Grant Recipient Highlight – Legal Aid Society of Evansville

The Indiana Bar Foundation (Foundation) annually grants funding to organizations across Indiana to ensure they keep doing great work for Hoosiers in civil legal assistance. We want to highlight those organizations by spotlighting their hard work. For December, we are highlighting the Legal Aid Society of Evansville.

The Legal Aid Society of Evansville’s mission is to provide quality legal services to eligible residents of Vanderburgh County. They believe that individuals are entitled to equal and meaning/id access to the judicial system to protect their rights and obtain legal remedies.

With the Indiana Bar Foundation’s grant, the Legal Aid is able to delegate an attorney to help clients
specifically with any and all housing issues. A story the Legal Aid would like to share is about a low-income senior and how thye were able to assist him.

Stillwell, a senior living alone with no other income than Social Security retirement benefits, had previously resided in a large, corporate-owned assisted living facility. During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stillwell left the facility to see a friend. Like most Americans adjusting to the unfolding crisis, Stillwell was unaware of the governor’s essential worker mandate. Upon his return to the facility, he was advised he was being immediately “evicted” and was directed by staff and security personnel to leave the premises. Stillwell was given only a large garbage bag foll of some of his clothes. Despite his protestations, the facility refused to permit him entry to his room to even take inventory of his possessions, let alone arrange to have them removed. As restrictions eased, Stillwell was later told that the facility had discarded all of his furniture, personal items, valuable guitars, and other clothing that did not fit in the garbage bag with which staff had put his other clothes. Stillwell contacted Legal Aid to discuss his rights. Legal Aid not only filed suit against the facility for its disregard for Stillwell’s dignity and personal property, but also took his matter to trial and won and collected a judgment for him in the amount of $6,500.00. Legal Aid helped Stillwell obtain a judgment to replace the things taken from him during a global pandemic which was particularly difficult on senior citizens.

The Legal Aid Society provides free legal advice and/or representation. The majority of case types include: family matters (divorce, custody disputes, visitation disputes, support), guardianships, adoptions, evictions, landlord/tenant and housing matters, expungements, information for contempt, petitions to modify and other cases at the discretion of their Director. If you would like to learn more you can click here: https://www.evansvillegov.org/county/department/index.php?structureid=26