A survey reveals the overall rate of dementia in the U.S. is declining, but the reasons are not clear. It has long been expected that as more and more Americans lived into older age and continued to suffer from obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol, the percentage of the population with dementia would increase. Some very [...]
A new study suggests that the total costs from elder abuse in the U.S. continue to rise at an alarming rate. Elder abuse is a serious problem in the U.S. This has been known for a long time. As more people live longer while suffering from some form of cognitive impairment due to age or [...]
Two women in Florida have confessed that they improperly disposed of their father's body five years ago. Fairly or not, the state of Florida has a reputation for weird news. One of the latest stories to come out of the state is not going to do this reputation any good. The details are sparse, but [...]
Every year the Social Security Administration accidentally lists thousands of people as deceased. That’s actually an improvement for the agency. The Social Security Administration pays benefits to millions of Americans until they pass away. The agency has an interest in knowing when people pass away so it can stop paying those benefits. When a person [...]
Despite a state law that says otherwise, and that is named after their father, Glen Campbell’s children say that they are still being denied access to their father. In May, the governor of Tennessee signed a bill providing that family and friends cannot be prohibited from visiting someone by a guardian or someone who has [...]
A new survey of elderly patients reveals that for many of them death is preferable to living under certain conditions. Medicine has traditionally been focused on trying to keep patients alive, with the notion being that dying is the worst thing that can happen to someone. However, it has always been known that not everyone [...]
Financial abuse of the elderly costs families billions of dollars a year. It can be difficult to prevent entirely, but getting an extra set of eyes on an elderly person's day-to-day finances can help. One of the ways financial abuse of the elderly happens is that an older person is no longer quite as astute [...]
It is important to look for signs of elder abuse, but to do that you need to know what to look out for. A recent column in the Washington Post discusses the problem of financial exploitation of the elderly and how big of a problem it is in the U.S. It did so in the [...]
World Elder Abuse Awareness Day was June 15, 2016. It is a good time to review some of the legal concepts that are often involved in elder abuse cases, such as undue influence. It is estimated that approximately 2 million elderly people are financially abused in the U.S. every year. Estimates of the costs of [...]
The ongoing battles over the competency of Sumner Redstone are bringing attention to an estate planning problem that is becoming increasingly common in the U.S. Sumner Redstone has recently had to defend himself against a charge of incompetency brought by an ex-girlfriend. He won. The newsprint on that story was barely dry before Redstone's competency [...]