Exploration of the Appointed Guardianship System of the Civil Code

The appointed guardianship system in Article 33 of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China has achieved a breakthrough in the system of guardianship in China. Unlike legal guardianship, which is directly regulated by law, appointed guardianship is unique in that it is freely negotiated by the parties and places more emphasis on the ward’s own wishes, thus helping to protect the ward’s legal rights and interests more comprehensively. In the context of China’s aging society, the appointed guardianship system has a realistic urgency, but China is still in the early stage of exploration, the Civil Code only set the basic rules on appointed guardianship, its normative meaning still needs to be clarified, and a series of specific supporting rules need to be improved. Under this circumstance, it is of great theoretical and practical significance for the sustainable development of China’s aging society to learn from the appointed guardianship systems of foreign countries, summarize the existing achievements on the appointed guardianship of adults in China, analyze the factors affecting the operation of the appointed guardianship system, and discuss the existing deficiencies in the scope of the selection of guardians, the difficulties in defining the elements of validity, the lack of registration procedures, the unitary guardianship measures, and the lack of supervision mechanisms.