This article is general information, not legal or financial advice. Speak to an attorney or a registered financial adviser about your own circumstances.
A will, a power of attorney and written instructions about medical care only hold if the person signing them understands what they are signing. Dementia wears that understanding down over months and years, so the decisions that depend on it need to be made early, ideally soon after a diagnosis.
Financial planning for dementia in South Africa means putting a valid will, signing authority, healthcare instructions and organised records in place while the person living with dementia is able to make and explain their own decisions. Once that capacity is lost, those documents can no longer be signed, and the family may have to apply to the Master of the High Court or the High Court for authority to manage their loved one’s money.
World Alzheimer’s Month, held every September, raises awareness of dementia and challenges the stigma around it. For Sonja Smith Elite Funeral Group, the conversations it starts connect closely to what we advocate every day: planning ahead, having difficult conversations early, and making sure the people we love know our wishes.
Sonja Smith’s work with ADASA during September
During September, our Founder and Director, Sonja Smith, took part in several dementia-awareness initiatives as a Board Member of ADASA (Association for Dementia and Alzheimer’s of South Africa). One of those projects was developing ADASA’s Financial Decision-Making Toolkit for Dementia, a practical resource that helps individuals and families understand the decisions to consider before dementia progresses to the point where a person can no longer make them independently.
Why early planning matters
Dementia affects more than memory. Over time, it can change a person’s ability to understand information, manage finances, enter into agreements, give instructions, make healthcare decisions and deal with legal and personal matters.
Plan today. Protect tomorrow.
The toolkit’s message is “Plan today, protect tomorrow.” Where possible, decisions should be discussed and documented while the person living with dementia can still understand the particular decision being made and communicate their wishes. South African law assesses capacity decision by decision, so someone in the early stages may be able to sign a will even if complex investment choices have become difficult.
Waiting until a crisis, such as a fall or a hospital admission, leaves families making complicated financial, legal and healthcare decisions under pressure, often without knowing what their loved one would have chosen.
What does ADASA’s Financial Decision-Making Toolkit cover?
The toolkit brings together practical guidance on the areas families should consider after a dementia diagnosis or when preparing for the future.
These include:
- A valid will: recording your wishes for your estate and reviewing them as your circumstances change. Under the Wills Act 7 of 1953, a will is only valid if the person making it understands the nature and effect of what they are signing.
- Power of attorney and signing authority: understanding what these documents can do, and their limits when a person loses legal capacity. In South Africa, an ordinary power of attorney lapses once the person who granted it loses mental capacity.
- Living wills and future healthcare wishes: recording preferences about medical care should you later be unable to communicate them yourself. A living will is not legally binding in South Africa, but it gives doctors and family a written record of what you wanted.
- Financial affairs: reviewing investments, policies, annuities, banking arrangements and access to financial information.
- Life assurance: understanding the difference between an early payout of death benefits, and dread disease cover, which pays out when a listed condition is diagnosed. Some policies include Alzheimer’s disease or dementia with specific severity criteria, so the policy wording decides what applies.
- Estate planning and liquidity: considering whether there will be enough cash in the estate to cover expenses and obligations after a person passes away, so assets don’t have to be sold to pay them.
- Administration or curatorship: understanding what may need to happen when a person is no longer legally capable of managing their own affairs.
- Documents and the Life File: keeping personal, legal, medical and financial information in one place so it can be found when it is needed.
- Digital legacy: considering online accounts, devices, passwords, digital assets and the information family members may need in future.
- Executor and estate documents: helping families understand what information and documentation will eventually be required to administer an estate.
- End-of-life planning: encouraging conversations about personal wishes, healthcare, funeral preferences and how a person would like to be cared for at the end of their life.
The toolkit gives families the information to prepare while their loved one can take part in the choices.
Raising awareness at the Memories Matter High Tea
Another highlight of World Alzheimer’s Month was the ADASA “Memories Matter” High Tea, where Sonja had the privilege of serving as Master of Ceremonies. The event brought together families, supporters, and community members for a morning dedicated to dementia awareness and the value of staying connected.
Prof Thuli Madonsela was the keynote speaker, sharing personal reflections, while South African singer Mathys Roets provided entertainment with a trip down memory lane.
A person living with dementia may lose names, dates and places and still respond to a familiar song, a gentle touch, a fragrance, a photograph or the presence of someone they love. Those moments bring warmth, safety and joy, and they are worth making time for at every stage.
Questions families ask about dementia and financial planning
Can a person with dementia still make or change a will?
Yes, as long as they understand what a will does, roughly what they own and who they are leaving it to at the time of signing. A diagnosis on its own doesn’t remove that capacity.
Wills signed later in the course of an illness may be more vulnerable to challenge. Having a doctor confirm the person’s mental capacity at the time of signing can provide valuable evidence should the validity of the Will later be questioned.
Is a living will the same as an ordinary will?
No. A living will sets out the medical treatment you want, or don’t want, if you are alive but unable to say so, such as whether to be kept on life support with no prospect of recovery. Your ordinary will deals with your estate after you pass away and must be dated and signed by you in the presence of two competent witnesses to be valid under the Wills Act.
Who can manage a loved one’s money once they no longer have capacity?
Someone has to be formally appointed. The family has two routes: an application to the Master of the High Court for an administrator under the Mental Health Care Act 17 of 2002, or an application to the High Court for a curator bonis. An attorney can advise which route suits the person’s assets and circumstances.
What should go in a Life File?
Copies of ID documents, the will and where the original is kept, policies and bank details, medical aid information, a list of doctors and medication, contacts for the attorney and financial adviser, and a Funeral Wishes List, just to name a few. Download our Life File Index for a template. For a family caring for someone with dementia, it also saves searching for paperwork every time a bank, hospital or care home asks for it.
Start the conversation before there is a crisis
In 20 years of caring for families, we have seen how much easier arrangements are when a family knows exactly what their loved one wanted, and how difficult they become when those conversations never took place. Talking early means that when decisions do have to be made, the family makes them knowing they are honouring their loved one’s wishes.
A few practical ways to begin:
- Start with one topic, such as where the will is kept or who should have signing authority, rather than trying to cover everything at once.
- Book time with an attorney while the will and any power of attorney can still be signed.
- Write down funeral preferences in a Funeral Wishes List and keep it with the Life File.
- Tell at least two family members where the documents are kept.
You can request our free Life File and Funeral Wishes List templates on our website. If you found this article insightful, you might want to read Funeral cover, life insurance and the details that matter and Memory, Mind, and Life with Dementia.
