When one party is dead or lacks capacity to testify due to a mental condition or psychiatric disability
12 V.S.A. § 1602
in effect1602. When one party is dead or lacks capacity to testify due to a mental condition or psychiatric disability
A party shall not be allowed to testify in his or her own favor where the other party to the contract or cause of action in issue and on trial is dead or shown to the court to lack capacity to testify due to a mental condition or psychiatric disability, except as follows:
(1) To meet or explain the testimony of living witnesses produced against him or her.
(2) To meet the testimony of such deceased or party who lacks capacity to testify due to a mental condition or psychiatric disability upon a question upon which his or her testimony has been taken in writing or by a stenographer in open court to be used in such action and is admitted as evidence therein.
(3) In any action in which the estate of such deceased or party who lacks capacity to testify due to a mental condition or psychiatric disability or his or her grantee or assignee is a party, entries in a cash or account book showing the receipt or payment of money in due course of business, made by such party prior to his or her death or incapacity to testify and before any controversy arose respecting the transaction to which such entries relate, may be admitted in evidence as tending to show the facts therein recited to be true. The adverse party in such action may meet the evidence of such entries by any proper evidence.
(4) In addition to the right to testify, as provided in the foregoing exceptions, the living party may be a witness in his or her own favor, so far as to prove in whose handwriting his or her entries are and when they were made and no further, in actions founded on book account and when the matter in issue and on trial is proper matter of book account.
(5) In any action founded on tort, provided, however, that in tort actions by or against representatives of deceased persons, memoranda and declarations of the deceased, relevant to the matter in issue, may be received as evidence, and provided further, that this provision shall not be construed as permitting testimony as to conversations with the deceased other than to meet or explain the memoranda or declarations of the deceased.
Amended 1961, No. 166, § 1; 2013, No. 96 (Adj. Sess.), § 46.
Source: Vermont General Assembly (legislature.vermont.gov)URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/12/061/01602Fetched: 10/21/2026