Topics: Elder Law - 9 results

A jury has ordered a nursing home to pay $3.7 million to the daughter of an elderly woman who died during a five-day stint at a nursing home. Janet Smith was a patient at Belmont Lodge Health Care Center in Pueblo, Colo. in May 2011. She planned to stay for only five days while she recovered after breaking her ankle. Smith knew the place well; she had worked there 30 years ago. But according to Smith’s daughter, Margaret, the nursing …

A $2 million jury award for the death of a former pro wrestler highlights the abuse and neglect of elderly patients in understaffed nursing homes. George Dahmer, known to fans as Chief White Owl during his 30-year career as a WWWF wrestler, essentially wasted away after spending only two months under shoddy care at a nursing home in Florida. Dahmer was 72 years old when he entered Lake Worth Manor, now Oasis Health, in February 2008 after suffering from bouts …

As individuals and advocacy groups push to advance the rights of LGBT citizens across the nation, a frequently overlooked area is the discrimination that older gay residents can face when they have to check into nursing homes for short- and long-term care. As the generation of civil rights heroes who marched and fought for equal rights in the 1960s grows older and faces the health problems associated with aging, a new frontier opens in the battle for the right to …

A Pennsylvania man got some unpleasant news when he found out a nursing home was sticking him with a bill for $93,000 for his mother’s medical care. Pennsylvania’s “filial support law”can make children liable for parents’ bills Twenty-eight other states have similar laws First known filial support case with large liability but no fault   Payback Time Parents can spend a fortune feeding, clothing and educating their children. Now, it’s time for the kids to give back, says the Pennsylvania …

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) is awaiting word on its challenges to federal rules and industry practices that are placing widows and widowers at risk of foreclosure. In March of 2011, the AARP Legal Foundation filed suit on behalf of the surviving spouses of three homeowners against the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), alleging that policy changes enacted by that agency in late 2008 regarding reverse mortgages were pushing them into foreclosure. Reverse mortgages are …