Descriptive, not categorical: How court questions shape functional expert conclusions in adult capacity cases

The study analyses how courts formulate questions in orders/measures commissioning expert reports in legal-capacity proceedings, with the aim of systematising and improving such assignments. Using qualitative clustering with duplicate removal and explicitly focusing on excluding prompts that solicit legal evaluations, we identified eleven question clusters aggregated into four superordinate categories A-D: (A) identification of illnesses and medication; (B) general limitations of cognitive and motivational-volitional processes; (C) specific limitations with a predominant impact on rights and obligations; and (D) specific limitations with a predominant impact on everyday life. Drawing on this semantic structure, we proposed optimised formulations that invite experts to provide descriptive accounts of a person's condition and functioning rather than categorical "is/is not capable" judgments. The reformulation is grounded in (i) longstanding higher-court critiques in the Czech Republic of courts' passive adoption of categorical expert conclusions, (ii) the revealed thematic categories (A-D) with corrections to imprecise wording, and (iii) international frameworks emphasising supported decision-making and non-discriminatory indicators of support needs. Descriptive conclusions in expert reports better equip courts to form a qualified understanding of mental condition and functioning. Practically, we recommend structuring assignments around clearly defined semantic clusters and using model descriptive phrasings for recurrent content areas. Across two judicial regions (HK and SK), we examined 40 court assignments comprising 202 questions in total, of which 188 were substantively related to legal capacity and were retained for analysis.