Assessment of Older Adults with Diminished Capacity: A Handbook for Lawyers |
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| Sponsoring Entities: ABA Commission on Law and Aging and the American Psychological Association |
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With the coming demographic avalanche as the Boomers reach their 60s and the over-80 population swells, lawyers face a growing challenge: older clients with problems in decision-making capacity.
While most older adults will not have impaired capacity, some will. Obvious dementias impair decision-making capacity -- but what about older adults with an early stage of dementia or with mild central nervous system damage? Such clients may have subtle decisional problems and questionable judgments troubling to a lawyer.
Assessment of Older Adults with Diminished Capacity: A Handbook for Lawyers offers elder law attorneys, trusts and estates lawyers, family lawyers, and general practitioners a conceptual framework and a practical system for addressing problems of client capacity, in some cases with help from a clinician.
This handbook represents a unique collaboration of lawyers and psychologists. It offers ideas for effective practices and makes suggestions for attorneys who wish to balance the competing goals of autonomy and protection as they confront the difficult challenges of working with older adults with diminished capacity.
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The mission of the American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Law and Aging is to strengthen and secure the legal rights, dignity, autonomy, quality of life, and quality of care of elders. It carries out this mission through research, policy development, technical assistance, advocacy, education, and training.
The ABA Commission consists of a 15-member interdisciplinary body of experts in aging and law, including lawyers, judges, health and social services professionals, academics, and advocates. With its professional staff, the ABA Commission examines a wide range of law-related issues, including: legal services to older persons; health and long-term care; housing needs; professional ethical issues; Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other public benefit programs; planning for incapacity; guardianship; elder abuse; health care decision-making; pain management and end-of-life care; dispute resolution; and court-related needs of older persons with disabilities.
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. Through its divisions in 53 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 59 state, territorial, and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession, and as a means of promoting health, education, and human welfare. The APA Office on Aging coordinates the association's activities pertaining to aging and geropsychology (the field within psychology devoted to older adult issues). The Committee on Aging (CONA) is the committee within the APA governance structure dedicated to aging issues. Its six expert geropsychologists are selected for three-year terms. Together, the Office on Aging, CONA, and association members promote the health and wellbeing of older adults and their families through expanded scientific understanding of adult development and aging and the delivery of appropriate psychological services to older adults.
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