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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Decisional capacity in theory and practice
— legal process versus "bumbling through" | | Author(s) | M B Kapp |
| Journal title | Aging & Mental Health, vol 6, no 4, November 2002 |
| Pages | pp 413-417 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Court of protection ; Law ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Guardianship is a legal device designed to protect people who lack the cognitive and emotional capacity to make their own life decisions. However, for those who are clearly severely mentally disabled but comprise a "grey area", the capacity issue never gets raised formally, and the legal process of guardianship is never invoked. Instead, the various parties generally "muddle through" extra-legally as best they can. When the capacity issue does get raised formally, it is often done as a matter of legal self-protection for a healthcare provider or financial institution, rather than primarily for the world's benefit. The central policy issue to be debated is whether we should be encouraging or discouraging the extra-legal, muddling through type handling of those with questionable capacity, rather than initiating formal judicial involvement in formalised guardianship. A closely related issue is what we should be teaching health care providers, finance officers, and other third parties who in reality are the ones who initially decide whether the formal guardianship system should be initiated for a particular person. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-021216238 A |
| Classmark | JVC: VR: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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