While legislative efforts at the federal and state levels have represented a dramatic change in the last three decades, there is a great range and variations in the laws addressing elder abuse, leading to difficulty in generating comparison data, and coordinating program creation and implementation across state lines. This article examines the legislative variations on the topics of definitional issues, reporting statutes, investigative methods, temporary and permanent court interventions, and protective services provided under the laws of all fifty of the United States and the District of Columbia. Further, it examines the current elder abuse literature and makes suggestions toward legislation compatible with it.
Recent studies view retirement as a family transition that affects others in the close family circle, as well as the retiree, and is a process that occurs over time, and not as a single event. It therefore behooves us to learn more about how husbands' retirement affects the women with whom male retirees share their lives. Furthermore, most previous research has studied the wives of retirees using cross-sectional designs. In general, findings have indicated that husbands' retirement has little effect on wives' marital quality. This study is an advance over much of the previous research in that we use a longitudinal design. We have examined wives' assessments of marital quality including contextual life changes before their husbands' retirements, and have compared the assessments of the same wives following their husbands' retire-
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