Statutory wills

The Mental Health Acts contain provisions under which the Court of Protection can authorise a person to execute a will on behalf of a testator who lacks testamentary capacity. Recent case law has confirmed that the approach to be taken by the Court of Protection, in deciding what the terms of such a statutory will should be, how changed by the Mental Capacity Act 2005. This is, therefore, a developing area of the law and it will be interesting to see how the cases develop, as in VAC v JAD [2010] EWHC 2159 (Ch).