Breakout 9 | Dementia and the Courts: Litigating Powers of Attorney, Contested Guardianships, and Beneficiary Designations (qualifies for 1.0 ethics hour; 1.0 bias hour)

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As our population ages, attorneys are increasingly placed in the difficult position of assessing our client's capacity and protecting against undue influence. At the same time, we are ethically obligated to treat clients with diminished capacity as normally as possible. This presentation will focus on three increasingly common issues: litigating powers of attorney, contested guardianships, and beneficiary designations.

In this presentation we will cover the following:

• Our ethical obligation to both assess the capacity of our clients and to treat clients with diminished capacity as normally as possible.
• Potential abuses of powers of attorney and actions for accounting.
• Key issues and evidence in contested guardianships of persons with dementia.
• Litigating incapacity and undue influence claims with beneficiary designations.

Speaker: Timothy F. McCurdy, The McCurdy Law Firm, LLC, Chesterfield

Opinions and positions stated by presenters of MoBarCLE programs are those of the presenters and not necessarily those of The Missouri Bar. This program is intended as information for lawyers in Missouri, in conjunction with other research they deem necessary, in the exercise of their independent judgment.