2010 Volume 4 Issue 1 Pages 60-67
Recently, relatives of legal guardians have been decreasing. The main reasons for this tendency and future direction of changes in the legal guardianship system were investigated from the perspective of changes to the system and transformations in the structure and function of the family. The legal guardianship system has changed from maintaining family property to protecting the profits of the guardians, further to protecting the profits of the person concerned, there are two kinds of guardianship aims at protecting the profits of the person concerned. One has characteristics of autonomy of relatives, and the other does not have such characteristics. It now aims to protect the profits of the person without concern for the autonomy of the relatives; therefore legal guardians are not limited to relatives. Furthermore, the increase in the number of households with a single elderly person, or just the elderly couple has made it difficult for a family to function as a welfare facility, or a medial health facility. It is now difficult for just the family or relatives to protect and support elderly people. Decrease in the number of relatives of legal guardians caused by the above reasons is expected to continue. In the future, securing a third person as a legal guardian, as well as investigating the possibilities of corporate legal guardianship would be essential.
