Of Sound Mind? Dementia and Aspects of Assessing Legal Capacity.

As dementia progresses, it weakens a person's legal capacity. Both legal and medical aspects are closely intertwined in the assessment of legal capacity. It is a legal problem whose solution requires medical expertise and a medical point of view. It is essential for lawyers to have basic knowledge about the effects of dementing illnesses in order to properly understand medical evidence presented in a case. For a physician it is necessary to have knowledge about different kinds of legal capacities and the complexity of legal assessment.