Tracking a Parent With Alzheimer’s: A Practical and Legal Guide

This article explains the general landscape and practical options — it isn’t a substitute for advice from a lawyer or a social care professional familiar with your specific situation. Every family situation and every degree of cognitive decline is different, and the decisions that matter most are best made with that kind of professional support, not from an article alone.

A broader shift in the law, and why it matters

Over the past couple of decades, a growing number of countries have reformed how their legal systems treat adults who need support making decisions — including people living with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. The older model in many places was fairly blunt: a court could declare someone legally “incapacitated” and hand full decision-making authority to a guardian, effectively replacing the person’s own voice altogether.

The direction of recent reforms, in country after country, has been away from that model and toward what’s usually called supported decision-making: instead of automatically replacing a person’s will, the legal framework tries, wherever possible, to support them in exercising it themselves — stepping in to decide on their behalf only where they genuinely can’t, and even then typically under some form of oversight. This shift is closely tied to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which many countries have used as a reference point when updating their own guardianship and capacity laws.

Exactly how this plays out, though, varies enormously — in terminology, in procedure, and in what’s actually required — not just from country to country but often from state to state or region to region within the same country. Nothing here should be read as a description of the specific law where you live. If you’re facing a real decision on this, a family lawyer or your local social services office is the right place to get an answer that actually applies to your situation.

Do I need a legal order to put a location app on my parent’s phone?

In most cases, no — at least not at first. If your mother or father still understands what the app is for and gives their consent — even if you need to explain it more than once, or in simple terms — no legal process is required at all. It’s a personal decision, the same as it would be for any older adult without any diagnosis.

The legal question becomes relevant once the person can no longer reliably understand or express that consent. At that point, depending on where you live, some form of supported or substitute decision-making arrangement may be needed for a family member to make this kind of decision on their behalf, usually under some form of court or official oversight — guardianship, conservatorship, a power of attorney set up in advance, or another mechanism entirely, depending on the country. If you think you might be in that situation, a family lawyer or a local social worker can tell you whether it’s actually necessary here, and what it would involve.

The underlying principle: no more restriction than necessary

A principle that runs through most of these legal reforms, wherever they’ve happened, is that any support measure should be the minimum necessary — not whatever is most convenient for the family. Applied to location tracking, this has a very practical translation: turn on only what the situation actually calls for, not everything the app offers.

If the real problem is that your father gets disoriented in the neighborhood and can’t find his way back, turning on on-demand location or a neighborhood geofence solves that specific problem. Turning on continuous, permanent tracking “just in case” is a bigger intrusion into his privacy than the situation calls for — and it’s exactly the kind of overreach this broader shift in the law has been trying to move away from.

How to bring it up in practice, even with cognitive decline

Explain it during a clearer moment. Many people with early or moderate-stage Alzheimer’s have times of day when they’re noticeably more lucid than others — it’s usually worth having this conversation in one of those windows, not just whenever it happens to come up.

Frame it as something that gives freedom, not something that takes it away. “This way you can keep going out for walks on your own, because if you get turned around, we can find you” tends to land much better than “we’re going to keep track of you.”

Involve every sibling or relevant family member in the decision, not just whoever lives closest. It heads off conflict later and spreads the responsibility around.

If more than one family member helps with care, let everyone see the same information. It turns this from something that can feel like being watched by one person into something closer to shared care.

What to look for in an app built for this

Not every family location app is designed with this situation in mind. A few things worth checking: that the older adult can see at any time exactly what’s being shared, rather than turning it on once and forgetting about it; that there’s an option for a one-off location check rather than only continuous tracking, for the cases where that’s genuinely enough; and that the app’s language doesn’t sound clinical or treat them as a patient, but as the adult they still are.

Aasta, for instance, leaves location turned off by default, and it’s the person themselves who turns it on from their own phone — with the choice of on-demand (a one-off check) or continuous, depending on the plan — precisely so the family only turns on what the specific situation actually needs, not everything by default.