Clear Counsel Law Group Staff

Staff

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Jordan Flake. I'm an estate planning attorney for Clear Counsel Law Group.

As our technology advances, we also have new frontiers in estate planning that attempt to respond to this technology. Obviously, the technology outpaces the estate planning, and the estate planning just tries, sometimes clumsily, to keep up with those situations.

That's what we have in the case of electronics and electronic information, I guess what I would call electronic assets, if you'll think of it like that.

An Example of an Electronic Asset

If you think of the old days, you would maybe ... Let's say you're a photographer and you take a bunch of photos and they're really beautiful.

In the old days, if you had a box up in your attic, you'd say, "My photos that I took" ... You either sell them during your life, or you give them away during your life, or you have a box up in your attic that has all these beautiful photos, some of which might be worth money and you say, "I decided to give this to my son, Brian."

Then Brian could go up into the attic and take that box of photos and say, "Okay I have this box of photos."

What if in today's world, I say, "I want my photos to go to Brian," but before I die I give my hard drive to my son, Jared. Jared has a hard drive that has all of my photos on in, and Brian has the photos that are sitting there in a box.

Who really is entitled to those photos?

Then Jared decides to sell all of those electronic file photos to these photography websites and magazines who pay him a lot of money for it. Then Brian gets really mad and says, "Dad specifically gave me all his photos." Jared says, "No he didn't.

He gave me his hard drive where all the electronic copies were held, and you could have sold those photos off to those websites and those magazines if you wanted to, but you just kept them in the box.

Why You Want to Discuss Electronic Assets With Your Estate Planning Attorney

You can kind of see how that's a weird scenario where the existence of an electronic asset, where as before you just would've had a physical asset, really creates a potential ambiguity for your clients.

What you'll want to do in each of these cases, is meet with an attorney who is sophisticated enough to understand some of those subtleties and have a bigger picture about how might this instruction have been misinterpreted.

Just taking this example, I would for example walk the client through and say,

"All right. You want your photos to go to Brian. What exactly do you mean by that? You have a box in your attic, but you also have potentially a hard drive, or maybe you emailed a few of these out to your family and said hey look I went to Yellowstone this last weekend and I took this amazing photo. Does them having a copy of that constitute basically the right to use this photo and to re-sell it?"

We really have to draw back and drill into it and say, "Okay how do we define what you're actually giving away when you're giving away this photo of yours?"

It could be more than just a photo. It could be, say your mom was really good at some administrative process and she created several different workbooks or outlines on how to deal with this complex administrative process, then she printed those out.

She gives them to Brian again. Brian gets the printed copy and Jared gets the computer hard drive that has all the electronic copies on it.

This situation is happening more and more, that people have things that are actually valuable that exist both in the physical world and strictly in the electronic world. It's important to meet with an estate planning attorney so that you can delineate what to do in each of those situations.

How We Help Keep Your Digital Assets Safe

While I'm on the topic of computers and computer hard drives, with increasing frequency we're seeing situations where people don't leave adequate information about where their electronic assets are held or kept.

A simple example of this is passwords. There might be websites that are hosting valuable digital assets or electronic assets.

There could be, for example, an individual who has several profitable websites that are membership-paid websites and they're the domain holder and user and operator for these websites and they're receiving income from them.

What happens if that individual passes away?

Who is going to be capable of going in an managing those websites and handling everything that needs to happen so that they're either wound down properly and the assets are liquidated, or they continue to run and create a profit?

Estate Planning Has Changed Quite a Bit Recently

These are some of the types of questions that you need to ask that you wouldn't have had to ask 20 years ago.

There's a lot of different resources at our disposal to make sure that all of the passwords are written down, all of the websites are written down properly, all of the electronic and digital assets are identified specifically.

We can have different web services that will be the main hub for all of your passwords and all of your websites.

There's just really a lot of different options, so it'll be up to you to come meet with us to determine how to make sure that you don't fall into any of these ambiguities with your digital assets. I'd be happy to meet with you and discuss this. You just have to be forward thinking about these things, because technology does move very fast.

Thanks so much.

Probate Videos / Estate Planning / Probate - 04/13/2016

You Must Specifically Disinherit in Nevada

Disclose All Uncomfortable Facts to Your Lawyer, And How to Disinherit

Transcript:

Hi my name is Jordan Flake, I am an estate planning attorney at Clear Counsel Law group and today I want to talk about why it's really important to tell your estate planning attorney everything.

Sometimes we have these clients who have a child who they just don't really associate with them as a child anymore.

In fact, often times they've considered themselves to have moved on from that relationship. It may not necessarily be a child it can also be a brother or sister or in an estranged situation it could be a spouse.

We have had cases and we have seen cases where someone will come into our law firm and say well ask, "How many children do you have?" They'll say, "Well I have 2 kids. I have Bob and Susie" and we'll say, "Okay great." We'll include those 2 individuals in their estate planning and then we'll find out later on down the road that in addition to Bob and Susie they have a child named Johnny.

The problem is they haven't talked to Johnny in 10 years. It ended badly and they didn't wish to provide for him.

The client over on the other side of the table is thinking, "If I just don't tell the attorney at all about Johnny, then only Susie and Bobby will show up in the estate planning and only Susie and Bobby will get part of my estate."

That seems to be a good idea from their standpoint. Now, some of you who are viewing this may already be able to anticipate what is wrong with that. In Nevada and in other states, it's necessary to specifically disinherit your next of kin.

Why Nevada Requires You to Expressly Disinherit

Otherwise there's a presumption in the law that you just somehow made an error and excluded them on accident and so if I say,"I want to give everything to my 2 kids Bobby and Susie" and I don't mention my third kid Johnny, Johnny can come along after I pass away and say, "Hey, here I am. You know dad said he wanted to give everything equally with his kids."

Bobby and Susie will say, "Whoa Johnny first of all we haven't seen you in 10 years. Second of all there's a problem because we can point very clearly to the language in the estate plan that says he wants everything to go to the 2 of us."

Then Johnny could say, "Whoa, no it says equally between the kids and he just forgot to put me on there. That's all that's happened here."

That's why it's very necessary in Nevada when you're doing your estate planning to specifically disinherit Johnny.

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Often times we'll put a provision in there that says,"For the purposes of my estate planning I desire to disinherit Johnny and I desire that he be treated as though he had pre-deceased me" so that literally nothing goes to him and so that he won't have any power over the estate planning at all.

There's different language you can use.

Sometimes it's the case that you have Bobby, Susie and Johnny and you just gave Johnny his share of the inheritance before you passed away and in that case we can use a little bit more amicable language where you say, "I do not desire to provide for Johnny through this estate plan that I am preparing because I provided to him a living gift several years ago" or whenever it was.

There's No Good Reason to Lie to Your Lawyer. S/He is Your Lawyer.

These are different things to take into consideration but the real red flag and the thing that I want you to remember and take away is don't hold anything back from your estate planning attorney precisely because you're not sure of the impact of withholding that information on your eventual estate plan.

It's really good to know for example, do you have a prior marriage where there may not have been a divorce finalized. We see this happen a lot too. A couple will get married, they'll have a falling out.

They'll intend to divorce. They may even start the divorce process but they never ever really finalized it.

They never did a divorce discharge and what happens is later on down the road they meet somebody else and they say, "Hey, I want to give you all of my assets when I die."

They'll basically draft up an estate plan but then they'll fail to properly get rid of that spouse who under the eyes of the law is still a spouse.

This is really a scary situation because you don't end up getting exactly what you want. Make sure you talk to an estate planning attorney about all of these types of issues so that with the benefit of our knowledge and experience we can make sure that there's not going to be some land mine that crops us later.

If you're in a situation like this where you may want to disinherit someone. You may have some kind of legal issue that was never fully wrapped up from earlier in your life or maybe you just want to know that you don't have some sort of landmine that's going to crop up, please come to me with your estate planning.

I'll do a no charge consultation.

I'll sit down and review your estate plan whether you have documents or whether you just, your estate plan maybe right now is just in your mind and you need to get it out on paper.

In either situation, I am more than happy to meet with you and for sure when we meet make sure you tell me everything.

Thanks so much.

Estate Planning / Probate / Probate Videos - 04/06/2016

By Addressing Tough Estate Planning Questions, You Will Feel So Much Better

Transcript:

Hi. I'm Jordan Flake. I'm an estate planning attorney with Clear Counsel Law Group.

One of the biggest barriers to getting people to actually come in and see me and meet me for a complimentary estate planning consultation, is just the fact that estate planning inherently deals with questions that we sometimes don't want to answer at all.

Sometimes it's really unpleasant to think about our own mortality or our own potential incapacity.

Sometimes it's really hard to think about who would raise our children if we have minor children. It's hard to think about how you want your assets to be distributed because it brings up questions or fairness and what's right with respect to different children who may have either been extremely nice to you or wrong to you.

Estate Planning for Difficult Questions

One of the questions is how do we deal with these uncomfortable questions and these uncomfortable situations? I think the very, very first thing that you want to know when you do this is don't avoid estate planning because you don't feel like you have all the answers. That's the first thing.

Sometimes I get people who say Jordan, we got your card last September. We know we need to do an estate plan, but my wife and I have been talking and talking. And we just can't figure out what we want to do.

We can't figure out which of our kids we can trust? who gets this stuff? Who would take care of us if we were both incapacitated? We're going to think about it for a little while longer and see what we can come up with and then we're going to schedule a consultation.

Please do not do this precisely because a lot of what we're going to discuss in the complimentary consultation is basically some of the different answers to these questions that you might consider.

I regard my job as an estate planning attorney, somebody who can help guide you through some of these uncomfortable and ambiguous situations. I've seen it all in the last 10 years of practicing law. I'm very familiar with a lot of the different situations that can cause this to be hesitant or confused about estate planning. Please don't let those hold you up.

I'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment. The other thing that we sometimes need to worry about is just getting in here at all to do your estate planning. Never mind the fact that you have questions that are hard to answer. Let's just focus on your need to come in and see me in the first place.

The Importance of Starting Your Estate Planning

Please understand that as an estate planning attorney I also look at my position as one that confers peace of mind. I feel like I'm somebody who, my job is to give you peace of mind.

What that means is that before you meet with me and before you have your estate plan set up, you're sitting here thinking, "Oh geez, this is tough to think about. This is tough to do. It's confusing. It's complicated and I don't want to answer these questions."

What do I do if I pass away? I'm just not comfortable with that.

After you meet with me and after we sign the documents that through your wishes I have prepared to become legally and forcible and valid, I can immediately see it's almost like clockwork, a big sigh of relief from my clients who say, "You know, I just feel so, so much better. Thank you so, so much."

Estate planning, Las Vegas, Nevada

Please don't look at what I do as something scary that makes you have to ask all these difficult questions.

Instead, do what I do which is look at the finish line, that moment where you say, "Hey, I'm so glad I got that taken care of. It's one less huge thing that I have to worry about and I just don't have to worry about that anymore."

Of course we'll look at it every 3 to 5 years to make sure it's still says and does what you want it to say and do. Other than that you're in a place where you now have peace of mind. Specifically though, what are some of the tough questions that come up?

Tough Estate Planning Questions for Parents with Minor Children

For those of us who have minor children, I happen to have minor children.

One big question that my wife and I had is how do we decide who will take care of our children? Here's just one example of what I was talking about. I have seen couples refuse to come meet with me as an estate planning attorney because they say, "Jordan I'd love to but my wife and I can't agree on who's going to watch our kids so I don't want to come to an estate plan yet."

Please don't do this. Come meet with me and we can talk about it.

That's one of the touch questions that we get is who's going to watch the kids? One of the reasons this is a tough question is because a lot of parents look at the person whom they're appointing as a potential guardian as a replacement for mom and dad.

This can be too daunting if you think about it. If heaven forbid, something happens to a husband and a wife, a mother and a father, realistically there's not going to be any really great 100% replacement for the love and the care and the attention and maybe the physical environment, the emotional environment. It's going to be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to replicate all of those things.

If you're sitting here saying I don't want to do my estate planning until I figure out who can totally replicate the same life for my kids that my wife and I would've given them, then you're never going to be able to really do your estate planning.

That's a big hangup. It's really, really difficult, if not impossible, to figure that out.

That's something that we can talk through so that you say so you're saying I should do my estate planning because having something is better than having nothing?

Good, okay. You're saying I should be doing my estate planning because listing a guardian who has good fiduciary sense is 9/10 of the battle. You're saying Jordan that I can go ahead and do my estate planning because I don't need to worry about who has an extra room where we can fit bunk beds.

What to Look for in a Guardian

What I'm getting at is that people look at these concerns without the benefit of experience of knowing really what you're looking for in a guardian. If you just come in and see me you'll find out for example, what you should be worried about it fiduciary sense.

That's the number one thing that you can be concerned about. Morals, you can't force somebody to have morals that go onto your kids. We do worry about finances because you actually can hold them accountable for that.

What about physical accommodation? Your guardian doesn't necessarily have to be the person where your kids actually reside with that person.

Your guardian might say I'm going to be the guardian of your minor children. I'm going to make sure they're provided for financially because I have good fiduciary sense.

I happen to know that sister Becky and her husband have a really big house because he's done great at his dental career. They have room to take the kids and a good setup in the basement there.

We Will Help Through Difficult Questions

Thinking through these things with the benefit of practical experience will make it so these big scary confusing questions actually become a lot more manageable. I just picked one out of the air.

I picked the idea of this guardian of minor children as a potential barrier. For every barrier that you're facing in your mind right now with respect to estate planning, I can promise you that we've seen it, we've been there, and we can ask the questions to help you discover what the best solution is for you.

In no case are we going to recommend a solution that's uncomfortable to you or try to force your hand.

Estate planning always has been and always will be about putting your wishes down into legally and forcible documents.

Helping you understand what you really want and what's going to be best for your loved ones, absolutely that's something that we can help you out with and we will help you out with. We really want to. Please pick up the phone, schedule a complimentary consultation and I'd be happy to walk through some of these things.

I look forward to seeing you. Thank you. Bye.

Probate Videos / Estate Planning - 04/01/2016

Estate Plan Advice for Snowbirds & People with Assets in Multiple States

An Estate Plan for Snowbirds

Transcript:

Hi, I'm Jordan Flake. I am an attorney with Clear Counsel Law Group. I focus primarily in estate planning, and today we have a question here from one of our clients. It says, what if you have an estate plan that is out of state, but then you buy a condominium in Nevada to retire and make Nevada your long-term residence? Do you need a new estate plan? Could Nevada estate plan cover out of state assets, such as those that you may have left in Illinois?

I'm going to try to answer this question. Basically the idea is that when you move to a new state, you probably should as a good practice meet with an estate planning attorney in that state. I'm going to talk about why that might be a good idea.

Also, I'm going to talk about how assets work in a revocable estate plan and why it's okay owning assets in different states, and how to make that function.

Updating Your Estate Plan After Moving to Nevada

As you can imagine, I practice here in Nevada, and I get a lot of retirees who move here from other states around the country. Often times, they'll buy a property here, such as in the question that was asked, and yet often times, they'll leave property in their former state as well.

In fact, a really common scenario is these self-described snowbirds. What a snowbird is, it's someone who lives off in Wisconsin during the summer months, when it's nice and temperate, and then when it gets freezing cold in Wisconsin, the snowbirds move here to Las Vegas, and they spend maybe roughly from November to March where it's temperate here in Las Vegas, living at their condo here.

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I meet with these individuals and they say, "Hey, Jordan, we have changed our long term residence. We really intend to retire in Las Vegas, but we still have our house back in Wisconsin that we go to every summer. Where should we do our estate planning and why?"

My recommendation is to first answer the question, which is really going to be your state of residence? As soon as you answer that question, if it's Nevada, then you should probably do your estate planning in Nevada. If it's Wisconsin, then possibly do your estate planning in Wisconsin.

Why Nevada?

The reason why a lot of people will opt to have Nevada be their estate planning destination is because Nevada has really good robust estate planning laws that are very highly developed, to the point that different provisions have been tested here in the court setting, which means that as an estate planning attorney, we can have the confidence to implement various provisions that have undergone robust testing at the court level, so that we know they're highly enforceable.

We actually have a lot of clients who live out of state who opt to do their estate planning here, precisely because Nevada's estate planning laws are so favorable and so protective of the clients and the grantors in these situations.

I would say that if you intend to make Nevada your long-term residence, then the answer is very easy. You should do a Nevada estate plan. Even if you don't, you may still wish to consider it because Nevada has better laws.

That of course raises the question, let's say I'm intending to make Wisconsin my long-term residence. How can I do a Nevada estate plan? Are estate plans enforceable across state lines? The answer is generally yes. Generally, states will give effect to legal documents created in other states. The mere passage from one state to another does not automatically nullify estate planning documents. I know that's true of Nevada, and I'm pretty sure it's true of every single state in the United States.

Basically, if you want to think of it another way, imagine you and your buddy both lived in California at the time, had an agreement that he would paint all your houses for $50,000, and you basically have this agreement for the next 3 years, your buddy's going to paint all your houses, any houses that you own, for $50,000, and you both live in California at the time of that agreement.

Both of you decide to move to Nevada, and the question is, is the agreement that you made in California still enforceable in Nevada? The answer is yes, that contract will go from one state across state lines and still be legally enforceable. That's true of your estate planning as well. The things that you put in place in one state are generally going to be enforceable in the next state.

It is a little bit different because each state has different laws with how little tiny particulars will arise, or with how probate is handled for example, so that's why you'll definitely want to have your estate plan reviewed by an attorney in the state where you intend to make that state your personal long-term residence.

Developing an Estate Plan with Property in Multiple Jurisdictions

Come see us. If you have property in Nevada, we can get you set up with a Nevada estate plan. The second part of this question, let's say you do have a property in Nevada and you do make Nevada your long term residence, and you do have a condo here, and you have transferred that into your estate planning, and that condo now becomes part of your estate plan. What do we do with the summer house in Wisconsin? The answer is very simple. If we create a Nevada estate plan, you can think of it like a box. We create that box and we transfer some of your assets into that box. There's nothing about the fact that that house is owned in Wisconsin that prevents us from taking that house and transferring it into the Nevada trust. There's really nothing about that that prevents it.

Regularly, as estate planning attorneys, we'll sit down and meet with clients who have assets in various states and properties and various states. What we'll do is we'll go request a deed from that state and we'll copy down the legal description and we'll prepare a deed for that state. We'll send it out saying, my Wisconsin summer house now is to be transferred into the Johnson family trust, or the Johnson estate planning. You definitely can have a Nevada trust that owns property in various states.

If you're in either of these situations, if you're maybe mixing residence between 2 states like Wisconsin and Nevada, and you're not sure where to do your estate planning, please come talk to me. If you're a Nevada resident and you have property that's outside of the state, and you want to make sure it passes according to your wishes, please come see me. Those are both questions that we handle very often. They're both things for which we can do a complimentary consultation, and please give us a call, set up a consultation, and we'll be happy to help you out with this. Thanks so much.

Probate / Estate Planning / Probate Videos - 03/23/2016

Important Legal Knowledge for Real Estate Professionals

Getting Ahead as a Real Estate Agent

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Jordan Flake. I'm an attorney with Clear Counsel Law Group. I have some advice for real estate professionals out there. We deal with a lot of real estate professionals, we like a lot of the ones that we use, and if you do need a good real estate professional, I can certainly put you in touch with somebody that we trust.

My unsolicited, I guess, advice for real estate agents is this: Learn a little bit about the law, especially when it comes to real property and estate planning. Understanding the law, with respect to real property and estate planning will make you seem a lot smarter to your clients.

Now, I'm not trying to give you advice on how to conduct your career, but I will tell you that in sitting down with a lot of agents, going out to lunch, what they tell me is, these days, because of the internet, because of websites like Zillow and just because of the ability to go online and do a lot of the selling and buying, a real estate agents' job is really changing from simply listing properties, showing properties, which are things that, now, everyone has a better opportunity to do them on their own, to really being experts about the things that they're trying to accomplish for their clients, and getting their clients the help they need, and so that's one reason why a real estate agent should consider getting a deeper understanding of how estate planning works.

Real estate agent, Las Vegas, Nevada

How to put your house in a trust, differences between joint tenancy with rights of survivorship and tenants in common, or community property with rights of survivorship. There's really a lot that a lawyer knows about real property and estate planning that would make it so that a real estate agent was that much more impressive and conversant and savvy with their clients.

If you're a real estate agent listening to this video and you're interested in meeting with me or setting up some kind of a seminar or presentation, reach out and we'll see if it'll work.

I have a few different presentations that I do for real estate agents, and I'd be very interested, in this upcoming year, to sit down with you personally, or with a group of you, to talk about how to learn a little bit more about the law and how that might benefit your career. Thank you.

Probate Videos / Estate Planning - 03/15/2016

What Are the Legal Requirements of a Trustee?

What are the Legal Obligations of a Trustee?

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Jordan Flake. I'm an attorney with Clear Counsel Law Group. Sometimes a client, or potential client, will come to me and say, "I was left as the trustee on my parent's estate and now they're both passed away," and they want to know what do they have to do?

Well, a trust basically imposes several different legal responsibilities on the named trustee. There's a trust administration process that we have to go through in order to make sure that that trustee fulfills all of his or her legal responsibilities. That's basically the trust administration process.

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A lot of people don't realize that they have these duties. When their parents' listed them as trust, maybe they didn't reach out to them and say, "Hey, by the way, I'm going to impose all these legal responsibilities on you," but the duties, nonetheless, exist. Sometimes, a lot of questions can arise about making sure that everything is distributed properly, administered properly.

Our objective, as a law firm, when we represent trustees, is to make sure that everything is done, according to the terms of the trust, and especially that the trustee isn't in any kind of legal peril or that there's no liability or any potential claims of breach of fiduciary duties.

In other words, the trustee, when they hire us, can take complete comfort and confidence in knowing that they are doing everything according to the law and that nothing's going to come back to bite them. If you're listed as the trustee of your parent's trust, you may want to set up an appointment, we don't charge for the initial consultation, just to come sit down with me.

If you have a copy of the trust, that'd be best. If not, we can just talk about how a trust administration works and what some of your responsibilities will be. Thank you.

Probate Videos / Product Liability - 03/08/2016

How Should You Own Your Property?

What Is the Best Way to Hold Your Property?

Transcript:

Jordan: I'm Jordan Flake with Clear Counsel Law Group. I'm an attorney who does estate planning primarily. Occasionally, questions will come up about how property ownership works and operations of law. What I mean by that is how do you hold property in such a way that it will accomplish some of your estate planning objectives? We call this non-attorney estate planning, usually because it doesn't necessarily require an attorney.

When you purchase a house, you can just tell your real estate agents and the title company how you want to take title to that property. Let's just use the example of a client who said, "My wife and I and a friend own this duplex together, the three of us. We want to make it so that the last of us to die, the survivor among the three of us, gets all the property?" They don't necessarily have to go see an attorney to make that happen. They can just tell the title company that they'd like to own the property in joint tenancy with rights of survivorship

What that means is that everybody just owns the property and then the survivors own the property and then the survivor of the survivors gets all the property. That's called joint tenancy with rights of survivorship. Now there are other ways to own it. There's something called tenancy in common, which means each would get one-third, one-third, one-third and their undivided one-third share would go to their estate when they passed away.

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That wouldn't accomplish the objectives of which they were requesting from me. Normally, a better way to do all of this is to put it all into a trust because then you can clearly delineate who gets what and when and under what circumstances. Brian, do you have any questions on this form of ownership?

Brian: Is it difficult to change the ownership from a joint tenancy to a tenancy in common?

Jordan: You can do that just by recording a deed. We can help you prepare the deed that would change the vesting status, it's called vesting status meaning what happens when a person passes away, but we can prepare a deed that will change the vesting status and we don't charge much to do that. In fact, we don't charge at all for the consultation. Any other follow-up questions on this though?

Brian: Of the options you described, you said that a trust is preferable to just having it recorded on the deed.

Jordan: When you prepare a trust, you also prepare a deed, generally transferring the property into the trust. A trust operates like a box, then you can put property inside that box. The house or the duplex in this case would be something that you'd likely want to deed into the trust. Then the trust gives specific instructions about what happens to that property. Say the husband and wife pass away, but their friend at that time is an elderly gentleman, who's incapacitated just because of old age.

The trust will prepare for that contingency, whereas merely creating a deed that puts the house into joint tenancy with rights of survivorship doesn't address that contingency. A trust is much more comprehensive and flexible in terms of addressing several different possible scenarios. That's what we do as estate planning attorneys. We look out and say, "How can we preemptively address all of these things that can and do happen to people?" That's why it's really important to set up a consultation with me. I don't charge for the initial consultation. I'd be happy to go over this or any other situation that you're looking at. Thank you.

Estate Planning / Probate / Probate Videos - 03/01/2016

How to Disown an Adult Child

Do you need to remove an adult child from your estate in Nevada? Please call our Nevada estate lawyers today for a free consultation. (702) 522-0696

Is It Possible to Disown an Adult Child?

Transcript:

Hi. I'm Jordan Flake. I'm an attorney with Clear Counsel Law Group. I work in estate planning. One question that I sometimes get is, "Can I disown my adult child for various reasons?" You may have had falling out with your son or daughter and you just really don't want anything to do with them anymore. Reality is a lot of the disowning process just happens by operation of law. When someone turns 18, they essentially are considered an adult and have their own rights, responsibilities, and duties, and are really no longer your legal responsibility once they turn 18.

Aside from that though, one thing that a lot of clients will do if they have a child who they have disowned or the relationship cease to exist is disinheritance. What that means is you come into an attorney's office and whatever you were planning on giving to anyone, you need to explicitly state that you want to disinherit your child. It's really important that the disinheritance provisions are drafted correctly because if not, you could be facing a situation where your disinherited child comes back and says, "Whoa, it's very unclear that ... They didn't say anything. They didn't say the right things about disown me. He told me before he passed away that he wanted me to have something." They can make all kinds of claims in those circumstances.

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The law requires that you specifically disown your own children, and so those provisions have to be drafted correctly. If you're worried about where your assets go after you pass away and possibly, you have a situation in your family where you don't want your assets to go to a certain child, then please give us a call, so I can meet with you for a no-charge consultation. We'll go over your options. Thanks.

Estate Planning / Probate / Probate Videos - 02/23/2016

What You Need to Know about Power of Attorney

Power of Attorney and Your Estate Plan

Transcript:

Hi, I'm Jordan Flake. I'm an attorney with Clear Counsel Law Group. I work in estate planning. I got a question from a client about how to become a power of attorney. Can you just essentially declare yourself to be power of attorney of someone? Or, do you have to write it down? What's the process?

Power of attorney is a very important mechanism in estate planning because it essentially gives another person the right to make financial and healthcare decisions on your behalf. It's a right that you can give to someone else. Obviously it has to be somebody that you trust a lot, because you wouldn't want to let somebody else make financial and healthcare decisions for you unless you really knew that they were going to act in your best interest. Also, you can't simply just say it. It actually has to be written down. There's also a lot of formalities in the law that need to be met and fulfilled in order to give that document credence and validity.

Power of attorney, las vegas, nevada

One important thing to remember about power of attorney documents is that the entity that will often be enforcing those or rejecting them, as the case may be, would be a bank or a hospital or doctor's office or an insurance carrier. It's not always going to be interpreted by a judge. That's why it's very important to make it very crystal clear, so that somebody without a law degree can actually understand what the power of attorney is intending to do and what it says and leave no doubt whatsoever as to the fact that you're giving someone else the right to make decisions on your behalf.

If you feel like you need to make a power of attorney document

Estate Planning / Probate / Probate Videos - 02/19/2016

When a Short Sale Might Be Your Best Option for Your Home

How a Short Sale Might Assist You

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Jordan Flake. I'm an attorney at Clear Counsel Law Group. We deal with a lot of real property issues, and there are times that we help people accomplish a short sale. Pretty much everyone I know has either seen a foreclosure, or a short sale, or a default at some point in the last several years, because so many people have gone through that, here in the Valley; but just so that you know exactly what your short sale options are:

The term short sale just means that you're selling the property out there in the world, and the proceeds from the sale are not sufficient to cover the loan balance. Let's use an example. Let's say you owe $80,000 on a house, but the house is only worth $60,000. The owner of that house basically can get a buyer for $60,000, and go to the bank and say, "Hey, listen, I don't have enough money to cover all $80,000 that I owe. However, I have this buyer, and rather than default on this and have it go into foreclosure for several years, why don't you accept this $60,000 buyer, and we'll basically allow that to wipe out the loan."

Short Sale Home, Las Vegas, Nevada Real Estate

It's very important when you do a short sale that you cross all your T’s and you dot all your I’s, because you don't want that $20,000 deficiency, in other words the amount of the mortgage that wasn't covered by the sale, to chase you down, and hunt you down, and follow you around for a long time. That's, depending on whether not you have a first and/or a second, there's different rules that apply; but if you're thinking about short selling your home, please reach out to Clear Counsel Law Group. I'm more than happy to do a no-charge consultation, just to discuss your short sale options, give me a call. Thank you.

Nevada Law / Probate / Probate Videos / Real Estate - 02/12/2016

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