New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has signed a bill (S2886/A4640) that will improve the process in New Jersey for caregivers to quickly and easily make alternative arrangements for the care of their children when necessary.

Sponsored by Senator M. Teresa Ruiz, Senate President Pro Tempore, Senator Nellie Pou, Assemblyman Raj Mukherji, and Assemblywoman Carol A. Murphy, and spearheaded by the Rutgers Law School Child Advocacy Clinic and Lowenstein Sandler’s Center for the Public Interest, the new law creates a power of attorney that will allow parents and other qualified caregivers to designate alternative caregivers if they find themselves in emergencies or fear that they may become unavailable to make important decisions about their child’s life. Critically, it permits them to do so without going to court.

The law covers parents in a wide range of circumstances, including those with COVID-19 or another serious illness, those facing immigration enforcement, those called into active military service, and those facing incarceration.

Under prior law, New Jersey parents, legal guardians, or custodians could make emergent arrangements without going to court, but the delegation of authority was limited to six months and did not go into effect upon a triggering event, such as when a caregiver becomes ill or incapacitated, is detained or deported, becomes incarcerated, or deploys for military service. It allowed the court to appoint a standby guardian only when the parent was seriously ill or near death.

The new law addresses these and other shortcomings as it:

  • Permits a parent, legal guardian, or custodian on his/her own without going to court to delegate caregiving responsibilities to another adult, hopefully one well known to the child or ward, for up to one year, with the ability to renew.
  • Expands the grounds on which a parent, guardian, or custodian can make a delegation or seek standby guardianship, permitting such alternative arrangements whenever caregivers have become or may become unable to provide care to a child or ward themselves. The law explicitly includes illness, incapacity, immigration enforcement, incarceration, and military deployment among the reasons that may trigger alternative caregiving arrangements.
  • Allows a caregiver to make a delegation effective immediately but also permits the caregiver to identify a triggering event, such as when he/she is seriously ill or near death, has been detained or deported, becomes incarcerated, or is deployed for military service.
  • Clarifies that both New Jersey’s Delegation Statute and Standby Guardianship Statute are available to caregivers who are parents but also to those who are legal guardians or custodians.
  • Provides a sample form that caregivers may use.

Randi Mandelbaum, Distinguished Clinical Professor of Law, Annamay Sheppard Scholar, and Director of the Child Advocacy Clinic at Rutgers Law School and Catherine Weiss, partner and Chair, Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest, spearheaded the bill and vigorously advocated for its passage.

Mandelbaum, emphasizing the benefits for children in the foster care system, states, “Under the new law, children can now avoid emergency placements in group settings and/or in the households of strangers if their parents designate family or friends as caregivers.”

Weiss praises the law’s positive impact on immigrant families and other under-resourced communities that were hard-hit by the pandemic and economic crisis: “For households facing catastrophic illness, imminent deployment, and other circumstances requiring sudden separations, this law will at least provide peace of mind for parents that their children will be cared for no matter what.”

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