Does Lack of Experience Mean a Lack of Mental Capacity?

It’s a question that crops up regularly in both clinical and legal settings: if a person has never done something before, do they have the mental capacity to decide to do it now?

Whether the decision relates to managing finances, making a Will, choosing where to live, or consenting to treatment, lack of experience is often mistaken for lack of capacity.

Capacity is decision-specific and time-specific, not experience-dependent.

The MCA requires us to assess whether a person can understand, retain, use or weigh relevant information, and communicate their decision. Nowhere does it require prior ‘hands-on’ experience of the decision in question.

If it did, very few of us would have had capacity to make our first major life decisions.

The courts have been clear on this point. In Hoff v Atherton (2004), the Court of Appeal emphasised that a person does not need to demonstrate wisdom, sophistication, or familiarity with complex matters in order to have capacity. The focus is on whether they can grasp the salient information relevant to the decision when it is explained to them — not whether they have previously encountered it.

In other words, capacity is about cognitive process, not just life experience. This is particularly important when working with younger adults, people with learning disabilities, or individuals whose lives have been highly supported.

A person may never have managed a bank account, signed a tenancy agreement, or instructed a solicitor — but that does not mean they are incapable of doing so now.

Often, it simply means they have not been given the opportunity.

There is also a risk of circular reasoning: “They lack experience because they lack capacity, and they lack capacity because they lack experience.”

This approach directly conflicts with the first principle of the MCA — that a person must be presumed to have capacity unless proven otherwise. Experience can inform understanding, but it is not a prerequisite for it.

For assessors, the practical takeaway is this: the task is not to test whether the person would make the same decision we would, or whether they are doing it “properly”, but whether they can engage with the key information when it is explained in an accessible way.

Supporting someone through unfamiliar territory is part of good practice, not evidence of incapacity.

In short, lack of experience may explain hesitation, anxiety, or unconventional choices — but it does not, of itself mean a lack of capacity.

If it did, none of us would ever be allowed a first time.