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A road wraps around itsel,f forming a brain

Matters of memory

Helen Bradford-Swire, News Editor at STEP, examines the issues that loss of mental capacity can cause to estates and looks at STEP’s progress on promoting an international standard in planning for capacity

Contentious estate litigation is, on its own account, a thorny issue for many families; however, later-life and post-death planning is complicated tenfold by issues of mental capacity. Problems for testators who have lost – or are losing – capacity range from mismanagement of financial affairs and confusion over wills and bequests to the risk of financial abuse and undue influence.

According to the worldwide federation of Alzheimer associations, Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI), someone in the world develops dementia every three seconds. ADI notes that, in 2020, there were over 55 million people worldwide living with dementia. It predicts that the number will almost double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050.[1]

It is a problem that governments must face up to with some urgency: the annual global cost of dementia is now above USD1.3 trillion and is expected to rise to USD2.8 trillion by 2030, according to ADI, with organisations such as the World Health Organization emphasising the incrementally greater impact it is having on developing countries.

‘This has always been an issue of critical importance to those whose capacity to deal with property has diminished, but the urgency has increased in recent times as the global population ages,’ says Ian Lebane TEP,[2] a member of STEP’s Global Representative Power (GRP) Working Group. ‘Statistically, that results in a greater percentage of individuals with diminished capacity and it’s clear that it is more imperative than ever to devise and implement workable solutions.’

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