Friday Heroes of Reform
The power to manage someone else’s savings should come with a duty to explain where the money went. In a guardianship, that explanation can depend on an inventory, an annual account and a court willing to follow up when the paperwork is missing or raises questions.
Texas Senator Judith Zaffirini helped put that scrutiny into law. Her 2019 Senate Bill 31 established the Guardianship Abuse, Fraud, and Exploitation Deterrence Program within the Office of Court Administration. It gave courts additional resources to examine the records behind court-appointed authority.
For families describing their experiences as probate victims, the concern is familiar: who checks what happens after someone receives legal control over money or property? Guardianship and estate proceedings have different rules. But demands for records, explanations and meaningful oversight run through both.
A reform aimed at the records
In an August 30, 2019 Texas Senate announcement, Zaffirini described the legislation as a response to testimony about physical and financial abuse that had gone undiscovered for years. The answer she advanced was concrete: compliance staff to help courts examine guardianships and identify problems.
SB 31 took effect September 1, 2019. Under its provisions, specialists review guardianship files, identify missing reports, audit annual accounts and report concerns about potential abuse, fraud or exploitation to the appropriate court. Courts selected by OCA must participate; other courts may apply.
The law also requires an electronic database to monitor filings. A recordkeeping requirement matters because a court cannot scrutinize information it never receives. Our separate coverage of fee harvesting and the probate fee machine examines families’ concerns about costs and financial incentives. Those accounts are separate from OCA’s findings.
The judge’s response matters too
Government Code Section 72.123 permits the OCA director to notify the State Commission on Judicial Conduct when there is reason to believe a judge’s action or inaction on a specialist’s report of potential abuse, fraud or exploitation constitutes judicial misconduct. Notification does not itself impose discipline or reverse an order.
That provision places attention on what happens after a concern reaches the court. Identifying a problem and responding to it are different steps. Effective oversight needs both.
Section 72.124 requires annual reporting to the Legislature. The program must account for its own work, including reviews, reporting deficiencies and concerns referred to courts. That makes it possible to ask what the oversight process is actually doing.
Progress that still needs follow-through
OCA’s fiscal year 2025 report says initial baseline file reviews had reached 249 of Texas’s 254 counties since the program began, and 22 follow-up county audits were completed during FY2025. These are coverage measures, not counts of people rescued or financial transactions individually audited. The report also acknowledges gaps in complete and timely information about corrective actions. Of seven counties asked for FY2025 updates following FY2024 baseline reviews, two did not respond.
A missing account deserves attention, but it does not by itself establish theft. Nor does a completed review guarantee that a person’s money is safe. OCA’s current program description explains how specialists report concerns and assist courts; it does not promise an annual audit of every guardianship or compensation for every loss.
The value of Zaffirini’s reform is the mechanism it provides: people assigned to examine records, report problems and make oversight work visible. Its effectiveness must be judged by follow-up as well as coverage. Families need to know whether a concern led to a corrected account, an explanation or further action.
Stop Legal Bullying’s separate advocacy for Robin’s Law concerns probate fees and attorney accountability. That proposal is distinct from SB 31 and is not legislation attributed here to Zaffirini.
Separate campaign records
The Damn Lawyers investigation and its reporting on the Allison family probate case and probate plot concern a separate family dispute. Our arbitration trap coverage and court-accountability resources collect related allegations about the dispute-resolution process.
Better oversight starts with questions that records can answer. The campaign’s published filings include questions about how fees accumulate. Another examines advice about continuing litigation. A third concerns the terms of representation. These are separate allegations, not disciplinary findings.
Other submissions ask what clients knew about professional connections when choosing a lawyer. They also raise questions about independent representation during estate administration. A further account concerns understanding a fee agreement before signing.
The record concerning an arbitrator’s disclosures raises a different part of the accountability question. Each filing needs to be read alongside its supporting materials and any response or decision. These campaign records do not establish facts about Zaffirini’s work or the OCA program, and they imply no endorsement by the people or institutions discussed in this article.
Accountability begins with a record someone can examine. It becomes meaningful when the institution entrusted with that record responds.
Archival photograph: Judith Zaffirini by Gonzalo Serrano, via Wikimedia Commons, File:Judith_Zaffirini.jpg. CC BY-SA 3.0; license URI: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ . Photograph unaltered. Uploaded in 2008; date photographed unspecified. No endorsement implied.