The Incapacitated Seller: Dementia, Alzheimer's, and More

It’s not always a specialty – sometimes it’s the routine. The Incapacitated Seller course focuses on an all too common scenario for families and real estate professionals. This is a 1-hour indispensable risk-management course for real estate agents, presented by probate attorney Paul Horn, especially given the rapidly growing senior population and the increasing number of transactions involving aging homeowners.

The reality is that it only takes one transaction involving a client with diminished capacity, undue influence, or improper authority to create significant legal exposure for an agent—and potentially place their license and reputation at risk. Understanding how to recognize and navigate these issues is not optional; it is an essential part of serving today's clients while protecting both the public and the real estate professional.

The goal of this course is to give practitioners enough context to understand why this matters, what the legal risks actually look like, and how these situations typically unfold in court.

This course will cover:

• The prevalence of this issue in today’s real estate market.
• how courts evaluate mental capacity when a transaction is challenged.
• An overview of Probate Code sections 810–814, which courts rely on when determining whether someone had capacity to sign the listing agreement
• How these issues typically arise when families later sue agents or brokers
• Elder abuse statutes and why these cases carry extraordinary risk.
• Solutions like estate planning before capacity is lost and why a Durable Power of Attorney is critical (DPOA)
• Conservatorship process and court oversight, delays, costs, and medical declarations (e.g., Form GC‑335)
• Who ultimately has authority to sign listing agreements and sale documents in a conservatorship