Conservatorship accounting in California, practically.

What a conservatorship accounting is

When a California court appoints a conservator of the estate, the conservator becomes accountable to the court for every dollar of the conservatee's property. The accounting is how that accountability is discharged: a periodic report showing what the estate held, what came in, what went out, and what remains — supported by documentation and filed on the Judicial Council's GC-400 series forms.

The court's examiner reviews it before a judge sees it. Their first check is arithmetic; their second is whether the spending was consistent with the conservatee's needs and the powers the order granted.

Who has to file

• Conservators of the estate — professional fiduciaries, family members, and public guardians alike. The obligation follows the appointment, not the appointee's occupation.
• Guardians of the estate of a minor, on essentially the same accounting framework.
• Conservators of the person only generally do not file an estate accounting, because they do not manage the estate — but check your order, since combined appointments are common.

A family conservator's obligation is identical to a professional's. The court does not apply a gentler standard because you are the conservatee's daughter, and a good-faith accounting that doesn't balance still comes back.

When it's due

The customary rhythm is a first account one year after appointment, then biennial accounts — every two years — until the conservatorship terminates, plus a final account on termination (death of the conservatee, restoration of capacity, or resignation and substitution of the conservator).

Your appointment order governs. Courts vary the first-account date, some require annual accounts throughout, and some counties set their own calendaring conventions. The date on your order is the date that matters, and diarising it the day you are appointed is the single cheapest risk control in this whole process.

What goes in the packet

1. A summary of account — the one page that states total charges and total credits and shows they agree.
2. Schedules supporting each line of the summary: property on hand at the beginning of the period, receipts, gains on sales, disbursements, losses on sales, and property on hand at the end. Additional schedules cover liabilities, changes in the form of assets, and other circumstances as they apply.
3. The statutory attachments required by Probate Code §2620(c) — the supporting statements and documentation that must accompany the accounting.
4. A petition for approval, and whatever your county requires alongside it: a local cover sheet, notice to interested persons, proposed order, and copies.

The schedules are the substance; the attachments are where filings most often turn out to be incomplete. Assemble both before you calendar the hearing, not after.

The equation everything serves

Property on hand at the beginning + receipts + gains on sales = disbursements + losses on sales + property on hand at the end.

Charges on the left, credits on the right, and they must be equal to the penny. Every schedule feeds one side. A worked example with real numbers shows how a two-year period lands on $0.00 variance.

What to keep as you go

• Every statement, every month, every account. A missing month is one of the most annoying defects to fix a year later, because closed accounts do not always reissue statements.
• Receipts for anything unusual — a large one-off payment, a reimbursement to yourself, anything to a family member.
• A contemporaneous note on every cash withdrawal. "Personal needs allowance, weekly" written at the time is worth far more than a reconstruction two years later.
• Court orders authorising fees, and the dates they were allowed.
• The prior approved accounting, which supplies your beginning figures.

What gets a filing rejected

In rough order of frequency, from what fiduciaries report:

1. It doesn't balance — a transcription slip or a double-counted transfer.
2. Missing §2620(c) attachments.
3. Beginning property doesn't match the prior approved accounting's ending property.
4. A gap in statement coverage, so the period isn't fully accounted for.
5. Sale proceeds shown as receipts instead of gains or losses against carry value.
6. Undocumented cash, or payments to the conservator not covered by an order.
7. Local requirements missed — the statewide forms were right, the county's cover sheet wasn't attached.

Note that six of those seven are clerical rather than substantive. That is the frustrating thing about this work: the hard professional judgment rarely causes the rejection.

Statewide forms, county rules

The GC-400 series is statewide and accepted in every California superior court. Counties then layer on local requirements — a probate cover sheet, an ordering convention for attachments, a required number of copies, sometimes a local declaration. Read your local rules alongside the form instructions, and if you file in more than one county, do not assume the second behaves like the first.

How long it takes

For a period with two or three accounts and a couple of thousand transactions, ten to twenty hours by hand is the number fiduciaries report, most of it re-typing and then reconciling. Software that reads the statements and cross-foots continuously collapses the mechanical part and leaves the judgment part — which was always the part that needed you.

FiduKit does exactly that, entirely inside your browser, so the conservatee's financial records never leave your computer. See how it works, or read what to look for in any GC-400 software before choosing anything.

Official sources

Get the current forms and instructions from the California Courts forms finder, and read Probate Code §2620 and your county's local probate rules. Where this guide and an official source disagree, the official source is right.