Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Wellview Consulting Rooms, North Sydney, Australia.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2019 Sep-Oct;66:101450. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2019.101450. Epub 2019 Jun 4.
Cognitive assessment is central to the evaluation of testamentary capacity. Such assessment is currently performed in a subjective, unreliable and non-standardized manner. Dementia, a cognitive illness, poses one of the largest threats to testamentary capacity in modern society. A better understanding of the ways in which dementia related cognitive impairment can affect a testator's ability to meet the relevant legal criteria to make a will is needed. A review of the literature over the past ten years focusing on what cognitive abilities are required to satisfy the legal criteria for testamentary capacity has highlighted an alarming scarcity of work in this area. There is little discussion spanning beyond general acknowledgement of the importance of memory and executive function. The specifics of how cognitive impairment impacts the four limbs of Banks v Goodfellow are rarely addressed. Several additional areas of cognitive function of importance to assessing testamentary capacity are the subject of this article.
认知评估是评估遗嘱能力的核心。目前，这种评估是主观的、不可靠的和非标准化的。痴呆症是一种认知疾病，是现代社会对遗嘱能力的最大威胁之一。需要更好地了解与痴呆症相关的认知障碍如何影响立遗嘱人满足相关法律标准以立遗嘱的能力。对过去十年中关于满足遗嘱能力法律标准所需的认知能力的文献进行回顾，突出表明在这一领域的工作严重不足。除了普遍认识到记忆和执行功能的重要性之外，几乎没有讨论。关于认知障碍如何影响 Banks v Goodfellow 的四个方面的具体内容很少被提及。本文还讨论了评估遗嘱能力的其他几个重要认知功能领域。
