Cava Faulkner

December 25, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

Even though there are now vaccines for the pandemic and the number of new cases is on the decline, becoming infected is still a very real possibility. And for parents who suffer from any debilitating illness, it can be a colossal challenge to navigate your typical parenting responsibilities, while trying to recover.

This is especially true for single parents who are the sole caregiver, with limited outside child-care options. That said, plenty of single parents have faced the same challenge and successfully recovered, while raising their young children. Fortunately, you can learn from their experiences, ask for support, and take steps to prepare for and manage your illness and your role as a parent.

Last week, in part one, we discussed some key legal issues that parents of minor children should address in order to deal with the risks of the coronavirus or any other serious medical condition that can leave you totally incapacitated or worse. Specifically, we talked about the need for naming legal guardians to care for your kids in the event you become unable to look after them. If you have not already legally documented who you would want to look after your children should you become unable to do so yourself—even for a short period of time—go to this free website right now get it done.

In addition to naming legal guardians for your kids, we also talked about the need to create a medical power of attorney and living will. These legal documents are advance directives that describe your wishes for medical treatment and end-of-life care in the event you become incapacitated and unable to express your own wishes.

Here, in part two of this series, we are going to discuss proactive measures that single parents debilitated by the coronavirus or another illness can take to improve your chances for a smooth recovery and better manage your parenting duties at the same time. Additionally, we are going to discuss additional estate planning steps for you to consider now.

Practical Tips For Recovering From The Coronavirus

If you develop symptoms that aren’t serious enough to warrant hospitalization, your main priority is recovering from your illness, but unless you can find an alternate caregiver, you’ll still need to look after your kids. As with any other challenge, planning ahead for this situation will greatly improve your chances of having a smooth recovery.

The more you prepare yourself, your home, and your children for your illness before you start feeling sick, the easier it will be to manage things when your symptoms reach their worst. The coronavirus affects people in a variety of different ways, so until you know exactly how your body will react, it’s best to prepare for a broad range of symptoms.

Identify Support. As a single parent, having backup support to care for your kids, in case you become ill or in the event of your death, is critical. While we discussed naming legal guardians for your children in our previous article, on a practical level, now is the time to consider who in your life would you be able to call on for immediate support if you need help.

As you make this list of potential immediate supporters for you and your kids, have a proactive conversation with those people now, letting them know you hope to not have to call on them, but if you do, you want to know if they would be open to being available to support you and/or your children.

If they say yes, create legal documentation giving them authority to stay with your kids and make medical decisions for your kids, in the event that you cannot make those decisions for any reason at all. This way, if something does happen, and you are too sick to care for your children, the authorities would have your written authority to leave your children in the care of the people you’ve identified, and they wouldn’t have to take your children into the care of strangers or “the system” while they figure out what to do.

In the even that you do become seriously ill, you should take the following steps to help prepare yourself and your family:

Plan to get lots of rest. Constant fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of the virus, and this can seriously affect your ability to care for your kids. Given this, you should do everything you can to keep your kids safe and occupied, so you can rest. This might mean gathering games, videos, books, music, toys, and snacks to keep them entertained. And if you have small children and are worried about them wandering off, consider using a playpen or play gates to keep them in the same room as you while you rest.

Stock up on food. You should stock up on food for both you and your kids. Your best bet are easy-to-prepare meals, such as canned soup, microwave meals, energy bars, meal-replacement shakes, and frozen pizzas. While you should be able to stock up on at least a couple of weeks worth of food beforehand, you may find that you need additional food or other essential supplies once you get sick. To prepare for this, reach out to family and friends to see if they can drop off groceries, and if that’s not an option, look into delivery services such as TaskRabbit or Instacart.

Get homework help. If your kids are attending school remotely, it might be a good idea to coordinate with a friend or tutor to be available via FaceTime or Zoom to help you kids with their schoolwork should you be laid low by your symptoms.

Preparing for the Worst-Case Scenario

While most adults don’t experience severe complications from the coronavirus, there’s always the chance that you could be among those who do. Should the absolute worst happen and you end up passing away from the illness, it’s critical that your estate plan be completely up-to-date with the latest documents, beneficiaries, and administrators. Here we’ll outline some of the most important aspects of your estate plan that you should have covered to ensure your kids are properly cared for following your death.

Ensure your will distributes your assets properly: As a single parent of minor kids, you’ll likely want most, if not all, of your assets to pass to your children in the event of your death, and for this reason, you may have named them as beneficiaries in your will. However, as minors, they wouldn’t be able to access those assets until they reach the age of majority. Until they come of age, the court would appoint a guardian, which could be someone other than the person you’ve chosen, to manage their inheritance.

To avoid this, if you only have a will, you should ensure that your will establishes a testamentary trust for the benefit of your kids, with a financial guardian named by you to care for the assets, until your children reach the age you choose for them to receive their inheritance.

But for a variety of reasons we’ll cover below, using a will alone is not the ideal option for protecting and transferring your assets to your kids. Instead, you should seriously consider creating a trust to ensure your children’s inheritance passes to them in the most advantageous way possible.

Use a trust to protect and control the distribution of your children’s inheritance: Using a revocable living trust to pass your children’s inheritance to them offers a number of important advantages over a will. For one, assets included in a will must first pass through the court process before they can be transferred to the intended beneficiaries. This means that the guardian you’ve named to care for your kids would have to first go through the process before they could get access to any of your assets for your children’s care.

can not only take months or longer to complete, but it can also be expensive and confusing. In contrast, if your assets are held in a properly drafted trust, the person you name as financial guardian could work with your lawyer for ease of management of your assets, and the people you name to care for your children could access those assets much more easily and directly as needed.

The trustee you name could be the person you’ve named as your kids’ legal guardian, or it could be a different individual, who could oversee the management of your children’s inheritance, freeing the guardian from the responsibility of caring for your kids and worrying about managing their money at the same time. Alternatively, you could make the guardian and another individual co-trustees, so there would be two individuals overseeing the assets for increased accountability.

Another advantage a trust has over a will is the level of control they offer you when it comes to distributing assets to your kids. By using a trust, you can specify when and how your kids will receive your assets once they come of age. For example, you could stipulate in the trust’s terms that the assets can only be distributed upon certain life events, such as the completion of college or purchase of a home. Or you might spread out distribution of assets over their lifetime, releasing a percentage of the assets at different ages or life stages.

In this way, you can help prevent your kids from blowing through their inheritance all at once, and offer incentives for them to demonstrate responsible behavior. Plus, as long as the assets are held in trust, they’re protected from the beneficiaries’ creditors, lawsuits, and divorce, which is something else wills don’t provide.

Furthermore, a will does not cover assets that pass directly to a beneficiary by contract, such as life insurance and retirement accounts. Given this, make sure your insurance policies and retirement accounts are directed to your trust, instead of listing your children as designated beneficiaries. Naming minors or even young adults as the beneficiaries of insurance and retirement accounts is a sure-fire way to ensure they unnecessarily get stuck in a court process, with a judge deciding how your assets are managed for your children, which you can easily avoid by designating your trust as the beneficiary of your life insurance and retirement accounts.

That said, if an asset hasn’t been properly funded to your trust, it won’t be covered, so it’s critical to work with us, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, to ensure the trust is properly funded. We have systems in place to ensure that transferring assets to your trust and making sure they are properly owned at the time of your incapacity or death happens with ease and convenience.

Finally, in addition to the above documents, it’s essential that your estate plan also include a comprehensive inventory of your assets.

Create a Personal Resource Map: Maintaining a regularly updated inventory of all your assets is one of the most vital parts of keeping your plan current. By creating such an inventory, those named in your will and/or trust will know what you have and how to find everything should something happen to you, so none of your assets end up in our state’s Department of Unclaimed Property. This task is so important we’ve created a free online tool called a Personal Resource Map to help you get your asset inventory process started right now by yourself, without the need for a lawyer.

After getting your inventory started there, meet with us, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, to incorporate your inventory into a comprehensive set of planning strategies that we will develop with you to keep your plan updated throughout your lifetime.

Minimize Your Risk With Planning

While the pandemic has been an extremely trying time, it seems we’re finally rounding the corner in containing the virus and getting our lives back to normal. Although it’s impossible to totally prevent you or your loved ones from getting seriously ill, by putting the type of proactive planning measures described here in place, you can significantly minimize the level of stress, suffering, and conflict that can result if you do become sick.

Whether you have yet to create these documents or need yours updated, meet with us, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, right away to ensure your family and your assets are as well-protected as possible. Contact us today to schedule your appointment.

Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. If you’re ready to create a comprehensive estate plan, contact us to schedule your Family Wealth Planning Session. Even if you already have a plan in place, we will review it and help you bring it up to date to avoid heartache for your family. Schedule online today.

December 22, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

As you no doubt already know, on January 26, 2020, basketball legend Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash on a wooded hillside 30 miles north of Los Angeles. Also killed in the tragic accident was his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven other passengers, who were friends and colleagues of Kobe and his family. The exact cause of the crash remains under investigation.

The 41-year-old former Los Angeles Laker was flying to Mamba Sports Academy, a youth sports center Kobe founded in Thousand Oaks, where his daughter Gianna was set to play in a basketball tournament. Fortunately, none of Kobe’s other family members were on the flight, and he’s survived by his wife Vanessa and three other daughters: Natalia, 17, Bianka, 3, and Capri, 7 months.

Kobe’s sudden death at such a young age has led to a huge outpouring of grief from fans across the world. Whenever someone so beloved dies so young, it highlights just how critical it is for every adult—but especially those with young children—to create an estate plan to ensure their loved ones are properly protected and provided for when they die or in the event of their incapacity.

While it’s too early to know the exact details of Kobe’s estate plan (and he may have planning vehicles in place to keep the public from ever knowing the full details), we can still learn from the issues his family and estate are likely to face in the aftermath of his death. We cover these issues in hopes that it will inspire you to remember that life is not guaranteed, death can come at any moment, and your loved ones are counting on you to do the right thing for them now.

Kobe’s sports and business empire

Between his salary and endorsements during his 20-year career with the L.A. Lakers, Kobe earned an estimated $680 million. And that’s not counting the money he made from his numerous business ventures, licensing rights for his likeness, and extensive venture capital investments following his retirement from the NBA. That said, by all estimates, his estate has the potential to be the most valuable of any modern athlete.

Given his business acumen and length of time in the spotlight, it’s highly unlikely Kobe died without at least some planning in place to protect his assets and his family. But even if Kobe did have a plan, when someone so young, wealthy, and successful passes away this unexpectedly in such a terrible accident, his family and estate will almost certainly face some potential threats and complications.

For example, due to his extreme wealth, Kobe likely created trusts and other planning strategies to remove some of his assets from his estate in order to reduce his federal estate-tax liability. However, because he was so young and still actively involved in numerous business ventures, it’s quite unlikely that all—or even the majority—of his assets had been fully transferred into those protective planning vehicles.

And seeing that Kobe owned the helicopter and the weather at the time was poor (many other flights had already been grounded), there’s also the real potential that the families of those killed in the crash will file civil lawsuits against his estate. Regardless of how extensive Kobe’s estate plan is, it’s doubtful that the lawyers who drafted his plan considered the possibility of so many potential wrongful-death lawsuits.

Here’s the bottom line: the post-death handling of Kobe’s affairs is surely going to be complicated, and we’ll keep monitoring the court filings to let you know what there is to know, once we know.

Though you almost certainly don’t have a Kobe-size estate to pass on, that makes it even more important for you to handle your planning—and really get it done right. Kobe’s family can afford years in court, lawyers upon lawyers, and a loss of some assets to taxes and lawsuits. Your family, on the other hand, cannot.

Trusted support when it’s needed most

Since Kobe’s wife Vanessa survives him, and it’s been widely reported that they married without a prenuptial agreement, it’s most likely that she will inherit everything. And due to the “spousal exemption,” those assets will pass to her tax free. Yet despite the protection from estate taxes, if she does inherit everything directly, all of the estate-planning, financial-planning, business-management, and wealth-preservation responsibilities for Kobe’s immense fortune will now pass to Vanessa.

That’s an overwhelming responsibility to suddenly have to take on, especially while she’s mourning the loss of both her husband and child, as well as raising Kobe’s three other daughters. Given the vast scope of Kobe’s estate, ongoing business ventures, and likelihood of lawsuits and other legal complications, Vanessa will need the advice and support of her trusted counsel now more than ever. And we sure do hope she has that support, and that it was established well before this point in time.

Unfortunately, many estate planning firms do not engage with the whole family when creating estate plans and the associated legal documents, leaving the spouse and other family members largely out of the loop. Though we can’t know if this was the case with Kobe’s lawyers, such situations occur frequently enough that there’s a good possibility this could be true for Vanessa as well.

And it could be true for you and your family, too. Are you in the loop on the planning that’s been handled (or not) for your parents? Are the people you’ve named in your plan or who you would want handling things for you when needed fully up to date and in the know about your planning?

This scenario highlights the immense value of working with family-centered planning lawyers like us. We take the time to get to know your family members and include them in the planning process. We can even facilitate regular family meetings to keep everyone up to date, as your family dynamics and planning strategies evolve and change over the years.

While the death of Kobe, his daughter, and the others is terribly sad, if it motivates you to get your estate planning handled the right way, or updated, the tragedy just might have some positive impact. Whether you already have a plan created or nothing at all, meet with us to learn about the specific planning strategies necessary to protect your loved ones and their inheritance if and when something equally tragic happens to you.

December 21, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

As more banks close local branches and eschew brick and mortar growth, small businesses face uncertain times. With fewer branches in which to form trusted financial relationships, business owners often must rely on online banking for everyday needs.

This poses a problem for small business owners who previously benefited from personal relationships with bankers when seeking financing. Although a computer algorithm might not recognize the potential of a small business from an online loan application, personal bankers often can, making local banking branches an important source of funds for small businesses.

So, what can small businesses do to secure vital financing in a world where brick and mortar branches are closing their doors? Where can they turn for personalized financing? Can online banking be trusted?

Entrusting a banking app with the financial livelihood of your business might make small business owners uneasy, especially when facing rejection from online loan applications that only take into consideration hard numbers like credit scores and revenues.

You can offset this disadvantage by working with a skilled advisor who can help you plan for the future and secure financing for growth on your own terms. We can do two things: help you prepare to secure financing from a bank and help keep you in excellent financial shape allowing you to rely less on financing and more on growth.

We know what big banks want to see in an applicant and can help you represent your business as an attractive candidate for financing. By coordinating your business formation, tax strategy, insurance policies, and financial operations, we can ensure your business is a sound investment for any financier.

But securing a small business loan is just the start. To focus on growth, you’ll want to put financial systems in place that minimize your reliance on financing while maximizing the performance of the funding you do obtain.

Securing financial backing for small businesses is harder than ever, but with sound planning, you can beat the odds. If you want to put systems in place to boost your financial fortitude, begin by sitting down with us so we can establish a sound legal, insurance, financial, and tax system for your business so you can focus on growth and reach your full potential.

We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for businesses and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer a LIFT Start-Up Session™ or a LIFT Audit for an ongoing business, which includes a review of all the legal, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Call us today to schedule. Or, schedule online.

December 20, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

As you already know, the COVID-19 pandemic means nothing is business as usual. Many states have implemented a “shelter-in-place” order to limit the spread of the disease; however, if you are not in a place with such an order, or if your parents are not following it, you may want to refer to our previous blog on how to talk to your parents and get them to stay home.

Once you have attended to your (and your parents’) immediate needs, it will be time to consider more long term precautions.

In this time of stress and chaos, your parents may be resistant to talking about estate planning. It may feel too pessimistic to plan for the worst in the midst of a scary situation. However, that’s exactly why it’s the most important time to do so. Plus, since hopefully you are staying inside, you may actually have the time to dedicate to getting these tasks taken care of.

Here are actions you can, and should, take to ensure you and your family are protected both legally and financially.

Update Your Health Care Documents

Above all, you first need to ensure that both you and your parents have advance care directives. This will be an invaluable reference point for those who are assisting you, whether they be friends, family, or medical professionals. This directive should include instructions on your preferred methods of care and the contact information for each of your doctors.

You must also clearly state who will be in charge of handling your affairs in the event of your death or incapacity. Even if you have done this already, I urge you to take out any existing documents now and review them. Have your circumstances changed? Do you have additions to make? Encourage your parents to do the same thing, and to communicate with you about what their directives say.

Here’s an article to read, and share with your parents (and adult kids, if you have them) on the 3 parts of a Health Care Directive, and the 5 things you want to look for in your Health Care Directive right now, to ensure it’s up to date for Covid-19.

If you are unsure whether your Health Care Directive is in ship-shape, call us to take an expert look at them.

Create a “Personal Resource Map”—an Inventory of Everything That Matters

You might think that only the very rich need to worry about making specific plans for their assets. But not so fast. Do you have investments or a retirement account? Physical things like jewelry, musical instruments, or furniture? What about crypto? Or even social media accounts? In the event of your incapacity or death, your family members won’t know where to look for what you have, or how to access it, unless you’ve planned for that ahead of time.

Somewhere between 49 and 80 billion dollars are currently unclaimed, or unable to be claimed, by family members of people who have passed away. This is money that individuals may have forgotten they had, or that they made no provisions to pass on to their family after they died. That’s why it’s extra important that you create a “personal resource map” to tell your loved ones where everything is and how they should move forward according to your wishes.

To help you make your own personal resource map, and to help your parents make theirs, you can go to http://www.personalresourcemap.com/ or call us direct and we’ll walk you through it.

Wisely Maximize Your Access To and Use of Credit

Financial experts often recommend a rainy day savings account, and it seems that the rainy day has come. Whether or not you have a sizable savings, you should also maximize your access to credit. Getting approved for a higher credit line is good to do sooner rather than later. If you find yourself in a position where you need money quickly (to afford a medical expense, for instance), you don’t want to be scrambling to pay the bill.

Some people might balk at the idea of applying for more personal credit, particularly people who are afraid of debt. Think of it, however, as a worst-case precaution. You can get approved for credit even if you have a decent amount of savings—just as a backup. If you need reassurance, or if you need some help encouraging your parents to get approved for a higher credit line, you can contact us to walk you through your options.

Remember that it’s never an inappropriate time to plan for the future. It’s also always a good time to ask for legal and financial help. #WereAllInThisTogether and we’re here to support you, virtually now, as well. We can take care of you, and your family, fully online. Call us, we’re here.

December 15, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

Do your parents have an estate plan? Is it up to date? No matter how rich or poor you or your parents are, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, you need to be asking these and several other questions. When your parents become incapacitated or die, their affairs will become your responsibility, and it will be impossible to ask them to clarify anything. So, if you do not know whether or not they have estate planning in place that will help you best support them, read on.

The Best-Case Scenario

In a best-case scenario, your parents have an updated estate plan, and they’ve walked you through it. They have provided an inventory of their assets that’s easy for you to find listing out everything they own, how it’s titled, and who it should go to and how. Ideally, it also includes directions on how to handle their non-monetary assets, and an audio recording or written stories that pass on their values, insights and experience. On top of all that, it’s best if they’ve introduced you to the lawyer who set it all up, so you know who to turn to when the time comes.

Less-Than-Ideal Scenarios

If that’s not the case, you could have some holes to fill. If they’ve not done any planning at all, now is the time to encourage them to get it done, and support them in any way you can. If they already have a completed plan, it’s likely that it has been sitting on their shelf or in a drawer for years, not updated, with no inventory of their assets and no way to capture and pass on their intangible assets. Even worse, their lawyer could have been using outdated systems that are no longer recognized, which can lead to trouble down the road.

It’s also possible they’ve never updated their estate plan, it no longer tracks with their current assets, and may even require complex actions that are no longer necessary upon their death. Worst of all, you may have no idea what your parents own or how to find their assets, and at their incapacity or death you’ll be left with a mess, even though your parents had good intentions and thought their planning was handled.

The Worst-Case Scenario

In a worst-case scenario (which we see more frequently than we’d like), your parents may have worked with someone who exerted undue influence over their decisions. This person may have led them to write something into their plan that they either didn’t really want to or wouldn’t otherwise have chosen if they understood all of their options.

Either way, it’s critical for you to know who your parents have worked with to create their estate plan, and how and why they made the choices they did. If you aren’t in the know, now is the time to find out.

If you and your parents are already discussing these matters, but have not yet included you, you can ask them to schedule a family meeting with their existing attorney. On your parents’ request, that attorney should look forward to walking you through your parents’ planning, the choices they made, and how you will be impacted in the event of their incapacity or death.

You want to develop a relationship with their estate planning attorney now. This advisor can be one of the most important supporters of you and your parents during your time of need. It’s a relationship you will want to establish before you need it, so you won’t be scrambling during a time of crisis.

If you need support to have these conversations with your parents, let us know. We can help.

December 14, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

Last week, we shared the first part of this series, discussing some of the key steps for conscious co-parenting. In part two, we continue with the final steps.

Today, many married couples who decide to end their marriages choose conscious divorce. However, once the divorce is finalized, you must continue using the same positive approach in your joint-parenting efforts.

Conscious co-parenting is a child-centered process, where both you and your ex agree to work as cooperative partners for the sake of your kids. This ultimately helps both you and your children adapt in a healthier way.

Such collaboration can be challenging, but last week we offered three ways you can successfully navigate the process. Here, we continue with three additional ways to make conscious co-parenting work for you:

4. Respect your co-parent’s time with the children

Conscious co-parenting is about demonstrating to your children that you still want the other parent in their lives.

To this end, don’t do anything that might stop your kids from having an enjoyable time when they’re with the co-parent. This means not scheduling children’s activities during the co-parent’s time, unless you’ve asked them first. It also means respecting their time together by not constantly calling or texting.

It’s normal to miss your children when they’re away, but it will be easier and healthier for everyone if you respect their time together.

5. Get outside support

When it comes to divorce, the experience is often painful and unsettling. The underlying emotions can be overwhelming if they aren’t processed properly, which can have negative effects on your parenting skills.

Given this, it’s crucial you have support systems in place to move through this phase of life. There’s no single solution, so try a few different supportive outlets to find the one(s) that most suit you.

Whether it’s therapy, support groups, trusted confidants, and/or meditative solitude, you should take this opportunity to practice self-care. For better or worse, our personal identities are often largely centered around our marriages, so it’s perfectly natural to go through a grieving process when they end. Just don’t let the grief become too burdensome.

6. Use conscious co-parenting to achieve personal growth

While it may sound paradoxical, divorce can offer a wonderful opportunity for personal growth. The steps discussed here can help you adjust to your new life in divorce’s immediate aftermath, but they can also allow you to better express yourself throughout your life overall.

Consciously choosing a cooperative co-parenting relationship is just the beginning. You can bring the same mindful focus to every other area of your life. Treating your co-parent in a compassionate, respectful, and patient manner can provide the foundation for how you deal with all of life’s relationships and circumstances.

By doing this, you can serve as a role model for your children, demonstrating how they can deal with adversity in their own lives. In fact, conscious co-parenting can provide them with an array of vital skills that will strengthen their ability to endure the trials and tribulations they’ll likely face in the future.

From custody agreements to alimony payments, there are numerous legal issues that can arise when co-parenting, so be sure you have the legal support you need by consulting with us as your Personal Family Lawyer®, and we can help you identify how to get the best support possible. And given the fact that your family structure has changed, you’ll definitely want to update your estate plan as well. Contact us today for assistance with any of these matters.

We don’t just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That’s why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session, ™ during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before, and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge. Schedule online today.

Managing Child Care While Dealing With Debilitating Illness: Tips For Parents—Part 2