SHOULD I INCORPORATE?

So your business is up and running (or on its way!) and suddenly you wonder, what is that incorporation stuff all about anyway?

I too had to ask myself the same question when I started my own law firm. I was surprised at how much inaccurate and confusing information exists on the Internet.  (Yes, even after taking Corporate Law, I still love to Google.  Actually, my triple checking everything is probably a certifiable personality disorder).  

Sadly, over my years of practice in this area, I’ve also found that even professional advisors often give misleading and unclear advice on the topic.

SHOULD I FILE FOR BANKRUPTCY?

The bill collectors are calling.  You hate the poor soul who delivers your mail.  You stopped using your credit cards in public to avoid that embarrassing look the teller gives you when the card is declined.  Your paycheck doesn’t look like it will ever stretch to meet your debt and you don’t know what to do… so what about that bankruptcy thing?

There are two main types of bankruptcy for the average person with a lot of consumer debt:  Chapter 7 and Chapter 13.

Chapter 7 is often preferred because it comes the closest to wiping the slate clean.  Your debt.  Gone.  (Of course there are exceptions, Ask Roxy readers know that there are always exceptions in law— that is what makes it fun!).  Chapter 13 has this ugly term associated with it called “repayment plan” so let’s dig into the details of Chapter 7 first. 

MEDI-CAL LEGISLATION UPDATE

2016 UPDATE: NEW SIMILAR LEGISLATION WAS SIGNED BY GOV. BROWN AND WILL GO INTO EFFECT 1/1/2017! SEE HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION. 

2014 UPDATE:  THIS LEGISLATION WAS VETOED BY GOVERNOR BROWN.


This post is a continuation of my Medi-Cal Alert series which includes the previous posts:



ALERT! GO ON MEDI-CAL AND LOSE YOUR FAMILY HOME! (12/10/13)


and

NEW MEDI-CAL LEGISLATION! SPREAD THE WORD. (3/28/14)

SHOULD I MARRY MY CARETAKER TO AVOID PAYING OVERTIME?

Don’t laugh.  I’m not going to dig up any legal authority for this, but I think we can all agree that, historically, spouses have been very economical choices for fulfilling household duties.  Not to mention the other benefits…

And household help is getting more expensive.  (Or at least it should be, if you are following the new laws.)

WILL MY SPOUSE TAKE MY INHERITANCE IN A DIVORCE?

So, Great Aunt Martha left you the vineyard and now your spouse wants her half so she can take that Maui vacation she always wanted…with her new boyfriend.

I have good news and bad news.

It is a beautiful sunny day here in Santa Cruz so we’ll start with the good news:

In California an inheritance is classified as “separate property” and not “community property.”  Community property is shared equally by the spouses and, for the most part, divided equally in a divorce.  Separate property belongs to the spouse that owns it and is technically not subject to division in divorce.   But lawyers have to make their money and in divorce all of the fun is in picky exceptions and creative reimbursement strategies.  (Any lawyer who tells you that the fun part is figuring out the least painful way to divide the kids time between two houses is clearly not me.)

Speaking of me, here is the part where I go into a tangent where I try to make my childhood memories relevant to your question.

NEW MEDI-CAL LEGISLATION! SPREAD THE WORD.

Update: New similar legislation was just passed! See here fore more information. 

UPDATE:  SB1124 WAS VETOED BY GOVERNOR BROWN.

6/2015 UPDATE: THERE IS NEW LEGISLATION YOU CAN SUPPORT SB33.



For those of you who have been following my posts about Medi-Cal, you know that I put out an alert that going on Medi-Cal under Covered California could lead to the loss of your family home if you are over 55 years old. This is new news to for the many people who have just qualified for Medi-Cal because of the expanded program (Thanks Obama!), but as my post on Medi-Cal recovery explains, it is old news for everyone who has been dealing with the fact that Medi-Cal is a LOAN, not a public service, once you hit 55 (or if you are unlucky enough to fall in any of the other recovery categories).

SHOULD I PUT MY TIMESHARE IN MY TRUST?

For some people timeshares are the perfect vacation solution.  For others, they are a nightmare of fees and wasted time on paperwork.
The trick for estate planning is to figure out which category your children are in.

Most, but not all, timeshares are an interest in real property.  That means that you do actually own something (other than all of the fees).

Different timeshares are set up differently, but often they are what lawyers refer to as a “tenancy in common” where distinct people or entities have a percentage ownership in a piece of real estate.  The co-owners also have a timeshare agreement that designates the manner in which they share the property.

WHY YOU MAY WANT TO PUT YOUR TIMESHARE IN YOUR TRUST

WHEN SHOULD I START WORKING ON A PREMARITAL AGREEMENT?

YOU’RE IN LOVE

Aw February, the love month, when flowers and chocolates flow like promises.  Except that your promises won’t rot and die like the flowers or get crunched in half and eaten whole like chocolate.

At least that is the plan.   Believe me, I love that plan.  I’ve got the same plan going myself so hooray and many happy returns to us.  And, so far, things are looking our way.  We made it past the December/January mine fields, the most popular months for breaking up.    So, love is in the air, and everything is perfect.  Except the statistics.  The statistics are not perfect.

WHY YOU DON’T WANT A FREE BACKSTAGE PASS

When I was a teenager I loved going to reggae concerts.  Deep in the thick of the crowd, moving my body to the easy rhythm and heavy bass, it was easy to forget every adolescent anxiety and just be me.  Up on stage, the Rastafarians were like exotic birds with their long dreadlocked manes and fabulous accents.  I felt they were singing directly to me, as if they knew exactly what I needed to hear.  I would walk into the concert worried about a boy who didn’t care for me or a girlfriend who didn’t treat me as if I were part of the “in” crowd… and after a few songs it would all melt away.

The band would start off easy and sweet and then warm up until they reached a frenzied crescendo of spontaneous solo instrumentals — where each band member got a moment to show us his thing and we all screamed and applauded with delight, and even a bit of pride, as if that drummer or saxophone player was our own child performing in front of everyone for the first time.  They knew we felt like family.  I knew they knew because they would encourage us to wave our hands in the air in unison, even hold our neighbor’s hand and sing together some wonderful ditty like “Now that we found love what are we going to do with it?”



The band had traveled all of the way from Jamaica to give us a different kind of concert, where instead of being pissed at the tall guy in front of you or the weirdoes to the right that kept making out, you loved your neighbors.  You forgave them their imperfections.  You reached over and held their hands.  And then the band would ask us what we were going to do with all that love.  And I would hear it as a question.  And I would answer that question.  I would tell myself: I will love myself enough to not worry about that boy, I will help all of my girlfriends to feel like they are part of the “in” crowd.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was when at the age of twenty-two I got a job being the assistant to the on-tour producer of a major reggae production.  

DO I NEED A POWER OF ATTORNEY?

A power of attorney is a document that gives the agent you appoint the power to handle your financial affairs.  The agent has a fiduciary duty to use your assets for your benefit and they only have the powers you give them in the document.  There are “limited” power of attorney documents that grant only certain powers (like access to one particular bank account for one purpose or it could be temporally limited:  you might decide to appoint an agent a power of attorney over all financial affairs during a scheduled hospital stay).  There are also “general” power of attorney documents that are meant to allow agents to handle most or all of your financial matters.  The powers and limitations are listed in the document.

Often when we think about appointing an agent for power of attorney we are worried about something happening suddenly to cause incapacity.  You may think, “I need to set up a power of attorney so my loved one can access my bank account if I’m in a car accident.”  That is true, but when it comes to assisting the elderly the reality is often not so clear cut.  Many times incapacity edges slowly in like a rising tide, with individual days ebbing and flowing like waves, and the line where capacity and incapacity meet is far from clear.

11 SIMILARITIES BETWEEN NEW PARENTS AND DRUG ADDICTS

1.  You can only think about one thing.  Your new baby!  Is there anything else? Except maybe the story of her birth.  Oh and the way she held your hand right afterward.  By the way, have you noticed that her eyes are changing color?  Do you think she is hungry?  I understand there are wars going on in the world, but why do you think every little newborn outfit comes with tiny bibs?  

2.  Your friends change.  If you’ve been wondering where your childless friends have gone see Number 1 above.  Back in the heyday of your youth you had all sorts of friends.  They did different things.  They represented a wide range of interests.  Then you had children.  Soon you found that people without a little white baby splurge on their shoulders just don’t get you (or maybe they don’t want to get too close, I’m not sure, it’s all a blur, and really, you don’t care anymore).   After a year you look around and everyone you mingle with has the same one-track mind you.  It’s not that everyone else is doing it, it’s that you are only hanging out with those that do.

2.  You’re up all night.  Meth addicts may be more famous for working on their cars at 3AM, but new parents are up at the same time slowly driving around the neighborhood in a desperate effort to get snookums to sleep.

DON’T GET SCAMMED! TWELVE CLASSIC CONS TO AVOID.

We’ve all made bad investments before. Something sounds like a great idea, you’re so excited, and then, uh, it doesn’t work out. It is common to feel shame when you’ve made a bad call. Shame is a powerful emotion. You don’t want to tell anyone. You’re embarrassed. Everything feels murky. You’re confused about
what went wrong. You don’t want people to know. And that, my friends, is why con artists thrive. 

HOW CAN MY FAVORITE ANIMAL GET PROTECTION UNDER THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT?

Critically endangered black rhinoceros.

Despite this fabulous photo of a rhino, my favorite endangered animals are whales.  You’ll have to read to the end to see an amazing whale photo.  Just this morning my friend told me that when humans are out trying to capture baby orcas and put them in prisons (like Sea World) the daddy orcas swim along the surface trying to lure the humans in one direction while the mommy and baby orcas swim underwater in the other direction.  If we didn’t have helicopters and sonar the trick might work, but we do and it doesn’t.

HOW CAN I HELP A FRIEND IN CRISIS? FOUR SIMPLE TIPS TO GET THOUGH COMPLICATED SITUATIONS.

As an attorney I’m often called on in a crisis.

 Someone has done something terrible, someone hates their spouse, someone got hurt, someone has died. I’m called. I jump in. Things (usually!) settle down.

Being an attorney, I have some advantages in this area (and cold-hearted b!#ch isn’t the main one, by the way, but the ability to stay calm in the midst of metaphorical or even actual blood and gore does help.)

But you don’t need to be an attorney to do a lot of what I do.

 In fact, if you follow these simple guidelines you may be able to get things under control yourself:

 1. Look for the resources. 

Most of the time the person or people in crisis are in that particular crisis for the first time in their lives and they have absolutely no idea what resources are available to them if only they looked around. 

CONTINGENCY FEE, RETAINER FEE, FIXED FEE— WHAT DO THESE MEAN AND HOW MUCH IS MY LAWYER GOING TO CHARGE?

Okay, I admit it.  We lawyers use so many different terms for the different types of fees we charge, if you didn’t know what a wholesome and compassionate bunch we are you might suspect that we’re throwing legalese about just to distract you while our staff reaches into your pocket book.

Ask Roxy understands your confusion.  On my own website I try to be very clear about my pricing.

I’ll break it down for you here:

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I WANT TO SELL GIFT CERTIFICATES AT MY NEW BUSINESS. ANY ISSUES?

 Like most subjects I cover here on Ask Roxy, the law regarding gift certificates is a state/federal combination, as in the federal government has some rules, your state has some rules, and they might not match up.  Of course, if there is an inconstancy between the two the federal law preempts the state law, but “inconstancy” is a term of art, folks, and your lawyer really needs to do a careful analysis in relation to the particular terms that may apply to you.