The job of being an attorney for personal care for an incapable person is not an easy one. The attorney often has to make difficult decisions regarding an incapable person’s medical care and treatment, personal care, food, clothing, and shelter. A particularly difficult decision that can arise in the case of older adults is the decision of whether an older incapable person should be placed in a retirement or long-term care home.
I recently came across a decision that considered a personal care attorney’s decision to move his mother, Ann, into a long-term care facility. As set out in Corbet v Corbet, 2020 ONSC 4157, prior to the move, Ann had been living with her personal care attorney’s son (Ann’s grandson), and his spouse. The personal care attorney lived in the USA. The grandson and spouse were the defendants to an action brought by the personal care attorney, and the defendants had brought the motion that was dealt with in the decision. The motion sought an order that Ann return to live with the defendants.
The Corbet decision discussed the powers and duties of an attorney for property, as governed by the Substitute Decisions Act, 1992, S.O. 1992, c. 30 (the “SDA”). Section 66 of the SDA provides that a personal care attorney must exercise his or her powers and duties diligently and in good faith. If the attorney knows of prior wishes or instructions of an incapable person, they shall make their decision in accordance with those prior wishes or instructions. If the attorney does not know of a prior wish or instruction, or if it is impossible to make the decision in accordance with the wish or instruction, the attorney shall make the decision in the incapable person’s best interests. Although making a determination of what is in the incapable person’s best interests can be difficult, the SDA does set out the factors that the attorney must consider, as follows:
- the values and beliefs that the guardian knows the person held when capable and believes the person would still act on if capable;
- the person’s current wishes, if they can be ascertained; and
- the following factors:
- (i) Whether the guardian’s decision is likely to,
- improve the quality of the person’s life,
- prevent the quality of the person’s life from deteriorating, or
- reduce the extent to which, or the rate at which, the quality of the person’s life is likely to deteriorate.
- (ii) Whether the benefit the person is expected to obtain from the decision outweighs the risk of harm to the person from an alternative decision.
- (i) Whether the guardian’s decision is likely to,
Ultimately, the court determined that it was not prepared to grant the order sought by the defendants. Some of the factors that were determinative included the following:
- Ann had entrusted her only son as her attorney for personal care.
- The court should not attempt to micromanage an attorney’s day-to-day handling of an incapable person’s affairs unless there is clear evidence the attorney is not acting in good faith.
- Before making the decision to move Ann to the long-term care facility, the attorney consulted with Ann’s family doctor, and had a comprehensive assessment of the defendants’ home done by the LHIN case manager.
- Although Ann had expressed that she wanted to “go home”, the court found that Ann perceived her home as the home she had shared with her late husband, and not the defendants’ home.
- There was no evidence that the personal care attorney failed to consider the best interests criteria as set out above.
- There were allegations that the defendants had mistreated or neglected Ann, and that they had misused or misappropriated her money. As a result, it remained to be determined whether they were “supportive family members” with whom the attorney has a duty to consult under the SDA.
Attorneys for personal care would be well-advised to carefully consider their decisions, in light of the guidelines set out in the SDA, and to document their considerations in making decisions on behalf of an incapable person.
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