42 states have supported decision-making laws. Michigan still doesn’t.

At a transition meeting somewhere in Michigan this month, a parent is being handed a guardianship packet and told this is just what you do when they turn eighteen. Nobody in that room is lying. In a state with no supported decision-making law, guardianship really is the tool everyone knows. That does not make it the right one, and it is very much easier to enter than to leave.

What supported decision-making is

Supported decision-making is an arrangement where a person with a disability keeps their legal right to make their own decisions and formally designates people to help them understand options, weigh consequences, and communicate what they have chosen.

It is not a loophole and it is not new. Most adults already do it. You call your sister about the job offer, your accountant about the tax question, your friend who understands cars. Nobody suggests removing your legal capacity because you needed help deciding.

A supported decision-making statute does two things. It gives the arrangement a recognized legal form so third parties like doctors and banks have to engage with it, and it puts a named alternative in front of a probate judge who would otherwise be choosing between guardianship and nothing.

Michigan has neither of those things.

Where the country actually is

At least 24 states plus the District of Columbia have enacted comprehensive supported decision-making agreement legislation. At least 18 more require probate courts or guardianship petitioners to consider supported decision-making as a less restrictive option before a guardian is appointed.

Add those together and roughly 42 jurisdictions have written supported decision-making into law in one form or another.

The recent additions tell you where this is going. Hawaii, Utah, and New Mexico enacted in 2025. Idaho, Kansas, and Illinois enacted in 2026. This is not a coastal enthusiasm and it is not partisan. It has moved through legislatures of every description because the underlying idea, that you should not remove all of somebody’s rights when you only need to help with some decisions, is not actually controversial once anybody looks at it.

Michigan has not moved. Not a comprehensive statute, not a requirement that courts consider it.

What Michigan does have, and it is not nothing

I want to be careful here, because the absence of a supported decision-making statute does not mean Michigan families have no options. It means the options are less visible and nobody hands you the list.

Michigan law already requires the least restrictive alternative. A guardian is to be appointed only where less restrictive means will not adequately meet the need. That principle is in the code. There is no SDM statute to invoke, but the principle is the same question and a judge has to reach it.

Durable power of attorney covers financial matters and is revocable. It requires the person to have capacity to sign it, which is a real limitation for some adults and not for others.

Patient advocate designation is Michigan’s healthcare power of attorney. It lets your adult child name who makes medical decisions if they cannot, without a court taking anything away.

Representative payee handles Social Security benefits specifically and nothing else. Families routinely take guardianship when a payee designation was the actual need.

Limited guardianship lets a court remove only specified rights and leave the rest. It is more work to petition for and it is dramatically less destructive, and it is chronically underused because plenary is the default form in the packet.

An honest word about Level 3 adults

Here is where a lot of writing on this subject gets soft, and I do not want to.

Supported decision-making advocacy sometimes reads as though guardianship is always the wrong answer. For an adult who communicates, understands consequences with support, and can express a preference, I think that is largely right and the evidence supports it.

For a nonspeaking adult with significant intellectual disability who cannot indicate a preference about medical treatment, telling that family they should have used a supported decision-making agreement is not advocacy. It is abandoning them to a system that will demand a legal decision maker at every hospital admission.

Some families need guardianship. Saying so out loud is not a betrayal of the disability rights movement. What those families deserve is limited guardianship where limited works, a real look at the alternatives first, and periodic review as their adult child changes, rather than a fifteen minute hearing that settles the next fifty years.

Both things are true. Guardianship is massively overused, and some people need it. Any framework that cannot hold both of those is not built for the families this site serves.

Your practical next steps

Before the transition meeting. Write the list. Every category of decision your adult child will face: medical, psychiatric, housing, money, benefits, employment, relationships, voting. For each one, note whether they can decide with support, decide with a lot of support, or cannot indicate a preference.

Then match tools to items. Healthcare items may be covered by a patient advocate designation. Benefits by a representative payee. Money by a durable power of attorney or a special needs trust. What is left after that is the actual scope of any guardianship you might need, and it is usually much smaller than the packet suggests.

Before you file. Ask the probate court in writing what less restrictive alternatives it expects to see addressed. Get advice from an attorney who does disability work specifically, not general estate planning. The Special Needs Alliance maintains a directory.

If you already have plenary guardianship. It can be modified. It is harder than not filing in the first place and it is not impossible, and if your adult child has gained skills since the order was entered, that is exactly the circumstance a modification exists for.

Forty-two jurisdictions have decided this deserves a statute. Michigan will get there. In the meantime the least restrictive principle is already in Michigan law, and the families who invoke it early are the ones who do not spend a decade undoing a form they signed at a transition meeting.