A Local Column Points at a Statewide Need: Volunteer Guardians in Ohio

Sally Kelly writes the “Senior Life” column for The Portager, a locally owned news outlet serving Portage County. In her September 9, 2026 piece, “Become a guardian volunteer for vulnerable neighbors,” she wrote about something she had never really thought about before: adult guardianship. Kelly’s own background is with children, not seniors; she started out placing guardians for abused and neglected kids at the Children’s Home in Akron.  She draws a clean, useful line from that experience to this one. A legal guardian for a vulnerable adult does the same basic job a guardian does for a child: step in, under a court’s supervision, for someone who cannot currently manage their own health, finances, or home.

Kelly’s column focuses on Portage County’s own program, run by the Portage County Guardianship Service Board under Probate Judge Patricia J. Smith. Volunteers there are trained, supervised by the Board, and visit the person under guardianship to check on their well-being, all “through the least restrictive means possible,” which is the standard that should govern every guardianship in this state and, too often, doesn’t. If you are in Portage County and want to get involved, the Board’s executive director, Diana L. Clarke, can be reached at 330-839-3964. Start at portagecountygsb.org.

One clarification, because the details matter if you actually sign up. Kelly mentioned a three-hour online class. That figure can be right for a volunteer visitor who never becomes the legal guardian. The statewide Supreme Court requirement is different, and it applies only to people the probate court appoints as guardians. Under Superintendence Rules 66.06 and 66.07, an appointed adult guardian must complete a one-time six-hour Fundamentals of Adult Guardianship course, then three hours of continuing education each year after appointment. Training for appointed guardians is free through the Ohio Adult Guardianship Education Program. Volunteer visitors work under a public guardian or a guardianship services board; their training is set by that program and the local court, not by Rule 66. Ask which role you are applying for before you register for a class.

Why this Belongs on a Blog that Treats Guardianship as a Last Resort

I’ve spent time on this blog making the case that guardianship is a blunt instrument that should be a last resort, not a first stop, and one that badly needs oversight. None of that argument is a reason to walk past the volunteers who are already doing this work well, under real court supervision, for people who genuinely have no one else. A trained volunteer visitor is often the only check between an isolated ward and neglect. That is exactly the kind of oversight guardianship-reform advocates keep asking for, and it already exists in a few dozen Ohio counties, mostly unadvertised, and usually short on volunteers.

So consider this an invitation. If Kelly’s column got you thinking about it, here is where the same kind of program operates elsewhere in Ohio, as best we could compile it, and what the job actually is before you call.

Two different volunteer jobs

Ohio programs use similar words for two different roles. Ask which one a county actually needs before you apply.

• Volunteer visitor / guardianship support volunteer / friendly visitor: A public guardian, a guardianship services board, or the court itself remains the legal decision-maker. You are extra eyes and a friendly face. You visit monthly, watch living conditions, talk with caregivers, and write a short report. This is the Portage County PCGSB model Kelly described. Summit County’s Senior Visitor Program and Richland County’s Friendly Visitor Program work the same way. Rule 66’s six-hour / three-hour sequence does not automatically apply unless the court later appoints you as guardian.
• Volunteer guardian of the person: The probate court appoints you. You make, or help make, medical and quality-of-life decisions. You visit, attend care conferences, and file the annual guardian’s report. You almost never manage the ward’s money. This is the model used by the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging, Stark County’s Guardian Support Services, the Wayne County Volunteer Guardianship Association, Clark County’s United Senior Services, Summit’s Volunteer Guardian Program (now run by Adult Guardianship Services), Wood County, Medina, Williams, and others. Those volunteers do take the six-hour fundamentals course and the three-hour annual refresher.

Both roles change lives. The visitor role is often the easier on-ramp. The appointed-guardian role carries more authority, and more power to insist that a facility treat the person as a person.

Where Ohio’s Volunteer Guardian Programs Operate

A few things worth knowing before you use this table. Some of these programs are run directly by the county probate court. Others are administered by a nonprofit under contract with the court; Ohio often calls this a “guardian of last resort” arrangement, and it is a common model because courts themselves are rarely staffed to run a volunteer program. Where the court itself hosts the sign-up page, we have linked to it directly. Where a nonprofit administers the program, we have linked to them and named the court they report to.

Ohio has 88 counties and no single statewide volunteer-guardian agency. Coverage is uneven. Large holes remain in Appalachia, much of the northwest, and many rural counties. Wood County recently reported 433 open guardianship cases and only 17 volunteers. If your county is not listed, call the probate court anyway. Many courts will train an individual volunteer even without a branded program. The Supreme Court publishes a county-by-county probate resource guide.

Part of the sourcing behind any statewide inventory still traces to a 2019 Eye on Ohio investigation, cross-checked here against each organization’s current site. Program names, directors, and contact numbers change. Call before you drive anywhere or mail an application.

County / region	Program	What volunteers do / notes	Where to learn more or apply
Allen & Putnam	Crime Victim Services Guardian Program	Volunteer guardian of the person. About 2–3 hours a month. Six-hour Ohio training plus program orientation.	Program page · Allen Probate
Butler & Warren	LifeSpan of Ohio	Volunteers often start as friendly visitors, then may be appointed guardian of the person for more stable nursing-home cases.	LifeSpan · Butler Probate
Clark	United Senior Services Volunteer Guardianship	Nursing-home residents age 60+ without willing family. Visit twice a month. Six-hour Supreme Court training. One-year commitment.	USS program · Clark Probate
Cuyahoga & Lorain	Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry Adult Guardianship Services	Large mixed volunteer/staff model. Volunteers serve as guardian of the person; staff take more complex cases.	LMM · Cuyahoga Probate
Delaware, Fairfield, Fayette, Franklin, Licking, Pickaway	COAAA Volunteer Guardian Program	Court-appointed guardian of the person for nursing-home residents. Two visits a month. Program attorney at the appointment hearing. Age 21+.	COAAA VGP · Franklin Probate
Hamilton	Cincinnati Area Senior Services / Personal Guardianship Services	Volunteer and professional guardians for unrepresented adults. Confirm current volunteer openings before applying.	CASS · Hamilton Probate
Holmes	Holmes County Probate Court	Court-based volunteer guardianship. Contact the court directly about current openings and local training.	Holmes Probate
Huron	Catholic Charities (Diocese of Toledo) Volunteer Guardianship	Matches screened volunteers with adults who have no suitable family. Volunteers report to Huron County Probate Court.	Huron Probate guardianships
Lucas	Lucas County Guardianship Services Board	Public guardianship board of last resort for indigent adults. Volunteer openings are typically at the Board/trustee level, not case-level guardians.	LCGSB · Lucas Probate
Marion	Marion County Adult Volunteer Guardian Program	Court-run guardian of the person. No handling of money. Six-hour fundamentals plus three hours of annual continuing education.	Ask Marion County Probate Court for the MCAVGP application.
Medina	Medina County Probate Court Volunteer Guardianship Program	Guardian of the person for indigent Medina residents without family. Health and placement decisions only. Age 21+, Ohio resident.	Medina Probate · (330) 725-9703
Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Shelby	Life Essentials (Catholic Social Services of the Miami Valley)	Staff and trained volunteers serve as guardian of the person. Monthly visits. Expanding coverage across the Miami Valley.	CSSMV / Life Essentials · Montgomery Probate
Ottawa	Ottawa County Probate Court Volunteer Guardianship (with RSVP)	Guardian of the person only. Court training and support. RSVP partnership can provide mileage or meal stipends for volunteers 55+.	Contact Ottawa County Probate Court.
Portage	Portage County Guardianship Service Board Volunteer Visitors	The program in Kelly’s column. Monthly visits to public-guardianship wards; written reports to the Board and Court. Age 18+, Ohio license, background check. Local visitor training (Kelly cited three hours). Rule 66’s six-hour / three-hour sequence applies only if the court later appoints you as guardian.	PCGSB · Portage Probate · (330) 839-3964
Richland	Friendly Visitor Program + Mid-Ohio Guardianship Services	Court Friendly Visitors monitor facility wards monthly and file a short report. Separate agencies also provide professional or volunteer guardianship.	Richland Probate guardianship
Stark	Guardian Support Services, Inc.	Volunteer guardians for nursing-home residents. No finances. Monthly visit; initial and yearly training; annual court report. Matched by geography.	Become a volunteer · Stark Probate
Summit	Volunteer Guardian Program, operated by Adult Guardianship Services of Summit County; plus the Court’s Senior Visitor Program	The court launched the Volunteer Guardian Program in 2015. In 2022 it spun out as Adult Guardianship Services of Summit County (AGS), which now recruits and trains volunteer guardians of the person. The probate court still runs a separate Senior Visitor Program.	AGS volunteer page · Summit Probate volunteers
Union	Union County Guardianship Services	Evolved from a volunteer-guardian program into a case-manager model. Volunteer visitor options have existed alongside it. Confirm current roles with UCGS and the court.	UCGS · Union Probate
Wayne	Wayne County Volunteer Guardianship Association (WCVGA)	Nonprofit, active since 2012, that recruits, screens, and trains volunteer guardians of the person and presents them to Wayne County Probate Court. Age 21+, background check, short initial training. No estate duties. Appointed guardians still complete Rule 66 education.	WCVGA volunteer page · Wayne Probate guardianships
Williams	Williams County Volunteer Guardian Program (Dept. of Aging / Probate)	Guardian of the person for nursing-home residents. No estate duties. Training through the Department of Aging and the court.	Williams County Dept. of Aging · (419) 633-4317 · Williams Probate
Wood	Wood County Probate Court Volunteer Guardian Program	Urgent need: hundreds of open cases and far too few volunteers. Age 21+, background check, six-hour training, monthly face-to-face contact.	Wood Probate · (419) 354-9230

If a link has moved, start with the county probate court page. That office is always the appointing authority.

What it Typically Takes to Serve

• Age: Age 18 or 21 and older, depending on the program; Ohio resident or a local connection.
• Background: Application, interview, references, and a criminal background check.
• Dependability: Reliable transportation. Most visits are in nursing homes, group homes, or private residences.
• Training: If you will be appointed as guardian: the free six-hour Supreme Court fundamentals course, plus three hours of continuing education each year after appointment.  If you will be a visitor only,  the local program’s own training, often a shorter class. Confirm hours with that program. Do not assume Rule 66 applies, and do not assume it does not if the court later appoints you.
• Duties: A monthly visit in most programs,  twice a month in some, quarterly in a few,  and a short written report.

Once you are matched, this is usually a few hours a month: not a second career. The hard part is showing up steadily, including on the days the person no longer remembers your name and the facility would rather you did not ask about the unexplained bruise.

How this Fits Aging in Place

If you are reading this as a planner for your own later life, or as counsel to a client, take three actions that matter more than hoping a stranger-volunteer appears later:

• Name decision-makers now. Execute a financial power of attorney and a health-care power of attorney while capacity is clear. Name successors. Tell those people you named them.
• Settle a Trust: A properly drafted revocable living trust, paired with advance directives, does two distinct jobs. First, it reduces the odds that a court ever needs to appoint a guardian. Decision-making authority is already assigned to someone the person chooses, not someone a judge selects after a crisis. Second, in a trust-code state, a well-drafted revocable living trust keeps trust assets out of a guardian’s reach even if a guardianship is later opened for other reasons. That matters. A guardian facing personal liability for whatever happens to the ward at home has every incentive to solve the risk by moving him into a facility. Managing the risk in place is harder. A trust with the right successor-trustee provisions and clear guidance on care preferences removes that incentive at the source. It is one of the more effective, and most overlooked, ways to close off the on-ramp from “needs some help” to “placed in a facility because that was administratively simpler.”  
• Write Your Values, not Just the Forms. A living will and a short letter of intent stating where you want to live, what “quality of life” means to you, and who should never be appointed, give any future guardian a compass.
• Build the bench. If you have no spouse, no nearby adult child, or a family that cannot serve, introduce yourself to the local volunteer program while you still can. Some of the best volunteer guardians started because they looked around and realized they might need one someday.

An Invitation

This work is not for everyone. It is for people who can keep a confidence, sit with silence, read a care plan, and politely refuse to be hurried out of a nursing-home hallway.

If that sounds like you, pick up the phone this week. Start with your own county row in the table. If your county has no program, call the probate clerk and ask two questions: “Do you have a volunteer guardian or volunteer visitor program?” and “If not, will the court consider training me?” If you expect to be appointed as guardian, complete the six-hour online fundamentals course so you arrive already serious. If you expect to visit only, ask the local program what class it actually requires.

Ohio is getting older faster than its family networks are getting closer. Courts cannot visit every ward. Facilities cannot be their own watchdogs. Families cannot always be who we wish they were. A trained volunteer,  one afternoon a month, one person at a time,  is how a community refuses to let a neighbor become invisible. Portage County readers: call PCGSB at 330-839-3964. Everyone else: use the table. Then go be the person you would want walking through your door.

Sources & notes

Sally Kelly, “Senior Life: Become a guardian volunteer for vulnerable neighbors,” The Portager, Sept. 9, 2026.

Portage County Guardianship Service Board, portagecountygsb.org. Director listed as Diana L. Clarke.

Supreme Court of Ohio, Ohio Adult Guardianship Education Program (Sup.R. 66.06 and 66.07) and county probate resource guides. The six-hour fundamentals course and three-hour annual continuing education apply to appointed guardians, not automatically to volunteer visitors.

Summit County: the Volunteer Guardian Program began in probate court in 2015 and, on January 1, 2022, spun out as Adult Guardianship Services of Summit County, Inc., which now administers that program. The court still lists a separate Senior Visitor Program.

Wayne County: Wayne County Volunteer Guardianship Association (WCVGA), waynecountyguardianship.org, active since 2012; volunteers are appointed by Wayne County Probate Court as guardians of the person only.

Additional program pages: COAAA VGP; Guardian Support Services (Stark); United Senior Services (Clark); Life Essentials / CSSMV; LifeSpan; Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry; Crime Victim Services (Allen/Putnam); Wood, Medina, Richland, and Williams County courts and aging offices. 

This article is educational and is not legal advice. Guardianship is a court-supervised legal relationship. Eligibility, training, and appointment rules are set by each probate court under Ohio law and Superintendence Rule 66. Confirm current details with the local probate court before applying.

California Court Reins In a Family's 20-Year Equalization Fight — Equalization Clause Lessons

Family trust litigation often turns on a single sentence buried in an otherwise routine distribution clause. A new published opinion from California's Fourth District shows exactly how much can ride on that sentence, and how far a trial court can stray from it when a family's finances have been informal for decades.

The case involves an equalization clause. Families include equalization language in trusts for a clear reason. Parents want the children treated fairly. One child borrowed money. Another received a down payment. A third never asked for anything. The parent does not want the last accounting to pretend those transfers never happened. So the document says, in substance: treat unpaid loans and unequal gifts as advances, and adjust the shares. That is a sensible idea. It is not a license to reopen two decades of rents, sales, and informal family bookkeeping under the heading of “fairness.” A California appellate court has just drawn that line in published language that is useful anywhere a lawyer drafts a hotchpot or equalization clause, including Ohio and Missouri.

The Trust and the Fight

Jean Sandford created a trust in 1998 for her five children: Debra, Linda, Mark, Michael, and Pamela. She restated it in 2000 and named all five as successor trustees. The trust called for equal shares, but it included an equalization provision. That provision did two specific things. It said any unpaid loan from Jean to a child would be deducted from that child's share. It also said unequal lifetime gifts would count as advances against each child's share, with the trustee making adjustments to even things out.

Over the next two decades, several siblings managed family properties and finances in a loose, informal way. Family members executed quitclaim deeds, sold property, and entered into rental arrangements. When tensions boiled over, Debra and Linda petitioned the Orange County probate court for an accounting and to remove Mark and Michael as trustees. Mark and Michael counter-petitioned to quiet title to two disputed properties.

What the Trial Court Did

The Superior Court sided with Debra and Linda on nearly everything. It conducted what the Court of Appeal called an extensive audit going back twenty years, and it treated years of rental income and sale proceeds from family properties as early distributions subject to the equalization provision. On that basis, it ordered offsets against Mark's and Michael's shares, removed them as trustees, required formal accountings, and awarded Debra and Linda their attorney fees out of the trust.

Notably, the trial court also found that separate claims against Mark and Michael for financial elder abuse and breach of fiduciary duty were barred by the statute of limitations. Those claims did not survive on their own.

Mark and Michael appealed

What the Court of Appeals Held

The panel reversed the equalization rulings. Its reasoning is the part worth reading closely. The equalization provision, the court held, permits a reduction only for unpaid loans and unequal gifts. It does not reach rental income, sale proceeds, or the broader universe of informal financial dealings the trial court had folded into its twenty-year audit. The provision's language was plain, and the evidence showed Jean was focused specifically on unpaid loans when she wrote and later restated the trust. That left no ambiguity to interpret.

The more pointed part of the opinion addresses why this mattered so much. The court noted that if Mark and Michael had genuinely engaged in misconduct in those property transactions, the trustee would have had a cause of action against them. But the trial court had already correctly found that any such claims were time-barred. The Court of Appeal held that the trial court could not use the equalization provision as a workaround: it could not achieve, through a twenty-year "equalization" accounting, the same result that a time-barred breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim would have produced. Because the equalization orders fell, the attorney fee award built on top of them fell too. The court affirmed the rest of the judgment, including the denial of the quiet-title claims and the removal of Mark and Michael as trustees, and sent the case back for further proceedings.

Why this Case Belongs in a Drafting File

Two lessons stand out, and both are ones worth building into how you draft and later defend an equalization or hotchpot clause.

First, courts will read these clauses narrowly, not functionally. A clause that lists "unpaid loans" and "unequal gifts" will be read to mean exactly that, even after decades of family conduct that looks, informally, like a much broader running account. If a client's actual intent is to true up rental income, property use, below-market sales, or any other benefit one child received at another's expense, the clause needs to say so. A drafter who wants a true "hotchpot provision," one that sweeps in the informal financial reality of how families actually behave, has to enumerate that reality or use deliberately broad catch-all language tied to the trustor's overall intent. "Loans or gifts" will not stretch to cover it later, no matter how sympathetic the facts.  

Second, an equalization clause is not a substitute for a timely claim. This is the sharper point. A beneficiary, or a trustee acting for the beneficiaries, cannot let a breach-of-fiduciary-duty or elder-abuse claim go stale and then recover the same ground by recasting the same transactions as an equalization adjustment. If the underlying claim is time-barred, a court will not let an accounting theory function as its replacement. That cuts both ways for drafting: a broadly worded equalization clause is not a way to build in a permanent, limitations-proof audit right, and a client relying on one for that purpose is relying on something the clause cannot deliver.

The opinion is Sandford v. Sandford, Nos. G064699 and G065223 (consolidated), Cal. Ct. App., Fourth District, Division Three, filed and certified for publication September 2, 2026, on appeal from the Orange County Superior Court. 

Because the opinion is only days old as of this writing, it's worth checking the docket before citing it for whether a petition for review has been filed with the California Supreme Court.

Daily Wellness Check-In Services for Aging in Place: A Practical Guide to the Expanding Options

*The image is a Grok-AI generated image and does not depict a specific service/product

One of the most common and persistent worries for families supporting an older adult who lives alone is simple: “Is she okay today?” Traditional solutions have long included phone trees among siblings, neighbor agreements, or expensive monitoring systems. In 2026, a growing category of relatively low-cost daily wellness check-in services has emerged to address this specific need.  Two of the newer entrants, AloneAssist and CheckWellCall (also referred to as Check WellCare), illustrate both the promise and the variety within this space.

AloneAssist offers a conversational AI phone call each morning, a written summary for the family, and Care Circle notifications if the call is missed for a modest $14.99 per month. CheckWellCall provides scheduled automated wellness calls with alerts only when something appears wrong, and higher-tier plans allow multiple check-ins per day.  These two services are useful entry points for understanding a broader set of tools now available. The category ranges from simple press-1 confirmation systems to more sophisticated AI conversational companions. None of them replace medical alert systems, fall detection, or hands-on care. Used thoughtfully, however, they can reduce caregiver stress, create helpful daily structure, combat isolation, and provide an earlier signal when something is amiss.

Check-in Services for Aging in PlaceDaily check-in services sit in a practical middle ground among the array of Aginging-in-Place Planning tools and devices. They are less intrusive than continuous sensor monitoring and less demanding than requiring family members to call every day. For many older adults, a predictable phone call feels relational rather than surveilling. For adult children, especially those living at a distance,  the services convert vague daily anxiety into a clearer signal: either the check-in occurred normally, or an alert requires follow-up. These tools work best as one layer in a broader support system that may also include medical alert devices, selective smart-home technology, paid caregivers, and clear family communication protocols.Comprehensive Comparison of Current Options

The table below summarizes the main services available in mid-2026. Pricing and features can change, so families should verify current details directly.

Daily wellness check-ins are not one product. Some are a text. Some are an app tap. Some are an AI phone call. Some are a sheriff’s office calling for free. Match the method to the person,  and do not pay a consumer price for a program that is supposed to be a public service.

Service	How it checks in	Who pays / typical cost	Best for
ConfirmOK	Automated phone check-in licensed to police/sheriff departments	Agency pays; free to the resident where offered. Not a ~$13–15 household plan.	Seniors in a county that has bought the platform
Local “Are You OK?” / R U OK?	Municipal telephone reassurance; missed call can dispatch deputies	Usually free	Ask the sheriff or senior center first
AloneAssist	AI conversational morning call; family dashboard; Care Circle alerts	About $14.99/mo or $120/yr	Families who want a call plus a written summary
Verocall	Daily well-being call (press-1 or conversational bot)	About $19/mo; trial available	Landline-friendly scheduled calls
ElderVoice	AI companion and check-in calls	About $19/mo advertised for a weekly plan (confirm daily pricing)	Companionship plus a missed-call alert
Meela (companion calls)	AI phone companion / check-in	Reported near $40/mo; confirm current quote	Conversation-first check-ins.
MilaCare	AI daily voice check-in; family alerts	Early access; confirm U.S. price s publishes are EU	Emerging voice option (EU hosting noted on site)
GoodMorningBuddy	Daily personalized SMS from an AI “friend”	Confirm current price	Texters who will not take a call
CheckinBee	Daily text; reply YES/OK; care-circle alert if silent	Consumer plan plus a professional dashboard for agencies	Simple SMS; no app on the senior’s phone
CheckIn More	App tap on a schedule; alerts by email/text/call	Free (1 check-in, 1 contact); Plus $6.99; Premium $19.99	Seniors comfortable with an app; unlimited contacts on paid plans
I’m Still Okay	Daily email with a confirm button	Free	Email users only; no dispatch. Small indie service.
Still Safe	App: scheduled check-ins, safety timers, SOS	Free tier; premium about $2–4/mo	Timers for “I’m going out — if I don’t close this, alert someone.”
Snug Safety	App tap; missed check-in texts contacts; Dispatch can request a welfare check	Free tap-and-alert; Dispatch about $12.50–$20/mo	Smartphone users; paid plan if family cannot be the backup
CheckWellCall	Scheduled AI voice wellness call; family notified if something is wrong	Confirm current consumer/organization pricing	A set daily call without a new device

Note: These are not medical-alert pendants and they do not replace 911. Pair a check-in with a passive fall-detection watch or pendant if the risk is a fall that may keep the person from answering the phone.
How These Services Differ in Practice

•Scheduling: Most services are routinized rather than random. AloneAssist centers on a consistent morning call. CheckWellCall and several others allow families to choose preferred times and, in some cases, multiple daily contacts. Consistency generally works better for older adults than unpredictable outreach.

•Depth of Interaction:  

• Press-1 or basic confirmation services (IAmFine, ConfirmOK) simply verify that the person answered.
• Conversational AI services (AloneAssist, Verocall, Callie Care, and others) attempt a short dialogue and can surface mood or concerning comments in summaries.
• Text-based options remove the need for a phone conversation entirely.

•Family Coordination:  AloneAssist stands out for its shared Care Circle dashboard. Several other services notify multiple contacts, but the quality of shared visibility varies. Families should ask specifically how alerts and summaries are distributed.

•What None of Them Do:  These are not emergency response systems. They do not replace a medical alert pendant or fall-detection device, nor do they provide continuous monitoring or clinical oversight. A missed check-in prompts human follow-up, not automatic dispatch of help.

Practical Ways to Deploy These Tools

•Long-distance Adult Children:  A daily conversational service such as AloneAssist or a flexible option like CheckWellCall can reduce the pressure to call every morning. Pair it with a medical alert system so that both routine wellness and true emergencies are covered.

•Local family with rotating responsibilities:  A service that supports multiple notification recipients helps prevent the “who was supposed to check today?” problem. The daily call becomes a shared signal rather than one person’s burden. 

•Older adult with mild cognitive changes:  A consistent, predictable daily call can reinforce routine. Families should monitor whether the person answers reliably and whether the conversation remains appropriate. In some cases, a simpler press-1 service may be less confusing than an open-ended AI dialogue. 

•Hybrid household (paid caregivers + family):  The check-in service can serve as an independent verification layer. Caregivers and family members receive the same alerts, improving coordination without requiring constant cross-checking.

Important Cautions

• Review privacy policies and data practices carefully.
• Involve the older adult in the decision so the service feels supportive rather than imposed.
• Test during any available trial period.
• Treat these tools as one layer, not a complete safety net.
• Be prepared to adjust or discontinue if the calls become stressful or confusing for the older adult.

Closing Perspective

AloneAssist and CheckWellCall are useful examples of a rapidly developing category of low-to-moderate-cost daily wellness check-in services. Alongside longer-established options such as IAmFine and a range of newer AI and text-based alternatives, families now have more choices than they did even a year or two ago. 

The right tool depends on the older adult’s preferences, cognitive status, comfort with technology, the family’s geographic spread, and the desired balance between simplicity and richer interaction. When selected thoughtfully and combined with appropriate emergency-response measures, these services can meaningfully reduce caregiver stress while supporting an older adult’s ability to remain at home with greater confidence and connection.

As with most aging-in-place technology, the goal is not perfection. It is a practical, sustainable system that provides earlier information and shared peace of mind. 

What the Murdoch Trust Fight Teaches Drafters of Trust Amendment Clauses

Most trust litigation stays quiet. The filings get sealed, the settlement gets signed, and the rest of us never see how a judge actually weighs a trustee's motives against a trust's own terms. A newly unsealed Nevada probate file breaks that pattern, and it is worth a close read by anyone who drafts or administers an irrevocable trust with an amendment power built in.

The Background

The Murdoch Family Trust, an irrevocable trust, controls the family's voting stakes in Fox Corp. and News Corp. In late 2024, Rupert Murdoch pursued a restructuring effort internally called "Project Family Harmony." The plan would have let him appoint additional trustees with authority over the trust and its controlling shares in the two companies.

A Washoe County, Nevada probate commissioner, Edmund Gorman, reviewed the plan and recommended that the court deny it. His 96-page recommendation was filed in December 2024, but it stayed sealed until January 2026, when the Nevada Supreme Court forced its release. That is the file that, at least, new outlets can now read.

What the Commissioner Found

According to the unsealed recommendation, Gorman concluded the restructuring was built to cement son Lachlan Murdoch's control of the two companies after Rupert's death. He also found it was meant to preserve Rupert's editorial legacy and reduce the influence of his son James Murdoch, seen as the more liberal of the brothers.

That finding mattered because the trust's own language required any amendment to serve the beneficiaries as a group, not to advance one branch of the family over the others. Gorman found the trustee, Cruden Financial Services LLC, and the three managing directors who approved the plan acted in bad faith, abused their discretion, and breached the fiduciary duties they owed to all the trust's beneficiaries. He found the amendment's sole purpose was not the beneficiaries' benefit, as the trust document required. As This Is Reno reported, Gorman wrote that the plan amounted to an effort "to stack the deck in Lachlan's … favor."

Why the Internal Name Became a Problem

"Project Family Harmony" is the kind of label a client or a trustee's advisor picks without thinking much about how it will read years later in a public court file. Once the commissioner concluded the plan actually favored one beneficiary at the expense of others, the internal name became evidence of the gap between the stated purpose and the real one. The Associated Press, in a report carried by PBS NewsHour, noted that Gorman's own opinion used the phrase "carefully crafted charade" to describe the plan.

That is a lesson worth repeating: trust names, internal project names, talking points, and strategy memos do not disappear. If a plan cannot survive being read aloud by a skeptical judge, its name will not help.

Three Drafting and Administration Lessons

The case, and the unsealed determination, offer three lessons: 

• "Sole Benefit of the Beneficiaries" is not Decorative Language: Many irrevocable trusts include a clause requiring that any amendment serve the beneficiaries' collective interest. This case shows a court applying that standard the way it is written, not as a mere formality. If a proposed change is designed to benefit one beneficiary's position over the others, the standard clause is enough to defeat it, even without proof of self-dealing by the person exercising the power.

• Broad Appointment Powers Deserve Real Limits: The amendment here would have let Rupert Murdoch appoint additional trustees with authority over the trust and its controlling votes. A power that broad, held by one person or one branch of a family, is exactly the kind of provision that invites a bad-faith challenge later. When you draft an appointment or modification power into an irrevocable trust, build in a check: an independent trust protector, a defined and neutral process for adding trustees, or a requirement that any amendment be tested against the sole-benefit standard before it takes effect.

• Process is Evidence: The commissioner did not just look at what the amendment said. He looked at who devised it, why, and what the trustee and its directors did when they approved it. That means the process a trustee follows before approving a significant change- board minutes, outside counsel involvement, documented consideration of all beneficiaries' interests- is not paperwork for its own sake. It is what a court will examine first if the amendment is ever challenged.

A Caution on the Posture of this Case

Gorman's findings are a probate commissioner's recommendation to the district court, not a final appellate ruling on the merits. The file only became public because a state supreme court forced disclosure of a sealed record, which is itself a reminder: sealing a trust fight does not make it permanent. If your client's family later disputes the seal, or if a beneficiary successfully argues for access as this one did, the internal reasoning behind an amendment can surface years later, read by people the trustee never anticipated as an audience.

For drafters, the practical takeaway is simple. Write the amendment power narrowly, tie it explicitly to the sole-benefit standard, and assume that someday, someone besides the family will read the file.

New York Times Co. v. Second Judicial District Court, No. 89347 (Nev. Dec. 23, 2025):
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/nv-supreme-court/118075965.html
Thanks to Wealth Strategies Journal for reporting the case. 

The $11 Million Man Nobody Knew

Joseph Stancak lived alone on Chicago's Southwest Side. He drove an old car. He wore old clothes. Neighbors guessed he might have been an electrician. Nobody knew much else about him.

He died in 2016 at 87. He left no will. He had no spouse, no children, and no living siblings. For years, his money just sat there. It showed up only as a single flag in the Illinois treasurer's unclaimed property database, marked "over $100." That flag hid the truth: Stancak had quietly built an $11 million fortune, and now there was no one obvious to give it to.

What it took to find his family

An attorney finally obtained the real balance. Locating Stancak's family took real work. Investigators traced Stancak's line back through five generations. They combed obituaries, church registries, and government records across the United States, Poland, and Slovakia. In the end, they identified more than 119 relatives, mostly second- and third-cousins, most of whom had never heard the name Joseph Stancak.

That's the scale a search can reach when nobody plans ahead. A single missing branch of a family tree, once you have to trace it five generations forward, can turn into more than a hundred people scattered across three countries.

Just When it Looked Resolved, It Got Harder

The heirs waited years for their share. Then, right before the court could finally pay them, a will surfaced. It was dated 2015, roughly eighteen months before Stancak died. It left everything to a childcare charity and its president, neither of whom had any apparent connection to Stancak's life. The attorney overseeing the estate called the will "poorly drafted" and said he was "highly suspicious" of it. The lawyer supposedly listed as its drafter had died years earlier in a plane crash.

The court still allowed the will to be entered as evidence, without yet deciding whether it was genuine. That single ruling put every one of those 119 relatives back in limbo, years after they'd first learned they had a claim.

What This Means if You're Not Planning to Leave $11 million

Most families reading this aren't sitting on a fortune like Stancak's. But the pattern in his case isn't really about the size of the money. It's about what happens when nobody has done the work in advance.

Stancak's estate ended up costly and slow for a simple reason: there was no plan, and no map of who was supposed to inherit. Every dollar spent tracing his family across three countries and five generations was a dollar that came out of what his relatives eventually received. Every year the case dragged on was a year those relatives didn't have access to money that was rightfully theirs.

The same risk shows up in far more ordinary families. A parent loses touch with one branch of the family for decades. A sibling estrangement means nobody's spoken in twenty years. A blended family means there's a child from an earlier relationship that half the family doesn't know about. None of that requires millions of dollars to turn into a real, expensive mess for the people left behind. Heir Pros, an heir search firm, puts a number on what that looks like at ordinary-family scale: a $500,000 house that shrinks to roughly $330,000 by the time a missed heir's share is carved back out of it, with that heir netting around $126,000 after a contingency search firm's cut, which is a figure any family can actually picture, not just an abstraction.

If You're Already the Fiduciary

Most of what's written about this problem, including the Heir Pros piece linked below, is aimed at people who are still doing their own lifetime planning. But there's a sharper version of the lesson for whoever is already serving as executor or successor trustee for someone who has died. If that's you right now, the order of operations is what matters: pay for a proper heir search before you write a single distribution check, not after. Once the money is out the door and spent, there's nothing left to claw back from, and a missed heir's claim comes out of your own pocket, not the estate's.

The part you actually control

You can't control whether a mysterious will turns up after you're gone. What you can control, while you're alive and thinking clearly, is whether anyone has to guess who your family is in the first place.

A current, properly executed estate plan does the work Stancak never got the chance to do: it names your family by name and states your intentions in your own words. But naming your family isn't enough. Stancak's millions sat frozen in ordinary bank and brokerage accounts for years precisely because nothing had ever actually been moved into a trust, and no beneficiary form matched any real plan; a signed document sitting in a drawer doesn't retitle an account. A trust that's actually funded keeps your family's money out of a state treasurer's unclaimed-property list in the first place, instead of waiting for someone to build a five-generation chart to go claim it. If you're already serving as someone else's trustee, the same math just runs in the other direction: paying for a proper heir search now costs a few thousand dollars; a missed heir who surfaces after you've already distributed can cost you the house you already sold, plus a contingency contract with a lawyer of your own.

If your own family tree has a branch you've lost touch with, or a relationship your current family doesn't fully know about, that's exactly the kind of thing to raise with your attorney now, while you can still explain it yourself, rather than leaving it for someone else to piece together later at real cost to everyone involved.

For a look at this same problem from the other side, the risk a personal representative takes on if they skip a proper search before closing an estate, the following is  a good piece on what that exposure actually looks like: "The Cost of an Unidentified Heir".