Dementia: Understanding Your Legal Choices Before You Need Them – The Human Side Of Money Presented By Client Care

by admin | Sep 6, 2026 | Financial Planning, St Francis

There’s a phone call I’ve come to recognise over thirty years in this profession. It starts with, “Dirk, I need your advice about my mother,” and within a few sentences I can tell we’re already behind. A diagnosis has come, capacity is fading, and the family is trying to work out in a hurry what can still be done.

Sometimes there’s still a good answer. But it’s never as simple as it would have been a year earlier. In South Africa, so much of what we can legally do depends on one thing: whether a person still has the mental capacity to decide. Once that’s gone, some doors close for good.

Why plan early? Acting while the mind is clear means wishes are recorded, finances are protected, and families know their options without the cost and stress of an emergency court application. I’ve sat with families going through that, and the emotional toll often outweighs the financial one.

Your options, in brief:

Power of Attorney helps with financial matters while capacity is intact, but it automatically lapses once capacity is lost. It’s a bridge, not a long-term solution.

Administration, granted through the Master of the High Court, is a practical, less costly alternative when someone can no longer manage their affairs with proper oversight built in.

Curatorship, appointed through the High Court, offers more comprehensive management for advanced cognitive decline, with a curator acting in the person’s best interests.

Special Trusts (Type A) can offer long-term protection for someone with severe mental incapacity and safeguarding assets, ensuring continuity, and offering favourable tax treatment where requirements are met.

Advance Healthcare Directives record a person’s wishes about future medical care in writing, so loved ones and doctors aren’t left guessing when it matters most.

Wills should be reviewed and signed while capacity still allows it, ideally well before any diagnosis, so they reflect current wishes rather than an outdated chapter of life.

Before the crisis, not during it

None of this is about taking control away from someone. Done at the right time, it’s one of the most respectful things a family can do, preserving a person’s own wishes in their own words, made by their own hand, while they were still able to decide.

A dementia diagnosis is hard enough without a family untangling legal and financial matters under pressure. If there’s one thing to take from this; have the conversation now, while it’s still just a conversation.

As always, at Client care we happy to talk this through with you or your family, whenever it feels right.

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Dirk Groeneveld, Certified Financial Planner

t. 083 261 9287

e. dirk@clientcare.co.za