The legality preventing elderly couple Noboru and Elaine Kawamoto from living together in a community-care foster home puts focus on a societal conundrum sure to repeat itself as Hawaii’s population ages.

Both he, 95, and she, 88, are private-pay residents in separate elderly homes. His foster home, which was designed primarily for low-income Medicaid patients, doesn’t allow two private-pay patients — and he doesn’t want to move into an expanded care home, a type of dwelling where she now lives.

It’s a tough, emotional issue — with Kawamoto supporters urging a law exemption to enable her to move in with him, but others noting that there are the options of him moving to be with her or having his care-home operator pursue re-licensing to moot the Medicaid restriction.

However this turns out, perhaps it’s time to refine the law, recognizing that the Kawamotos’ situation might be reflecting a growing reality, not the exception.