It appears to be hitting critical mass, the dissatisfaction of many timeshare owners who find that they are perpetually bound to pay annual association dues for a timeshare they no longer want.   If they don't pay the dues, they get sued. And yes, we have seen our clients get sued when they try to "walk away" from their timeshare.

There are so many people trying to get out of timeshares that the scams are abundant. We have ... << MORE >>

Some time ago I came across this news story about a bankruptcy in Las Vegas. What I found interesting was the allegation by creditors that the bankrupt party had "taken numerous steps to benefit himself financially, such as transferring $7 million to other companies outside the reach of the creditors ..."     The defense is that these transfers were "proper and properly recorded."
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For several weeks now it has been my intention to write a post on some of the other areas of work we do such as business planning or asset protection. Yet it is the estate planning issues that continually provide the most interesting fodder for this blog.

Today I encountered another problem that can arise when a parent names his or her child as a co-owner of their house.  I'm counseling a son who is 1/3 owner of his ... << MORE >>

Here's a great article on disinheriting a spouse or other family member. I was a little put off by the unnecessary and apparently unfounded speculation on why a certain millionaire disinherited his second wife. However, most of it is good advice, including how the law favors a spouse even if the will tries to disinherit him or her. The article illustrates the personal nature of estate planning that has nothing to do with ... << MORE >>

This has little to do with my areas of legal practice but much to do with doing the right thing. I encourage you to watch this video appeal from a boy who is now cared for by the taxpayers of Colorado because of the malpractice of a Florida hospital. Due to the byzantine applications of Florida's version of sovereign immunity, Aaron Edwards must literally ... << MORE >>

Last year I had a great time as a speaker at an event known as Girls Gone Wise!  It was so well-received and so much fun that I've been asked to do it again.

Together with Becky Byers of Summit Brokerage and Liz Bornmann of Bornmann Insurance I'll be addressing how women can plan for themselves in the areas of estate planning, investments and insurance. We eat, drink and ... << MORE >>

I've encountered several cases lately where the personal representative of an estate or successor trustee of a trust is anxious to distribute all of the estate or trust within weeks after taking over the estate or trust after the death of the original owner.

They resist me when I tell them to "let things settle". I think sometimes they believe I'm just trying to run up the legal fees (even when I am not charging by the hour). ... << MORE >>

We hit the ground running on our Year of Updating for our clients who are in our CARePlan trust maintenance program. We had several clients come in for the January updating workshop and a number are already signed up for the February program.

All of the clients who attended the January workshop had changes they wanted to make to their planning documents. These amounted to what we call "word processing" changes because they could be expressed ... << MORE >>

Karen Klein, one of my favorite columnists and bloggers, has an article in BusinessWeek with a year-end tax planning checklist for small businesses.

In addition to the tax issues Karen Klein raises, I would add that this is a good time for small businesses to do the following:

(1) Corporations and LLCs should review their minutes book and make sure that minutes are up to date
(2) Companies with a Buy/Sell Agreement should ... << MORE >>

This article from the Denver Post is intriguing. It says that the state of Colorado will "work with" the U.S. Department of Labor to "share information and coordinate more closely ... on the problem of worker classification."  Tony Gagliardi of the National Federation of Independent Business shares the view that the current rules are confusing and not consistent among the different agencies, something I noted in this previous blog post.
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