Study Shows Legal Needs of Elderly to Outpace Resources
Contact: Len Kaye, (207) 262-7920; Jaye Martin, Legal Services for the Elderly, (207) 621-0087
ORONO — A recent study of legal needs of aging Mainers by the University of Maine Center on Aging has confirmed that the number of older people needing legal services will outweigh available resources in the future.
Up to half of all older adults in the state will need legal assistance in the next 5-10 years, the Center study found. Among low-income elderly, the percentage is higher, with 45-86 percent of residents in their 60s needing legal intervention to help solve problems, the study’s report says.
The primary agency that provides free legal services for older Mainers, the non-profit Legal Services for the Elderly (LSE), and the Maine Office of Elder Services, commissioned the Center on Aging to conduct a needs assessment study, “Legal Needs Assessment of Older Adults in Maine” to help plan for the future. The study was supported by grant funding from the U.S. Administration on Aging.
“It is our hope this study will help to guide us in directing our limited resources to those most in need and identify areas of unmet or growing need,” says Jaye Martin, executive director of Legal Services for the Elderly.
Primary authors of the report, Lenard Kaye, director of the Center on Aging, and Center staff members Melissa Adle and Jennifer Crittenden listed categories of legal needs most in demand by older Maine residents. They compared legal needs previously and currently provided by LSE with legal services provided in other states.
Help with health insurance, including Medicaid Part D, was the number one category nationally and in Maine, and constituted 25 percent of the services provided by LSE. Other categories, in order of highest demand, included financial, including bankruptcy; estate planning, specifically writing or changing wills; and housing, including foreclosures. Also of significance was the observation that in Maine and nationally, elders are not seeking help with issues of abuse or exploitation. That means that while only 2.5 percent of the LSE cases currently involve abuse or exploitation, more than five times that number of elders likely need help in that area.
The authors also note that Maine is the oldest state in the nation, with a median age of 41.2 years, and adults over age 65 comprise 15 percent of the population, compared with the national average of 12.8 percent. In addition, Maine’s baby boomer population represents 32 percent of the population, four points more than the national average.
Compounding the potentially looming crisis is that Maine is one of the most rural states in the country and people living in rural areas are three times as likely to live in poverty as those in urban areas, the report says. Maine’s medium income is below the national average and many living rural areas have incomes significantly less than the state average.
“The importance of this study is that it serves to confirm the increase in a wide variety of legal needs surfacing among older Mainers concurrent with their dramatically increasing numbers and their having to deal with an extended period of economic distress,” Kaye says.
The full report is posted on the Center on Aging website at www.umaine.edu/mainecenteronaging. People in need of help from Legal Services for the Elderly are asked to call the statewide help line at 1-800-750-5353.