Welcome to Age and Wisdom, my blog highlighting issues associated with aging in America. I am an attorney in New York City with twenty years experience in complex litigation. For the past ten years, I have focused my practice on elder and family law. Along with many of my fellow practitioners, I am increasingly concerned that, as a society, we are grossly unprepared for the challenges we will face in meeting the needs of our rapidly growing elderly population and their caretakers.
Today, 48 million Americans are 65+, and by the year 2040, the number of Americans age 65 or older is expected to increase to 82 million. Older adults who are frail or the oldest of the old, those 85 or older, are the fastest growing population segment in the United States. As women have entered the work force and started their families later in life, much traditional care taking has shifted away from family because the women of this “sandwich generation” find themselves squeezed by their care taking responsibilities for their children, their parents, and the demands of work. And as more people are forgoing marriage and having children, and move away from family, we have an ever growing population of individuals with no family to care for them as they age. Therefore, the need to plan for and manage the care of the elderly and the disabled can no longer be placed solely on the family. These challenges we face as a society rarely garner the attention they need and deserve. It is my hope that this blog will help individuals and families looking for guidance, and increase awareness of the need to focus on what lies ahead of us in caring for our aging population.
Age and Wisdom 