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.