Professional Guardian Fees 'Opaque'... "Workload and Case Difficulty Should Be Added to the Base Fee"

[Financial News] A study has found that wards and their families have difficulty predicting how much they will have to pay because the criteria for setting professional guardian fees are unclear. In some cases, guardians are even working for low fees or no compensation. The study proposed a mixed fee system as an alternative, with a standardized base fee supplemented according to the actual workload, case difficulty, and whether specialized services are provided. 

According to legal sector sources on the 22nd, a forum titled 'Research Findings and Discussion on Standardizing the Professional Guardian Fee System and Developing Guidelines for Fee Claims' was held the previous day at the Gangnam-gu branch office of YK Law Firm in Seoul.
The forum was hosted by the Korean Guardianship Association (KGA), organized by its affiliated Decision-Making Support Research Institute, and sponsored by YK Law Firm. Attorney Bae Gwang-yeol of OnYul and social worker Han Jin-su of the Korean Guardianship Social Welfare Society gave presentations, followed by a discussion among four experts and a question-and-answer session. 
According to the 'Research Report on Standardizing the Professional Guardian Fee System and Developing Guidelines for Fee Claims' by the Decision-Making Support Research Institute affiliated with the KGA, the current Civil Act requires the family court to set reasonable fees after considering the ward's financial situation and other circumstances.
Professional guardians are appointed when disputes arise among relatives over property management or personal care, or when it is difficult to find a suitable family guardian. They are mainly professionals with relevant qualifications, such as attorneys, judicial scriveners, social workers, accountants, and tax accountants, as well as related organizations.
However, standardized criteria showing how asset size, workload, and case difficulty are reflected in fees have not been sufficiently disclosed. As a result, wards and their families have difficulty predicting how much they will have to pay when a professional guardian is appointed. Guardians, too, reportedly find it difficult to estimate how much compensation will be recognized for the work they perform.
The researchers analyzed 119 court rulings on the awarding of guardianship fees received by OnYul, an incorporated association that has worked as a professional guardian since 2016. The analysis covered 42 wards for whom a guardian or guardian supervisor had been appointed.
Only six of the 119 rulings ordered the payment of a fixed monthly fee. The remaining 113 cases determined compensation retroactively based on the work actually performed over a specified period.
The OnYul cases showed that guardianship fees tended to be determined by considering actual working hours, the nature of the work, and the difficulty and special characteristics of each case, rather than being based solely on the ward's total assets. In cases involving assets of less than KRW 5 billion, the differences in average hourly fees based on asset size were not significant.
In cases involving fewer than 200 working hours per year, the average hourly fee ranged from approximately KRW 91,000 to KRW 103,000. By contrast, cases involving 200 or more hours of work per year had a lower average of approximately KRW 81,000 per hour. The researchers analyzed that this result included cases in which substantial time was spent on wards with insufficient available cash, while the fees were set at a low level.
A focus group interview with five experts presented a case in which a publicly appointed guardian worked 332 hours over four months but was awarded a monthly fee of KRW 400,000. Based on the actual time spent, this amounted to approximately KRW 4,800 per hour. There were also cases in which guardians delayed filing claims for two to three years, effectively working without pay, because they feared that claiming fees would reduce the ward's assets needed for living expenses. However, these were individual examples presented by interview participants and do not represent the average compensation level of all publicly appointed guardians.

To address these issues, the researchers proposed a mixed fee system based on a 'base fee + workload supplement + difficulty supplement + specialized-service supplement.'
The base fee would apply to routine property management and personal care, communication with relevant institutions, administrative work, and regular reporting. A workload supplement would be added when more time than usual is required. A difficulty supplement would apply in cases involving serious family conflicts or litigation, repeated responses to medical institutions, urgent personal care, or complex property management.
The researchers said a specialized-service supplement should be recognized when professional judgment in areas such as law, accounting, social welfare, or medicine is actually used in the work. They added that the assessment should be based on the content and difficulty of the work performed, rather than on the guardian's professional field itself.
They also proposed introducing standardized work logs and timesheets to objectively verify guardians' workloads. After first calculating an appropriate fee based on workload and difficulty, the portion that the ward cannot afford should be covered with public funds, they suggested.
However, the study has limitations because it focused on OnYul's cases and did not reflect overall court statistics on guardianship fee awards or the views of court officials.

[email protected] Yoo Seon-jun Reporter