Also known as: senile · mental incapacity · incapacity
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
Mental incapacity arising from advanced age or degenerative cognitive decline that renders a person unable to understand the nature and consequences of a transaction or to give effective consent to an intentional invasion of personal interests.
Simone Sanders mails an offer to sell her gallery to Spencer Silver. Before Spencer can accept, Simone suffers a sharp cognitive decline from senility and can no longer manage her affairs. The power of acceptance terminates because the offeror has lost capacity.
Serena Soto grants her nephew power of attorney to manage rental properties. After Serena develops senility that prevents her from understanding financial decisions, the agent's authority ends in the same manner as if she had died.
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Sean Steele executes a power of attorney naming his daughter as agent. The document states it is durable. When Sean later experiences senility that leaves him unable to handle his own affairs, the agent's authority continues without interruption.
Sophia Singh owns a studio. Her live-in caregiver Samuel Soto has advanced senility and often mistakes visitors for old friends. When the caregiver invites a contractor inside, the entry remains trespass because the caregiver lacks capacity to consent.
Sterling Manufacturing's founder creates a trust benefiting his genetic children. One nonmarital child later suffers senility that prevents the founder from functioning as a parent before the child's majority. The child remains a beneficiary under the class gift because the founder's intent is presumed unchanged.
Summit Bank grants Spencer Silver an option to purchase land. Before Spencer exercises the option, the bank's president develops senility. The power of acceptance remains intact because an option contract is not terminated by the offeror's loss of capacity.
Consent to an intentional tort requires the person giving consent to understand the nature and consequences of the contact. When a person has advanced dementia that prevents such understanding, any apparent consent is ineffective even if the person utters words of agreement.
A resident with advanced dementia who frequently mistakes visitors for old friends lacks capacity to consent to entry. The owner may still maintain a trespass claim because the caregiver's invitation does not supply effective consent from a possessor with legal capacity.
In a diversity case applying state law, a conservatorship order resting on findings of cognitive decline that impair judgment in financial and personal matters renders the witness incompetent under state precedent incorporated by Federal Rule of Evidence 601.
A contract is voidable when the signer lacked capacity to understand the nature and consequences of the transaction or to act reasonably in relation to it and the other party had reason to know of the condition. Documented bipolar episodes, flat affect, slurred speech, and prior hospitalization notices supply evidence of incapacity.
…next friend to assert constitutional rights on behalf of an incompetent patient who is unable to do so. Thus, if Nancy Cruzan's incapacity to "exercise" her rights is to alter the balance between her interests and the State's, there must be some further explanation of how it does so. The Court offers two possibilities, neither…