AI, Capacity and the Older Client: Who Is Really Giving the Instruction?
Byline: Karen Jones, founder of Citywealth, has more than 20 years’ experience in global private wealth.
Elder law update: How can advisers confirm that polished, AI-assisted instructions genuinely reflect a client’s wishes? As artificial intelligence changes how clients communicate, advisers face a renewed elder-law challenge: distinguishing a person’s own informed decision from a message shaped by technology or by someone else.
Elder law, capacity and early planning
This update continues Citywealth’s coverage of elder law in “Elder law – burying your head in the sand won’t help” (2024) and “Elder Law 2025: a global challenge for an ageing, wealthier world”. Those features examined delayed planning, capacity, financial abuse and the promise of AI as an early warning of cognitive decline. This article returns to those questions with a new one: when a client’s communication is polished by AI, how can advisers establish that the instruction is genuinely theirs?
Citywealth’s 2024 elder-law feature began with a reason families often delay. Sally Ashford, Partner at Charles Russell Speechlys, said, “It had taken a long time for them to pluck up the courage to do something about their worries.” The article then turned to what can happen when safeguards fail. Jemma Garside, Partner in the Private Client team at Kingsley Napley, said, “Also, we get involved where there has been a family member (or friend) who was appointed as LPA but has abused their position, often we have to investigate following concerns raised to the Office of the Public Guardian”; Alice Johnson, Private Client Associate at Druces, warned, “We need to be on alert for certain red flags”; and Ronni Davidowitz, Partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman, put the case for acting early simply: “Burying your head in the sand just limits options.”
By 2025, the discussion had moved to whether AI could give families more time to plan. James Mabey, Partner at Winckworth Sherwood, said, “Early and reliable insight into cognitive decline can also give individuals the opportunity to get their affairs in order.” Robert Agresta, Partner at McLaughlin & Stern in New York, described the shift as “an intentional, early practice that integrates health, wealth, and legacy”; Daniel G. Fish, Trusts and Estates Partner at the same firm, highlighted the financial stakes: “Alzheimer’s disease brings with it an exposure to extraordinary medical expenses.” Parisa Jones, Partner in the Tax, Trusts, Wills & Probate team at Lester Aldridge, brought the discussion back to autonomy: “The earlier people act, the more choice and control they retain, for themselves and those they care about.”
This update follows those themes into a changing landscape: AI can now help compose client communications as well as predict health risks; high-cost treatments can involve international travel and decisions under pressure; and families may be managing wealth and businesses across generations.
Allan Goldman: a family dispute, not a court finding on capacity
One case brings care, treatment and succession into view. Allan Goldman, a New York real-estate heir with Parkinson’s disease, travelled to Russia seeking stem-cell treatment and died in a hospital in St Petersburg in January 2022, aged 78. His son sued Goldman’s longtime partner, Natalia Vostrikova, alleging neglect and improper influence. Vostrikova disputed the allegations. The wrongful-death suit was later settled. No trial took place, so there was no trial finding that Goldman lacked capacity or had been abused. Recent reporting on the separate family-business disputes describes continuing litigation over the Goldman family’s real-estate business; those disputes should not be conflated with the settled wrongful-death claim.
Goldman’s estate was also part of a wider family dispute. Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.8 billion in 2022; that was a wealth estimate, not a probate valuation. The case is a vivid example of care, treatment and business succession coming into the same family story, but it is not evidence of a court finding about Goldman’s capacity or the treatment he sought.
Ageing populations and the transfer of wealth
The demographic case for continuing Citywealth’s elder-law coverage is this: The World Health Organization projects that the global population aged 60 and over will rise from 1.1 billion in 2023 to 1.4 billion by 2030 and 2.1 billion by 2050. The number aged 80 and over is expected to reach 426 million by 2050.
For ultra-high-net-worth families, later-life decisions may affect not only personal assets but trusts, operating businesses, family offices and succession plans. UBS estimates that billionaires will transfer about $6.9 trillion globally by 2040, with at least $5.9 trillion expected to pass to their children, directly or through spouses. Its 2026 Global Family Office Report surveyed 307 family offices across more than 30 markets and found an average family net worth of $2.7 billion. Only 35% reported having a defined succession plan. The survey reflects UBS clients rather than all family offices, but gives a measure of the governance and continuity issues facing some wealthy families.
AI-assisted client instructions and financial decision-making
The 2025 Citywealth feature considered AI as a possible early-warning tool. The new concern is different: AI can make a client’s message sound fluent and consistent, even where the client is struggling to understand a decision or another person has helped shape the instruction.
Greg B Davies, Head of Behavioural Finance at Oxford Risk, a financial technology company, says: “The danger isn’t just that AI can disguise signs of vulnerability. It’s that it can turn a bad decision into something that sounds remarkably sensible.”
“AI has a tendency to be agreeable, confident and articulate. Give it a poorly thought-through investment idea, or a vague and confused instruction, and it may turn it into a polished, persuasive argument. Worse, it may reinforce the original thinking rather than challenge it.”
“For an older investor who’s already struggling to understand a complex decision, that creates two problems. They may find it difficult to challenge the AI’s confident interpretation of what they meant. And their adviser may receive a beautifully articulated instruction with none of the hesitation, uncertainty or confusion that would otherwise have prompted further questions.”
“Of course, using AI doesn’t indicate diminished capacity. It can be enormously empowering, and older investors have every right to make unconventional decisions. But a coherent email is not evidence of an informed, independent decision. The same technology can also help third parties conceal their influence over a client.”
“For advisers, the answer is not simply more automated monitoring. Where vulnerability or significant financial decisions are involved, proportionate support may mean considerably more human contact, not less. Sometimes you need to speak directly to the client, understand what they’re trying to achieve, and establish that the decision is genuinely theirs.”
“AI can make a bad decision sound good. That doesn’t make it informed, independent or safe.”
Davies also sees potential for AI to improve financial advice, if it helps advisers understand the person behind the portfolio: “HSBC’s plans to replace some advisers with AI raise a much bigger question than whether AI can make financial advice cheaper. Can it actually make advice better?”
“There’s enormous potential here. Good automation can make advice more consistent, reducing the noise and biases that inevitably arise from human judgement. It can take care of tasks humans are inefficient at, freeing up valuable adviser time for the situations that genuinely need it. And it can transform advice from something delivered periodically into a much more continuous, dynamic and personalised service.”
“But the hardest part of financial advice has never been producing a sensible portfolio recommendation. It’s helping people make good financial decisions in the first place, and then stick with them. That means understanding their anxieties, confidence, knowledge, emotional responses to risk and changing circumstances. Sometimes the right intervention is encouragement to invest; sometimes it’s reassurance to stay invested; and sometimes it’s recognising that circumstances have changed and a different course of action is needed.”
“AI has the potential to deliver this sort of behavioural engagement far more consistently and at a scale traditional advice simply cannot match. But only if it’s built on robust measures and models of investors’ financial circumstances and financial personalities, rather than simply assuming a clever chatbot can work everything out.”
“The real test of HSBC’s strategy won’t be how many advisers it can do without. It will be whether its customers, older or otherwise, make better decisions, invest appropriately, remain invested when they should, and get human support when they need it.”
“Automating financial advice doesn’t make the psychology of investing disappear. But done properly, it could help us deal with that psychology far better than we do today.”
For Nicole Marmor, Partner and Head of the Private Wealth Department at Sherrards Solicitors, direct contact remains central: “When I am taking instructions, I do like to see older clients in person, where that is possible. If not, then a video call might also be of assistance as part of the process of establishing whether my client has capacity and/or at least understands the ramifications of what they have asked me to do. I say that because in the AI age that we are now embracing, we do have to be alive to whether our clients really do comprehend what they are asking us to do having sought input from an AI vehicle. It is quite true that the perfection of some instructions may indeed disguise diminishing cognitive abilities.”
“My experience tells me that nothing comes close to an in-person meeting to determine who really does have a grasp of their faculties and a genuine understanding of what’s what and most importantly, to determine as far as possible, that there is no inference of undue influence especially with Wills being increasingly contested.”
Jemma Garside, Partner at Kingsley Napley, says the technology may help identify cognitive decline earlier, but could also make changes harder to spot: “AI presents both opportunities and challenges in the elder law and capacity arena. On the one hand, technology may help identify cognitive decline at an earlier stage, giving individuals and families valuable time to put in place appropriate wills, powers of attorney and succession arrangements. However, the same technology may also make it more difficult for advisors to identify declining capacity or more serious safeguarding issues. AI can generate communications in a client’s usual tone and style, potentially masking changes in cognition that advisers have traditionally recognised through correspondence or conversations. This poses significant risks around data protection, and raises important questions about how advisers, lawyers and financial institutions satisfy themselves that instructions genuinely originate from the client, are free from undue influence and reflect a sound and informed decision. The risk can be even higher where a third party may be assisting with communications for reasons ranging from convenience to financial abuse or fraud, and the advisor may not be aware of their involvement. These concerns reinforce the continuing importance of personal engagement, capacity assessments where appropriate, and careful scrutiny of significant changes of instructions in relation to matters such as investments, testamentary intentions and power of attorney arrangements.”
“Medical advances are creating equally complex challenges. As treatments become available that may extend life or offer experimental interventions for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and dementia, disputes can arise over whether vulnerable individuals have the capacity to consent to such treatment. Where a person lacks capacity, there can also be issues around who has authority to make such decisions on their behalf, if at all. We also see disagreements between family members of those who have substantial wealth about whether treatment and care decisions are motivated solely by welfare considerations or are influenced by financial interests and inheritance expectations. For practitioners working with older and incapacitated clients we must be alive to these developments to ensure we can continue supporting our clients in respecting their individual choices whilst balancing our duty to safeguard the vulnerable.”
Joshua S. Rubenstein, Partner and Global Chair of Katten’s Private Wealth Department, based in New York, says: “As life expectancies continue to rise, issues surrounding capacity and undue influence rise exponentially.”
“AI makes the problem of assessing capacity all the more complicated. AI can accurately predict increased cases of Alzheimer’s. What it cannot predict is the extent to which people with diminishing capacity (as opposed to lack of capacity) are susceptible to undue influence.”
“AI additionally makes it difficult for advisors to determine whether a client is suffering from compromised capacity, if the client (or someone on the client’s behalf) uses AI to compose the communications to the advisors. The communications now, at least on their face, appear to be cogent. Advisors must be more vigilant than ever to determine who the true spokesman is.”
“Whenever a client who is terminal attempts an experimental treatment, as much as we all hope for success, that is as clear a signal as there can be that changed directions during that period may not be reliable. The obligation upon the advisor to assess the situation becomes all the more heightened.”
Parisa Jones, Partner in the Tax, Trusts, Wills & Probate team at Lester Aldridge, also sees the need to build on earlier elder-law safeguards: “One emerging challenge in the private client sphere is the impact that increasingly sophisticated AI tools may have on assessing capacity and identifying potential undue influence. Traditionally, advisers have relied on a combination of written communications, meetings and their knowledge of a client’s circumstances when taking instructions. As AI becomes more capable of replicating an individual’s writing style and tone, there is a greater risk that communications may not accurately reflect a person’s wishes or level of understanding.”
“For elderly and vulnerable clients in particular, this reinforces the importance of direct engagement and careful contemporaneous record-keeping. Capacity assessments have always involved professional judgement, but advisers may need to place even greater emphasis on face-to-face or live discussions and on documenting the reasons behind key decisions. The use of technology should complement, rather than replace, those safeguards.”
CAR-T treatment: costs, timelines and patient-specific outcomes
The 2024 and 2025 features raised questions about protection, care costs and the value of planning before a crisis. Medical developments add another dimension: some older clients are pursuing innovative, costly treatments, sometimes across borders, while families may disagree about the risks, benefits and who should decide.
CAR-T therapy, used for some blood cancers, involves collecting a patient’s T-cells, modifying them and returning them for infusion. At University College London Hospitals, manufacturing takes at least four to six weeks. It may not succeed, and clinicians review whether the patient is fit to proceed before the infusion.
There is no single survival rate that applies to every CAR-T treatment or patient. In one five-year follow-up of the ZUMA-1 trial, 42.6% of patients treated with axicabtagene ciloleucel for refractory large B-cell lymphoma were alive at five years. That result applies to a particular therapy and patient group; it cannot predict the outcome for someone with another cancer, or the chance of reaching infusion after cell collection.
Insurance may form part of the decision to go ahead. Bupa’s October 2026 List A includes several CAR-T products for specified cancer indications. Cover depends on the terms of the member’s policy and requires prior authorisation. A lawyer who has experienced private CAR-T treatment told this writer that a figure of approximately £600,000 had been quoted. Private costs depend on the treatment and circumstances, so this should not be read as a standard ticket price.
Jones’s comments on treatment and family interests speak directly to the Goldman story, while keeping the distinction between a broader issue and the facts established in that case: “Advances in medical science are also creating new challenges for families and advisers. Individuals are increasingly pursuing innovative and sometimes expensive treatments later in life, often across jurisdictions, raising complex questions around capacity, autonomy and best interests. Where there are concerns about cognitive decline or conflicting family interests, disputes can arise over who is making decisions and whether those decisions genuinely reflect the wishes of the individual. In this environment, early planning through measures such as Lasting Powers of Attorney, together with clear records of a person’s wishes while they have capacity, becomes more important than ever.”
Electronic wills law in New York and wills reform in England and Wales
The 2024 Citywealth feature raised concerns about authenticating electronic wills and preventing fraud or undue influence. New York’s Electronic Wills Act was enacted in 2025 and is due to take effect on 12 December 2027. In England and Wales, the Law Commission has proposed a replacement for the Wills Act 1837; the Government welcomed the recommendations but has said it does not intend to introduce the legislative proposals at this time, citing limited parliamentary time. These developments address how a will may be made; they do not, by themselves, establish that instructions are informed, independent or free from pressure.
The elder-law questions raised in Citywealth’s earlier features remain: how to plan before a crisis, protect a client without overriding their autonomy, and identify when a trusted person may be exerting influence. AI and new medical treatments add fresh pressures to those questions. For advisers, the task is to notice when instructions change, whether communications sound unusually polished, and whether family interests may conflict.
Key Takeaways
- AI changes how clients communicate, raising challenges for advisers in confirming clients’ genuine wishes.
- Advisers must navigate the risk of AI polishing instructions, which may mask a client’s cognitive decline.
- The global ageing population increases the importance of early planning for wealth transfer and decision-making.
- Direct engagement remains crucial; technology should complement, not replace, personal assessment of capacity.
- Changes in elder law reflect evolving complexities involving AI and innovative treatments, necessitating careful scrutiny of instructions.
Karen Jones is the founder of Citywealth and a wealth management commentator with more than 20 years’ experience across global private wealth, family offices and succession. Before founding Citywealth in 2005, she held publishing roles at The Times and The Sunday Times, London; Legal Business magazine and worked on the Asia Pacific Legal 500.
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