Once Lee had control over Shurman's life, she tried to put her in a psychiatric hospital against her will. After Shurman spent a few hours in the hospital waiting area, the hospital concluded that she didn't meet the legal requirements for involuntary admission and sent her home. Meanwhile, though, her husband had been moved from their apartment, and no one would tell her where he was, Shurman testified under oath.

Three court-appointed mental health examiners eventually visited Shurman and split on whether she needed a guardian.

In October, after Shurman spent two harrowing months in guardianship, she appeared in court for the first time and testified lucidly in her own defense.

General Master Kathleen Ireland, the hearing officer, concluded that Shurman didn't meet the legal requirement for guardianship after all.

"This is all about money," an outraged Shurman said. "It's not about helping people, it's about taking their money."

Ireland, on her own initiative, has called a new hearing to determine whether Shurman's daughter acted in bad faith. Smith denies it. "There was absolutely no bad faith in this," Smith said. 'It's only in her mind that it's about money."

Professional guardians make a living having elderly or disabled people declared incompetent and placed in their care for a fee of up to $41.50 an hour in Broward and up to $75 an hour in Dade.

Emergency guardianships proliferated in Broward as a growing number of professional guardians scrambled for new clients.

Broward court officials say they are now so concerned about abuses of emergency temporary guardianships -- ETG in court parlance -- that they are trying to grant fewer.

Last month, after The Herald reviewed computerized court records on emergency temporary guardianships, a Broward court officer told a gathering of professional guardians that, from now on, they will have to take the standard, lengthier route to guardianship as is commonly done in other counties.

"It's going to be, as it should have been all along, just for an emergency," said Barbara A. Goglio, the top attorney for the probate court in Broward.

State law prescribes a monthlong process by which elderly or disabled people who need assistance enter guardianship and are stripped of rights, such as the rights to vote, drive, handle their money, determine where they live or pick their own friends.

First, three court-appointed mental health experts examine an alleged incapacitated person and offer an opinion on whether they are competent. Then a court officer presides at a hearing where both the guardian and the elderly person can testify. Finally, a judge rules on whether the old person is incompetent, and therefore needs a guardian.

State law offers one exception to this process. If an elderly person's mental well-being or their assets are in "imminent danger," a judge can grant a 60-day emergency temporary guardianship.

In Dade, judges granted about two emergency guardianships a month last year, typically in dire circumstances, such as an elderly person's being too demented to consent to life-saving surgery.

In Broward, by contrast, judges granted about 30 emergency guardianships a month in 1992 and 1993.

"Broward and Dade are like night and day," said Carol Taylor, director of utilization management at Aventura Hospital and Medical Center in Dade, which sometimes pays guardians or attorneys in each county $1,200 to help discharge patients deemed unable to care for themselves.