Florida’s Expanding Elder Abuse Laws: Guardianship, Financial Exploitation & Healthcare Liability (Co-sponsored by Miami Dade Bar)

Dr. Karen Reimers | Karen Reimers, M.D

Dr. Karen Reimers is an adult psychiatrist, author of The Clinician’s Guide to Geriatric Forensic Evaluations, and a national lecturer on capacity, undue influence, and elder exploitation.

She is a board-certified psychiatrist with geriatric and forensic expertise who specializes in capacity assessment, undue influence, and elder financial exploitation cases. She serves as volunteer faculty at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine and the University of Minnesota. Dr. Reimers is co-chair of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law’s Geriatric Psychiatry and the Law Committee and is the author of The Clinician’s Guide to Geriatric Forensic Evaluations. She lectures nationally on decision-making, elder financial exploitation, and the intersection of psychiatry and the law.

Pamela D. Keller | Keller Law Office, P.A.

The focus of Pamela’s practice is civil litigation. She also practices elder law, guardianship, Medicaid planning and probate and trust administration. Ms. Keller’s litigation practice includes commercial, transactional, construction, real estate and exploitation litigation. Her elder law practice includes complex and contested guardianship, trust and probate litigation, preparation of estate planning documents and Medicaid planning.

Ms. Keller has almost 40 years of experience trying civil cases in New York and Florida. She has appeared before the Federal and Supreme Courts in the State of New York and regularly represents clients in the Circuit Courts of Florida. She has been qualified as an expert by the Circuit Court in Florida testifying in an attorney malpractice action and a legal fee dispute.

In addition to bringing cases to verdict, Ms. Keller also is skilled in alternative dispute resolution, appeals and administrative hearings. In her elder law practice, she has developed a caseload of matters involving family fraud, successfully retrieving assets and property taken from aged clients by unscrupulous family members.

An advocate for the elderly, Ms. Keller has helped bring about Florida legislation and program funding that aids in protecting families dealing with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. As chair of the Florida Council for Public Policy for the Alzheimer’s Association, Ms. Keller lobbied on the state and federal levels on behalf of Alzheimer’s sufferers and their families. She continues to advocate for the elderly through the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys and the Florida State Guardianship Association.

In 2007, Ms. Keller founded the Keller Law Office in Punta Gorda, Florida.

Session I – Guardianship, Financial Exploitation & Healthcare Liability: Legal Strategies and Case Insights | 1:00pm – 2:00pm

• Guardianship law in Florida: Duties, obligations, and emerging trends in elder protection
• Recognizing and preventing financial exploitation: Warning signs, investigative strategies, and legal remedies
• Civil liability and elder abuse: Understanding potential available remedies making the exploiter legally accountable
• Practical case studies: Lessons from real-life scenarios, including contested guardianships and fiduciary breaches
• Litigation strategies: Tools for attorneys to build compelling cases, including evidence gathering, discovery, and collaboration with experts

Break | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

Session II – The Psychiatrist’s Eye: Capacity, Vulnerability, and Expert Insights in Elder Abuse Cases | 2:10pm – 3:10pm

• The psychiatrist’s eye on vulnerability
  • How cognitive decline and dementia increase risk
  • Psychological vulnerabilities: Isolation, dependency, depression
  • Behavioral red flags lawyers may miss
• Capacity, consent, and undue influence: The psychiatric role
  • Task-specific nature of capacity
  • How psychiatrists assess capacity and susceptibility to undue influence
  • Retrospective review: Why full-file analysis and collateral information matter
• Working with psychiatric experts in legal cases
  • Involve experts in guardianship or exploitation disputes
  • What attorneys should provide (records, collateral, timelines)
  • How opinions are formed and framed for court testimony
• Consequences & collaboration
  • Brief description of mental health impacts of abuse
  • Practical steps for collaboration between lawyers and psychiatric experts
  • Balancing autonomy and protection in elder law
• Closing takeaways & Q&A