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The Netflix movie I Care a Lot provides a dark, violent, and somewhat comedic take on the real life and not-at-all funny dangers of the legal (and sometimes corrupt) guardianship system. While the film’s twisting plot may seem far fetched, it sheds light on a tragic phenomenon—the abuse of seniors at the hands of crooked “professional” guardians.

Last week in part one of this series we offered a brief synopsis of the movie, which revolves around Marla Grayson, a crooked professional guardian who makes her living by preying on vulnerable seniors, and we then outlined the true events that inspired the fictional account. The film’s writer and director, J. Blakeson, came up with the idea after reading news stories of a similar scam involving a corrupt professional guardianship agency in Las Vegas.

In that case, a real-life Marla Grayson named April Parks, who owned a company called A Private Professional Guardian, was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison in 2018 after being indicted on more than 200 felonies for using her guardianship status to swindle more than 150 seniors out of their life savings. While I Care a Lot is fictional, the Parks case also inspired the 2018 documentary, The Guardians, directed by award-winning filmmaker Billie Mintz, and his film details the terrifying true events that ravaged the Nevada guardianship industry.

In a Facebook post, Mintz praises I Care a Lot as “a perfect introduction to guardianship,” but worries that because of the movie’s heavy focus on violence and Russian mobsters, “people won’t believe it’s real.” However, as Mintz points out, “I assure you that everything you see about guardianship is true.”

Indeed, while the Parks case is the most famous, similar cases of senior abuse by professional guardians are on the rise across the country. A 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office found hundreds of cases where guardians were involved in the abuse, exploitation, and neglect of seniors placed under their supervision. And given the country’s exploding elderly population and our overloaded court system, such abuse will almost certainly become more common.

Additionally, although most of the cases that have made the news have involved the elderly, the fact is, any adult could face court-ordered guardianship if they become incapacitated by illness or injury and haven’t put the proper legal protections in place.

To this end, here in part two, we’re going to explain how you can protect yourself and your loved ones from such abuse using proactive estate planning.

How It Happens

Should you become incapacitated without any planning in place (due to illness or injury), your family (or a friend) would have to petition the court in order to be granted guardianship. In most cases, the court would appoint a family member as guardian, but this isn’t always the case. If you have no living family members, or those you do have are unwilling or unable to serve or deemed unsuitable by the court, a professional guardian would be appointed.

Beyond the potential for abuse by professional guardians, if you become incapacitated and your family is forced into court seeking guardianship, they are likely to endure a costly, drawn out, and emotionally taxing process. Not only can the legal fees and court costs drain your estate, but if your loved ones disagree over who is best suited to serve as your guardian, it could cause a bitter conflict that could tear your family apart and make it less likely that you get the kind of care you want.

In another scenario, should your loved ones disagree about who should be your guardian, the court could decide that naming a relative as your guardian would be too disruptive to your family dynamics and appoint a professional guardian instead. However, if you have the proper planning vehicles in place, it is highly unlikely for a guardian to be appointed against your wishes.

A Comprehensive Plan For Incapacity

Should you become incapacitated, a comprehensive incapacity plan would give the individual, or individuals, of your choice the immediate authority to make your medical, financial, and legal decisions, without the need for court intervention. Moreover, such planning allows you to provide clear guidance about your wishes, so there is no mistake about how these decisions should be made.

There are several planning vehicles that can go into a comprehensive plan for incapacity, but a will is not among them. A will only goes into effect upon your death, and then, it merely governs how your assets should be divided, so it would do nothing to protect you in the event of incapacity.

When it comes to creating your incapacity plan, your best bet is to put in place a number of different planning tools rather than a single document. To this end, your plan should include some or all of the following:

• Durable financial power of attorney: This document grants an individual of your choice the immediate authority to make decisions related to the management of your financial and legal affairs.
• Revocable living trust: A living trust immediately transfers control of all assets held by the trust to a person of your choice to be used for your benefit in the event of your incapacity. The trust can include legally binding instructions for how your care should be managed, and the document can even spell out specific conditions that must be met for you to be deemed incapacitated.
• Medical power of attorney: A medical power of attorney grants an individual of your choice the immediate legal authority to make decisions about your medical treatment in the event of your incapacity.
• Living will: A living will ((sometimes called an advance directive) provides specific guidance about how your medical decisions should be made during your incapacity, particularly at the end of life. In some instances, a medical power of attorney and a living will are combined in a single document.

But here is the thing about all of these documents—they are just documents and not guidance for the people you love. If you really want to keep your family and friends out of court and out of conflict, you cannot just rely on documents to do it. Rather, these documents should be created by a lawyer who will get to know you, your wishes, and be there for you throughout the many stages of life, plus be there for your family and friends if and when you can’t be.

Communication is Key

In addition to the above planning tools, it is equally—if not more—important for your loved ones to be aware of your plan and understand their role in it. As part of our planning process, we hold a family meeting with all of the individuals impacted by your plan where we walk them through your plan and explain the reasoning behind your decisions and what they need to do if something happens to you.

By combining your comprehensive incapacity plan with a team of people who care for you, can watch out for you, and know exactly what to do in the event tragedy strikes, we can make it virtually impossible for you to be abused by a professional guardian.

Don’t Put It Off

Although incapacity from dementia is most common in the elderly, debilitating injury and illness can strike at any point in life. Given this, all adults 18 and older should have an incapacity plan. Furthermore, planning for incapacity must take place well before any cognitive decline appears, since you must be able to clearly express your wishes and consent for the documents to be valid.

In light of this, you should get your own planning handled first, and then discuss the need for planning with your aging parents as soon as possible, and from there, schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session with us to get a plan started. And if you or your senior loved ones already have an incapacity plan, we can review it to make sure it has been properly set up, maintained, and updated. Unfortunately, a plan put in place years ago is unlikely to work now, so updating is critical, and unfortunately often not overlooked.

Indeed, once you have a plan in place, make sure to regularly review and update it to keep pace with life changes, changes in your assets, or changes in your family structure. And if any of the individuals you have named become unable or unwilling to serve for whatever reason, you will need to revise your plan—and we can help with that too.

Retain Control of Your Life and Assets

To avoid the loss of autonomy, family conflict, and potential for abuse that comes with a court-ordered guardianship, we invite you to meet with us as your Personal Family Lawyer®. While there is no way to prevent dementia and other forms of cognitive decline or an unexpected illness or injury, we can put planning tools in place to ensure that you at least have some control over how your life and assets will be managed if it ever does occur. 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.

Need instructions for replacing your car’s spark plugs?

Want to learn HTML?

Looking to find the route home with the least traffic?

You can find all of that—and just about anything else—with a quick Google search. Indeed, the amount of information you can gain from the Internet is staggering. But just because you can find something online doesn’t mean you should trust it.

This caveat is especially true when it comes to legal documents for your business. While you’ll find tons of websites offering click-and-print legal forms for dirt cheap, these do-it-yourself (DIY) documents can put your business in serious peril.

With so many important items needed to run a business, it’s easy to give less priority to what seem like cut-and-dry legal documents. To the layperson, many standard business agreements appear basically identical, only with different names and numbers depending on whom you’re dealing with.

However, when it comes to legally binding contracts, the details of each agreement are of paramount importance. Even the smallest mistake or omission can make the contract invalid or seriously affect its enforcement. What’s more, without a legal background, you’ll have no idea what to look for to catch and correct such errors.

Sure, such forms are often less expensive than hiring a lawyer in the short run. But is saving a few hundred dollars actually worth the very real potential that down the road you’ll get stuck paying tens of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees, fines, and court costs—or even going out of business?

If you want to see how truly ineffective DIY legal documents can be, look no further than the fine print found in the document websites themselves. These companies flat out tell you that at best, their products are inferior to the advice of a lawyer, and at worst, completely ineffective.

For example, here are some terms-of-service disclaimers from two popular online document companies, LegalZoom® and Rocket Lawyer®:

LegalZoom®, its services, and its forms or templates are not a substitute for the advice or services of an attorney.

Neither Rocket Lawyer® nor any legal information provided by Rocket Lawyer® is a substitute for legal advice from a qualified attorney licensed to practice in an appropriate jurisdiction.

The LegalZoom® disclaimer goes on to note that it can’t even guarantee its own documents are accurate or current:

The legal information contained on the Site and Applications is not legal advice and is not guaranteed to be correct, complete, or up-to-date.

The Rocket Lawyer® disclaimer casts similar doubt on the reliability of its products:

The information, software, products, and services made available through Rocket Lawyer® may include inaccuracies or typographical errors. Information received via Rocket Lawyer® should not be relied upon for personal, medical, legal, or financial decisions.

When even the companies themselves admit that you can’t trust their products to be accurate, effective, or reliable, that should be a huge red flag. After all, isn’t getting accurate, effective, and reliable legal documents the whole reason you’re doing business with them in the first place?

These online document companies are counting on you to believe that technology has reached a point where consulting with a live lawyer is no longer a necessity. Yet their own terms and conditions totally dispel this dangerous assumption.

And this leads to perhaps the most egregious thing about online legal document services—they provide business owners with a false sense of security. Thinking that DIY forms provide your business with a solid legal foundation can be tremendously dangerous, especially if they prevent—or delay—you from consulting with a real lawyer.

While you may be able to cut corners in other areas of your business, not having effective legal systems is a disaster waiting to happen.

If you purchase a cut-rate computer printer, for example, and it misprints some of your office memos, that’s problematic, but not exactly devastating. However, if the legal agreements you rely on are incorrect, outdated, or faulty in any way, it can put your entire company in jeopardy.

Legal documents are designed to protect some of your business’ most essential elements: your personal liability, intellectual property, trade secrets, and tax obligations to name just a few. Are you really going to trust generic, fill-in-the-blank forms you found online to protect such vital components of your business?

Just as you would never try to wire your office’s electrical systems yourself if you weren’t an experienced electrician, you shouldn’t try to do the same with your company’s legal systems. When it comes to implementing such a critically important element of your business, you should always consult with a licensed and experienced professional like us.

Our mission is to guide you through the complexities of the law and legal processes to ensure your company has the most robust legal protections possible. Whether you have legal documents in place that need reviewing, or you need to create your foundational legal systems from scratch, we can offer trusted guidance and advice.

We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for business owners 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 you a LIFT Your Life And Business Planning Session, which includes a review of all the legal, insurance, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Schedule online today.

In the aftermath of rapper Nipsey Hussle’s murder this March, his family and ex-girlfriend have been locked in a bitter battle for custody of one of his young children. And as this ugly drama plays out in the courtroom and tabloids, it highlights the single-most costly estate-planning mistake a parent can make.

Hussle, 34, whose given name was Ermias Ashgedom, was gunned down outside his South Los Angeles clothing store in March. His alleged killer, Eric Holder, was arrested and indicted for murder a few days later. The rapper’s death is particularly tragic, as his debut album, Victory Lap, was recently nominated for a Grammy Award.

Yet even more tragic is what’s happening to Hussle’s kids. Because Hussle never named legal guardians, the decision of who will raise his two children—daughter Emani, 10, and son Kross, 2—is now up to the court. And this mistake is already having terrible consequences.

In addition to not naming guardians for his kids, Hussle also failed to create a will, which makes their guardianship even more contentious. Hussle’s estate is estimated to be worth $2 million, and under California law, in the absence of a will, that money is to be split equally between his two kids.

Given that both children are minors, however, they’re ineligible to access their inheritance until they reach the age of majority. This means that whomever ultimately wins guardianship of the children will likely gain control over their money as well.

Guardianship of Hussle’s son Kross, while still undecided, is currently not a source of conflict. Kross’s mother is actress Lauren London, who was Hussle’s longtime girlfriend, and  Kross had been living with London at the time of his father’s death. She petitioned the court for her son’s guardianship, and there’s little doubt she’ll get it.

Who will be awarded guardianship of Hussle’s daughter Emani, however, is far less clear.

Since the day of the shooting, Hussle’s sister, Samantha Smith, has been caring for Emani, who was living with her father when he was killed. Following Hussle’s shooting, Smith petitioned the court to obtain Emani’s guardianship. But Emani’s mother, Tanisha Foster, an old girlfriend of Hussle’s, is also seeking guardianship.

Though Foster and Hussle shared custody of Emani, at the time of the rapper’s death, Hussle’s ex had reportedly not seen the child in months. Yet Foster claims that Emani was just visiting her dad on the day he was killed and that Smith and the rest of Hussle’s family are refusing to return her.

Smith and Hussle’s family contend that Foster is unfit to raise the child due to her criminal past. Foster has a criminal record dating back to 2006, and she currently has a warrant out for her arrest after skipping a court hearing for a DUI charge.

Yet Foster claims that her criminal history is irrelevant, and that as Emani’s mother, she’s the one who should be named as guardian. She’s also claiming that Smith unlawfully took custody of her daughter on the day of Hussle’s shooting.

For now, the court is siding with Smith, ruling in May that Hussle’s sister can retain temporary custody of Emani, pending a final decision on her guardianship. That decision will likely be made in a court hearing scheduled for October.

As Hussle’s case so dramatically demonstrates, your death can strike at any time, so if you’re the parent of minor children, it’s imperative that you select and legally document long-term guardians for your kids. In fact, naming guardians for your children should be your number-one planning priority.

The fact that Hussle didn’t create a will is obviously another terrible mistake. But when it comes to your children’s lives, all the money in the world is meaningless in comparison. For this reason, we’re going to focus solely on the consequences resulting from Hussle’s failure to name legal guardians, and how easily the whole ugly mess could have been avoided.

As we’re seeing with Hussle, leaving it up to the court to name guardians for your kids
can lead to conflict, as otherwise well-meaning family members fight one another over custody. This process is not only costly, but it can be terribly traumatizing for everyone involved, especially your kids.

Hussle’s case also shows how agonizingly slow this process often is. There have already been numerous court hearings related to Emani’s custody since her father’s death in March, and though the October hearing could finally decide her fate, it’s just as likely that the decision could be postponed again. Indeed, these custody battles often drag on for years, making the lawyers wealthy, while your kids are stuck in the middle.

But the most tragic consequence of Hussle’s failure to name legal guardians is that a judge will be the one who decides who’s best suited to care for his kids.

Though we can’t be sure exactly who Hussle would have wanted to raise Emani, it’s almost certain he wouldn’t have wanted a total stranger to make that decision for him. Yet, because he didn’t take the time to document legal guardians, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

Helping you select and legally document long-term guardians for your children is one of our specialities. The founder of the Personal Family Lawyer® program, Alexis Katz, wrote a best-selling book on the subject titled Wear Clean Underwear!: A Fast, Fun, Friendly and Essential Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents.

As a mother and one of the country’s leading estate-planning experts for families, Alexis was shocked to discover that the plan she created for her own daughter under the traditional planning model would have left her child at risk of being taken into the care of strangers, if anything happened to her and her husband. To address this gap in her plan, Alexis created a unique system known as the Kids Protection Plan®.

The system is a comprehensive methodology to guide you step-by step through the process of  legally documenting guardians for your kids, for the short-term, long-term, and so much more. I’ve been trained to support you to put in place the Kids Protection Plan® for your minor children and/or children with special needs.

Because naming legal guardians for your kids is so critical, you can’t afford to wait to get the process started. If you have minor children—or children with long-term special needs—living at home, you should immediately use this resource, or contact us directly, to get started. And then schedule a follow-up visit with us to put a full Kids Protection Plan® in place. The numerous resources offered in the full plan go far beyond just naming long-term legal guardians.

The Kids Protection Plan®  also lets you grant the people you choose (along with backups) the legal authority to temporarily care for your children, until the long-term guardians can be located and formally named by the court. And you’re also able to confidentially, but in writing, exclude any person you know you’d never want to raise your kids.

Indeed, the full Kids Protection Plan® offers a broad array of protective measures and materials designed to provide for the well-being, care, and love of your kids no matter what happens. Meet with us as your Personal Family Lawyer® today to ensure that your children and family never fall victim to the same tragic circumstances as Hussle’s.

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.

Life insurance is a key component of your family’s estate plan, offering those who depend on you for their financial security a safety net in the event of your death. Whether those dependents include your spouse, children, aging parents, business associates, or all of the above, investing in life insurance is a way to say “I love you” and make certain that when you pass away, the people you love will have a reliable source of financial support to count on.

Although purchasing life insurance may seem fairly straightforward, it can actually be quite complex, especially given all of the different types of coverage available. Plus, because insurance agents often earn hefty commissions on the policies they sell, it can be challenging to determine exactly how much coverage (and what type of insurance) you actually need—and who you can trust to give you objective and accurate advice about that coverage.

With this in mind, we’ll break down the common types of life insurance coverage, explain how each of the different types work, and outline what you need to know in order to purchase a policy that will adequately address your needs, objectives, and family situation. While you should always meet with your Personal Family Lawyer® to ensure you get the proper coverage, here are a few of the most important factors to consider when shopping for a life insurance policy.

Depending on the type and purpose of your coverage, a life insurance policy pays benefits to your family or business (whomever you choose as the beneficiary) in the event of your death. And while you don’t need it until you die, the earlier in life you purchase your policy, the less expensive your monthly or annual premiums will be. Of course, investing in life insurance early on also means that you’ll pay into the policy for a longer period of time.

By the same token, the healthier you are when you get life insurance, the less you’ll pay in premiums, because your policy is basically a bet between you and the insurance company about when you’ll die. The insurance carrier is betting they’ll be able to earn enough from the premiums you pay before you die, so that they’ll have received more than enough money to pay out the death benefit to your designated beneficiaries by the time you pass away. To that end, many carriers require a medical exam before you are issued a policy.

Life insurance comes in two main forms, which you can think of as permanent and non-permanent. With permanent coverage, such as whole life and universal life, as long as you pay the premiums, your insurance cannot be canceled, and your policy will be there and pay out when you die (unless you live longer than the guaranteed period).

With non-permanent coverage, known as term life insurance, you pay premiums over a certain number of years—usually 10, 20, or 30—and if you have not died during that period, the insurance ends, your premiums are gone, and no benefits are paid out when you die.

To determine which type of life insurance policy you should purchase for your family—permanent or term—you’ll need to consider a number of factors. When it comes to buying life insurance for your family, you will need to die with life insurance coverage in place if any of the following three scenarios apply:

1. You are likely to have dependents—minor children, a non-working spouse, or senior parents—who rely on you for their financial needs, and you will not have enough saved up at the time of your death to provide for their needs for the rest of their life.
2. You have a business that will need a cash infusion if you die to keep it running, until it can be sold or for your loved ones to buy out a business partner.
3. You will have an estate tax bill that you want to make sure is covered by life insurance so your family doesn’t have to sell assets to pay your estate taxes.

In each of these situations, you want to make sure you have either term life insurance that will continue long enough to cover your needs, or you’ll want to consider purchasing permanent coverage.

The coverage periods of term life policies can vary widely: 10, 15, 25, 30 years, or longer. Because your coverage expires after a certain number of years, term life insurance is much cheaper than permanent. Term policies are typically used by people who expect that they’ll only need the insurance for a certain period of time or for a certain purpose, but at some point in the future, they will no longer need the coverage.

For example, you might purchase term life coverage in order to pay off your home mortgage in the event you die before it’s paid off. Or you might have minor children, who rely on your income for their basic needs, and you need a term policy to ensure they have enough money to live on until they become financially independent should you die before they reach adulthood.

Permanent life insurance comes in several different forms, such as whole life, universal life, and variable universal life. And it’s mostly used for estate tax planning, very high-end income tax planning, and can also be used as key-person insurance, which pays out benefits if you fill a vital role in a company that would need cash upon your death to continue operating. As mentioned earlier, the various forms of permanent life insurance pay a death benefit whenever you die, no matter how long you live (unless the policy contract has a termination provision at a specific age).

Permanent life insurance policies typically have two components: the amount that goes toward paying for the life insurance, and the amount that builds up as an investment, called the “cash value” component. The cash value amount of your premium is invested tax-free, and depending on the policy, you may be able to use the cash value component in several ways: You can borrow against it throughout your lifetime (in which case you pay interest to the insurance company), you can take out cash withdrawals (in which case your death benefit would be reduced accordingly), or you can use it to pay future premiums.

There are some caveats to mention here: You often need to pay premiums on a permanent life insurance policy for 10 to 15 years before there is enough cash value to borrow against or use to pay premiums. If you access the cash value of your life insurance, you’ll reduce your death benefit, and you also may have to pay fees or taxes, depending on the policy and how much you take out. And if you withdraw too much, your coverage could terminate.

Keep in mind that life insurance is for providing your loved ones with a death benefit when you die, so you should always consult with us, your Personal Family Lawyer® and financial advisor before accessing the cash value funds.

When purchasing life insurance, you’ll want to make sure you have enough term life insurance to cover the expenses that your dependents will require until they are no longer dependents, or until you are certain that you will have enough money saved up to cover the lifetime needs of those dependents.

If you have children with special needs or a non-working spouse, they will require a longer period of care after your death, compared to a family with two incomes and children who will achieve their own independence in their late 20s or early 30s. To determine the right amount of term life insurance, consult with us, your Personal Family Lawyer® or a fee-only financial planner.

If you plan on staying in your business well beyond the typical retirement age, if you are an absolutely indispensable part of your company’s continued success, or you will have estate taxes to cover upon your death, you should consider permanent life insurance. In that case, you’ll want to consult with us, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, before you meet with an insurance agent to make certain you understand the terms of the policy you are buying and why you are buying it.

We all have unique assets, liabilities, and family situations, so there’s no way to know exactly what types and amounts of life insurance coverage your family needs without a full evaluation. Before you sit down with an insurance agent, meet with us, your Personal Family Lawyer® to identify the appropriate life insurance policy for your particular situation. Schedule your appointment today to get started.

This article is a service of a Personal Family Lawyer®. We do not 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.

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.