[Conservababe]

If a married couple, because of circumstances, find that one spouse needs the help of nursing home, while the other is able to remain outside the nursing home, and they want to have a sexual relationship, how grand for them, that they still do love each enough to want that intimacy...

An excellent and informative post, but with one omission.

Even unmarried couples or those with living spouses do have the right to have sex with anyone, as others do outside of nursing homes.

Another poster said, states vary in the law. This is incorrect. Federal law says that persons in a nursing homes are residents with full rights as if they lived in their own homes.

[andysandmikesmom]

You are of course correct about mentally competent seniors, being able to have sex with whoever they chose, regardless of whether or not they are married to each other...

It does become a bit problematic tho, especially with Alzheimers patients...we need to make sure that they actually do understand what it is that they are doing...we do seem to assume that if they are having sex with their spouses, that this is more comfortable and familiar to them...having sex with another resident, and at least one of them having Alzheimers, is something that I have never encountered...and many Alzheimers residents, may not realize what they are doing, or with whom...

The Alzheimers residents do have the right to have sex, but they also need to be protected, if they are being taken advantage of, and are unable to articulate this, or unable to express this...

Having worked only in Washington State nursing homes, I just thought that what I experienced was regulated by the state...I did not realize that it was the Federal law which stated that persons in nursing homes are residents with full rights as if they lived in their own homes...good information...