Greep acted within his legal discretionary scope. Your post is long (and long on guesswork), but let me just focus on what I think your central point is:
>Is it really not obvious? Greer didn't want to have the hearings. He couldn't just declare that he'd never hold them, since the parents had the legal right to demand them.
What legal right? Once you grow up and get married, your parents lose pretty much all standing. They retain a sort of "interested party" status which courts entertain (such as filing Victim Impact Statements, etc.). But the rebutttable presumption mountain is very high.
Greer decided to let adults make adult decisions and live with them. He had no legal obligation to entetain being circus-master in what was clearly going to be a 99% emotional, 1% legal issue.
Do you believe it even remotely likely that a man who has openly pledged to marry another woman upon the death of his wife would not harbor a desire to have his wife dead? Do you believe it even remotely likely that such a person would not want to prevent, if possible, any improvement in his wife's condition?
You may regard it as "conjecture" that Michael Schiavo had craven motives for wanting his wife dead, but I don't see how any reasonable person who is aware of the timeline and certain undisputed facts thereon could believe that he did not.
I'll admit that Judge Greer's motives are less clear. The fact of his partiality, however, is not. Suggesting that there was malfeasance in Terri's guardianship that Greer didn't exposed is conjecture, but it's the simplest explanation for Greer's persistent behavior. It's also somewhat self-fulfilling: if there was ever any malfeasance (even if he only let Michael do something illegal because he was too lazy to inspect the records), Greer would likely have had to allow more malfeasance to prevent the first batch from coming to light.
They retain a sort of "interested party" status which courts entertain (such as filing Victim Impact Statements, etc.). But the rebutttable presumption mountain is very high.
The statutes provide a procedure by which interested parties (the parents certainly qualify) may challenge a person's guardianship status based upon that person's no longer being elligible to be guardian. The parents filed such a challenge as provided by statute in 2002.
Can such a statute be held to have any meaning if a judge doesn't have to rule for or against a challenge, but can simply sit on it indefinitely? Do you believe judges should have the authority to keep people in positions of guardianship when they are no longer elligible?