Financial Capacity Assessment Example: Fill & Download for Free

It depends. It depends on your local State parental responsibility laws, your level of dependency, your parents financial situation and other circumstances.In general, parental obligation to support children terminates after the child reaches the age of majority (18 in most jurisdictions) or when the child is emancipated. However, the parents’ obligations can go beyond this age under certain circumstances . For example:if a child has physical or mental disabilityif parent/s have contractually agreed to provide education and support payments after majority age (such as in a divorce agreement)If the child is diligently pursuing post secondary education full-time, the parents could be legally obligated to provide support for educational expenses, living expenses etc, under certain circumstances. This will depend on the your local state Parental responsibility laws. The judge would normally assess your needs, level of dependency, your parents’ financial capacity & resources , your academic performance, career path plan and other factors. So, if you are studying full time in university with clear career path and very much need support from your parents, and if your parents have financial means, it is best to check the parental responsibility law in your state and seek help from a family lawyer.Try to seek help from a free legal aid clinic. There are also lawyers who take up cases pro bono. Check online for free legal services in your area.In Canada, I personally know of parents who have been ordered by courts to pay for and finance their children who were already in their 20s but still actively pursuing university studies. One was in Quebec and one in Ontario. I am not familiar with the US but I am aware that there have been similar cases of such nature in some US states as well. It is a general misconception that parents’ legal obligations end only after a child turns 18 or reaches age of majority.If for example your parents have financial capacity and you are in your last year of your full-time university studies while living with them, you may have a chance to demand financial assistance If they move out leaving you homeless & abruptly disrupting your schooling. This ofcourse depends on all the circumstances I mentioned above. So i highly suggest you seek legal help.If you are not in school nor working and just bumming around or causing trouble to your parents, that is a different story and I can understand parents taking the tough love route.Nevertheless, I personally find it cold hearted for parents who leave or kick out an adult child living in the family home If that child has justifiable reasons (such as due to schooling or illness). I believe parents have certain moral responsibilities; no law should have to tell them that. Being a parent does not simply end after the child’s 18th birthday. Love and support is what family is all about (and this goes both ways by the way).

To the extreme, yes.Technically speaking, the law does not blatantly permit discrimination against people on the basis of race, gender, or disability. However, there are laws in place meant to “protect” people whose minds are impacted by conditions like autism, and these can be abused.The following situation is not fictional. It’s what really happened to me, and how I was unlawfully stripped of my rights as an adult with autism.One form of “protection” for the disabled is “adult guardianship”. Basically, certain things that other adults are legally allowed to do, like have their own independent finances, sign contract, and make medical decisions, are restricted. Instead, the power is shifted to at least one guardian, usually a parent.This process isn’t easy, and yet it can go so wrong because of peoples’ assumptions.It doesn’t matter how mild or severe the adult’s disability is- every single adult placed under guardianship must undergo a capacity assessment.When I was 17, I underwent an assessment at the request of my parents. I did my best and thought I did very well. In fact, I was told my test scores and they were all wonderful.However, the letter from the psychologist who assessed me said something very different. Her letter said I definitely needed a guardian. The reasoning was all untrue statements, things I had never said to her. She twisted my words, using words I actually said, but not in the order I said them.Example: She asked me if I cooked, and I told her I baked cookies regularly. She asked how long I’d been baking for, and I told her “about a year or two. At first the oven made me uncomfortable because it was really hot, but the cookies were worth it and now I’m fine.”On her report, she said that I said that I was scared of the oven, and that this means I cannot prepare my own food.In other words, she blatantly lied.That’s violation #1.Some other things in her report concerned me, and through her report I discovered that she had her mind made up before she ever met me. My parents had shown her drawings I’d done at the age of 12, claiming that they were drawings I’d done at the age of 17. They had also told this psychologist about a habit I had in high school of talking to adults on the internet, swaying her emotionally.Now, obviously that last part is scary. It’s irresponsible, and not a very good or mature thing to be doing. However, it was illegal for the assessor to judge my capacity based on that and not on the test results. I actually looked this up, and here is what the law has to say about this:The issue for the assessor is not whether the person's actions or choices appear reasonable or will put them at increased risk, but whether the individual is able to understand critical information and appreciate the reasonably foreseeable consequences of his or her decisions or lack of them.There is no doubt that my choices put me at increased risk. However, when the psychologist asked about my decision, I (without knowing this guideline) told her a huge list of consequences that I understood fully, and that I chose to take this risk anyway. I then explained those reasons to her- the depression from age 12 onward, the failure to connect to people my entire life, and that I chose to take that risk because I felt that what I could lose was no longer important to me at the time.Messed up as that is, my understanding met the criteria for those guidelines. Easily. Because I clearly stated all the potential consequences to her when asked. I owned my shit that day, and it’s sad she couldn’t even do the same as the half suicidal teenager in her presence.That’s violation #2.But wait. There’s more.Eventually, the court processed the appeal, and due to the misinformation in the psychologist’s letter, my parents were granted a 5 year guardianship. My parents were given full rights across the board, including the right to make medical decisions for me.However, my capacity to make medical decisions was never assessed. Here’s an important piece of information in that document that explicitly forbids such a decision from being made.The SDA rejects the notion of global incapacity and instead recognizes that capacity may be limited only with respect to certain decisions or classes of decisions.This also happened in the realm of financial decisions- my mother has full access to my bank account as happens under law, and now she comments regularly on how good at budgeting I am, something that I’ve apparently been doing better than her the entire time.They didn’t make a decision in each realm, but rather gave my parents every right they could possibly apply for, without a proper assessment.That’s violation #3.A neurotypical will never have to fight and lose their rights like I have. This is discrimination. This is injustice. This is what I’m going to overturn within the next year of my life.I have to convince the government that I deserve the same rights as everyone else. Do you?

Serious mental illnesses (SMI) such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can often significantly impair the cognitive abilities and decisional capacities of affected individuals.For example, there is increasing recognition that individuals with SMI may have impaired capacity to provide informed consent to treatment or to research participation.In its report entitled Research Involving Persons with Mental Disorders That May Affect Decision-Making Capacity, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission focused attention on, and made substantive recommendations regarding, informed consent procedures in research with persons with mental disorders such as schizophrenia and dementia.,Persons with schizophrenia never acquire basic financial skills and experiences, due to onset of their illness in early adulthood, the adverse developmental effects of positive and negative symptoms, and the unfortunate impact upon neurocognition seen in the disease.The consequences of these impairments in financial capacity are often devastating. Problems of malnutrition, homelessness, and even premature death have been attributed to clients' inability or unwillingness to use funds to provide for basic needs.As a result of drug abuse and dependence, many clients cyclically dissipate governmental and other financial resources intended to support themselves and family members.One study found that cocaine-abusing persons with schizophrenia spent nearly half of their total income on illegal drugs, and that psychiatric symptoms and hospital admissions were phase-linked with receipt of monthly disability checks.Such chronic misuse of funds has led to calls over the past decade for more effective money management approaches in this population, such as mandatory representative payees.Problems with financial capacity in schizophrenia also impact family members and relationships. Money mismanagement by persons with schizophrenia is a key concern of family members,and the issue of control over funds can often become a battleground involving clients, families, and government agencies.For alL these reasons, financial capacity is often a central issue in the assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation of clients with schizophrenia and SMI.