If you make sure the camera feels good and operates as intended, and otherwise looks healthy, you can't really do much more - other than make sure you can afford an overhaul if it is needed. My point is that you can do a lot of research - and you should, but the outcome of your choice is not really predictable when we are talking about cameras of this age. One day he put it down normally on a marble cafe table and the finder blacked out - separated! Like many Leica owners, he had a mild degree of OCD and babied the camera.
Surgery was needed at Leica and the cost of restoration set me back just as much as the price had I paid for the camera itself. It had just been CLA'd - I saw the paperwork - but after two days of using it, the shutter curtains jammed and ripped apart. That is 20 years ago and I know for a fact that the camera has been in use up until now without further deterioration of the finder. I ended up using the M3 for a year, before selling it in favour of a M2 (I needed the 35mm frame-lines). I bought it because it was so cheap, and even if the camera should break the next day, it would still have been a good deal because of the lens. The camera had actual de-cementing in the finder, clearly visible as a shiny uneven patch across 1/3 of the finder area when looking from the front towards the back, but perfectly clear when looking normally through the finder. The camera I ended up buying was a ratty beat up M3 with a lovely 50mm Summicron lens. I rejected some pretty good deals because of my paranoia. When I looked for my first Leica, of the first 10 I looked at (M2's and M3's), half had small edge droplets of brownish/golden color which I was told was a pre-stage to de-cementing by online forum members. It happens, but I think its camera specific. I really don't know much about that problem and there's other folks here that know much more about the technical aspects of Lecia's then I do, but to finally, answer your question, they can separate over time and if dropped. Otherwise, I believe most M rf/vf can be re-glued or replaced or updated. I was lucky I was able to get a replacement.
I had to get a replacement because it was a double stroke M3. I once dropped an M3, which I still have off a table at a party and the rf spot disappeared. From what I've seen it will appear milky and/or the range finder spot will disappear or fade which should be different then if it was fungus. (I just looked it up because I have never heard of it.) In any older M the glass in the rangefinder mechanism can separate over time. So you are talking about separation of the elements in the rf/vf in Canadian made Leicas where the Balsalm fails and forms "golden droplets" and then the prism just comes apart.
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