WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – A judge on Wednesday granted temporary guardianship to the husband of a woman on a feeding tube in a case similar to the lengthy legal dispute over whether Terri Schiavo should be kept alive.

Karen Weber, 57, has been in and out of a nursing home and hospital since having a stroke in December.

She is now hospitalized on a feeding tube in Okeechobee and suffering from meningitis, her mother, Martha Tatro, said Wednesday.

Weber's husband, Raymond, sought earlier this year to have the feeding tube removed and his wife transferred to a hospice ward, where she would likely die.

He says she is in a vegetative state and would not want to live this way. But Weber's mother is fighting to keep her alive, arguing she has been alert and responsive at times and doesn't want to die.

She said that during visits with her daughter in March and April, Weber was aware and used body language to communicate.

“She had her faculties and she made it clear that she did not want her feeding tube removed,” Tatro said after Wednesday's hearing in Okeechobee. “She could laugh and she could giggle and she could shake her head yes and no.”

Since then, Weber's condition has deteriorated, but Tatro remains confident she can recover.

Despite the guardianship order, an injunction that the judge issued in March to prohibit the feeding tube's removal remains in place.

“The injunction says he (Raymond Weber) has to adhere to reasonable medical advice, but he can make those decisions as long as the feeding tube and ventilator are kept in place,” said John Cook, an attorney appointed by the court to represent Karen Weber, who does not have a living will and cannot talk.

Tatro had been given temporary emergency guardianship over her daughter last week, but the judge on Wednesday handed it to Weber's husband, pending another guardianship hearing next week at which Tatro's attorney plans to bring in medical experts.

“I feel much better with the judge's ruling,” Raymond Weber said Wednesday. He declined to comment further.

His attorney, Colin Cameron, did not immediately return a telephone message.

The arguments in this case are similar to those made over Schiavo, whose husband wanted her feeding tube removed against the wishes of her parents.

Congress passed a bill that allowed a federal court to intervene. President Bush later signed the bill into law, but the Supreme Court sided with the husband. Schiavo was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state after her heart stopped in 1990.

She died amid protests outside her hospice in 2005 after her husband prevailed in the polarizing dispute.