From the President, 1216 WYBJ, Vol. 39 No. 6. 8

• Author: John A. Masterson, Wyoming State Bar President.

From the President

Vol. 39 No. 6 Pg. 8

Wyoming Bar Journal

December, 2016

John A. Masterson, Wyoming State Bar President.

Dealing With the Inevitable

I remember the day my family moved into a new house, a long time ago. My father told me that I’d have to help move a lot of the boxes – the heavy ones, and to this day I believe I moved every one of them. Sometime after the move, when I mustered the courage to bring it up, he said that while he wasn’t “old,” he was “older” than I was. Well of course he was right (even at a young age, I was perceptive) but after all, our parents never get old. Years later, after he died, I realized he had indeed aged and at some point had gotten “old.”

This issue of the Wyoming Lawyer is about the issues we as lawyers see and will see when helping our aging clientele. The vast majority of Wyoming lawyers have drafted a will or power of attorney, but the issues around elder law have multiplied and become so much more complex. It’s no longer about a simple will, or planning for the unexpected. It’s about dealing with the inevitable: the management of declining health, paying for care while trying to leave something to their heirs, the ability to make decisions and competency, and the protection from physical and mental abuse. Combine these issues with the rapid growth of an aging population,^[1] and the demand for critically needed legal services will only grow.

The questions start with the traditional ones. What do we do with our money and our real property? What do we do with our property and our personal possessions? But others have evolved. What role do we play in determining competency? How will we address the issue without violating confidences? Who do we contact when our client has no family or an estranged family? Who will determine it and how? How do we draft advanced directives and wills that involve mental health and physical deterioration? With medical technology keeping us alive longer, who is to decide when the quality of life is no more? And tax considerations – including the insidious Medicare “look back” used to take our client’s estate to pay for their care – change quickly and have dramatic consequences. And the scourge of mental and physical abuse of the elderly will unfortunately continue. Our responsibilities are first to our clients, but we also have a responsibility to bring these discussions to our communities.

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