Seniors in the Virgin Islands will be offered free legal advice and financial education this Thursday at the third annual Senior Financial Health and Wellness Conference, which aims to help older residents protect their assets and avoid scams.
The event will be held in St. Thomas at the Philadelphia Seventh-day Adventist Church and is sponsored by Legal Services of the Virgin Islands, the Senior Medicare Patrol, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Legal Services of the Virgin Islands is a nonprofit that offers free legal services for low-income families, the elderly, veterans, and victims of domestic violence. The Virgin Islands Senior Medicare Patrol is housed at the LSVI and is tasked with preventing, detecting, and reporting fraud, errors, scams, and abuse in the territory’s health care system that affect seniors and their caregivers.
At past Senior Financial Health and Wellness Conferences, Spanish- and Haitian-speaking residents were identified as being underserved. To address that, organizers are adding language access this year, including a Haitian Creole translator. That’s according to Jennifer Logie, project director for the Senior Medicare Patrol and outreach coordinator for Legal Services of the Virgin Islands.
Logie said the goal is to help seniors prepare for the future. “We want them to understand the importance of getting your affairs in order and protecting your assets,” an issue that she says causes major issues, such as probate, if seniors are not educated on the importance of financial literacy. Probate is the legal process of settling an estate after a person passes away, which can involve lengthy court proceedings and significant expenses if proper plans are not made in advance.
“One of the driving forces behind the conferences is to educate our seniors so that we can avoid probate,” said Logie. “One of the biggest challenges we have in the Virgin Islands is probate … It’s time consuming and costly. If you get your affairs in order, you avoid all of that.”
She said the sessions cover a wide range of estate planning topics, giving seniors the tools they need to make informed decisions. “We give you all the tools you need. We teach you about the opportunities … Everything that entails estate planning. We cover that so that they are able to make informed decisions.”
The conference will also address scam prevention, as according to Logie, seniors in the Virgin Islands continue to face increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes targeting their personal and financial information. “We have so much fraud in the community … every day these scammers are coming up with different scams to either steal your Medicare number, get your social security number, scam your banking information,” said Logie
According to Logie, seniors are often targeted by callers posing as medical professionals or pharmacies and requesting sensitive information. She stressed the importance of never sharing personal or financial details with unknown callers and urged residents to attend the conference for guidance on avoiding scams.
The broader goal, she said, is to equip seniors with the knowledge they need to protect themselves from fraud, probate issues, or other financial challenges. “We focus a lot on that, to educate you not only on fraud but also scams, so you’re fully aware of what is happening,” Logie said.
As she put it, the conference ultimately comes down to closing dangerous information gaps: “People perish from lack of knowledge. That’s why we are out here, just making sure we give the education.”
