The State of Elder Law Scholarship: SSRN Articles

Here is a sampling of recent articles on elder law and related topics. All of these articles were posted on SSRN within the last month, so they represent the latest in elder law scholarship.

• Memento Mori: Death and Wills by Karen J. Sneddon
  Abstract:
  
  Death. The mere mention of the word sends shivers down the spine or provokes a nervous giggle. Modern reactions to death range from avoidance, as shown by the abundance of death euphemisms, to fascination, as shown by the number of movies and television shows centered on death, including Twilight's vampires and The Walking Dead's zombies. Estate planning is the legal environment in which a person confronts his or her mortality and participates in the formulation of his or her legacy. Contextualizing the experience as a memento mori experience promotes the function of the estate planning process, specifically the drafting of the Will. The Will is the document that nominates the representative of the testator and the guardians of the testator's minor children. The Will gives cherished mementos of a life lived. "Remember you must die" prompts reflection and contemplation.
  
  
• Health Care Spending and Financial Security after the Affordable Care Act by Allison K. Hoffman
  Abstract:
  
  Health insurance has fallen notoriously short of protecting Americans from financial insecurity caused by health care spending. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) attempted to ameliorate this shortcoming by regulating health insurance. The ACA offers a new policy vision of how health insurance will (and perhaps should) serve to promote financial security in the face of health care spending. Yet, the ACA’s policy vision applies differently among insured, based on the type of insurance they have, resulting in inconsistent types and levels of financial protection among Americans.
  
  To examine this picture of inconsistent financial protection, this Article offers a taxonomy to describe ways in which health insurance regulation can promote financial security. It then uses this taxonomy to map the effect the ACA will have on the financial security of various insured populations. Specifically, it analyzes how much a person in poor health might spend out of pocket on health care in three scenarios: a person with average coverage through an individual-market health insurance exchange, a worker with employer-sponsored insurance, and a retiree with Medicare and a supplemental insurance plan. This analysis reveals two effects. First, the ACA alleviates financial risk from health care spending to some degree in all three scenarios. But, secondly, the ACA preserves (and may even exacerbate) variability in the degree and type of financial risk remaining across the three scenarios. In effect, the ACA asserts and affirms different visions of the role of health insurance in promoting financial security for different people. This inconsistency leaves some insured especially vulnerable to spending and creates complexity that may impede insured from comprehending these points of vulnerability.
  
  
• Contemporary Trusts and Estates - An Experiential Approach by Jerome Borison, Naomi Cahn, Susan N. Gary, & Paula A. Monopoli
  Abstract:
  
  In this essay in a special issue dedicated to teaching trusts and estates, the co-authors of Contemporary Trusts & Estates: An Experiential Approach (2d. ed. Aspen 2014) reflect on how the teaching of trusts and estates can integrate policy, practice, doctrine, and centuries of tradition. They describe the genesis of their problem-based casebook and the influence of the Carnegie Report on their choice of pedagogic framework. Each of the co-authors embraced the fundamental principles advocated by the Carnegie Report, which counsels that legal education should integrate "theoretical and practical legal knowledge and professional identity." This essay goes on to outline how the book incorporates a problem-based methodology as well as an innovative choice of ordering the chapters that tracks the chronological path of estate planning, addressing the lifetime use of trusts first, followed by issues of will validity and interpretation. Drafting exercises complement the problems as well as traditional cases that illuminate theory and practice. With chapters on planning for disability, the federal estate and gift tax, estate administration and charitable trusts as well as basic doctrine on intestacy, wills and trusts, the book reflects the contemporary challenges addressed by trusts and estates lawyers. The co-authors have found that the book’s innovative approach engages students in a way that makes the study of trusts and estates relevant and students practice-aware.
  
  
• Viable Solutions to the Digital Estate Planning Dilemma by Jamie Patrick Hopkins & Ilya A. Lipin
  Abstract:
  
  Countless people are dying without proper digital estate plans in place, leaving billions of dollars of assets unaccounted for in the digital world. This is occurring in part because individuals are often unaware that traditional estate planning tools and techniques, such as wills, are ill-equipped to handle the unique challenges of digital estate planning. As a result, the majority of Americans are vastly unprepared for their digital afterlife, unintentionally foregoing digital estate planning altogether and leaving their assets trapped in a digital purgatory.
  
  With the ongoing growth in our reliance on technology, interaction via social media, digitization of individual’s property, and further advancement of new Internet technologies, the amount and value of our digital assets are growing exponentially. In response to this immediate need for digital estate planning and management of digital assets, some businesses began to offer their users the ability to plan for the disposition of their digital assets upon their death. However, due to the novelty of this area of law, the business solutions currently afforded often leave more questions than answers about what happens to the individual’s digital assets, raise concerns about privacy and security, and augment disputes over their overall effectiveness in the estate plan. This Essay examines the importance and increasing prevalence of digital assets, discusses the challenges facing traditional estate planning in the growing world of digital assets, and suggests a workable strategy for the creation of a well-developed and manageable digital estate plan.
  
  
• Who Said Learning Trusts & Estates Can't Be Fun? by Gerry W. Beyer
  Abstract:
  
  From even before their first day of law school, Texas Tech University School of Law students have the opportunity to appreciate the importance of the estate planning area and to understand that it can be both an enjoyable and rewarding area of law in which to practice. During orientation, which takes place the week before classes start, new students participate in full-day programs centered on a particular area of practice either of their own choosing or assigned by the administration. For the 2013 entering class, I was in charge of two full-day Estate Planning Tracks with a total of approximately thirty-five entering students.
  
  As their legal education continues, students have additional exposure, some mandatory and some optional, to estate planning topics. In my first year required Property course, I spend several days reviewing the basic principles of intestate succession and wills. Texas Tech then requires all students to complete a four-credit introductory course entitled Wills and Trusts as a condition of graduation during their second or third year. Students desiring a more sophisticated treatment may take courses such as Estate Planning, Texas Estate Administration, Guardianship, Estate and Gift Tax, Elder Law, and Marital Property. Students may also compete for a coveted position as an editor for the Estate Planning and Community Property Law Journal that Texas Tech publishes.
  
  This Article reveals my basic teaching philosophy and the general pedagogical techniques I employ to make Trusts and Estates topics both fun and relevant. I will then share with you the specific tools I use when teaching the introductory course as well as the advanced courses such as Estate Planning and Texas Estate Administration. It is my hope that you may be able to gain insight from my approach to enhance your own teaching and the experience you provide to your students.
  
  
• Older Persons and Compromised Decisional Capacity: The Role of Public Policy in Defining and Developing Core Professional Competencies by Marshall B. Kapp
  Abstract:
  
  Issues frequently arise concerning the cognitive and emotional ability of older individuals to make certain legally significant decisions. In confronting these issues, the professional involvement of both attorneys and physicians (and other health care professionals), acting both individually and collaboratively, is desirable. This article describes the possible contributions of public policy in developing, through fostering innovations in medical and legal education, core competencies for physicians and attorneys that are essential to improving interprofessional collaboration on behalf of older individuals suspected of being compromised in their ability to make certain significant decisions. Additionally, ideas are suggested to address certain aspects of the current policy environment that may inhibit attorneys and physicians from optimal interprofessional interaction in this sphere.