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Families with a loved one under a conservatorship in Alabama got an important, if technical-sounding, piece of good news this week. On August 24, 2026, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled unanimously that circuit courts retain the authority to oversee probate courts, including the power to issue a writ of mandamus compelling a probate judge to vacate an order. The opinion, written by Justice Will Sellers, rejected the argument that a probate court operating under expanded local powers answers only to the Alabama Supreme Court itself, with no circuit-court check in between.
That may sound like a jurisdictional footnote. For anyone with a family member relying on a conservator, such as an adult with a severe disability, a person living with dementia, or a child receiving a settlement, it's the opposite. It means there remains a nearby, accessible court that can step in when a probate judge's order raises due-process concerns, rather than requiring families to appeal all the way to the state's highest court to get a hearing.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
The dispute traces back to Jefferson County, where Probate Judge Yashiba Blanchard ordered a forensic audit of roughly 146 conservatorship cases in January 2026. The accounting fees tied to that audit were uncapped and were to be charged directly against the individual accounts under conservatorship, the very funds meant to support the vulnerable people the audit was ostensibly protecting.
According to reporting cited in the case, the 146 cases broke down as follows: 14 were guardian-only matters with no money involved; 77 had already been closed with final settlements examined by court staff (75 of which had final judgments that would ordinarily limit the court's jurisdiction to revisit them); 18 had completed final hearings and were simply awaiting closing paperwork; and 37 remained genuinely open.
Attorneys Ripon Britton Jr. and Gregory H. Hawley, who represent conservators in a number of these cases, challenged the audit order. They argued it lacked case numbers and specific findings, violated due process, exceeded the probate court's authority, and ran afoul of Alabama Rule of Civil Procedure 53, which requires notice, a defined scope, and case-specific findings before a court can order this kind of sweeping accounting review. Their attorney, Alan Duke, put the objection plainly: "Nobody objects to auditing a conservator. The objection is to auditing cases the court had already audited and closed, without notice or cause, and charging an uncapped fee to the protected persons."
When Britton and Hawley took the matter to circuit court, Judge Elisabeth French dismissed it on March 30, 2026, citing earlier Alabama Supreme Court precedent suggesting that only the state's highest court, and not a circuit court, could review a probate order. That dismissal is what the Supreme Court has now reversed, sending the case back to Judge French for consideration on the merits.
It's worth being precise about what the Supreme Court did and didn't decide: the ruling does not determine whether Judge Blanchard's audit order was itself lawful, and it does not adjudicate the separate judicial-ethics complaint against her, discussed below. It decides only that a circuit court has jurisdiction to hear the audit challenge in the first place, thereby restoring a layer of judicial review that the earlier dismissal had effectively closed off.
The Broader Context: A Judge Facing Ethics Charges
This ruling doesn't exist in isolation. The audit order is also cited as evidence in a formal complaint the Judicial Inquiry Commission has filed against Judge Blanchard, alleging seven violations of judicial ethics standards. Judge Blanchard was suspended from the bench in May 2026 after a 120-page complaint accused her of, among other things, failing to hear any involuntary commitment hearings during her first nine months in office, capping her docket at four cases a day, and retaliating against attorneys who crossed her.
The complaint frames the January 2026 audit order, the one now headed back to circuit court, as part of a pattern directed specifically at Attorneys Britton and Hawley: Blanchard had filed a State Bar complaint against Britton in October 2025 seeking his suspension or disbarment, the Bar declined to act on January 26, 2026, and the forensic-audit order followed just three days later, on January 29, i.e., the same day Blanchard filed a police report claiming she felt threatened by Britton.
Separately, and this is worth flagging as a matter of sourcing, since it comes from news reporting on county and court records rather than from anything the Supreme Court reviewed or ruled on, records examined by WBRC found that a discretionary fund under Blanchard's control, built from $11 recording fees on county property transactions and worth an estimated $7.3 million when she took office in January 2025, had been drawn down substantially. Reporters' review of those records found at least $637,000 paid to one communications firm, over $142,000 in broadcast advertising, and dozens of personal reimbursements to the judge herself. A state audit of that fund began in March 2026, and Blanchard's trial before the Court of the Judiciary is scheduled for November 2026. She denies wrongdoing and, through her attorney, has declined to comment specifically on the conservatorship case. None of this spending, and none of the ethics allegations, was before the Supreme Court in the ruling discussed above; the Court decided only a jurisdictional question.
Why This Matters for Aging-in-Place and Elder Law Planning
For families navigating guardianship or conservatorship, whether in Alabama or elsewhere, this case is a useful reminder of a few things that rarely get discussed until something goes wrong.
First, oversight of conservators is legitimate and necessary; the problem in this case was never that audits happen, but how and against whom they were ordered. A conservator who is properly discharging their duties has nothing to fear from a well-scoped, properly noticed accounting review. What families should watch for is an audit or any court order that lacks a defined scope, skips notice, or imposes open-ended costs on a protected person's own funds.
Second, jurisdictional questions are not just lawyer technicalities. Whether a circuit court, rather than only a state supreme court, can review a probate judge's order determines how realistic it is for an ordinary family to actually get a decision reviewed. A remedy that technically exists only at the state's highest court is, for most families, no practical remedy at all. This ruling keeps a more accessible venue open.
Third, this case is a reminder that the professionals overseeing a loved one's conservatorship- the conservator, the attorney, and the court itself- operate within a system of checks that can and does break down, and that families and their advocates benefit from knowing those checks exist. Anyone currently involved in a conservatorship or guardianship matter in Alabama or another state should ask their elder law attorney what avenues of review are available if a court order affecting a protected person's account appears to be improperly scoped, uncapped in cost, or issued without adequate notice.
Even a well-run, properly reviewed conservatorship is still a court-managed substitute for aging-in-place planning, i.e., powers of attorney, health care directives, and funded trusts, that could have kept those same decisions within the family in the first place. That's the deeper, preventive lesson this case offers, and it's worth turning into a concrete checklist.
Building the Checks Before You Need a Court's
None of the steps below require a legal background; they require reviewing documents before a crisis makes guardianship or conservatorship the only available option.
- Keep durable powers of attorney and health care directives current, specific, and properly executed. A document signed a decade ago, naming an agent who has since died or moved away, does little to prevent a court from stepping in.
- Consider supported decision-making agreements or carefully drafted instructions before authority is stripped by a court. Many states, including Alabama, recognize less restrictive alternatives to full guardianship or conservatorship.
- Fund the trust, not just sign it. A revocable living trust that never had assets retitled into it won't keep a probate court out of the picture when it matters.
- Treat "closed" as a word that should mean something. If a professional fee gets charged against a loved one's account tied to a case that was already closed and settled, that's a signal to call an elder law attorney, not a routine administrative matter.
- Ask, in advance, who reviews the reviewer. Before agreeing to any conservatorship or guardianship arrangement, ask what court sits above the one making day-to-day decisions, and how a family could challenge an order it believes is wrong.
Looking Ahead
The underlying merits in this case, whether Judge Blanchard's audit order was lawful, will now be argued back in Jefferson County Circuit Court, and the separate ethics case against her proceeds on its own track toward a November trial. We'll follow both as they develop. But the more durable takeaway for readers of this blog isn't about Jefferson County at all: it's that the best time to decide who controls a loved one's money and medical care is before any court is asked to decide it for you. The documents above are how families keep that choice for themselves, and this case is a good reminder to check that those documents are actually in place, current, and funded, rather than waiting to see whether a circuit court will be there to help if something goes wrong.
Sources: Jennifer Horton, WBRC, "Alabama Supreme Court rules circuit courts can check a probate judge's power; why it matters to you" (Aug. 24, 2026); WBRC, "Records show suspended Jefferson County probate judge spent millions on PR firms, advertising, personal expenses while court fell behind" (July 21, 2026); NASGA – Stop Guardian Abuse blog.
