The Financial Capacity Instrument (FCI) is a conceptually based, standardized psychometric instrument designed to directly assess everyday financial activities and abilities relevant to community-dwelling adults. The FCI assesses financial skills at the task, domain, and global levels. The current version of the FCI (FCI-9) consists of 20 financial tasks, 9 domains of financial activity, and
Diminished capacity refers to two distinct doctrines. The first, known as the mens rea variant, refers to the use of evidence of mental abnormality to negate a mens rea—a mental state such as intent, required by the definition of the crime charged (the mens rea variant). The second, known as the partial responsibility variant, refers
With the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the Fourteenth Amendment right to due process as its grounding, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), established important procedural protections for criminal suspects in custodial interrogations. Aware of the inherently coercive nature of interrogations and of suspects’ risk of self-incrimination, the Miranda Court mandated
The capacity to consent to treatment, also known as treatment consent capacity (TCC) and medical decisionmaking capacity, is a civil legal capacity with important ethical, legal, and functional aspects. TCC is a fundamental aspect of personal autonomy and self-determination and refers to a person’s cognitive and emotional capacity to consent to medical treatment. TCC involves
Prior to interrogating a suspect, police officers must inform individuals of their legal rights. Mental health professionals are frequently called on to evaluate the extent to which criminal suspects have understood their legal arrest rights and made valid decisions with respect to waiving those rights. For individuals to knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waive their rights
Under Anglo-American law, the right of testation refers to the freedom to choose how one’s property and other possessions will be disposed of following one’s death. For a will to be valid, the testator (the person making the will) must have testamentary capacity (TC) at the time that the will is executed. TC is thus
Financial capacity (FC) is a medical-legal construct that represents the ability to independently manage one’s financial affairs in a manner consistent with personal self-interest. FC thus involves not only performance skills (e.g., accurately counting coins/currency, completing a check register, paying bills) but also the judgment skills that optimize financial self-interest. From a legal standpoint, FC