Testamentary capacity

Forensic psychiatry is an important subspecialty of psychiatry. Forensic psychiatrists play an important role in the society in assisting the judiciary in many complicated cases. In India, forensic psychiatry work is undertaken mostly by the general psychiatrists. Forensic psychiatric assessments are often associated with an element of anxiety or fear for a young psychiatrist. The present paper aims at familiarizing the readers with forensic evaluation in various situations so that they are able to carry out the assessments in real-life situations comfortably...

BACKGROUND: Mental health professionals are frequently involved in mental capacity determinations. However, there is a lack of specific measures and well-defined procedures for these evaluations. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a review of financial and testamentary capacity evaluation procedures, including not only the traditional neuropsychological and functional assessment but also the more recently developed forensic assessment instruments (FAIs), which have been developed to provide a specialized answer to legal systems regarding civil competencies...

BACKGROUND: Deathbed wills by their nature are susceptible to challenge. Clinicians are frequently invited to give expert opinion about a dying testator's testamentary capacity and/or vulnerability to undue influence either contemporaneously, when the will is made, or retrospectively upon a subsequent challenge, yet there is minimal discourse in this area to assist practice. METHODS: The IPA Capacity Taskforce explored the issue of deathbed wills to provide clinicians with an approach to the assessment of testamentary capacity at the end of life...

AIM: To audit the capacity assessments performed since December 2007 by Community Geriatric Services (CGS), Middlemore Hospital, and to develop a resource kit for training health professionals. METHOD: 1343 clinical letters were reviewed. Demographic data, reason for assessment and outcome of assessment were recorded. Data was analysed to reveal trends. RESULTS: There were 87 capacity assessments on 82 unique patients. The numbers of referrals for capacity assessments have increased since December 2007...

This article discusses the ever-increasing opportunity for forensic mental health evaluators to provide assistance to the legal system in the areas of testamentary capacity and guardianship assessments. These areas of evaluation are defined, and a discussion of preparation and execution of effective evaluations is provided. The legal concepts of undue influence and insane delusion are defined and applied to the evaluator's interview. Common cognitive concerns such as dementia and delirium may affect an evaluee's capacity, and their presence and effect on the evaluee are considered...

Medical practitioners are occasionally requested to provide opinions on people's ability to make a valid will. Moreover, if a will is challenged subsequent to the death of the testator, the evidence of a medical practitioner may be pivotal to a decision by the courts on the validity of the will. Litigation can be avoided if a well-founded expert opinion, based on thorough medical assessment, is available. The combination of an aging population, a consequent increase in the prevalence of dementia, an increase in per capita wealth, and more complex family structures with increasing rates of divorce and remarriage, is likely to result in a greatly increased frequency of demands on medical practitioners to provide opinion in this regard...

Forensic psychiatry determination is, ordered by a court, the analysis and interpretation of medical facts with important legal implications. In that sense, psychiatrists (or neuropsychiatrists), apart from their professional expertise, must be familiar with legal, economical and social significance of medical data, so that their forensic reports are clear and useful in the context of legal procedure. This review deals with forensic psychiatry aspects of mental capacity. In the introduction of the article, the explanation of relevant concepts such as mental capacity, contractual and testamentary capacity, informed consent, undue influence and forensic determination in light of Serbian statutory law is presented...

Huntington's disease (HD) is a relentlessly progressive and fatal neurological condition that is inherited. It has serious and disabling physical and mental components. As such, it impacts upon those who have HD, those with the potential to inherit it, and those who care for those with HD in a wide variety of ways. These can have many legal ramifications including in relation to evolving impairments of capacity which can have an outcome in terms of involuntary status as mental health patients, testamentary capacity and the need for guardianship and administration...

BACKGROUND: With the aging of the population there will be a substantial transfer of wealth in the next 25 years. The presence of delirium can complicate the evaluation of an older person's testamentary capacity and susceptibility to undue influence but has not been well examined in the existing literature. METHODS: A subcommittee of the IPA Task Force on Testamentary Capacity and Undue Influence undertook to review how to assess prospectively and retrospectively testamentary capacity and susceptibility to undue influence in patients with delirium...

Interest in hoarding behavior has intensified, as it works its way through DSM-V deliberations and treatment models. Meanwhile, both documentarians and fiction writers have embraced accounts of individuals with disposophobia and romanticized versions of the Collyer brothers, the Hermits of Harlem. In this article, I examine the range of media and professional attention given to hoarders and their problems and then focus on a potential role for forensic mental health professionals. The psycholegal problems of hoarders include health and zoning code violations that evolve into criminal charges, civil commitment, questions of animal cruelty, landlord-tenant disputes, divorce and custody evaluations, testamentary capacity, and child-neglect charges...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Testamentary capacity is one of the civil competences, it means that a natural person enjoys the capacity or qualification to establish testament and deal with his property. Recently, the cases of testamentary capacity assessment of the mentally disordered are increasing. This article firstly introduces the concepts of the testament as well as the testamentary capacity, and then summarizes the assessment standard of the testamentary capacity, by using the Banks v. Goodfellow case as a basis to make the standard criteria including: the understanding of the nature of a will and codicil, the knowledge of the general extent of one's assets, the knowledge of the natural object of one's bounty, the understanding of the impact of the distribution of the assets of the estate, and the absence of a delusion specifically affecting the distribution of the estate...

BACKGROUND: Challenges to wills on the basis of lack of testamentary capacity and/or undue influence are likely to increase over the next generation. Since contemporaneous assessment of testamentary capacity can be a powerful influence on the outcome of such challenges, there will be an associated increase in requests for expert assessment of testamentary capacity. There is a need to provide such potential experts with the knowledge and guidelines necessary to conduct assessments that will be helpful to the judicial system...

Psychiatric reports in German civil law cases are required if questions are raised of legal capacity, capacity to express a testamentary will, ability to sue or be sued, capacity to marry, ability of mentally disordered patients to consent to treatment, and when custody or hospital orders of these patients is considered or compensation is due for mental disorders resulting from accidents. Many reports must decide whether the ability to decide using sound reason or motives is or was impaired by a mental disorder...

BACKGROUND: As people live longer, there is increasing potential for mental disorders to interfere with testamentary distribution and render older people more vulnerable to "undue influence" when they are making a will. Accordingly, clinicians dealing with the mental disorders of older people will be called upon increasingly to advise the courts about a person's vulnerability to undue influence. METHOD: A Subcommittee of the IPA Task Force on Testamentary Capacity and Undue Influence undertook to establish consensus on the definition of undue influence and the provision of guidelines for expert assessment of risk factors for undue influence...

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to establish the morbidity structure among testators whose wills were challenged as well as to reveal if there is a specific relationship between certain diagnostic categories in the testators' health status and forensic psychiatry expert opinion on testamentary incapacity. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The authors analyzed 156 consecutive forensic psychiatry reports on retrospective, determination of testamentary capacity made in the Forensic Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Belgrade in the period 1965 - 2005...

OBJECTIVE: To provide an objective way to analyze handwriting, and to test its reliability and correlation with mental deterioration. Handwriting may give clues to the cognitive status of the writer, thus its analysis might be helpful, for example, in the forensic evaluation of a controversial handwritten last will. DESIGN: We devised a semiquantitative score system taking into account verbal and lexical skills and spatial orientation. We investigated its inter-rater reliability and its correlation with validated tests of neuropsychological status, such the Milan Overall Dementia Assessment (MODA) and the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE)...

As we enter the 21st century, growth of the elderly population, the costs of care, and the advances of medical science and technology will continue to have an impact on the patient-physician relationship. Transformation of the health care system will also raise ethical issues inherent to changing roles. The special nature of Alzheimer's patients and the natural course of their disease require special care on the part of physicians to meet the ethical challenges and establish medical goals, in conjunction with their patients and their families...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The examination for testamentary capacity poses several unique challenges to the forensic evaluator, especially when performed, as is often the case, postmortem. Forensic experience reveals that a series of common pitfalls awaits the unwary witness. This brief review identifies the more common pitfalls and suggests how to avoid them.