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With societal attitudes about love, marriage, and parenting constantly evolving, our perception of what constitutes “family” is becoming more and more flexible. As family structures become more varied, we’re learning that when it comes to raising children, the marital status, gender, and even relationship status of the parents matters less and less.

What children need most are parents who are committed to loving and supporting them. Whether or not the parents have a romantic relationship with one another is immaterial to their ability to raise healthy and happy kids, so long as their co-parenting relationship is solid.

One new child-rearing trend that highlights this notion is platonic parenting. Also known as co-parenting, platonic parenting involves two or more people who agree to raise children together without a romantic connection. And we are discovering this nontraditional style of parenting can produce children who are just as well adjusted as those raised in a happily married household.

Platonic parenting was pioneered within the LGBTQ community, where until recently same-gender couples couldn’t legally marry and didn’t have the court system to make up rules for them about post-breakup parenting. Following a romantic split, they were forced to create innovative, outside-the-box parenting arrangements on their own.

More recently, platonic parenting has spread to married couples looking to more effectively raise their children following divorce. By maintaining an amicable and cooperative relationship—sometimes even cohabitating—a couple whose romantic connection has dissolved can not only spare their children the trauma of divorce, but they may also find the arrangement is much healthier for them. Indeed, couples who stay unhappily married for the children’s sake often find the arrangement can be even more harmful to the whole family than a clean divorce.

And now, more and more people are choosing to raise children together using platonic parenting, without ever having a romantic relationship to begin with.

Platonic parenting is particularly enticing for those who find themselves moving through their prime child-rearing years in the absence of a romantic relationship. For people who want to be parents, but aren’t interested in having a romantic partner, or simply haven’t found the right one yet, platonic parenting can be the ideal solution.

While raising a child on your own is perfectly acceptable, child rearing is an immense responsibility that lasts a lifetime. To help diffuse the tremendous demands parenting involves—and avoid the pressure to rush into romance—some individuals are turning to close friends in search of a co-parent.

And those who can’t find a suitable co-parent among their existing network of friends can use a number of websites dedicated to platonic parenting matchmaking. Websites like FamilyByDesign, CoParents.com, and Modamily enable prospective parents around the world to connect with one another to start a family.

Typically these arrangements involve conceiving through artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilization, and then raising the child in a platonic partnership. Some co-parents live separately and share custody, while others live together under the same roof like a traditional family.

There are even cases where the arrangement involves three or more platonic parents raising children together. Indeed, with today’s legal structures, people of all genders and sexual orientation are entering into a variety of platonic parenting relationships, putting a new spin on the notion of a blended family.

While platonic parenting might seem highly atypical and even controversial, given all of the work that goes into loving and raising children, it only makes sense that some would want to make parenting a team effort.

Just like any parenting arrangement, platonic parenting requires massive  levels of trust, communication, and planning. The first step of the new partnership is for all parties to come up with a solid legal agreement governing the financial commitments and living situation.

Other issues to work out include how to handle new romantic relationships, if/how to incorporate platonic partners into family gatherings, along with all sorts of other basic ground rules. You’ll also need to talk about how to discuss the arrangement with any existing children and other family members, so everyone understands exactly what this new life will entail.

With so many important agreements to be made, those seeking to create a platonic parenting arrangement should seek legal counsel at the outset of the relationship. We specialize in helping you navigate these types of non-traditional partnerships, and we offer a wide array of estate planning tools to help define the legal rights and responsibilities of each individual involved.

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 were to suddenly die today, would your loved ones know how to quickly find your estate planning documents? Would they know how to access all of your financial accounts? How about your insurance policies? What about your login and password info to all of your digital assets?

One crucial part of estate planning that frequently gets overlooked is ensuring your loved ones can easily locate all of your planning documents and other key assets upon your death or incapacity. One simple way to handle this important task is to create a “When I Die” file. According to A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death, this is a “findable file, binder, cloud-based drive, or even a shoebox where you store estate documents and meaningful personal effects.”

This new book, authored by Shoshana Berger and BJ Miller, was recently excerpted in TIME magazine, and the excerpt discussed the importance of creating such a file in order to “save your loved ones incalculable time, money, and suffering” upon your death.

We agree with Berger and Miller, and would add that this file is every bit as important in the event of your potential incapacity, not just your death—and perhaps even more so. We also offer some additional guidance here about how to ensure your “When I Die” file provides maximum efficiency and effectiveness for the people you love.

Following the death of her elderly father, Berger learned first-hand how agonizing it can be to not have a “When I Die” file. Though her father made his will and trust easily accessible, Berger and her sister spent nearly two years tracking down his other planning documents, assets, and finalizing his affairs.

Berger recalls “sleuthing through his file cabinet and mail and requesting what seemed like a mountain of duplicate death certificates to prove to various companies that he had actually died.”

Berger recommends that in addition to creating your “When I Die” file, you should also call your internet, cable, cell phone providers (as well and any other companies that bill you on an ongoing basis) and add your partner or children as joint owners. Unless you add a loved one’s name to these accounts, Berger says those you leave behind could be in for a torturous ordeal.

“If billing accounts are not in both your and a loved one’s name, your survivors will end up spending hours… begging bureaucrats to shut them down or convert the accounts to their name so they can manage them,” she says. “Think of every frustrating call you’ve had with your cell provider, and then multiply it by 10.”

Beyond burdening your loved ones with needless work and expense, if your planning documents, such as wills, prenuptial agreements, and insurance policies, can’t be located, it will be as if they never existed. The same goes for valuable assets like stocks, bank accounts, and other financial property no one knows about.

Given this, you should make sure your “When I Die” file contains an updated inventory of all your assets and their location. And don’t forget to include your online property in this inventory.

When it comes to digital assets like cryptocurrency, email, photos, video, and social media, your loved ones must not only be able to locate these items, they must also know how to access them. Given this, you should include any related login and password information in your “When I Die” file, along with detailed instructions about how to get into the accounts.

If you store your file online, password management apps like LastPass can greatly simplify this effort. In fact, we highly recommend you scan and upload copies of ALL the items in your “When I Die” file to the cloud and store them online. This not only makes your file much easier to access, it also prevents it from being destroyed in a fire, flood, or other natural disaster.

Because the TIME excerpt only includes a partial collection of the items Berger and Miller suggest including in your “When I Die” file (their book has the full list), we’ve added a few items to their list below to provide a more detailed inventory.

• An updated inventory of all your assets and their location, including password and access info for all digital assets
• An advance healthcare directive
• A will and living trust (with certificate of trust)
• Marriage or divorce certificate(s)
• Instructions for your funeral and final disposition
• An ethical will explaining why you made the choices you did in your real will
• Letters, cards, photos, and other treasured sentimentals
• If you have minor children, a Kids Protection Plan naming long and short-term guardians, along with detailed care instructions for both

Each family is unique, so this is just a minimum of what can be included in your “When I Die” file. We have systems in place to help ensure all of your assets are properly inventoried throughout your lifetime for the utmost convenience and care of those you love most.

And because death or incapacity can strike at any moment, don’t wait to get your affairs in order. If you do, your loved ones might experience the same lengthy ordeal Berger did when her dad died.

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.

Although we initially planned to run part two of last week’s post on Aretha Franklin’s failed estate plan, in honor of Mother’s Day, we’re running this special feature instead. We’ll return with the second half of the late singer’s planning mistakes next week.

In case you missed all of the commercials for floral arrangements that have been airing recently, here’s one final reminder: Mother’s Day is this Sunday, May 9th.

But before you spend your money on something that will wilt and die within a week or two, consider getting Mom a truly priceless gift—a plan for her kids (or grandkids) that provides her with peace of mind that, when something should happen to her and dad, her children will always be in the care of the people she knows, loves, and trusts.

It Can Happen to You

No one likes to think that something unexpected might happen to them, even though we know it happens to others just like us. Think about it, there’s an accident, the kids are at home with the babysitter, and mom and dad don’t make it home from their night out.

When they fail to arrive, the babysitter calls and calls, but no one is there to answer. The police are summoned, but because no one has the written, legal authority to take the children while the authorities figure out what to do, the kids have to be taken into the care of Child Protective Services, while the authorities figure out what to do.

Then there are other stories, where children are placed in the care of people they barely know, or that the parents wouldn’t choose, just because they are a blood relative, and the parents didn’t have a plan in place that dictated who should take on this incredible responsibility.

In still other cases, we see the fallout from family fights that are created when mom and dad didn’t make a plan, and the family couldn’t agree on who should care for the kids, who get caught in the middle of an ugly feud. Or in the worst cases, when there is no family available, we see kids get placed with and raised by total strangers.

In every case, when mom and dad don’t decide and legally document who should care for their kids, it’s left up to a judge to figure out and make the decision.

Don’t Leave the Decision Up to a Judge

We know that neither you nor Mom would ever want this to happen to your children (or grandchildren, nieces, or nephews). And this is where a Kids Protection Plan® can ensure that it never does.

Developed by a nationally recognized attorney, who’s a mom herself, the Kids Protection Plan® provides moms (and dads) with the legal planning tools needed to make sure there is never a question about who will take care of their kids if they are in an accident or suffer some other life-threatening calamity. The full plan includes all of the following:

• Legal documents to name short-term guardians, who can be there immediately for your children, so they’ll never be taken into the arms of strangers or anyone you wouldn’t want. Not even for a moment.
• Letters to the people you name as short-term guardians, so the people you’ve named will know just what to do if called upon.
• Instructions to everyone who takes care of your kids as to exactly what to do if you are in an accident, so there’s never any question about what to do or who to call.
• Legal documents to name long-term guardians, who will raise your children just as you would, so there is no family feuding over your children.
• Letters to your long-term guardians, letting them know exactly what to do if called upon.
• Instructions and guidelines for your long-term guardians on how you want your kids to be raised to ensure your kids are raised with your values, insights, stories, and experience. 
• Medical powers of attorney for your minor children, so the next time they travel without you or you travel without them, you know they’ll get the medical care they need. 
• A custom, personalized I.D. card for your wallet stating that you have minor children at home and who should be contacted if you are in an accident.

Put Your Kids Protection Plan® In Place Today

As a Personal Family Lawyer®, I am one of the few lawyers in the world licensed to prepare a Kids Protection Plan® for your family. Even if Mom has already taken steps to create a basic plan, such as having a will that names legal guardians for her children, that’s likely not enough to truly protect your kids.

In fact, we’ve found that in most cases, even parents who worked with a lawyer to name legal guardians have made at least one of six common mistakes that leave their children at risk. These mistakes are made, because unfortunately, most lawyers simply don’t know what’s necessary for planning and ensuring the well-being and care of minor children.

However, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, we’ve been trained by the author of the best-selling book, Wear Clean Underwear!: A Fast, Fun, Friendly, and Essential Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents, on legal planning for the unique needs of families with minor children at home. This is such an important task that we’ve created a totally free website, where you and Mom can visit to get her plan started right now.

Here’s How To Get Started

⇒ If Mom hasn’t taken any action at all, we’ve created an easy-to-use and 100% FREE website, where she can visit to take the first steps to create legal documents naming long-term guardians for her children to ensure that should anything happen to her, her kids would be cared for by the people she would want in exactly the way she would want. Do it here now: https://christine.kidsprotectionplan.com/

Afterward, call us to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session, where we’ll put the full Kids Protection Plan® in place, and determine if there is anything else your family might need to ensure the well-being and care of your children no matter what happens.

⇒ If Mom has already named long-term guardians in her will, either on her own or with a lawyer, as your Personal Family Lawyer® can review her existing legal documents to see whether she has made any of the six common mistakes that could leave her kids at risk, and then revise her plan to ensure the children are fully protected.

Make This Mother’s Day One She’ll Remember Forever

Rather than getting the same-old flowers and card yet again, why not take this Mother’s Day to give Mom a truly priceless gift that not only benefits her, but the entire family. With a Kids Protection Plan®, you can give Mom the reassurance that no matter what happens to her, her children will be raised to adulthood by the people she trusts most, and they’ll never be placed in the care of strangers, not even temporarily. Contact us today to learn more or schedule an 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.

As the host of the wildly popular The Joy of Painting TV series on PBS, Bob Ross became a pop-culture icon, who was equally famous for his giant head of hair, soothing baritone voice, and folksy demeanor as he was for his iconic landscape paintings. And like so many other artists, Bob’s artwork and image would become even more popular following Bob’s death in 1995.

Bob’s philosophy in both painting and life was that there “were no mistakes in life… just happy little accidents.” Sadly, as detailed in the recent Netflix documentary Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed, Bob’s failure to coordinate his business agreements with his estate plan was anything but happy, leaving his only son largely unable to benefit from his father’s fame and fortune.

Bob’s planning failures led to an ugly court battle between his former business partners and his family, who were fighting for control of the lucrative intellectual property rights to the Bob Ross brand. And while Bob’s son Steve ultimately lost his fight to benefit from the business empire built on his father’s persona and painting skills, here in part two, we’ll explain the steps you can take to ensure that your loved ones don’t suffer the same fate and are able to fully benefit from all of your business assets following your death.

As we learned last week, although Bob intended to leave all of his intellectual property rights to his son, Steve, and half-brother, Jimmie Cox, and he even changed his estate plan to transfer those rights to them, the court ruled that Bob couldn’t transfer those rights because Bob didn’t own those rights to begin with. The court ruled that Bob had transferred all rights to his intellectual property to Bob Ross Inc. (BRI) during his lifetime via oral contracts, and therefore it didn’t matter what his estate plan said, because those rights weren’t Bob’s to give away.

Bob started BRI in 1985, with his wife Jane Ross, along with husband and wife Walter and Annette Kowalski. The four were initially equal partners in the corporation, but following Jane’s death in 1992, the bylaws of BRI required that Jane’s share in the company be divided equally among the surviving three partners. As a result, Bob was reduced to owning just one-third of the company that bore his name and likeness, and this was the structure in place upon Bob’s death in 1995.

Bob’s situation is fairly common among business owners. When business owners first create their governing documents—operating agreements, bylaws, partnership agreements, etc.—they often aren’t thinking ahead about what would happen to their business and its assets when they die or if they become incapacitated. And because of this, they don’t take the proper precautions to ensure that their business assets are properly protected by their estate plan should something happen to them.

In other cases—and as we saw with Bob—business owners falsely assume that their estate plan will override any business agreements they are party to, and therefore any assets they pass to their loved ones via their will or trust will transfer to their intended beneficiaries regardless of what’s in their business agreements. However, this is false, and in fact, the very opposite is true. Whether it’s a partnership, LLC, corporation, or some other business structure, your estate plan does not have the power to modify, undo, or override any business agreements to which you are a party.

The bottom line: When it comes to the ownership of business assets, the legal agreements governing the ownership rights of a business are what determines who owns the business and its assets upon the death of an owner, regardless of what your estate plan says. This is why it’s essential that you make certain that any business agreements you enter into are in coordination with your estate plan. We can help you do this as long as we know about all of your business holdings, including your intellectual property and business entities when we handle your estate planning with you.

As we saw with Bob’s case, failing to properly coordinate your business agreements with your estate plan can lead to disastrous consequences. Fortunately, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can ensure that your business agreements are fully coordinated and integrated with your estate plan, so all of your business assets, including any intellectual property you own, will pass seamlessly to your loved ones in the event of your death or incapacity.

Whether your business is just getting started or you’ve been in business for years, here are the steps you need to take to avoid making the same not-so-happy mistakes that affected Bob Ross and his family.

The ideal time to coordinate your business agreements with your estate plan is when you first launch your business. This way you can address the ownership rights to all of your business assets, including any intellectual property, from the very start and incorporate those ownership rights into your company’s governing documents.

If your business has multiple owners, you’ll want to enter into the process of making agreements with your partners, and not just rely on form documents, or sign documents you have not fully understood. All too often, business agreements are created via form or template documents that do not give any real consideration to your most valuable assets. If that’s the case for you, now is not too late to make a change—but tomorrow might be.

Make certain that the governing documents address the ownership rights to all of the company’s assets, including any intellectual property, intentionally. And be sure to consider what happens to the company, and its assets, upon a sale, death, or disability of each owner of the company.

To ensure your intellectual property (and all of the assets of your business) are properly considered in your governing documents, you should consult with a trusted attorney like me, your Personal Family Lawyer®, who has experience in both intellectual property and estate planning (or can bring in the proper intellectual property advisors), to ensure that everything is documented and in alignment with your wishes, and your most valuable assets are properly handled.

If you are like Bob and many other business owners and you failed to coordinate your company’s governing documents with your estate plan at the start of your business, you’ll need to hire a lawyer like us to review your company’s existing governing documents to determine how the documents address the ownership and succession of the company’s assets. And if you haven’t created your company’s governing documents yet, now is the time to put these essential legal agreements in place.

When reviewing your governing documents, you’ll want to ensure that they properly address the ownership rights to your company’s intellectual property and other assets upon an owner’s death or incapacity, as well as upon the sale or dissolution of the business. If upon reviewing the governing documents, you find that the ownership rights are not in alignment with your estate planning goals, it may be possible to renegotiate the agreement with the other owners and amend the documents to better fit with your aims.

If renegotiating the ownership rights proves infeasible, at least your Personal Family Lawyer® will be aware of this fact, and we may be able to come up with an alternative solution to transfer ownership of these assets to your heirs. It’s certainly not the ideal situation, but it’s far better to learn this now while you are still alive, rather than learning it after your death as happened with Bob’s son Steve.

Once you’ve ensured the proper distribution of your intellectual property and other business assets through your company’s governing documents, you must then use your estate plan to protect and pass on the ownership rights to your share of the business interests you own. This often takes place through a coordinated business succession planning process.

Unfortunately, far too few business owners take the time to prepare for their company’s continued success following their retirement, death, or incapacity. Yet, creating a comprehensive succession plan as part of your overall estate plan is just as crucial as any other planning you do for your business, if not more so.

As we saw with Bob Ross, not planning for the future of your business after you are no longer in the picture can have terrible consequences for your family if (and when) something should happen to you. Whether you exit your business with a sale, your retirement, your incapacity, or as a result of your death, there will come a point when it’s time for you to exit your business. And a succession plan is designed to ensure that your company will continue to prosper once you are no longer running the show.

That said, when it comes to estate and succession planning, it can be difficult to even identify clear goals for a future that doesn’t involve you. This is just natural. If planning were simply another operations issue that needed solving, you’d have a plan in place in no time flat. However, multi-generational planning is by default something you’re almost certainly unfamiliar with.

In fact, business strategies that worked for your grandfather and father might not have worked for you. And by the same token, what worked for you may not work for coming generations. This can make it feel impossible to even know where to begin with your plan, much less identify what problems might arise and how to address them. But start you must.

This is where experienced estate planning lawyers like us come in. We can guide and support you to create a comprehensive estate plan to ensure the company and wealth you’ve worked so hard to build will last for generations to come. In particular, this includes putting in place a long-term business succession plan that not only names your successor but also provides a detailed roadmap for him or her to follow when you’re no longer around to offer your wisdom and advice.

If you’ve yet to create an estate plan that includes a comprehensive succession plan for your business’s future, meet with your Personal Family Lawyer® right away to take care of this vital responsibility. And even if you already have a plan in place, you should have us review it to make certain you’ve covered all your bases, as this is one of the areas we see most often overlooked in estate planning. Taking these actions will not only help shield your company and family from unforeseen tragedy but also give you the peace of mind needed to take your business to the next level.

After you’ve decided how you want your business to be run in your absence and formally spelled this out in your succession plan, you may want to consider separating your operating activities and your intellectual property into separate entities. In that case, you’ll want to consider which estate planning vehicles are best suited for protecting and transferring the ownership of your intellectual property rights to your heirs. In most cases, the best planning vehicle for this purpose is going to be a trust, either a revocable living trust, an irrevocable trust, or a combination of the two.

Using a trust, you can spell out exactly how you’d like your intellectual property distributed to your beneficiaries. In addition to considering the best way to distribute your intellectual property to your beneficiaries, you’ll also want to consider which of your loved ones is best suited for owning and managing these intangible assets, as well as how you’d like those assets to be used for the benefit of your loved ones.

Intellectual property, such as trademarks, copyrights, and patents, can be leveraged to create revenue in a number of different ways. Your beneficiaries could simply sell your intellectual property assets outright, or they could use the intellectual property as collateral to take out a loan. Or they could decide to license the use of your intellectual property to others, which can generate an ongoing revenue stream that can last indefinitely. Indeed, as we saw with Bob Ross’s case when properly managed, the licensing fees for a company’s intellectual property can generate millions in revenue, and that income stream has the potential to continue for generations to come.

Don’t let what happened to Bob Ross’s family happen to yours. If you own a business, it’s absolutely crucial that you put in place an effective estate plan, including a comprehensive succession plan, to ensure that all of the wealth and assets you’ve worked so hard to build will be properly passed on to your loved ones in the event of your death or incapacity.

Furthermore, you must also ensure that your estate plan is properly coordinated with your business agreements, or your estate plan may not work as intended. And in that case, your loved ones may find themselves in the same situation as Bob’s son Steve, who was left with virtually nothing, while the business built on his father’s name and persona continues to bring in millions of dollars every year.

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we know that your business is one of your family’s most precious assets, and with our support and guidance, we can ensure that it will continue to provide the maximum benefit for your loved ones following your death or incapacity. If you haven’t taken the time to put proper estate planning in place, consult with us, your Personal Family Lawyer® today, so we can help you find the estate planning strategies best suited for your asset profile and family dynamics.

And if you already have an estate plan—even one created by another lawyer—you should have us review your plan to ensure it will work as intended and that it’s properly coordinated with your business agreements. Contact us today to get started.