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If you’ve watched TV lately, you’ve likely seen ads touting the benefits of reverse mortgages. The spots typically feature famous actors like Henry “Fonzie” Winkler, Robert Wagner, and former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson telling elderly homeowners how they can dramatically improve their retirement with a reverse mortgage.

But what the ads don’t show is that reverse mortgages have actually caused heartbreak and financial devastation for thousands of elderly homeowners and their families. In fact, a USA TODAY review of government foreclosure data between 2013 and 2017 found that nearly 100,000 reverse mortgages failed during the years following the recession.

As a result, thousands of elderly citizens ended up losing homes that had been in their families for generations. In other cases, adult children, who expected to inherit the family home, were forced to sell the property (often below market value) or sign it over to the lender a few months after their parent’s death.

To make matters worse, the hardest hit have been low-income homeowners, targeted by shady lenders who dramatically underemphasized the risks of the loans and oversold their benefits. In particular, USA TODAY found that reverse mortgages were six times more likely to end in foreclosure in predominantly black neighborhoods than in neighborhoods that are 80% white.

While the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have recently enacted new laws to better protect seniors, reverse mortgages are still heavily marketed as an easy way to access extra money in retirement. Given this, seniors and their families should exercise extreme caution when considering reverse mortgages—and in most cases, avoid them entirely.

A reverse mortgage is a complex loan that allows homeowners 62 and older to convert some of the equity they have in their primary residence into cash. The amount of equity required to obtain a reverse mortgage depends on your age. Younger borrowers need about 60% equity in their homes to qualify, while those over 80 may need just 45%.

Once approved, you can receive the money in one of three ways: as a lump sum, as monthly installments, or as a line of credit. Because you receive payments from the lender, your home’s equity decreases over time, while the loan balance gets larger, thus the term “reverse” mortgage.

With a reverse mortgage, you no longer have to make monthly mortgage payments, and you can stay in your home as long as you keep up with property taxes, pay insurance premiums, and keep the home in good repair. Lenders make money through origination fees, mortgage insurance, and interest on the loan balance, all of which can exceed $10,000 to $15,000.

Although you often have to read the fine print to learn this, the reverse mortgage loan (plus interest and fees) becomes due and must be repaid in full when any of the following events occur:

●       Your death
●       You are out of the home for 12 consecutive months or more, such as in the case of needing nursing home care
●       You sell the home or transfer title
●       You default on the loan by failing to keep up with insurance premiums, property taxes, or by letting the home fall into disrepair

While reverse mortgages may seem like a good deal (and they can be for those with ample financial resources) the surge in foreclosures occurred mainly among low-income homeowners—the very demographic most likely to default. These seniors were aggressively targeted by lenders after the recession, when money was tight and credit was less accessible.

Homeowners were attracted by flashy ads claiming reverse mortgages were a way to “eliminate monthly payments permanently,” with “a risk-free way of being able to access home equity.” Other ads promised “you can remain in your home as long as you wish” and “you can’t be forced to leave.” Other times, the sales pitches came directly to seniors’ doorsteps vial mailers, door hangers, and door-to-door salesmen.

Some consumer advocates believe the upswing in reverse mortgages was a result of predatory lenders, who simply switched from selling risky subprime mortgages to selling reverse mortgages after the real-estate crash. Whatever the case may be, those who fell prey to these tactics eventually defaulted on their loans for a variety of reasons.

Some people fell behind on their property taxes after their tax rates went up. Some took the lump sum payment, spent the money too quickly, and then left with nothing to live on. Others defaulted after having to move into a long-term care facility or after their finances were depleted by a medical emergency.

Some of the saddest cases involved spouses who were not listed on the reverse mortgage because they were too young to qualify when the loan was taken out by their older spouse. Younger spouses can be listed as co-borrowers, but they have to be at least 62. These widows and widowers were tragically forced from their homes upon their spouse’s death, after they were unable to pay back the balance of the loan.

In 2014, HUD developed new policies to better protect at least some surviving spouses. Under the rules, if a married couple with one spouse under age 62 wants to take out a reverse mortgage, they may list the underage spouse as a “non-borrowing spouse.”

If the older spouse dies, the non-borrowing spouse may remain in the home. But he or she cannot access the remaining loan balance and must continue to meet the loan requirements like paying property taxes and insurance premiums. While this may delay things, these surviving spouses are still likely to be foreclosed on down the road.

In 2011, the CFPB cracked down on some of the most misleading ads. All reverse mortgage advertisers are now required to disclose that the loans must be repaid after death or upon move-out. Additionally, the ads can no longer claim the loans are a “government benefit” or “risk free.”

In spite of these new restrictions, the number of  ads for reverse mortgages hasn’t seemed to decline in any significant way, with more seniors and their families likely to fall for them.

Next week, we’ll continue with part two in this series on the dangers of reverse mortgages, focusing on how these loans can negatively affect your family and estate plan.

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.

Globalization and digital technology have made the world seem like a much smaller place. And though the enhanced ability to reach international markets can be a major advantage for your business, it also opens up new complications with intellectual property rights.

This is especially true when it comes to foreign trademark infringement. Trademarks are used to protect a word, phrase, symbol, design, or other distinguishing feature that identifies your product or service. Trademarks allow you to exclude others from using the same—or highly similar—branding as yours.

By registering your trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), you can protect your brand within the borders of the United States. However, having an American trademark will do little to stop competitors and scammers in foreign countries. Indeed, a federally registered U.S. trademark does not entitle you to sue a Chinese company in a Chinese court, even if it used your exact name and/or logo.

So what can you do to prevent your company’s trademark from being infringed upon in other countries? Big-name companies have lawyers around the globe policing against such violations, but if you have a smaller business, you still have ways to protect the branding—and customer goodwill—you’ve worked so hard to cultivate.

One way you can protect your brand is by registering your trademark abroad. You can contact the intellectual property offices in each country where you’re seeking protection to learn how to apply for trademark protection there.

However, a much easier way to achieve protection in many of the largest countries is to register your mark with the International Bureau of the World Property Intellectual Organization (WIPO). WIPO currently has 117 member countries, who have all joined the Madrid Protocol, one of the largest treaty schemes governing trademark rights in the world.

Once you’ve registered your trademark with the USPTO, you can file for an international trademark with the WIPO. Such registration provides protection in each of the member countries who’ve agreed to enforce trademark rights across their borders.

Though it’s certainly important to stop others from infringing on your trademark in foreign countries, you might face a greater threat from foreign counterfeiters who import their fake goods into the U.S.

You’ve undoubtedly heard the stories about Rolex watches being counterfeited and sold on the black market in the U.S. But you might be surprised at the number of other knock-off products that enter our borders every year.

In order to help prevent counterfeit versions of your goods from hitting the streets, you should register your trademark with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). If you have a valid U.S. trademark, you can register it on the CBP’s Intellectual Property Rights e-Recordation Website.

By doing so, you’ll qualify for trademark enforcement from the CBP, which is tasked with stopping the importation of counterfeit merchandise. If any obviously infringing imports are discovered, the CBP will seize the shipment and notify you of the confiscation.

One final way you can fight foreign trademark infringement is by bringing a lawsuit in U.S. Federal Court under the Lanham Act. The Lanham Act is a federal trademark statute that creates a civil cause of action for trademark infringement.

Although the jurisdiction of the U.S. Federal Courts are limited, the extraterritorial arm of the Lanham Act has been increasingly applied to protect trademarks from infringement that occurs almost entirely in other countries. This makes the Lanham Act a highly effective method to combat foreign trademark infringement here in the U.S., rather trying to navigate the laws and courts of a foreign country.

For the Lanham Act to apply, the infringement must have some connection to U.S. commerce. However, this can be something as simple as the infringer shipping products or materials through the U.S. or even exporting products from the United States. Plus, the Lanham Act has statutory penalties, so fines can be imposed—up to $100,000 for each infringing act—even if there are no actual damages.

The courts use a variety of tests to determine if the protections afforded by the Lanham Act apply, so if you think your trademark is being infringed upon in another country, contact us to see if any action can be taken in American courts.

Of course, enforcing your trademark doesn’t necessarily mean taking the infringing party to court. Litigation, especially international litigation, is quite time consuming and expensive, so unless your business is being seriously impacted by foreign infringement, you’ll probably want keep litigation a last resort.

Fortunately, there are many other options for enforcement, from sending a polite cease and desist letter to allowing the offender to pay a nominal licensing fee. And you never know when what seems like a negative event can turn into a positive. Indeed, we often write letters for our clients that not only fix the problem, but also motivate the infringer to work with them in a joint venture. And we can do this for you, too.

If you’ve put substantial time and money into your branding, you should carefully consider all the ways you can protect your investment. We can help you find the most effective and efficient methods for safeguarding your intellectual property both in the U.S. and abroad.

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.

Since you’ll be discussing topics like death, incapacity, and other frightening life events, hiring an estate planning lawyer may feel intimidating or morbid. But it definitely doesn’t have to be that way.

Instead, it can be the most empowering decision you ever make for yourself and your loved ones. The key to transforming the experience of hiring a lawyer from one that you dread into one that empowers you is to educate yourself first. This is the person who is going to be there for your family when you can’t be, so you want to really understand who the lawyer is as a human, not just an attorney. Of course, you’ll also want to find out the kind of services your potential lawyer offers and how they run their business.

To this end, here are five questions to ask to ensure you don’t end up paying for legal services that you don’t need, expect, or want. Once you know exactly what you should be looking for when choosing a planning professional, you’ll be much better positioned to hire an attorney who will provide the kind of love, attention, care, and trust your family deserves.

There’s no reason you should be afraid to ask a lawyer how he or she bills for the work they do on your behalf. In fact, questions about billing and payment should be among the very first subjects you bring up when you first contact them. No one wants surprises, especially when it comes to the bill.

If you call a lawyer’s office and they are reluctant or refuse to give you clear answers to questions about how they charge for their services, determine your fees, or what they expect certain services will cost, this is a big red flag. When someone is hesitant to discuss their billing or business practices, you could be in for some major surprises about what things cost down the road.

Find an estate planning lawyer who bills for all of their services on a flat-fee, no surprises, basis—and never on an hourly basis—unless it’s required by the court for limited purposes. And ideally, you want a lawyer who will guide you through a process of discovery in which they learn about your family dynamics, your assets, and they educate you about what would happen for your family and to your assets if and when something happens to you, and then support you in choosing the right plan for you that meets your budget and your desired outcomes.

Our process for your planning begins with a Family Wealth Planning Session™, in which we educate you about the law and you educate us about your family dynamics and assets, and then you choose the right plan, at the right cost, for the people you love.

One of the biggest complaints people have about working with lawyers is that they are notoriously unresponsive. Indeed, I’ve heard of cases in which clients went weeks without getting a call back from their lawyer. This is all too common, but totally unacceptable, especially when you’re paying them big bucks.

That said, in most cases, these lawyers aren’t blowing you off—they simply don’t have enough support or the systems in place to be able to be responsive. Far too many lawyers believe they can take care of everything themselves. From paperwork and client meetings to scheduling and returning phone calls to connecting their clients with other advisors, there are just too many responsibilities for one person to manage all on their own.

The truth is, if a lawyer is a complete solo practitioner without support or works for a firm that doesn’t provide adequate support, sooner or later, they are almost certain to become overwhelmed and unresponsive. Given this, it’s vital that you ask your lawyer about how they will respond to your needs if you decide to become their client.

Ask them how quickly calls are typically returned in their office, ask them if there will be someone on-hand to answer quick questions, and ask them how they will support you to keep your plan up to date on an ongoing basis and be there for your loved one’s when you can’t be.

A great way to test this is to call your prospective lawyer’s office and ask for him or her. If you get put through right away—or even worse, your call gets sent to a full voicemail—think twice about hiring this lawyer. This means they don’t have effective systems in place for managing and responding to calls or answering quick questions.

Instead, what you want is for the person who answers the phone—or another team member—to offer to help you. And if that individual cannot help you, then he or she should schedule a call for you to talk with your lawyer at a future date and time.

Your lawyer simply can’t be effective or efficient if he or she is taking every call that comes through. Ideally, all calls to your lawyer should be pre-scheduled with a clear agenda, so you both can be ready to focus on your specific needs.

Next week in part two we’ll talk more about the ways in which your attorney should communicate with you and list the remaining three questions to ask before hiring your estate planning lawyer.

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.

If you are like many homeowners, your home is likely your family’s most valuable and treasured asset. In light of this, you want to plan wisely to ensure your home will pass to your heirs in the most efficient and safe manner possible when you die or in the event you become incapacitated by illness or injury.

Indeed, proper estate planning is as much a part of responsible homeownership as having homeowners insurance or keeping your home’s roof well maintained. When it comes to including your home in your estate plan, you have a variety of different planning vehicles to choose from, but for a variety of different reasons, putting your home in a trust is often the smartest choice.

In part one, we explained how revocable living trusts and irrevocable trusts work, and we discussed the process of transferring the legal title of your home into a trust to ensure it’s properly funded. Here in part two, we will outline the key advantages of using a trust to pass your home to your loved ones compared to other estate planning strategies.

While both wills and trusts are the most commonly used estate planning vehicles to pass on wealth and other assets to your loved ones, putting your home in a trust has a number of distinct benefits compared to using a will.

One of the primary advantages of using a trust to pass on your home to your heirs is the avoidance of the court process. Unlike a will, assets held in trust do not have to go through. The court oversees the will’s administration, ensuring your assets are distributed according to your wishes, with automatic supervision to handle any disputes.

However, can be a long and expensive process, which can be emotionally draining for your loved ones. Depending on the complexity of your estate, proceedings can drag out for months or even years, and your family will likely have to hire an attorney to represent them, which can result in costly legal fees that can drain your estate. Plus, is open to the public, which can make things risky for those you leave behind, especially if the wrong people take an interest in your family’s affairs.

Unlike a will, if your trust is properly set up and maintained, your family won’t have to go through to inherit your home. Instead, your home will immediately pass to your loved ones upon your death, without the need for any court intervention. Avoiding the delay of can be especially critical when it comes to a home to ensure the property is properly maintained, since the home may fall into disrepair while is being completed.

Finally, unlike wills, trusts remain private and are not part of the public record. So, with a properly funded trust, the entire process of transferring ownership of your home can happen in the privacy of your Personal Family Lawyer®’s office, not a courtroom, and on your family’s time.

In addition to passing on your home to your loved ones when you die, putting your home in a trust can also protect your home in the event you become incapacitated by serious illness or injury. In contrast, a will only goes into effect upon your death, so it would be useless for protecting your home in the event you become incapacitated.

If you do become incapacitated with only a will in place, your family will have to petition the court to appoint a conservator or guardian to manage your affairs related to homeownership, including paying your mortgage and property taxes, keeping up with your home’s general maintenance, and overseeing the sale of your home. The process of petitioning the court to appoint a conservator or guardian can be costly, time-consuming, and stressful.

And there’s always the possibility that the court could appoint a family member as a guardian that you’d never want to manage your family home. Or the court might select a professional guardian, putting a total stranger in control of your family’s most precious asset and leaving it vulnerable to crooked guardians, who could potentially sell your home for their personal financial gain.

With a trust, however, you can include provisions in the terms of the trust that appoint someone of your choosing—not the court’s—as successor trustee to manage your home’s ownership and/or sale if you’re unable to do so yourself due to incapacity. For example, your trust could authorize your successor trustee to sell your home in order to pay for the costs of long-term care should you require it.

Because you can include specific instructions in a trust’s terms for how and when the assets held by the trust are distributed to a beneficiary, a trust can offer greater control over how your assets are distributed compared to a will. 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 marriage, or when the beneficiary reaches a certain age.

In this way, you can help prevent your beneficiaries from blowing through their inheritance all at once, and offer incentives for them to demonstrate responsible behavior. And as we mentioned earlier, 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.

If you leave your home to your loved ones using a will and you designate more than one person to inherit the property, there’s a potential for conflict because each individual gets an undivided interest in the home. Given this, these individuals must agree on what to do with the home—keep it or sell it—and they may not see eye-to-eye, which can create unnecessary drama that can tear your family apart.

For example, if one of your children wants to keep the home and live in it, but the other prefers to sell it in order to pay off their debts, the child who wants to sell could go to court in order to force their sibling to sell the property. However, this potential for conflict can be avoided by putting your home in a living trust.

If you name more than one beneficiary for your home in your living trust, you can name a neutral third-party as successor trustee to decide what happens to the home, and then manage the distribution after a clear determination is made. For example, the trustee could allow one child to live in the home, while the other could receive other estate assets of equal value, or the trustee could come up with some alternative solution to stave off the potential for conflict.

In some states you can use what’s known as a Transfer On Death (TOD) deed in order to transfer ownership of your home to your heirs. Initially created as an inexpensive alternative to living trusts, a TOD deed allows named beneficiaries to assume ownership of your home without undergoing or trust administration.

However, TOD deeds come with some major drawbacks, and they may end up creating unintended problems for your loved ones. To this end, before you rely on a TOD deed as a cheaper alternative to passing your house via a trust, consider the following factors:

• If your property is held joint tenancy, your joint tenant becomes the sole owner upon your death and has full control of the property, and your TOD deed would be inapplicable.
• Unlike with a living trust, a TOD deed cannot be used to manage, sell, or borrow against the property during your incapacity. This means that if you become incapacitated, the beneficiary of your TOD deed would be unable to access your home in order to sell or refinance the property to pay for your care, as your trustee could if you had the property in a living trust.
• If the beneficiary of the TOD deed is a minor upon your death, a court-appointed guardian will need to be named to control your property until the child reaches legal age. With a living trust, however, the person you named as successor trustee can manage the property until your child reaches legal age.
• Using a TOD deed in order to transfer ownership of your home to try and lower the value of your assets doesn’t count as a Medicaid spend-down, so it will not help you qualify for the program. Plus, depending on the state, the property may even be subject to the Medicaid Estate Recovery Program (MERP) after you die. As mentioned earlier, if you want to qualify for Medicaid and protect your home from MERP, meet with your Personal Family Lawyer® to discuss creating an irrevocable trust.

Given these potential complications, using a TOD deed to transfer ownership of your home as an alternative to a living trust is almost never a good idea. Instead, your Personal Family Lawyer®, can help you find better ways to transfer ownership of your home that will keep your family out of court and out of conflict.

Although putting your home in a living trust can be an ideal way to pass your home to your loved ones, each family’s circumstances are different. This is why your Personal Family Lawyer® will not create any documents until we know what you actually need, and what will be the most affordable solution for you and your family—both now and in the future—based on your family dynamics, assets, and desires.

The best way for you to determine whether or not your estate plan should include a will, a trust, or some combination of the two is to meet with your Personal Family Lawyer® for a Family Wealth Planning Session, which is the first step in our Life & Legacy Planning Process. During this process, we’ll take you through an analysis of your assets, what’s most important to you, and what will happen to your loved ones when you die or if you become incapacitated.

Sitting down with a Personal Family Lawyer® will empower you to feel 100% confident that you have the right combination of estate planning solutions to fit with your unique asset profile, family dynamics, and budget. In fact, we see estate planning as so much more than planning for death, which is why we call it Life & Legacy Planning—it’s about your life and the legacy you are creating by the choices you make today. Contact us today to learn more.

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.