Study On The Standard For Decision-making Of Adult Guardianship In USA

With China entering the aging society, great changes have taken place in social structure.Countriesof common law system and civil law system have reformed the adult guardianship system in succession. Newconnotation is injected to the adult guardianship system by a series of reformation. With deeper reformation of every specific system in adult guardianship system, the adult guardianship system is not only a system belongs to civil law, but a part of social welfare, and it has a deep relation with the social security of a country. From the20th century, new ideas such as "respect for the right of self-decision" and the "normalization of life in the maintenance of himself" have introduced in American adult guardianship system. After ten years’study, a systematic adult guardianship system have already informed in USA. And problems about how guardians should make decisions for incapacitated persons are put forward. Choosing a qualified guardian is the first step, how guardians should make decisions for incapacitated persons concerns the incapacitated persons’rights and interests. This article are trying to analyze how guardians make decisions for incapacitated persons in America by comparing the he best interest standard and the substituted judgment standard—two theoretical reference points used by the law to frame how guardians should make decisions for incapacitated persons. This article presents five decision-making models that synthesize divergent theories about the meaning of the substituted judgment and best interest standards:strict substituted judgment model, expanded substituted judgment model, strict best interest model, expanded best interest model, hybrid substituted judgment/best interest model.I hope to build up a decision-making standard for China through the advantages and the disadvantages of the five models.