A Guide to Consent & Capacity Law in Ontario, 2025 Edition

D'Arcy Hiltz, B.A., LL.B., was admitted to the Ontario Bar (1983) and has been an advocate in the field of consent and capacity matters for over 40 years, acting as counsel to individuals with mental health issues, their families and physicians. For a 10-year period (1991-2001), he was Chair of the Ontario Psychiatric Review Board (Toronto East Region), the Senior Vice Chair of the Consent and Capacity Board for Ontario and the Regional Vice Chair of the Board for Toronto. He presided over thousands of hearings involving consent and capacity matters. Mr. Hiltz has taught at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He has published widely and is a frequent lecturer on consent and capacity, guardianship and estate matters. Mr. Hiltz is a member of the Law Reform Commission of Ontario’s Advisory Group conducting a major review of the laws concerning legal capacity, decision-making and guardianship, and is frequently appointed to act as counsel for individuals whose capacity is in issue under guardianship proceedings. In addition to Halsbury’s Laws of Canada Mental Health, Mr. Hiltz is also a co-author of A Guide to Consent and Capacity Law in Ontario. Mr. Hiltz maintains a law practice in Toronto focusing on mental health law, litigation, guardianship and estate matters.

Anita Szigeti, LL.B., is the founding lawyer of Anita Szigeti Advocates, a Toronto firm focusing on mental health and the law. Ms. Szigeti graduated from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in 1990. She was called to the bar in Ontario in 1992 and in Nunavut in 2014. She is currently co-director (with Dr. Ruby Dhand) of the Mental Health Law course within the Health Law LLM at Osgoode Professional Development, where she obtained a Certificate in Tribunal Adjudication in 2018. Ms. Szigeti has published widely in this area, including as co-author of five textbooks on mental health law across Canada. These include the LexisNexis publications: Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law (2024), Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials (2023), Halsbury’s on Mental Health Law (2023), A Guide to Consent and Capacity Law in Ontario (2024), and A Guide to Mental Disorder Law in Canadian Criminal Justice (2020). She is a recognized expert in the area of mental disorder in both civil and criminal law contexts. She has been retained as an expert witness in mental health justice matters.

Ms. Szigeti has been a leader in the field for 30 years at the Ontario bar. She has been representing clients in Nunavut since 2014 as a member of the Nunavut Law Society. Ms. Szigeti was the Chair of the Mental Health Legal Committee (MHLC) for a decade and the founding first Chair of Legal Aid Ontario's Mental Health Law & Policy Advisory Group. For six years, she served as an elected Toronto Director of the Criminal Lawyers' Association (CLA) and the Association's Chair of its Mental Disorder Portfolio. She also served as the CLA’s Women’s Director through COVID in 2020-2021. Ms. Szigeti is the founder and President of the Law And Mental Disorder Association (LAMDA), a national umbrella advocacy organization of 200 lawyers practising mental health law. She is the founder and Secretary of Women in Canadian Criminal Defence (WiCCD), a national advocacy organization for women and gender non-conforming criminal defence lawyers in Canada. Ms. Szigeti’s community involvement extends to membership on the governing body of several other organizations, including as the sole Canadian (now Emeritus) representative on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA), an American advocacy organization based in Colorado, and Pilot Place Society, a not for profit 24/7 supervised housing service provider in Toronto.

Ms. Szigeti’s litigation career spans thousands of tribunal level cases, hundreds of cases argued in appellate Courts including fifteen in the Supreme Court of Canada. Ms. Szigeti has also been involved in more than a dozen death inquiries focusing on police use of force in interactions with persons in crisis and just as many high profile Inquests concerning other mental health related and institutional deaths. In 2016, she joined the prestigious Trial Advocacy faculty at the University of Toronto law school. She is a frequent guest lecturer in many mental health law courses at law schools across the country, including at the University of Toronto, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Western Faculty of Law and Osgoode Hall Law School. Ms. Szigeti is passionate about teaching advocacy as well as the substantive law of mental disorder. She has provided education and training throughout her career to Crowns, Coroners, adjudicators, psychiatrists, defence lawyers, clients, their families and anyone else who asked. She has particular expertise in training tribunal, board and agency adjudicators on how to address mental health matters culturally competently. Ms. Szigeti has mentored hundreds of new lawyers and law students and loves coaching advocacy at trial and appellate levels, including coaching mooting teams at law schools. When she's not mentoring new generations of lawyers and law students, she is in a courtroom litigating, nearly every day. She is grateful for three decades of opportunities to advocate on behalf of vulnerable people, giving a voice to those who otherwise may not be heard at all.