Canadian Lawyer

42 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m f you thought that legal issues for older people revolved only around wills and estates, it's time to broaden your understanding. For the past 15 years, the profession has been work- ing to refine the nuances of work- ing with an older client base, and it has led to an exciting and relatively young practice area: elder law. An older client base offers opportunities to lawyers who want to learn more — and could represent a risk for those that don't take the time to investigate their particular needs. "What called upon the creation of not just the practice but a new field of law was the number of issues arising for people who were living a very long life," explains Ann Soden, executive director of the National Institute of Law, Policy and Aging. "They are facing new challenges that we weren't seeing, in numbers that we hadn't seen before." This drove Soden to found the National Elder Law section of the Canadian Bar Association in 2002, putting it on the agenda for the legal profession. The demographic shift facing Cana- dian society as the baby boomers retire is making the focus on elder law increas- ingly urgent. John-Paul Boyd, executive director of the Canadian Research Insti- tute for Law and the Family, calls the numbers "mind-boggling." "The boomers [born between 1946 and 1965] make up the single largest population tranche in Canadian society, and they've just started to retire," he says. All the other fastest-growing age groups are over 60, and for the first time last year, seniors in Canada outnum- bered children. Lawyers must acknowledge this shift in their own practice, warns Laura Tamblyn Watts, a senior fellow at the Canadian Centre for Elder Law and co-chair of the Law and Aging team of the National Initiative for Care of the Elderly. "We're in the middle of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in the history of Canada. You have people who are older, and if they aren't they're related to someone older who also has legal issues," she says. "So if you're look- ing to grow your client base and market appropriately, the group you need to look at is over 60 years old." Watts argues that elder law is a lens through which to explore many differ- ent legal areas. It affects a large num- ber of disciplines beyond the obvious wills and estates issues. An aging client will have different requirements across a number of areas, ranging from the medical to the financial. Grey divorces and predatory marriages Family law is a case in point. People are increasingly divorcing and remar- rying in their fifties and beyond, in what Toronto estate lawyer Kimberly Whaley calls the "grey divorce." A cli- ent's older age can complicate already L E G A L R E P O RT \ E L D E R L AW HUAN TRAN The elder law boom Demographics shifts and a growing list of legal needs for aging clients should be on every lawyer's radar By Danny Bradbury I

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