Giles Eyre & Dr Linda Monaci provide practical insight into assessing a testator’s capacity after their death
- Assessing mental capacity retrospectively is a difficult task: it is essential to instruct an expert, such as a neuropsychologist, to provide a mental capacity assessment on the basis of the evidence then available.
Marie was born in France but had lived in the UK for the last 35 years. She died of dementia aged 88 in a nursing home, leaving under her will a considerable wealth to her four children, but divided unequally, and a legacy to an unrelated younger man.
Two of her children who lived abroad instructed a solicitor to contest the will as they claimed she lacked capacity at the time that the will was made and that the assets should be divided equally among all four children, in accordance with her previous will, and that the gift of £20,000 she had made to a man in his fifties should not be allowed as they claimed he had been a younger lover of hers who sought fortune and had taken advantage
