About the Mental Capacity Act
THE Mental Capacity Act allows you to appoint guardians to make decisions on your behalf should you lose your mind to illness or accident.
This guardian - a trusted relative or friend - is known in legal language as the 'donee', and you can appoint one or more donees.
You can decide the areas in which your proxy guardian can make decisions on your behalf.
The new law also empowers parents of children with intellectual disabilities to apply to the High Court to appoint a 'deputy' to act for their children after the parents' deaths.
Donees are not allowed to make decisions in six highly sensitive areas: consent to marriage or divorce, sexual relations, sterilisation, adoption, renouncing a religion and change of gender.
The law also makes it a criminal offence for caregivers to wilfully neglect or abuse mentally incapacitated people.
THE Mental Capacity Act allows you to appoint guardians to make decisions on your behalf should you lose your mind to illness or accident.
This guardian - a trusted relative or friend - is known in legal language as the 'donee', and you can appoint one or more donees.
You can decide the areas in which your proxy guardian can make decisions on your behalf.
The new law also empowers parents of children with intellectual disabilities to apply to the High Court to appoint a 'deputy' to act for their children after the parents' deaths.
Donees are not allowed to make decisions in six highly sensitive areas: consent to marriage or divorce, sexual relations, sterilisation, adoption, renouncing a religion and change of gender.
The law also makes it a criminal offence for caregivers to wilfully neglect or abuse mentally incapacitated people.
