Important decisions sometimes require another person’s help or legal authority.
Decisions about care, benefits, property, finances, and legal affairs may involve a guardian, conservator, trustee, agent under power of attorney, representative payee, or personal representative. Sometimes that responsibility belongs to a professional. In many other cases, it belongs to a family member or friend.
The work matters enormously, and right now it's largely invisible. Existing records capture only parts of the field. No current national source brings together the people performing these roles, their pathways into the work, their practice conditions, and the support they need. Better descriptive information can help policymakers, regulators, educators, and professional organizations identify questions that warrant closer study and areas where training or support may be needed.
We'd like to make this work more visible, and we're inviting people across fiduciary roles and settings to take part:
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Professional fiduciaries: guardians, conservators, trustees, personal representatives, agents under power of attorney, representative payees, VA fiduciaries, public and deputy public guardians, nonprofit agencies, and people working in a fiduciary practice without a credential of their own
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People exploring this work, or partway through getting licensed or certified
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Family members and friends serving someone they care about, not as a business
How to interpret the results: The Fiduciary Field Census is an open, voluntary national field survey. Because no complete national list of fiduciaries exists, it uses broad outreach through professional, public, educational, and community networks rather than a probability sample. The results will describe participating respondents and identify patterns across roles and settings. They will not be presented as estimates of the total national fiduciary population.
It takes about ten minutes. The survey does not ask for your name, email address, employer, or license number. Findings will be reported only in aggregate. Responses from very small groups will be combined or withheld when necessary to protect participants. Respondents may skip substantive questions after completing required routing items.
We will publish the questionnaire, methodology, aggregate findings, and study limitations in December, free and open to everyone. Results for very small groups may be combined or withheld to protect participants and avoid overinterpreting limited data.
Why the national picture remains incomplete
Fiduciary work crosses legal roles, employment settings, and family relationships. No single federal occupational category or national registry captures everyone performing it. State licensing records and court data provide important information, but their coverage and definitions vary.
National data gaps are longstanding. In 2016, the Government Accountability Office reported that basic national guardianship data were limited, including the numbers of guardians serving older adults and older adults living under guardianship.
A Massachusetts Department of Public Health study, finalized in November 2025, examined the need and feasibility of qualified professional guardians for unrepresented patients. The researchers could not identify an independent data source confirming reports of a limited and shrinking guardian pool, and available data could not establish how many guardians were serving in certain specialized medical-treatment cases.
Existing studies illuminate particular states, populations, or aspects of guardianship. They do not provide a current national picture across the fiduciary roles included in this survey.
Who's asking, and our interest in it
The Fiduciary Institute is a commercial education company serving the fiduciary field. Its founder is a practicing and credentialed fiduciary who also participates in Oregon professional and public-service organizations. Those affiliations do not sponsor or endorse this survey. Because The Fiduciary Institute sells education in this field, it has a commercial interest in understanding the people who perform and enter the work.
The survey does not promote or ask about any Fiduciary Institute product. No product will be promoted in the public report. The questionnaire, methodology, aggregate findings, and limitations will be published free and open to everyone.
See every question before you decide
You can read the entire instrument, all three tracks, before you answer anything or forward it to anyone.
If you're deciding whether to share this with your members
We're asking state associations, court-convened stakeholder groups, agencies and professional networks to put this in front of the people they reach. If you're weighing that, here's everything that should matter to you:
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It's free and ungated. No membership, purchase or account is needed.
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Nothing in the survey or the report sells anything.
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The findings publish free to everyone in December, including your members, whether they took part or not.
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Where a state receives enough responses to support a meaningful and privacy-protective summary, we will be glad to share that state’s results before publication.
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We will report response counts transparently and will not interpret results from groups too small to support meaningful analysis.
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You can read every question above before you decide.
Questions, or want your state's survey results?
email info@thefiduciaryinstitute.com
Request for Survey Results
Want us to email survey results to you? Complete the form and we'll send them when published.