Like most people, I did not plan my initial involvement in Elder Law. I had taught Federal Income Taxation and related subjects for nearly eleven years when my mother began needing assistance following a series of health incidents. She passed away after six months and, as I reflected on that period, I realized that I had acquired a voluminous amount of knowledge regarding various discrete legal regimes, and that much of this knowledge would be very valuable for students to learn in a structured context.
About this time, I received one of those occasional mailers from the American Bar Association touting an upcoming seminar on something called “Elder Law.” As I reviewed the contents of what was to be covered at that seminar, I realized that what I had spent the preceding half-year doing fit within this rubric and that I could create an experimental course under this title. I have taught this course continuously since that time to anywhere from twenty-five to one hundred students each time, depending upon the vagaries of the academic calendar and competing curricular alternatives. This article explains the current content of this course and some of the pedagogical decisions involved in determining its scope.