93.4% of Adult Guardianship Applications Cite Managing or Closing a Bank Account — The Entrance to a System for Supporting Decisions Sits at a Bank Counter

Managing or closing bank accounts93.4%39,871

Protection of personal welfare74.2%31,655

Long-term care insurance contracts45.7%19,502

Disposing of property36.3%15,502

Inheritance procedures25.6%10,909

Receiving insurance payouts17.8%7,578

Litigation and similar6.1%2,613

An application may cite more than one motive, so the totals exceed the 42,674 concluded cases. Percentages are calculated against that total. Figures cover January to December 2025.

The Family Bureau of the General Secretariat of Japan's Supreme Court publishes an annual compilation that includes a table of what prompts an application for adult guardianship. The procedure itself is set out on the courts' guardianship portal.

For 2025 the leading motive was managing or closing bank accounts, at 39,871 cases and 93.4%[1]. Second came protection of personal welfare at 74.2%, third long-term care insurance contracts at 45.7%. Multiple motives may be cited, so the total exceeds 100%, but a figure above 90% means almost every application passes through this one point.

The adult guardianship system gives legal support for the property and contracts of a person whose decision-making capacity is impaired. What actually sends people to the family court, though, is not the fact of that impairment. It is a procedural blockage: a deposit that cannot be withdrawn, an account that cannot be closed.

The scale runs as follows. At the end of December 2025 there were 259,901 users, up 2.3% from 253,941[1]. Applications came to 43,159, up 3.2% on the year[1].

The applicants are the person themselves and the mayor

Who files tells you the distance between what the system assumes and what happens.

First is the person themselves at 10,620 applications, 24.8%. Second is the municipal mayor at 10,139, 23.7%. Third is the person's child at 7,929, 18.5%[2]. Spouses account for 1,711, or 4.0%.

An application by a mayor is what happens when there is no family, or family exists but is barely involved. That accounts for close to one application in four, and it rose 1.6% from 9,979 the previous year[2].

The mayor's share varies fourfold by region

Under the same system, who files differs sharply by place.

By family court district, applications by mayors account for 45.0% in Aomori, 43.4% in Tokushima, 38.8% in Kushiro, 38.5% in Kochi and 38.1% in Yamagata[2]. At the other end, Kyoto stands at 11.4%, Kobe at 11.9%, Asahikawa at 14.2%, Fukuoka at 15.9% and Osaka at 16.0%[2].

Close to a fourfold gap between top and bottom. The share of people losing capacity is unlikely to differ fourfold by region. What differs is whether the family moves or the administration does.

More than eight in ten guardians are not relatives

Who gets appointed has moved away from family too. Guardians appointed from outside the family numbered 35,718, or 83.6%; relatives numbered 7,014, or 16.4%[2].

The non-family breakdown runs 11,966 judicial scriveners (33.5%), 8,903 lawyers (24.9%), 7,280 certified social workers (20.4%), 2,933 other corporate bodies (8.2%), 2,235 administrative scriveners (6.3%) and 1,615 social welfare councils (4.5%)[2].

The 7,014 family appointments are lopsided as well. Children account for 3,647 (52.0%), other relatives 1,329 (18.9%), siblings 1,053 (15.0%), spouses 523 (7.5%) and parents 462 (6.6%)[2].

A spouse becomes the guardian in 1.2% of all cases. Among older couples, one partner is often in no position to take it on.

Applications naming a relative as the proposed guardian come to 19.7%[2]. In eight cases out of ten, nobody expected family to do it in the first place.

Six in ten cases begin with dementia

Why the system became necessary is published too. Dementia accounts for 61.3% of cases, followed by intellectual disability at 9.6%, schizophrenia at 9.3%, higher brain dysfunction at 4.4% and prolonged disorders of consciousness at 0.5%, with 14.9% classified as other[2].

Other covers developmental disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, and impairment from alcohol dependence or epilepsy[2].

Causes other than dementia account for 38.7%. This is not only a matter of old age.

The age profile differs sharply between men and women

The age distribution shows it. The people concerned are 44.5% male and 55.5% female[2].

Among men, 34.5% are 80 or over and 28.1% are in their seventies, with 71.3% aged 65 or over[2]. Among women, 63.1% are 80 or over and 18.8% are in their seventies, with 85.8% aged 65 or over[2].

Among men, 21.7% are under 60. Women cluster at the older end; men include a working-age layer. Cases arising from intellectual disability and schizophrenia sit in that layer.

List every motive and money comes out on top

Motives are tallied with multiple responses allowed. Listed in full:

Managing or closing deposit accounts, 39,871 (93.4%); protection of personal welfare, 31,655 (74.2%); long-term care insurance contracts, 19,502 (45.7%); disposing of real property, 15,502 (36.3%); inheritance procedures, 10,909 (25.6%); receiving insurance payouts, 7,578 (17.8%); other, 3,147 (7.4%); litigation, 2,613 (6.1%)[2].

Deposits, property, inheritance, insurance. All situations where money cannot be moved. Protection of personal welfare runs high at 74.2%, but rarely stands alone as the reason for filing; it usually arrives attached to the deposit account problem.

The lighter categories grow while voluntary guardianship does not

How the four categories grow shows how the system is used.

Users of full guardianship, the heaviest category, number 180,828, up 0.8% on the year; assistance numbers 58,162, up 5.9%; and support numbers 18,078, up 7.2%[2]. The lighter the category, the faster the growth, which looks like movement toward using the system at an earlier stage.

But the mechanism for deciding in advance is not moving. Voluntary guardianship, where a person appoints their own guardian while still capable, has 2,833 users[2], 1.1% of the total of 259,901.

The same holds on the application side. Applications to appoint a voluntary guardianship supervisor came to 881, up 0.8%, against 29,233 for full guardianship (up 1.6%), 9,743 for assistance (up 6.4%) and 3,302 for support (up 9.1%)[2]. Voluntary guardianship alone is flat.

What sets the timing is not the person's condition

This is where the design of the entrance bites. That more than nine in ten applications enter through managing or closing a deposit account means the timing of the system is set not by the person's condition but by a procedural need. It starts when the bank counter stops. Until it stops, the system does not trigger, however far capacity has fallen.

Reversing that order causes problems. One is haste: people file after they are already stuck, and the hearing still takes time. 37.9% conclude within a month, 71.1% within two and 93.8% within four[2].

The other is that the person loses the chance to choose their own guardian. Voluntary guardianship sitting at 1.1% reads as the system not being in view while there is still a choice to make.

Capacity is formally assessed in 3.4% of cases

One more figure shows how the entrance is built.

Of concluded cases, a formal expert assessment was carried out in 3.4% of the total, against 3.8% the previous year[2]. In 96.6% the decision rests on a doctor's certificate alone.

Where assessments happen they are quick and cheap. 52.6% conclude within a month and 89.4% within two; 43.7% cost 50,000 yen or less and 85.8% cost 100,000 yen or less[2].

Neither slow nor expensive, and used in 3.4% of cases. The step that medically establishes whether capacity is impaired is, in practice, almost always skipped.

A supervisor is appointed in 3.4% of cases

Oversight after appointment is thin as well.

Of the 39,860 cases granted, a guardianship supervisor was appointed in 1,375, or 3.4%[2]. The breakdown runs 726 lawyers (52.8%), 474 judicial scriveners (34.5%), 121 social welfare councils (8.8%) and 8 certified social workers (0.6%)[2].

In 96.6% of cases nobody supervises the guardian. The family court checks through filed reports instead. The assumption that professional guardians are safe rests on this figure.

The mechanism for widening the pool has not reached scale

Citizen guardians, local residents trained to take the role, account for 390 appointments[2], 1.1% of the 35,718 non-family appointments. Up from 330 the previous year, but small in absolute terms.

A citizen guardian is defined as a natural person other than a lawyer, judicial scrivener, certified social worker and similar, with no family or personal connection to the person concerned, who has acquired knowledge and skills through a training course run by a local authority or equivalent body in order to serve as a guardian[2]. Training exists in many places; 390 a year reach appointment.

Relying on professionals comes back as remuneration paid out of the person's own assets, in principle until they die.

People who never reach the counter do not appear in the figures

The number of people who need the system and the number who use it are different things. Exclusion and non-take-up（このサイトの記事） covered why provision and reach have to be counted separately.

Here the route in runs entirely through a bank counter. Anyone who never reaches that counter does not appear in the figures at all.

The same "no family" problem surfaces in what happens when a facility admits an older person with no relatives（このサイトの記事）. Support with decision-making and the role of a guarantor are separate in law, and arrive together in practice.

The 132 people diagnosed with dementia inside penal institutions in older prisoners and reoffending（このサイトの記事） sit in the same place. A diagnosis exists; no published figure follows whether they reached anything outside.

What has to be counted before the next decision

What is published is the number of applications, their motives and the attributes of those appointed. Two things are missing.

The first is how many never reach an application. How many people are turned away at a bank counter, and how many of those go on to file. When the counter is the entrance, that number decides whether the system's reach can be measured at all.

The second is why the mayor's share varies fourfold by region. Family structure, municipal capacity, or how financial institutions apply their rules. A fourfold difference in how one system is used means something is producing that difference. Until it is identified, there is no telling whether a low share is good or bad.

Further Reading

• 『成年後見の社会学』 (The Sociology of Adult Guardianship)（外部サイト、新しいタブで開きます） (Shinya Saisho, Keiso Shobo). A study based on interviews examining how the system is used and who carries it. Useful for rereading the placement of the entrance from the side of those affected.

References

Overview of Adult Guardianship Cases, January to December 2025 — Family Bureau, General Secretariat of the Supreme Court (2026). Supreme Court of Japan

Overview of Adult Guardianship Cases, January to December 2024 — Family Bureau, General Secretariat of the Supreme Court (2025). Supreme Court of Japan

Promotion of the Use of the Adult Guardianship System — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (2026). Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare