As I’ve written on other occasions, as life spans increase, the prospects for sibling squabbles over Mom and Dad grow more likely. One growing trend: custody battles involving adult children fighting over where their elderly parents should live, who should care for them and who should control the finances. These family squabbles have given rise to a new preemptive tool: elder mediation. Across the nation, family lawyers and estate planners are turning to mediators to resolve family disputes involving elderly parents. A recent article in the Long Island Business News discusses the growing use of elder mediation to resolve family disputes. The article quotes several practitioners of elder mediation on their practice specialties, including the owner of this weblog:
“It’s just starting to be recognized as a separate discipline,” said Donald D. Vanarelli, an elder lawyer and mediator in Westfield, N.J., and founder of the New Jersey Elder Mediation Center. “The reason I got into it was that I realized I was doing a lot of it as part of my elder law practice,” he said. “So many times, there’s baggage from the past. It’s like the old Smothers Brothers line, ‘Mom always liked you best.’ There are things that linger from decades ago.”
Another practitioner of elder mediation, Carolyn Rodis, an attorney in Maryland, offered a checklist of skills which elder mediators should possess:
First, she said, the mediator should have experience with elder mediation – not just mediation per se. “The issues in elder mediation are just so different and they often involve so many parties,” she said.
Second, the elder mediator should be familiar with relevant legal subjects, such as Medicare/Medicaid and guardianship laws. He or she should also know relevant legal terminology, such as powers of attorney.
Third, she said, a good mediator provides referral sources to related services that participants may need during the process. “The mediator should tell the family that there are issues that may come up and here’s where you can go to deal with them.”
Fourth, “mediators should have a sensitivity to aging itself – the physical and emotional aspects of it.”
The entire article is available at libn.com.
Categories
- Affordable Care Act
- Alzheimer's Disease
- Arbitration
- Attorney Ethics
- Attorneys Fees
- Beneficiary Designations
- Blog Roundup and Highlights
- Blogs and Blogging
- Care Facilities
- Caregivers
- Cemetery
- Collaborative Family Law
- Conservatorships
- Consumer Fraud
- Contempt
- Contracts
- Defamation
- Developmental Disabilities
- Discovery
- Discrimination Laws
- Doctrine of Probable Intent
- Domestic Violence
- Elder Abuse
- Elder Law
- Elective Share
- End-of-Life Decisions
- Estate Administration
- Estate Litigation
- Estate Planning
- Events
- Family Law
- Fiduciary
- Financial Exploitation of the Elderly
- Funeral
- Future of the Legal Profession
- Geriatric Care Managers
- Governmental or Public Benefit Programs
- Guardianship
- Health Issues
- Housing for the Elderly and Disabled
- In Remembrance
- Insolvent Estates
- Institutional Liens
- Insurance
- Interesting New Cases
- Intestacy
- Law Firm News
- Law Firm Videos
- Law Practice Management / Development
- Lawyers and Lawyering
- Legal Capacity or Competancy
- Legal Malpractice
- Legal Rights of the Disabled
- Liens
- Litigation
- Mediation
- Medicaid Appeals
- Medicaid Applications
- Medicaid Planning
- Annuities
- Care Contracts
- Divorce
- Estate Recovery
- Family Part Non-Dissolution Support Orders
- Gifts
- Life Estates
- Loan repayments
- MMMNA
- Promissory Notes
- Qualified Income Trusts
- Spousal Refusal
- Transfers For Reasons Other Than To Qualify For Medicaid
- Transfers to "Caregiver" Child(ren)
- Transfers to Disabled Adult Children
- Trusts
- Undue Hardship Provision
- Multiple-Party Deposit Account Act
- New Cases
- New Laws
- News Briefs
- Newsletters
- Non-Probate Assets
- Nursing Facility Litigation
- Personal Achievements and Awards
- Personal Injury Lawsuits
- Probate
- Punitive Damages
- Reconsideration
- Retirement Benefits
- Reverse Mortgages
- Section 8 Housing
- Settlement of Litigation
- Social Media
- Special Education
- Special Needs Planning
- Surrogate Decision-Making
- Taxation
- Technology
- Texting
- Top Ten
- Trials
- Trustees
- Uncategorized
- Veterans Benefits
- Web Sites and the Internet
- Webinar
- Writing Intended To Be A Will
Vanarelli & Li, LLC on Social Media