Elder Laws At A Glance

Elder Law is the collection of statutes and laws which are applied to the population that is considered to be of an elderly age, typically those that have reached senior citizen status.

Elder laws concentrate on the rights of senior citizens, estate planning, and healthcare. Other aspects also addressed by elder laws will deal with the care of senior citizens in terms of guardianship. Therefore, Elder Law itself encompasses various aspects of law in general, making it quite an expansive legal field.

Examples of elder laws deal with aspects such as retirement planning, Social Security Benefits, consumer protection, powers of attorney, nursing homes and in-home care, as well as taxation issues. The first Elder Law in the United States can be considered to be the Older Americans Act, which was implemented in 1965, the same year in which Medicare was created.