined below the legal threshold, and no advance directive or power of attorney was ever signed while she still could. It is not the first tool a Metro Atlanta family should reach for, and it is not usually the fastest one, but for a growing number of households in Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties, it becomes the only legally recognized way to act on a parent's behalf once informal family consensus stops being enough for banks, hospitals, and licensed care communities to rely on.
Georgia law, codified in Title 29 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, treats personal decision-making and financial decision-making as two separate legal roles, and a family may need one, the other, or both. A guardian of the person is granted authority over an adult ward's living arrangements, medical treatment, and day-to-day personal care; this is the role that lets a son sign an assisted living or memory care admission agreement, consent to a surgery, or decide that a parent should move from a Personal Care Home into a Memory Care Center once dementia progresses. A conservator of the property, by contrast, is granted authority over the ward's income, bank accounts, real estate, and other assets, and must account for how that money is spent. A single family member can hold both roles, or a probate court can split them between two people, which happens often when one sibling lives near the parent in East Cobb and is better positioned for day-to-day care decisions while another sibling, with a financial background, is named conservator.
Georgia probate courts do not grant either role lightly. The person seeking appointment, called the petitioner, must show that the proposed ward lacks the capacity to make or communicate significant, responsible decisions about her health, safety, or finances, and that no less restrictive alternative, such as an existing power of attorney or supported decision-making arrangement, is adequate. Because the standard is capacity-based rather than diagnosis-based, a Metro Atlanta senior with early-stage memory loss who still understands her own medical choices generally does not need a guardian, even if her family worries about her judgment; the law intervenes only when that understanding has genuinely broken down.
Guardianship and conservatorship petitions in Georgia are filed in the probate court of the county where the proposed ward lives, not where the petitioning family member lives, which matters in Metro Atlanta households spread across several counties. A senior in an Alpharetta or Sandy Springs home falls under the Fulton County Probate Court in downtown Atlanta; a parent in Decatur, Dunwoody, or Brookhaven falls under the DeKalb County Probate Court in Decatur; a Marietta or Smyrna resident falls under the Cobb County Probate Court; and a Lawrenceville, Duluth, or Norcross senior falls under the Gwinnett County Probate Court in Lawrenceville. Each of these courts uses the statewide standardized petition forms published for Georgia probate proceedings, but filing fees, local scheduling practices, and how quickly a hearing gets set can differ meaningfully from one county to the next, so a family whose parent recently relocated from, say, Cobb County into a DeKalb County memory care community should confirm which court now has jurisdiction before filing.
The petition must be served on the proposed ward and on her closest relatives, who have the right to object or to seek appointment themselves, which is why disputes between siblings over who should serve as guardian are common and why an elder law attorney familiar with the specific county's probate court is often worth the cost even in an otherwise cooperative family. The court also appoints a guardian ad litem, an independent investigator, to meet with the proposed ward, review medical records, and report back on whether guardianship is truly necessary and whether the proposed guardian is a suitable choice, adding a layer of protection against a well-meaning but overreaching family member as well as against a self-interested one.
Every guardianship or conservatorship petition in Georgia must be supported by a formal evaluation, typically completed by a physician, psychologist, or other qualified evaluator, documenting the proposed ward's specific functional limitations rather than simply naming a diagnosis. In Metro Atlanta this evaluation is frequently completed by a geriatrician or hospitalist already treating the senior at Northside Hospital, Emory Saint Joseph's, or WellStar Kennestone, which is one reason families are often first told to consider guardianship during a hospital stay rather than in the calm of a lawyer's office. Once filed, the case proceeds to a hearing before a probate judge, where the ward has the right to attend, to be represented by an attorney, and to contest the petition; either side can request a jury trial, though most Metro Atlanta cases are resolved by a judge based on the evaluation and the guardian ad litem's report.
When a senior's safety cannot wait for that full process, Georgia law allows a probate court to appoint an emergency, or temporary, guardian or conservator on an expedited basis, sometimes within days, when there is an immediate risk of serious harm to the person or substantial loss to the estate. This is the mechanism a family uses when, for example, a Fulton County senior is medically ready for discharge from Grady Memorial to a personal care home but has no one legally authorized to sign the admission paperwork, or when a caregiver has discovered active financial exploitation of a Gwinnett County parent's accounts and needs authority to freeze them immediately. Emergency appointments are temporary by design and must be followed by the standard petition process to become permanent.
A Georgia guardianship or conservatorship does not end the day the judge signs the order. Guardians of the person must file periodic reports with the probate court describing the ward's living situation, medical status, and general wellbeing, and must notify the court of any move, including a transfer between assisted living communities or into a higher level of care such as a Memory Care Center. Conservators face a heavier ongoing burden: an initial inventory of the ward's assets, followed by annual accountings itemizing every dollar spent on the ward's behalf, from a personal care home's monthly rate to routine medical bills. Courts in Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties can and do review these filings, and a conservator who mismanages funds or misses deadlines can be removed and, in serious cases, held personally liable.
Because guardianship removes a person's legal right to make her own decisions, Georgia courts and elder law attorneys alike treat it as a last resort, and many Metro Atlanta families discover during the evaluation process that a less restrictive option would have worked just as well. A validly executed Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care naming a health care agent, a durable financial power of attorney signed while the senior still had capacity, a representative payee arrangement for Social Security income, or a supported decision-making agreement can often accomplish what a family actually needs without full guardianship. The hard lesson many Buckhead, Marietta, and Lawrenceville families learn only after a health crisis is that these documents are far easier to sign during a routine visit to an elder law attorney than to substitute for after capacity has already declined; a senior currently able to understand and sign a power of attorney should generally do so long before any hospital discharge planner has to raise the guardianship conversation at all.
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