Last December we initiated the process of becoming Arthur's legal guardians. After a person turns 18 in this country, they are legally free from their parents' oversight. Therefore, in order to retain the right for us to care for Arthur and make decisions for him, we had to become his guardians.
First we met with a young lawyer who started filing the forms, instructed us where to get the online training required by law to become a guardian and assigned us to a Guardian Ad Litem, who would determine whether Arthur met the requirements to receive guardianship and whether we were suitable guardians.
We met with this man, who is older than the lawyer but younger than us, in our family room in March after Arthur turned 18 and after we completed the online training and had a court hearing date assigned. The GAL saw that Arthur was an "incapacitated person" and appeared to think we would be good guardians for him. But he still required a doctor's appraisal of Arthur to confirm that Arthur needed guardianship.
Getting Arthur's doctor to fill out the form took longer than anyone figured it would, but the GAL had it in his hands a week ago, so he could finish his report and recommendation and we could keep the court date of May 3 at 8:30. On the phone to Dennis he was very positive in saying he felt we were the best guardians Arthur could have in that we were parents who loved him. That was encouraging!
Our lawyer, the GAL and the three of us Millers were allowed into the courtroom a few minutes before 9 o'clock. After one other brief case, Arthur Miller's case was called and we all walked forward and sat in the chairs they offered with the lawyer and GAL standing. After our lawyer made some date changes with the clerk regarding when the records we will keep have to be filed, the judge asked us if we had anything we wanted to say. Now we had told Arthur that the judge wanted to meet him. So when she said this, he went forward to get into the witness seat! (Too many movies!) They let him go ahead, and then he launched upon a several minute long testimony that only had a few words we could make out, those words being Paul and Annie. Dennis finally stood up to signal to Arthur his need to be done talking, so Arthur got out of the seat and returned to us. Then it was over and we were all dismissed.
Outside the courtroom, we waited for some paperwork from the lawyer, who had to stay for some other legal work there that day. We walked out with the GAL, who mentioned he could help us with the new forms the lawyer would be sending should we have questions.
Yesterday there came in the mail Ethan Miller's graduation from high school announcement. Ethan is four months younger than his cousin Arthur. Should we have taken a photo of Arthur on the witness stand, I suppose we could send that out as he commences upon being under our guardianship!
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