Aging With Dignity: How Legal Services Keep Seniors Safe

Episode Notes

Transcript

Al Cutturini:

The thing that hits me the hardest is that these clients are not going to get help anywhere else. If it wasn’t for Legal Services funding or some of these other smaller grants that we pick up, these people will not receive representation.

Announcer:

Equal Access to Justice is a core American value. In each episode of Talk Justice and An LSC Podcast, we’ll explore ways to expand access to justice and illustrate why it is important to the legal community, business government, and the General Public Talk. Justice is sponsored by the Leaders Council of the Legal Services Corporation.

Lee Rawles:

Hello and welcome to Talk Justice. I’m Lee Rawles, longtime legal journalist and your host for this episode. Today we’ll be talking about the legal needs of seniors and the services that help to address those needs. Aging Americans are vulnerable to a slew of legal problems that can impact their health, safety, and financial security. It can also impact their ability to maintain agency and ensure that their best interests are prioritized as they age. Civil legal service providers make sure that seniors are protected, supported and can age with dignity. Last year, LSC funded programs assisted more than 300,000 people age 60 or older with their legal problems. The number of seniors eligible for LSC funded services has increased by one third since 2016, from 6.6 million to 8.9 million in 2023. If this trend continues, more than 10 million seniors will be eligible for LSC funded services in 2027. I’m excited to talk with our guests today to learn about the biggest challenges facing older Americans and the innovative approaches that their programs are using to effectively serve seniors. So joining us, we have Jeff Hittleman supervising attorney for the Senior Citizen Law Project at Coast to Coast Legal Aid of South Florida. Michael Forton, director of Advocacy at Legal Services Alabama, and Alfred Cutturini, director of the Elder Law Project at North Mississippi Rural Legal Services. Thank you guys so much for joining us.

Jeff Hittleman:

Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Lee Rawles:

So civil legal problems can pop up in all of our lives at different times, but there are common legal tasks that seniors specifically face and will have to sort out. So Al, what are these common legal tasks?

Al Cutturini:

Well, the majority of my work is what we call advanced planning, will’s, power of attorneys, advanced healthcare directives. Everyone really needs them, but we really don’t start thinking about them till we’re older here, especially the power of attorney, which I think is just such powerful document that we forget about or we don’t want to think about until it’s too late. So a lot of our work is providing that, and then our seniors get into, they’re the number one targeted group for scammers through phone calls and technology on the internet. So we have a lot of consumer protection cases that we handle too.

Lee Rawles:

So Al, for those who aren’t familiar, what is an advanced directive?

Al Cutturini:

An advanced directive is where you nominate someone called your agent and they make decisions. If you’re unable to due to incapacity or a disability, maybe you have dementia, Alzheimer’s, you’ve suffered a stroke, your doctor’s always going to talk to you to figure out the right course of treatment. But if for some reason you can’t communicate, this agent is allowed to make those decisions on your behalf. So we have the advanced healthcare directive for medical decisions, and then we have the power of attorney for legal and financial decisions in Mississippi.

Lee Rawles:

And without having an advanced directive or a power of attorney in place, what could happen to a senior?

Al Cutturini:

Well, the law in Mississippi does state that there’s a hierarchy of people that can make the decisions for you if you don’t have the documents, but sometimes that’s not the person that you intend. It might be your spouse and your spouse could be disabled themselves or not in their right mind. It might be your children who are unaware of what your true wishes are according to care, and it might be a family member that was not your first choice. The state’s going to determine who gets to make those decisions if you don’t do it. And the same thing with the power of attorney. If you wait too long to where you’ve lost capacity, now you’re at the mercy of the court to pick a guardian or a conservator over you, and it oftentimes is not the person that you would’ve chosen yourself.

Lee Rawles:

Jeff, do you see similar issues?

Jeff Hittleman:

Absolutely. In addition to the important advanced planning tasks that Al does, we see seniors in the midst of unexpected legal crisis, and these are often at the same time that they’re dealing with medical issues, financial stress scams and fraud. Our seniors are prime targets for fraud. Everything from phony home repair schemes, tech support, scams, identity theft. We’re seeing a troubling trend right now, deed fraud, where seniors are tricked into signing over their homes thinking they’re signing something else. Here in South Florida, housing is a huge issue. We’ve become one of the most expensive places to live in the country. So Lee, that one bedroom apartment you could have rented for 1500 back in 2019, it’s now 2,500,

Lee Rawles:

And that’s just in the space of five years. Wow.

Jeff Hittleman:

Five years. It’s a thousand more a month. You can imagine for our seniors on a fixed income. Those increases are such a challenge, and we’re seeing many face eviction and foreclosure because they can’t keep up with these rising housing costs.

Lee Rawles:

Well, Mike, we’ve heard some of the common issues that seniors face. What are some of the challenges in providing legal help for seniors?

Michael Forton:

Well, I think that the challenges to helping seniors are basically the same challenges to helping all of the people that legal services serves, but they’re just multiplied. So if a single mom is unable to get transportation till they come to the office, oftentimes seniors because of mobility problems, that just becomes more and more difficult. Alabama is unfortunately, has numerous legal deserts, large swaths of area with very few private lawyers and often one legal services office to cover multiple counties. And so transportation’s a big issue. We also have internet deserts. Mississippi may very well be the same in terms of we have large sections of the state that still don’t have reliable high-speed internet with a lot of our services going towards internet, online, pro se resources, stuff like that, at least to get people started. That’s not always very useful for our senior clients. And then just many of the other things that affect everybody, the sheer volume of cases, legal services, Alabama gets 120,000 calls a year, and from that, we’re only able to have about 15,000 people with about 4,000 of those being seniors. And then many of those folks have multiple issues. So someone may come into us with tax issue and then also have an issue with getting the title of their property in their name because it’s air property. Alabama specifically has a lot of air property, but it’s the same things that affect everybody. It just makes it more difficult as you lack resources and sometimes alternatives that other people might be able to access.

Lee Rawles:

You brought up internet access, and one way the access to Justice community has been trying to meet needs over the past several years is through increasing these online resources. And obviously some seniors are going to be completely web savvy, but for many others, internet tools might feel difficult or impossible to use. So how do you bridge the tech gap for seniors who may not even have a smartphone? Jeff, let’s start with your thoughts.

Jeff Hittleman:

You’re right. It really is a spectrum. With one end, we often meet seniors who struggle with technology. We’ve had plenty of client meetings where the first thing we do is help them turn up the call volume practice using that on off button. And like Mike was mentioning, many of our seniors don’t have reliable internet or even a smartphone such a big barrier because so much is online in South Florida here, a lot of our court hearings have moved to Zoom. So we really try to focus on meeting seniors where they are. We do a lot by old fashioned phone calls. We pride ourselves on having real people answering when you call, whether it’s intake or working on your case, if your court hearings by Zoom, we often come out, sit with our senior, help them set up the Zoom and run it, and we like to go out into the community. We’re out at the senior centers, the senior housing buildings, meeting our seniors in places where they already feel comfortable. Al, you might appreciate this, we just held an advanced directives clinic at a senior center we went to where the seniors would’ve been spending their day. Anyway,

Al Cutturini:

I’m on the road two to three days a week doing that same thing. So I know we’re rural, we have to do it

Jeff Hittleman:

Exactly to meet people where they are. We set up in the lunchroom, and by the end of the afternoon, everyone walked away with the power of attorney designation of healthcare surrogate and a living will. There was one lady, she wasn’t very happy because we preempted bingo that was scheduled to be in the lunchroom. How dare you.

Lee Rawles:

Very thoughtless, Jeff.

Jeff Hittleman:

I know. But once we explained how these documents will make sure that her wishes are respected, she actually left happy and said that we gave her some peace of mind for the future. So yeah, we’re always looking for creative ways to remove those tech barriers so our seniors can get the help they deserve.

Lee Rawles:

Al, let’s go more into the Elder Law project at North Mississippi Rural Legal Services, because as you mentioned, going into the community, establishing these strong community partnerships, that’s been so important. Can you tell our listeners more about some of these partnerships and what you’ve accomplished together?

Al Cutturini:

Sure. If it was just us, I’m one attorney handling 40 counties. Oh, wow. And I cover six different area agencies on aging that basically provide a separate grant for us to provide free legal services for someone over the age of 60. But often they’re in the Delta. And if you’re not familiar with Mississippi, let’s just say it’s rural. Where I am is the University of Mississippi. It’s probably the most populated area in Tupelo where Elvis is from. You’ve heard of that. But

Everything else could be a two hour drive. Three hours is the furthest spot in my area to go out to the Delta to see clients. So we rely on senior citizen centers, the planning and development district buildings to allow us to just set up dates where we call ’em will days where people just set up half hour interviews with us. Normally, the assisted living places will provide transportation if anybody from their building wants to come over and we’ll just sit there for the day and we don’t draft on the spot, but we’ll interview people and then we’ll come back to our office draft and then we’ll set a day to come back and sign the documents. We bring the notaries, we bring the witnesses. They just need to have some form of ID for a driver’s license, so they would never get that service if they had to find a private attorney to come out and do that for them.

Lee Rawles:

We also brought up earlier in our tech conversation, old fashioned phone calls. And Mike, I know that at Legal Services Alabama, you have a senior helpline. Is that the main way that senior clients come into contact with your organization? And what kind of call volume do you see?

Michael Forton:

It actually is not the main way because when we introduced the Elder Helpline, I think it was three years ago, we initially publicized it a lot. And the way it functions is we have a call center staff with nine or 10 intake workers, and then there was a specific person designated as the elder law intake worker. And if that person was not available, it basically skipped the line because oftentimes our call center is about 45 minutes to an hour backed up. You’ll call and it’ll call you back. And when we advertise the Elder Hot Law Hotline, everybody from 15 to 45 is calling the Elder Law hotline basically to skip the line. What we use it for now is we give it to our partners and we give it in the elder specific publications. So if you get our elder guidebook, if you’re on the elder law, specifically in the elder website, if you’re at a area agency at Aging or a community center, they will get the Elder Law hotline.

So really only about 50 or 60 clients every month come through that. And again, we do about 4,500 clients a year. So it’s only about, I think 10% of the total volume, but that’s where we’re focusing specifically on getting to seniors who have a hard time accessing us. The rest of the folks still just find us the old fashioned way from family and friends, from other community partners, and then they’ll either come through our online intake or through the general call center, the elder hotline. We tend to specifically save where we can target seniors to make sure that they’re the ones using it

Lee Rawles:

Well, 50 to 60 people being helped a month still seems pretty massive when you consider how life-changing these Legal Aid Assistances could be. So I’m still impressed. You mentioned a guidebook, legal Services, Alabama has a guidebook for older Americans. Can you tell us about how that came to be and how it’s been helpful for your clients and the broader community?

Michael Forton:

Sure. The guidebook, the helpline, and also our senior website, which we have a website with SE and other resources for seniors, all came as part of a grant from administration, from administration for community living that we got five years ago. So they helped fund that. And the great thing with the guidebook was that we were able to bring in one of our former attorneys who is now a senior herself, Mary Jane Oakley. She was a staff attorney with Legal Services for over 40 years, and she came back and she spent six months to a year drafting it, went through numerous revisions, but people just seem to love it. It’s about 40 pages. It covers everything, every single legal problem that we see with seniors, it covers advanced directives, it covers consumer law, housing law, even senior abuse, scams, everything. And we’ve distributed, I think five or 6,000 of them.

The one thing that’s kind of prohibitive about that sort of publication, it is 40 pages, is that it does cost somewhere between a dollar and $2 to print. So again, we had to be very specific in Target where we were going to distribute that to make sure it was going to the people who really needed it. But then we were also able to share it online on the senior website. So it’s there for anyone who wants to download it, senior or not. And it’s really great. I recommend any Alabama senior or if other legal services want to look at it, I’d be happy to share it. I think it’s a great resource and people really seem to love it. In fact, I had a couple of grandparents down in Greenville, Alabama who were, they were seniors. They had a son who had a drug problem, and they had to take on their grandchildren and support them and raise them. Unfortunately, that led to accumulating some credit card debt. And as I’m sure everyone here knows, the four or $5,000 they borrowed ended up being 20 or $30,000 by the time it came to court.

And so thank God they did find us through the helpline, and they were aware of all the issues because of the guidebook. And we went down there, were able to represent them. Unfortunately for the debt collectors, they ended up owing nothing. They didn’t have to pay even the four or $5,000. But that was a great story. And it was great because there were just two grandparents still raising their grandchildren, and they needed that money a lot more. I always say it’s not fair to take someone’s food money and turn it into some attorney’s boat money because they’re taking money that people would spend on food and going and buying boats and trips and stuff, and legal services. We’re just always so thrilled when we can help people like that.

Lee Rawles:

Jeff, I’d love for you to tell us more about the Senior Citizen Law Project at Coast to Coast. Do you see some of the same things that Mike’s talked about in your area?

Jeff Hittleman:

Yes, we do. We’re in different states, but we’re seeing some similar issues. Mike, in our office, we have a special unit just dedicated to helping seniors. Our goal is simple, help seniors stay safe, independent and age in place. Actually, our number one type of case housing issues, we see a lot of seniors facing eviction, foreclosure calling us on the brink of homelessness. Last week, we just finished up a case, a 92-year-old senior who was being evicted, being evicted for an issue directly related to his disability. And when we think about it, many seniors, they don’t always, they know their rights or their resources or can be overwhelming to fight the case on their own at 92. And would he have known to request a reasonable accommodation citing the Fair Housing Act, which we were able to do and step in and ultimately stop his eviction and keep him in his home of over a decade. So that’s a huge priority of ours, keeping our seniors in their homes so they can age in place. And just like Mike said, we see a lot of financial security scams debt, medical debt issues, and when we’re able to assert a protection to step in, get some income back for a senior who is struggling to pay for food makes such a difference in their life.

Lee Rawles:

Well, and just like in Mike’s story, this can be multi-generational, the impact of a senior losing their home or being in this financial distress,

Jeff Hittleman:

We always see that the impact is like a domino effect where one issue turns into a whole snowball of other issues. And last year alone, we were able to help. We did over 1500 cases for seniors, helping them navigate these legal crises.

Lee Rawles:

You also mentioned the incredible range that you cover. So transportation has to be a huge issue, not just for the attorneys, but for the clients. So can you tell us how you’ve been able to overcome that?

Jeff Hittleman:

Yes. Our mobile Justice Squad, as I guess Mike and Al, see, one of the biggest challenges our seniors face is simply getting to us. Many of our seniors don’t drive anymore. Some have mobility issues that’s going to make public transportation difficult. So we thought, if they can’t come to us, let’s go to them. And that’s how the Mobile Justice Squad was born. We got a van. We made a list of everything someone had in their office and then outfitted the van, computers, printer, copier, scanner, hotspot back of the van, has all the office supplies you could ever need. And we’ve the road. In the last five years, we’ve been able to help over 530 home bound seniors coming right to their doorstep. And I’ll never forget one, she was a hundred year old lady. She’s a hundred years old, she wasn’t driving anymore. So her condo association revoked her gate access, like her transponder because she didn’t have a car, which meant her caregiver couldn’t get in to help her.

Now, I’m pretty sure you would’ve taken that case, Lee, and tried to help her because you knew you’d have a good legal argument to get that gate access back. But we needed some paperwork signed first if we had mailed it back and forth and would’ve taken weeks. We sent the mobile Justice squad van, got the paperwork signed same day soon after the gate access was restored, and she was so relieved and happy. So having the mobile justice squad and our van, it’s been a game changer and it’s literally removed one of the biggest barriers to accessing justice for our home bound seniors.

Lee Rawles:

Well, Al, we have heard the similar legal issues that all three of you see with your clients, and I want to give you an opportunity to talk about the annual conference on elder law issues for attorneys and social workers. Could you talk about the purpose of that conference and what it means to be able to get together with the other people doing this kind of work?

Al Cutturini:

Sure. Every year, we have an elder law conference, usually in August or September. And it is aimed at social workers and attorneys because we realize that we share so much of the same clients, the responsibilities, sometimes they’re the first responders that call us to tell us someone is homebound and is being abused by their caretaker. That person had no voice. There was no one else who was going to know that except for the social worker that then contacts us. So we get six credits for attorney credits and six credits for social workers. And there’s six presentations just around the theme of guardianship, conservatorship, planning documents, housing, Medicaid, Medicaid appeals, keeping your house from the lookback period for Medicaid. It just applies. I think everybody could take something home. And since I am one attorney, I can’t be everywhere. We rely on those social workers to then go out and educate others and just spread throughout. So maybe 200, 250 attendees each year, but who knows how many countless cases come back just from that.

Lee Rawles:

Well, Mike, Al, Jeff, all of your programs receive federal funding through LSA grants to support your work. And I know that many of the initiatives we talked about today are supported by local foundations or agencies focused on serving seniors. However, I know for your programs in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida LSE funding makes up around 60 to 70% of your total budgets. So I’d love to hear from you. Can you talk about why this federal investment in civil legal services is so vital to your programs and the services you’re able to provide for seniors? Mike, I’ll start with you.

Michael Forton:

Sure. Well, I think that our last return on investment study in Alabama indicated that for every $1 invested in legal services, $8 and benefits were received. And I think a huge portion of that’s the seniors, which is helping them avoid scams, which keeps them housed safe, fed, helping make sure that they get benefits that they deserve, and then also helping make sure that they don’t end up being bigger impositions on the state on going to nursing homes, stuff like that when they don’t have to. I mean, really, a lot of times the early intervention of a legal service attorney keeps someone housed, fed all the necessary things to live a healthy autonomous lifestyle. And that really benefits everyone. It benefits the senior their families, but it benefits our state and our country as a whole. And I think it’s a great return on investment.

Al Cutturini:

Al,

Lee Rawles:

How about

Al Cutturini:

You? The thing that hits me the hardest is that these clients are not going to get help anywhere else if it wasn’t for legal services funding or some of these other smaller grants that we pick up. These people will not receive representation. They might be forced under a guardianship or conservatorship because they had no voice at all, and they’re going to lose all autonomy. Once you get a guardianship or conservatorship over you, no one’s going to fight to set it aside for you. And the number of people, we do four to 600 cases a year that private attorneys would just not pick up because there’s no money in it for these people. And Mississippi’s hard enough to live in, and our public services are near non-existent. So to take anything away from these people is to just make it extremely hard for them.

Lee Rawles:

And Jeff, if LSE funding were cut by Congress, what would that mean for your clients?

Jeff Hittleman:

That ripple effect would be crushing. It would mean that fewer seniors get the help that they desperately need. Lee, imagine being 80 years old on the brink of homelessness and having no one to help you. Those LSC dollars are what allow us to say, you’re not alone. We can help. We’re going to figure this out together. I couldn’t agree more with what Mike and Al said, that those LSC dollars are a direct investment in keeping our seniors safe, stable, treated with the dignity that they deserve.

Lee Rawles:

So if the LSC funding were to be cut by Congress, could state or private funding make up for that loss? Mike, if you share,

Michael Forton:

I start out my career as an elder law attorney. I’m now the director of advocacy. And I remember a client I helped who was being threatened with eviction from public housing. And I went to visit her. And the one reason I remember this particular visit was because my client was eating when I came in, and I happened to notice that what she was eating was a can of pet food.

And I think people sometimes don’t realize the level of poverty that exists in America because if you don’t see it, it isn’t there. But it’s simply not true. And at Legal Services, Alabama and then many of the other legal services, the funding from Legal Services Corporation makes up 70 to 80% of what we receive if that were to go away. It’s simply impossible. There’s no infrastructure we may be able to have instead of 65 attorneys statewide, one or two. But people like that client would simply just not get service. They would be on their own. And for the record, she was being evicted for having a party at her house, which was completely fabricated. It didn’t even happen. But this little old lady who never left her house and was eating pet food, I was so thrilled to be able to help her. It is a privilege to be able to do this kind of work, and we just cannot do it without legal Services corporation funds. It’s impossible.

Lee Rawles:

Well, thank you to Jeffrey Hitman, Michael Forton and Alfred Cini for joining me today and helping us to better understand the legal needs of seniors and how vital legal assistance is for aging Americans. And thank you to the listeners for tuning in to this episode of Talk Justice. Be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss an episode.

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Podcast. Guest speakers views, thoughts and opinions are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the legal services corporations views, thoughts, or opinions. The information and guidance discussed in this podcast are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice. You should not make decisions based on this podcast content without seeking legal or other professional advice.

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