Department of Health and Human Services
Administration on Aging

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Legal Services

AoA’s legal programs help to ensure that older Americans and their caregivers receive critical information in areas such as consumer protection, public benefits, resident’s rights, guardianship, and health and financial advance planning. The Older Americans Act (OAA) is one of the top funding sources for low-income senior legal services. There are approximately 1,000 OAA legal services providers nationwide, which provide over one million hours of legal assistance per year. AoA also funds 13 senior legal hotlines and six pension counseling projects. The following examples demonstrate the benefit of AoA’s legal services programs:

• A 73 year-old woman was contacted by a telemarketer and invited to join a discount buyers club. She told the company she was not interested. However, when her checks began bouncing, she contacted her bank and found that an electronic transfer to the buyers club had been made. Intervention by senior legal services led to a refund of all her money plus additional expenses.
  
  
• An elderly couple was charged nearly $11,000 for minor home repairs that were never completed. Legal Services assisted the couple in canceling the contract.
  
  
• A legal provider assisted an elderly woman in obtaining her Social Security funds after they had been garnished from an account jointly held with her son. The son had a judgment against him and the creditor took action against the account. The elderly woman was a resident of a nursing facility and the non-payment of her bill might have caused her to be discharged.
  
  
• An elderly widow was being financially exploited. The legal provider was able to cancel legal instruments that had been forged by the abuser such as a financial power of attorney and deed to the house.
  
  
• An 80-year old man found himself the proposed ward under a guardianship petition. He did not believe he needed a guardian. The legal provider defended the elderly man against imposition of a guardianship by showing that the standards for granting a guardianship had not been met.
  
  
• An elderly couple was threatened with eviction. The legal provider’s attorney informed them of what was required under law to evict tenants. The couple was relieved to know that they did not have to move out simply because the landlord told them they had to.

According to the OAA, states must provide “assurances that area agencies on aging will give priority to legal assistance related to income, health care, long-term care, nutrition, housing, utilities, protective services, defense of guardianship, abuse, neglect, and age discrimination.” Services are also to be targeted to “older individuals with economic or social needs.”

AoA legal services providers promote alternatives to guardianship. These include medical and financial powers of attorney, living wills, and advance directives (combination of a medical power of attorney and a living will). AoA legal services providers also represent seniors who wish to contest a guardianship petition or those who desire to modify or terminate an existing guardianship (or power of attorney).

The OAA requires each state to appoint a Legal Assistance Developer. Similar to a state Long-term Care Ombudsman, this person is responsible for developing and coordinating the state’s legal services and elder rights programs. Specific duties can include:

• providing technical assistance and training to legal assistance programs and hotlines, area agencies on aging and ombudsmen;
• developing standards to ensure that legal providers reach targeted groups and address priority issues; and
• developing statewide reporting systems to determine the impact of legal assistance programs.

AoA also supports national legal resources centers (listed below) that work to improve the quality and accessibility of the legal assistance provided to older people across the United States. These grantees provide elder law attorneys and aging services providers with training, fact sheets and other written materials, case consultations, and help with service delivery issues.

Predatory lending, abuse of guardianship and powers of attorney, scams and other forms of exploitation threaten the well being of older Americans. Many seniors never recover financially or emotionally from the theft of their homes or life savings. AoA’s legal providers, developers, resource centers and hotlines protect seniors from these threats by providing them with prevention information; assistance in terminating exploitive contracts, guardianships, or powers of attorney; and help seeking restitution. They also help older persons understand their rights, exercise choice through informed decision-making and benefit from the support and opportunities promised by law.

Legal Resources:

AoA Aging Internet Information Note: Legal Services for Older Adults and Elder Law

AoA-funded National Legal Resource Centers: (All Links are Off Site)

ABA Commission on Law and Aging (COLA) (Off Site)
COLA provides elder law attorneys and aging network personnel with technical assistance on substantive legal issues. The project also works to improve legal assistance delivery systems, with a focus on collaborations among public programs and the private bar. This past year project staff produced elder law fact sheets, and they managed a listserv that connects over 350 elder law attorneys and other advocates from across the country. COLA also posted the following items on its web site: the 250-page ABA Legal Guide for Older Americans, Consumer’s Tool Kit for Health Care Advance Planning, and Spanish and English versions of Health and Financial Decisions: Legal Tools for Preserving Your Personal Autonomy.

The Center for Social Gerontology (TCSG) (Off Site)
TCSG helps states to improve their legal services delivery systems. Last year TCSG visited five states to provide in-depth technical assistance in areas such as targeting of legal services to seniors in the most social and economic need, implementing statewide legal services standards and reporting/outcome measures, and creating state elder rights coalitions. TCSG also hosted a guardianship/caregiver mediation training conference.

AARP Foundation’s National Training Project (NTP) (Off Site)
NTP provides legal services attorneys and aging network personnel with in-depth training and technical assistance in areas such as Medicare, nursing home law, advance directives, SSI, Social Security, elder abuse, coalition building, and strategic planning. NTP also offers an intensive “Training-of-Trainer” program to enhance the skills of field trainers in legal and social services organizations. In FY 03, NTP conducted 29 training events with a total of 46 training days in 22 different states, and it coordinated the National Aging and Law Conference. Project staff also developed downloadable overheads on elder law topics for community-based organizations, and they developed an on-line version of NTP’s Nursing Home Law Module.

National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC) (Off Site)
NSCLC provides in-depth case consultations to senior legal services providers, and it conducts substantive training sessions at state and national conferences. In FY 03, NSCLC staff responded to approximately 500 requests for in-depth case consultations, and they conducted at least 75 training sessions and related technical assistance sessions benefiting no fewer than 2,000 participants. NSCLC also convened governmental and community-based advocates in a New Mexico pilot project to assess and plan improvements in the state’s elder rights advocacy and legal assistance systems.

National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) (Off Site)
NCLC improves legal assistance to older Americans whose finances and economic independence are threatened by scams and abuses in the marketplace. The project addresses the most pressing consumer problems faced by the elderly, including challenges to sustaining home ownership, fraudulent and exploitive sales practices, and debt management and financial decision-making. This past year NCLC provided training, legal practice aids, and in-depth case consultations to elder law attorneys and other advocates serving the elderly. The project also produced and disseminated a consumer education brochure on predatory lending and translated it into Spanish and Chinese.

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