Article on Decision and Persuasion: Re-Conceiving the Role of the Planner Where Undue Influence is Suspected
Our population is aging. Blended familiar are becoming more common, complex, and multi-generational. Conservatorships have increased, along with the incidence of elder and financial abuse claims. While financial abuse is nothing new, modern sociocultural and familiar dynamics have compelled renewed legislative attention where profound decisional control is granted to proxies over the property of those they are supposed to protect. Often, that trust is misplaced. As these data converge and interact, the growth curve in undue influence claims will continue to accelerate, along with attendant and alter estate planning strategies. The world is rapidly changing, and it appears that there is “no turning back.”
Into this context comes a timely piece exploring leading edge research over the effect that recent psychological and neuroscientific discoveries might hold for planning and litigation. In Undue Influence: The Gap Between Current Law and Scientific Approaches to Decision-Making and Persuasion, Dominic Campisi, Evan Winet, and Jake Calvert reveal the under-appreciate role that the sub- or unconscious mind plays with complex decision making, and the presumably equally underdeveloped “psychology of percussion” that influencers might wield in search of a desired outcome. As Campisi el al. make clear, an integrated understanding of both should feature prominently or those wishing to avoid, press, or defend an undue influence claim, particularly give the exacerbating effects of age and cognitive decline upon tendencies toward triggered decision making. It takes but a quick look at such undue influence factor as “susceptibility to influence” to see why. How might the law respond?