Assessing capacity and diagnosing dementia are not the same thing. Medical professionals time and time again treat these things interchangeably but they are NOT the same thing. Wanting a diagnosis is understandable. You can have a diagnosis of dementia and not have your capacity affected at all though, which is the case for my father in law as they pushed for an answer by paying for a privet consultancy who then was able to refer them for testing sooner. Although the tests you have talked about are useful for determining whether they need to investigate further, they actually shouldn't be used alone to determine capacity as capacity should be tested in relation to a subject matter in particular, for example if you needed/wanted to sell your house in your joint names to fund private care, you would need to determine if your partner understood the house would be sold aka no longer yours and no longer where you would both be living, the money would be used to fund the care etc. and not understanding an element of that, even if understanding some of it, or understanding it but only for an hour and then forgetting, would make you start questioning capacity. That doesn't mean that person doesn't have capacity in other respects of their life so you have to constantly be assessing capacity, even if someone has already been said to lack capacity in one respect.
An example would be not having capacity to physically managing your money and bank accounts but still knowing what to spend your money on and what you don't want your money being spent on. Therefore you couldn't make a statement like "he doesn't have capacity to manage his finances" because that isn't completely true and treating someone like that would be overstepping the mark. That wouldn't be fair.
It is all case by case. You have to judge each case in its own right. Your post has made me understand why there is frustration about determining capacity now though by thinking of it as being part of diagnosis.
In one of your previous post's you said,
Quote;
" For those of you saying that she only needs to understand for a minute or a very short period of time, that is not true and very flaky foundations for any claim that a person had capacity at the time of signing such a document. A person with capacity should be able to make their own decisions about the matter in question, even if that decision seems unwise ".
I presume that was in response to my previous post.
You then go on to say in your above post that it is
" all case by case ",
and that
" You can have a diagnosis of dementia and not have your capacity affected at all though ",
which is perfectly true.
It also means for the purpose of POA that the person with dementia " may " be perfectly capable of making a power of attorney decision because they have capacity, but 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 week later they don't remember doing the POA because they have forgotten, and as you say it is all a case by case thing, and if the witness is happy to confirm that the person with dementia understood " at that time " what they were doing, then for the most I do not see any problems occurring.
Quote;
" A person with capacity should be able to make their own decisions about the matter in question, even if that decision seems unwise ".
My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's about 12 year's ago. Every week for the next 10 years I asked her to sell her house, I told her that I would sell my house, and that we would either buy two houses next door to each other, or one bigger property with a granny flat or annex, in order for my wife and myself to look after her, and my father in their future year's.
My father would have done it the next day, but for 10 years my mother said, " but I like it here, I like the neighbours, I like the view.
It didn't happen because I respected her " mental capacity ", and as the years rolled by I continued to respect her " mental capacity " even though she couldn't remember what she had for breakfast.
Just because she had Alzheimers dementia, it did not mean she didn't know what she liked and what she didn't like, she still knew what she wanted and what she didn't want.
There is not a time limit after making a POA for people remembering, it is if they know what they are doing at that time.
That is a decision the witnesses should make themselves happy with, and I think conforms to your " case by case ".