In addition to minors, persons with disabilities, or mental health issues, may also be able to register as having limited capacity to contract, regardless of their age. This usually only passes if these persons are not only temporarily unable to decide for themselves.
Some examples which may lead to an exception in someone’s capacity to contract may be the following:
- Intellectual disability: If someone is recognized as having an intellectual disability, an application can be made for an exception for capacity to contract on the part of this person. It depends on how severe the disability is.
- Hallucinations and visions: People who perceive things without a verifiable external stimulus; these perceptions can be present at all sensory levels.
- Advanced dementia: Those affected by dementia or Alzheimer’s disease may be exempted from contracts.
- Affective disorders: In an affective disorder, such as manic depression or severe bi-polar disorder, the affected person may experience acute, often uncontrolled mood changes. This may mean that a person should not be held accountable for things they do whilst affected by their depression, for example, and so have a limited capacity to contract.
Since the protection of a person who is not or only to a limited extent of legal capacity takes precedence over the law, it can happen that contracts which are signed are subsequently declared null and void. Only a court can determine whether a contract was legally incapable. In order to verify this, the individual’s mental health is determined, which can be stressful and challenging on the person in question.
Affected persons can be divided into different types of legal incapacity.
- Partial legal incapacity: This type of legal incapacity exists if a mental disorder relates only to a certain area – for example if the person concerned has hallucinations, but otherwise behaves "normally" in everyday life.
- Relative legal incapacity: Relative legal incapacity is the opposite of partial incapacity and refers to the fact that activities are of different difficulty. Those affected can, however, do everyday business, such as buying groceries or cinema tickets. However, they are not able to conduct long-term business, such as signing a mobile phone contract or buying a car.