ElderLaw Answers Blog

Our most recent home page survey asked the question, “Do you have an elderly family member whose driving is unsafe due to the effects of aging?” We were astonished to learn that almost three-quarters (74 percent) of those who responded answered “Yes.” Extrapolate that to the population at large, and you have an awful lot of people who, in the opinion of at least one relative, shouldn’t be on our roads.

A 2008 report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows the rate of motor vehicle-related deaths by drivers 70 and older has decreased steadily from 1975 through 2008. The 2008 rate for seniors ages 70 to74 was 14 per 100,000, and the rate for drivers 85 and older was just 17 per 100,000. Compare this to the death rate for drivers between the ages of 16 and 24 of more than 20 per 100,000.

Still, as people age, driving can become more difficult and more dangerous — as our survey results suggest. But in our car-based society, the fight to wrest control of the keys can be fierce and painful. For the past 80 years or so, most U.S. communities have been built around the assumption that adults will drive to obtain the essentials of life, including the proverbial quart of milk. Taking away a driver’s license usually imposes a sentence of immobility or dependency on others. Over the next several decades, as our society ages, millions of Americans will be facing this sentence.

All state Departments of Motor Vehicles, Highway Safety, or Transportation have an office where a family member or doctor can make a referral about an unsafe driver, but succeeding in getting the impaired driver off the road is another matter. Often families will want to sit down with the unsafe driver and see if the individual will voluntarily relinquish the keys or limit driving. In The Driving Dilemma: The Complete Resource Guide for Older Drivers and Their Families, author Elizabeth Dugan devotes a large section of the book to how to discuss the issue of driving with a loved one who may be showing deficits. ElderLawAnswers has also written about confronting an unsafe driver.

But this is easier said than done. The bulk of the baby boom generation will become senior citizen drivers over the next 15 years. What we need are more communities that are navigable on foot, by bicycle and by public transportation. There appears to be a trend in this direction as our fascination with sprawl fades and gas prices climb. Witness, for example, the rise of the New Urbanism movement. But whether we will locate the off-ramp from our car-centered culture in time for the coming tidal wave of elderly ex-drivers is another question.

Our new home page survey asks, in light of the news that Al and Tipper Gore are calling it quits after 40 years of marriage, whether 40 years is too long for any marriage.

I’ve often commented that to call everyone over 65 a “senior” is to miss the trees for the forest.  Those in their late 60s are often the children of those in their late 80s and have very different life experiences. 

Someone born in 1924 or before will have experienced the Great Depression and may have fought in World War II.  Someone born in the late 30s or early 40s will not have been formed by either event.

Further, the older group is part of a cohort that lived longer than their parents and grandparents and contributed to a great increase in the percentage of the population over age 65, and now over age 85.  Those that followed were smaller in number relative to the greater population due to the baby drought during the 30s and World War II.  The nation’s resources in caring for seniors will not be overly strained over the next decade, but they will when the baby boomers reach age 75 and beyond.

Likewise, it is brushing with too wide a stroke to paint all baby boomers with the same brush.  Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama are all baby boomers, but their experiences are also quite different, with the older baby boomers being formed by the Vietnam War and its protests and the younger boomers coming of age in its aftermath.

These differences are borne out in a study commissioned by the MetLife Mature Market Institute, Boomer Bookends:Insights Into the Oldest and Youngest Boomers, starting with the moniker “baby boomer” itself.  While older boomers are comfortable with the name, the younger boomers are not.

Not surprisingly, the different groups are at different places in their lives, with the younger set much more likely to have children at home and much more likely to have two living parents. 

Despite those differences, the study also found a lot of similarities between the two groups.  Most boomers of both groups continue to work full-time.  Most are homeowners and don’t plan to move for at least five years.  Younger boomers earn more on average, with annual household income of $89,000 as opposed to $71,000 for the older group.  Surprisingly, a greater percentage of younger baby boomers – 17 percent — are providing care to an older relative than are older boomers — 14 percent.

While it appears that younger boomers identify more with the generation that followed and don’t want to be categorized as “boomers,” the two cohorts have more in common than one might expect at first.  However, this is likely to change and the differences are likely to grow as the older boomers move into retirement.  It would be interesting to revisit this study in five years.

This morning I interviewed Dr. Robert N. Butler, the CEO of the International Longevity Center – USA and a pioneer in the field of geriatric medicine, for ElderLaw Radio about the future old age of baby boomers.  I was expecting an uplifting conversation about how we’ll change aging with our vitality, health and resourcefulness.  That’s not what I got.

Dr. Butler pointed out that we’re not so healthy.  While some baby boomers eat right and exercize, we’re also a big part of the obesity revolution, which could lead to declining longevity and health on our part.

We’re also not so wealthy.  Most people had too little saved up even prior to the current recession.  We have even less now.

And we can’t depend on our parents to pass along gobs of wealth to us.  They also have less than ever now, and what wealth current seniors have is concentrated in a small number of the most affluent.  Most baby boomers will see little or nothing by way of inheritance.

Finally, there are not enough caregivers to take care of us when we get ill and feeble.  Given the high cost of a medical education in the United States, most new doctors come out of school with too much debt to become primary care physicians.  Instead, they go into high-paying specialties that permit them to pay off their debt, and by the time they’re solvent most are too ensconced in their specialties to switch back to the calling that may have inspired them to be doctors in the first place.

Are there any answers for this dilemma?  Certainly, there are steps government can take to ameliorate the situation, but Dr. Butler makes a resounding call for each of us to make changes that will improve our senior years and, if we all make these changes, that will save our nation from a potential financial and care trainwreck.  Here are some steps we can take:

• Exercize, aerobic and for strength and balance.  One of the leading causes of death and disability among seniors is falling, which can be avoided through exercize.
• Push back from the table.  Don’t eat that second course or dessert.  Obesity is a major health and financial crisis for individuals and the country.
• Keep working.  You’ll need the money, as well as the socialization and purpose work provides.
• If you’re not working, volunteer.
• Start or involve yourself in a community such as Beacon Hill Village to help yourself and others stay at home.

With these changes, Dr. Butler says, we can change our future as individuals and as a nation.

I’m just back from participating in a webinar for ALI-ABA on “Estate Planning for the Aging Baby Boomer.”  The idea of the program was to talk with estate planners about the country about how estate planning for baby boomers is different from estate planning for prior generations.

We concluded that there are three main differences:  First, with the of the estate tax credit to $3.5 million, fewer clients will be motivated by savings saving taxes.

Second, baby boomers were born wearing the “Question Authority” badge.  They have access to more information than prior generations through the Internet and other sources and are more likely to question the value of the legal service provided.  It is more important than ever that attorneys be able to explain the value of the service they provide over low-cost forms available on the Internet.

Third, the complexity of boomers’ family life makes their planning all the more complicated, important and interesting for the practitioner.  While the paradigm of a man and a woman married for life with 2+ children was never as universal as it was portrayed on television and elsewhere, it is even less prevalent today.  With single-adult households exceeding nuclear-family households, 1.5 million babies a year born to unmarried woman, second, third and fourth marriages and partnerships, and growing acceptance of same-sex relationships, estate planning needs to take these various family configurations into account.  Neither the state intestacy rules nor the forms available on line will do so.