Legal Issues in Aging Families

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to assist readers involved in planning, providing, monitoring, and studying services for older Americans to better deal with some of the legal intricacies of family aging. The author delves into a selective identification and analysis of roles and responsibilities involving the interaction of older persons and their families. This endeavor concentrates mainly on the following contexts: families assisting older individuals to exercise their legal rights; families acting as surrogate decision makers for decisionally incapacitated older persons; families protecting and advocating for their older members; and families qua recipients of services from their aging relatives. The chapter concludes with some thoughts regarding directions for future research in this arena, focusing on the wisdom of examining relevant laws affecting older persons under the analytic lens of Therapeutic Jurisprudence, which asks about the actual good or bad impact of specific laws and forms of legal involvement on the intended beneficiaries of those laws and processes.