Elder Law

As the state with the third highest percentage of older adults, Pennsylvania is often the arena for financial abuse or exploitation. This timely new book presents the legal consequences of financial exploitation, both in criminal and civil terms. By focusing on the law of exploitation, this essential guide will give those who assist older adults and dependent persons, including attorneys, courts, financial advisors, banks, social workers and families, clear guidelines for prevention of financial exploitation.

Online access available through Westlaw. Updated annually.

This handbook represents a unique collaboration of lawyers and psychologists. The book offers a conceptual framework and practice tips for addressing problems of client capacity. Also available in print format, KF390.A4A874 2005.

Online access available through HeinOnline and GPO. Also available in microfiche, Y 4.AG 4:S.HRG.109-753.

Although not specifically about guardianship for the elderly, this handbook describes the guardianship proceeding. It is a useful overview of the process for practitioners.

Online access available through ProQuest Congressional. Also available in microfiche format, Y 4.AG 4:S.HRG.108-117.

Online access available through ProQuest Congressional and GPO.

The National College of Probate Judges calls this electronic book a "ground-breaking work [that] provides welcome tools for judges, attorneys, clinicians, investigators, guardians ad litem, evaluators and scholars concerned with capacity issues facing older adults."

This book provides a comprehensive description of the manner in which the law regulates and reacts to heath care and personal decision making for the elderly. Topics covered include paying for health care; long-term care housing options; paying for long-term care; legal implications of mental incapacity: guardianship, conservatorship & powers of attorney; and end of life decision making.

Legal and Healthcare Ethics for the Elderly provides a balanced analytical presentation of the complicated socio-legal, medico-ethical and political perspectives which interact with gerontology as a field of study. It covers information on access and financing healthcare, the ethics of rationing healthcare and the inevitable link to the quality of life, guardianship issues in a nursing home setting, informed consent, living wills and durable powers of attorney, elder abuse, and death with dignity.

This looseleaf source was authored by a team of psychologists, a physician, as well as an experienced elder law attorney. The resource provides expert guidance on how to assess mental incapacity and incompetency. The authors summarize the law on different types of mental capacity required to perform different legal transactions; discuss the medical causes, symptoms, and treatments of different types of incapacity and incompetency, and offer advice on evaluating, contesting, and defending legal capacity.