LEGAL SERVICES FOR SENIORS (LSS)
OF MONTEREY COUNTY

Legal Services for Seniors (LSS) was founded in 1985 by four Monterey County residents who saw the need for free legal services for the County’s low income and otherwise needy seniors.

Legal Services for Seniors has two main offices, one on the Peninsula (Seaside) and one in the Salinas Valley (Salinas). LSS’ offices are staffed by legal advocates and an attorney, Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. LSS provides free legal assistance to Monterey County seniors who are 60 years of age and older. In addition to the two offices, LSS holds numerous outreach hours in Southern Salinas Valley (King City, Greenfield and Soledad), the Monterey Peninsula (Carmel, Monterey and Pacific Grove) and in North County (Castroville). Legal Services for Seniors is always looking for new places to expand its outreach assistance. As a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, Legal Services for Seniors is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors.

LSS also provides education, training and assistance to other Monterey County agencies and organizations such as Meals on Wheels, Alliance on Aging and the Ombudsman who can pass along information of the existence of Legal Services for Seniors to homebound and other seniors who otherwise may not know about LSS services.

Legal Services for Seniors’ financial foundation has a broad base of public (the State, Cities, and the County of Monterey) and private support (donations from private parties including the private bar, private donors and private fundraising efforts).

Types of Legal Assistance Provided

LSS offers legal assistance in the areas of health care, landlord-tenant law and other housing issues, public benefits, income maintenance and protection, long-term care, guardianships and elder abuse (financial and physical). LSS can help its clients with the most basic counsel and advice issues (where a phone call is enough) up to and including full legal representation in the local Superior Court – such as in Domestic Violence Restraining Orders, Eviction defense, financial elder abuse and fraud. LSS has found that two of the reasons seniors are targeted for financial elder abuse are that 1) seniors have lived long enough to accumulate wealth in the form of a house (owned with no mortgage owing), a large bank account or other assets; and 2) generally, an elderly person is more apt to remain quiet about being taken advantage of because seniors are afraid of being labeled “senile” or generally failing and thus having their autonomy taken away from them by well-meaning, but wrongly informed, family or friends.

With LSS’ elder abuse attorney able to take a case from the first consultation all the way to court, LSS has been able to win back homes and money (such as a teacher’s life savings given to an unscrupulous financial “advisor”) taken by defendants from our seniors, who otherwise would have had no recourse if required to find money to pay a private attorney. However, there are many more cases than one staff attorney can take on. With additional assistance from the private bar, more of the elderly who face these problems may be able to recover their homes or life savings.

Although LSS does focus its assistance on the most economically and/or socially needy seniors who come to them for help, LSS has no income requirements. The only restriction is that a client must be a Monterey County resident at least 60 years of age (if a couple, one of the couple must meet the age requirement).

In the 25 years LSS has been in Monterey County, LSS has assisted over 65,000 seniors with legal problems; seniors who otherwise would have gone wanting for legal assistance because of financial and/or social barriers. Each year, LSS helps approximately 3,500 senior citizens maintain their legal rights and independence. LSS does this by the basics, helping its clients be better legal consumers with full legal representation up to and including the filing of lawsuits where an individual client’s situation calls for such action.

Unmet Needs

Legal Services for Seniors is plagued with many of the same problems other local non-profit law firms face. LSS is not always able to provide all the services its clients need because of a lack of personnel, the client requires help in an area of law in which LSS staff and attorneys have no expertise, or there is a lack of staffing needed to spend the time to delve into a more complex legal problem.

Although LSS has Spanish-speaking advocates in both offices, there is a growing population of indigenous peoples from Mexico (principally Oaxaca) with whom LSS cannot presently communicate effectively. If LSS had the opportunity to hire an indigenous-speaking attorney, or even have access to a translator for these languages, LSS would be able to offer its services to a substantial amount of people LSS currently cannot help.

How can the private bar help?

Quite honestly, money. It is not news that the entire country is in an economic downturn. That downturn affects charitable organizations like LSS in many ways – in the private world, when work dries up, so does the ability of the worker to indulge their charitable side to donate to their local organizations, be in directly or via donations to larger organizations such as United Way, the Community Foundation, or the like. In turn, because those organizations receive only a trickle of the funds they’re used to, therefore charities that depend on those larger foundations are affected as well.

So, that’s a long, drawn-out way to say that the current financial state the country is in has affected LSS greatly. LSS needs the funds to return its staff to their previous full time positions. Last year, the entire Legal Services for Seniors’ staff had their salaries reduced by ten percent, where the salaries remain to this day. Although a day/pay-period furlough accompanied that salary reduction, it means LSS has fewer advocates to assist its clients. Bringing the organization’s finances back to what they were before the salary reduction would result in providing fuller service to LSS’ existing clients and would allow LSS to help even more clients.

That said, LSS can and does encourage private bar attorneys to attend its case review sessions and/or participate in co-counseling when the appropriate client presents themselves.

LSS occasionally have clients with whom LSS is conflicted in assisting. Having a private attorney take on such a client on a pro-bono basis would also be very helpful.

In addition, there are some forms of law in which LSS staff and attorneys are not proficient, but would like to offer services, such as immigration and bankruptcy. A local attorney who has such requisite legal expertise knowledge can lend his or her expertise to Legal Services for Seniors by training LSS attorneys and legal advocates in those particular areas of law. Being able to practice in new areas would open up LSS to assisting more low-income clients in areas where LSS has seen the need, but lacks the expertise. Alternatively, attorneys may wish to volunteer to take on an occasional case from LSS in a subject matter area---or because of overwhelming demands---LSS is not able to handle.

TO VOLUNTEER OR DONATE, CONTACT:

Kellie D. Morgantini
Executive Director, Attorney
Legal Services for Seniors
Offices in Salinas & Seaside, California:
831.442.7700/831.899.0492
Email: ed@legalservicesforseniors.org