Conservatorship and Estate of Bell CA2/7

DISCUSSION

Probate Code sections 2641 and 2642 authorize payments from a conservatee’s estate to compensate a conservator and the conservator’s attorneys for services during the conservatorship. (Conservatorship of Cornelius (2011) 200 Cal.App.4th 1198, 1204.) Without citing those statutory provisions governing his request, Diop contends he spent three years and more than $18,000 in attorney fees establishing the need for a conservatorship of Bell and the probate court erred in failing to consider his December 2020 “supplemental petition” when denying his request for fees. There are numerous problems with Diop’s appeal. First, Diop failed to identify the December 2020 filing in his designation of record on appeal, and those documents are not included as a part of the record before us. Diop’s attachment of a copy of those documents, without any file stamp, to his appellate brief instead of filing a motion to augment the record was improper and did not cure the defect. (See Cal. Rules of Court, rules 8.155(a) [augmenting the record on appeal], 8.204(d) [attachments to briefs].) Second, even if Diop had properly moved to augment the record on appeal with a file-stamped copy of the…