After I file a petition to be appointed guardian of my incompetent brother, who is legally required to be notified before the court actually holds a hearing on it?

Fixing the hearing

Once a petition for a general guardian is filed, the court's first duty is procedural: it shall fix a time and place for hearing the same, setting the case in motion toward an actual determination. Fixing the hearing date is what triggers the notice obligations that follow, since notice cannot meaningfully be given until there is an actual time and place to notify people about.

Mandatory notice recipients

Reasonable notice must go to the persons mentioned in the petition residing in the province. The rule is explicit that this includes the minor if above 14 years of age or the incompetent himself — the very person facing guardianship is not left out of the notice requirement just because a guardian is being sought over him. This ensures the proposed ward, whose autonomy is directly at stake, has a genuine opportunity to be heard on whether guardianship should actually be imposed. Petitioners cannot satisfy this section by notifying only relatives or other interested persons while quietly leaving out the very person the guardianship petition concerns.

Discretionary broader notice

Beyond that floor, the court may direct other general or special notice thereof to be given, allowing it to reach additional interested persons the petition may not have named, or to use publication where circumstances call for it. This discretion lets the court tailor notice to the actual facts of a case, expanding it where a wider circle of people plausibly has a stake in the outcome.

Scope given the 2003 carve-out

As with the rest of Rule 93, this notice requirement, in its current form, governs petitions for guardianship of incompetents; petitions concerning minors are handled under the separate notice provisions of the 2003 Rule on Guardianship of Minors. A petitioner seeking guardianship over an incompetent adult relative should look to this section for the applicable notice rules, while a petition over a minor ward follows that separate 2003 procedure instead. Confusing the two tracks risks giving the wrong kind of notice to the wrong set of recipients entirely, so identifying which proceeding actually applies should come before anything else.

Related provisions

• Rule 93, Section 3 — Court to set time for hearing; Notice thereof
• Rule 93, Section 2 — Contents of petition
• Rule 93, Section 4 — Opposition to petition