Why Mental Capacity Cases Are Hard to Prove

Capacity is a very, like I said, it's a very fluid thing. It's day-to-day. It's hour-to-hour. And so, we look at, you know, before this person did any changes, did they have a doctor write a letter that said they could make legal decisions? Is there a neurologist involved? Do we already have some kind of diagnosis that would make us look more into it? "Hey, you know, not every diagnosis precludes making new documents," but definitely affects it based on severity, where they're at in the cycle.

So, that's, again, unfortunately, where it kind of comes to the attorney looking at it and kind of seeing. I know we've had many cases where on the surface, you've looked at it and it's very logical, like, "No, this person did not have capacity." But trying to get the medical records to prove it, potentially having a doctor testify if they were closely monitoring them, that's kind of where that starts to come in, and where we potentially do subpoenas for medical records, we do depositions of doctors. Did this person truly have capacity?

But it is very much an uphill battle here in Arizona. It's a tough, tough thing.