법조 제75권 제3호(통권 제777호) 연구논문 - 36 - caregivers regarded it as highly important—yielding the largest gap in perception between the two groups. This suggests that as persons with developmental disabilities expand their participation in local communities and their spheres of daily life, the need for daily life support guardianship may become increasingly concrete. Accordingly, even where guardianship centered on legal representation or property management is not required, there is a clear need to institutionalize support systems capable of providing more prompt and flexible assistance for persons with developmental disabilities who need only daily life support. Furthermore, in cases involving simple daily living assistance, it is necessary to explore ways to legally recognize legal acts performed by persons with developmental disabilities themselves—with the assistance of caregivers—without requiring the formal commencement of guardianship. In this regard, the Supported Decision-Making (SDM) system recently developed in the United States offers much to learn from. SDM is designed as an alternative to, or means of avoiding guardianship, and is recognized as a representative model for respecting the rights and intentions of individuals. Individuals enter into support agreements with persons they trust, and as individual states grant these agreements legal effect, the system has come into increasingly active use. The Korean legal system, by contrast, still treats the "absence of decision-making capacity" as the central criterion for commencing guardianship, an approach that tends to impose excessive restrictions on individuals' legal capacity. Korea, too, needs to shift its paradigm from one centered on decision-making capacity to one centered on support—and in this respect, the U.S. SDM system has important implications to offer.
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