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February 17, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

In today’s digital-everything world, nearly every business—no matter how small—has some degree of online presence. Some, like e-commerce shops, may operate completely online, while even brick and mortar businesses likely have a website and Facebook account. However, unless you’re an online-marketing guru, building your business’ online presence can be challenging. Here, we’ll offer valuable tips for maximizing your online operations, so your company can thrive and grow in the web marketplace.

Be Unique

When it comes to e-commerce, you’re competing with businesses around the world, so your web services should stand out by offering something unique. What will attract customers away from your competitors’ websites and toward yours? A website and/or app that speaks to your unique brand is a must, otherwise your business will get lost amidst the sea of other businesses.

One key thing to remember is many people shop online for convenience. So make sure you’re not only offering a unique product, but you’re also making the shopping experience quick and easy for customers. A few examples of this are an easy-to-navigate e-store, quick shipping options, and superior customer service.

Be Consistent

Whether you’re found only online or boast other retail outlets, your company’s brand and message need to be clearly communicated at every step. It’s vital you create a winning brand identity and stick with it, no matter where a customer encounters your company. To this end, your website, app, social media, and/or physical aesthetic should be consistent as much as possible.

Such consistency develops a more uniform experience that customers will become familiar with and remember. This builds brand recognition and repeat business, as people are more likely to seek out companies they recognize and are comfortable with. A uniform style is what allows even small-scale businesses to stand out and thrive on a global scale.

Keep Fulfillment Standards High

If you have a fulfillment partner that packs and ships your products or you outsource some other business service, it’s essential these vendors offer the same high-quality service as you. If a customer’s online shopping experience is awesome, but their shipment takes weeks to arrive and/or is damaged when it gets there, you’ve likely lost a customer.

Be Everywhere

There are myriad online marketing options to take advantage of to get your brand and message out there. Whether it’s e-newsletters, Facebook, Twitter, online ads, or traditional advertising, it’s critical to stay in the front of a customer’s mind, so whenever her or she wants to make a purchase, you’re just a click away.

These e-tools are also an ideal way to engage customers with marketing campaigns—sales, promotions, and VIP services—as well as keep them updated on company news, like the opening of a new location or launch of a new product.

If you’re serious about growing your digital footprint, you’re going to need to ensure your legal systems are in compliance, with up-to-date privacy policies, terms of service, and data management systems. To ensure you’ve got what you need, begin by sitting down with us. We can help you identify opportunities for growth and put valuable legal and financial protections in place to ensure the online part of your venture is both secure, in compliance, and competitive in the global marketplace.

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.

February 14, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

Maybe you’ve heard that before investing in a professional service you should “get three estimates.”

While often this is wise advice, it’s actually a bad idea when it comes to estate planning.

In this article, I explain why and how you can ensure you get the most efficient and affordable plan possible for your family without shopping estate planning lawyers the way you may think.

Why “Get Three Estimates” Doesn’t Protect Your Family

Let’s begin with why “getting three estimates” for an estate plan doesn’t work to actually get you what you want.

First and foremost, this recommendation assumes that you should be shopping for an estate plan based on cost alone and that you understand exactly what you are shopping for and how to evaluate those estimates.

Shopping for an estate plan with the idea of spending the lowest amount possible is the fastest path to leaving your family with an empty set of documents (maybe in a beautiful binder, but not worth the paper they are printed on) that won’t actually work for your family when your loved ones need it.

Unfortunately, we see the negative effects of cheap estate planning when family members come to us during a time of grief with that fancy binder that sat on the shelf for years sending out signals of false security, full-of-out of date estate planning documents. They often find themselves stuck in court or conflict even though that’s exactly what their loved ones thought they had paid someone to avoid for them.

An Illustrative Story For You About A $3,000 Plan That Didn’t Work

By Alexis Neely, America’s Family Business Lawyer™

“When I was in law school, my father-in-law died. He had spent $3,000 to work with a law firm in Florida to create estate planning documents that he was told would keep us out of court and out of conflict with his ex-wife when he died or if he became incapacitated.

“He received a nice thick set of documents, a fancy binder, and peace of mind. He put the binder on his shelf, never looked at it again and never heard from his lawyer again. He died thinking it was all handled.

“You can imagine our surprise then when after his death, we were stuck dealing court and his ex-wife – the exact things my father-in-law had spent good money to protect us from having to deal with.

“It turns out that his fancy set of documents had never been updated so they were completely out of date. And his assets weren’t even titled in the name of his estate plan.

“I thought, ‘For sure this must have been malpractice.’

“But after going to work at one of the best law firms in the country and then surveying hundreds of other lawyers just to confirm, I found out that this was not malpractice at all.

“This was common practice.

“Lawyers everywhere were putting in place form documents that they know won’t work when their clients’ families need them, not because they are bad people or bad lawyers but because that’s how they were trained.

“This model typically involves form documents, no updating of the documents or regular communication with clients once the plan was done, no inventory of the assets to ensure that all assets could be found after the death or incapacity of a loved one, and not ensuring that assets are titled properly to make sure the plan even worked.

“On top of that, I later discovered that the plans lawyers were putting in place for families with minor kids at home had huge gaps that left the kids at risk of being taken out of their home and into protective custody while the named guardians were located.

“This happened even at the best law firm in the country, which I worked at for three years after law school.

“When I left to start my own law firm, I made a commitment to create something truly meaningful for my clients: plans that would actually work when their families need it to give you true peace of mind, all through a compassionate process that supports my clients to not just plan for death, but to become better parents, better business owners, and better community citizens during their lives.

“Now Family Business Lawyers™ across the globe are being trained the right way to plan for families and be there for your loved ones when you can’t be.”

5 Reasons To Avoid The Same Mess

Here are five reasons why shopping around for the cheapest estate plan is likely to leave you with a plan that won’t work for your family … and will leave them with a big mess instead.

The least expensive plan is not worth the paper it’s written on once you’ve left the attorney’s office. Your life changes, the law changes, and your assets change over time. Your estate plan needs to keep up with those changes. The truth of the matter is that a lawyer who charges only a few hundred dollars for documents cannot afford to provide anything more than documents. There simply is not room for the lawyer to provide the updating and regular check-ins that need to happen when you do an estate plan. That business model simply doesn’t work.

Cheap estate plans are often sold by financial professionals or form document companies who are not trained estate planning attorneys. But they are not doing right by your family by selling you something cheap. An attorney who has built a practice to actually serve your family in your best interests cannot support their practice, their clients, and their own family by selling $399 documents. Buyer beware!
Forms and documents won’t be there for your family when you can’t be – you want to leave your loved ones a relationship with a trusted advisor with whom you have built relationship during your lifetime and who your family has already met and already trust.
You get what you pay for and unfortunately it’s your family who pays the price. As you read in Alexis’ story above, her father-in-law died after paying $3,000 for an estate plan (not cheap) so that his family would not have to deal with the probate court or his ex-wife after his death, and yet that’s exactly what happened when he died. Why? Because the law firm was a traditional forms-and-documents firm that only put documents in place, but didn’t make sure his assets were owned in the right way or that his plan stayed up to date over time. You might think that is malpractice, but unfortunately it is not. It’s common practice and it leaves your family at risk if and when something happens to you!
An estate plan isn’t a “set it and forget it” kind of thing. You estate plan needs to stay up to date with changes in your life, your assets and the law. There is currently a massive amount of money sitting in state departments of unclaimed property throughout the U.S. This typically because surviving family members of a loved one lose track of it or doesn’t even know about it.

These are five ways your family loses out if you shop around for the cheapest estate plan rather than getting in place a plan that actually works for the people you love.

Plus, there is a risk that if you simply keep shopping around, you will never actually get around to putting a plan in place at all.

False Security Or Genuine Peace Of Mind?

If what you want is the false security of a cheap estate plan, go online and do it yourself. Chances are, you haven’t done that because you know that’s risky business and you love your family too much for that.

It’s the same way when you are shopping around town for the cheapest plan possible.

Because you love your family, you don’t actually want the cheap plan. You want the plan that is going to work for your the people you love when they need it.

In the meantime, if you already have an estate plan in place and you are concerned you may have gotten a cheap plan that will not actually serve your family when they need it most, contact us for a plan review.

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.

February 13, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

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February 13, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

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.

An alternative arrangement

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.

Parenting partnerships

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.

Planned parenthood

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.

Create a legal foundation

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.

February 11, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

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.

Death can be a logistical nightmare

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.

Don’t forget your digital assets

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.

What to include in your file

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

Get your affairs in order—before it’s too late

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.

February 10, 2021 by Cava Faulkner

Setting up a trust fund for your children can ensure that the money you are leaving behind for them is taken care for them, in the way that you want. But your efforts in completing this important, yet somber task can be ruined by making one of these common mistakes.

Leaving Assets Outright to Kids

One of the worst things you can do is to do nothing, which means that whatever you are leaving behind will go to your children outright, unprotected and directly to them when they turn 18. But, worse than that, it means that a Court will decide who handles the assets for them (and whoever is named as their guardian) before they turn 18. And, it’s very likely that those assets will not be used in the way you want. On top of that, if a professional Trustee is appointed, the costs of handling the assets could drain what’s left for your kids, quickly.

Not Carefully Choosing a Trustee

Even parents who do the right thing and set up a trust to hold what’s being left behind for their kids sometimes do not think carefully enough about who the Trustee should be taking care of the assets. Do you want one trustee or a co-trustee who can ensure the funds are well managed? Choosing more than one can provide some accountability for how the funds are used.

Not Properly Protecting Assets Left In Trust

Another mistake parents make when setting up a trust is distributing the assets out of the trust direct to their children at specific ages or stages, instead of holding those assets in a flexible lifetime trust that will protect their kids’ inheritance from future divorces, creditors or accidental lawsuits.

Unfortunately, most lawyers do not understand how to use trusts to establish this kind of vital protection for the inheritance you are leaving behind. And they may even suggest to you that it’s not necessary, if you have a smaller estate. I believe that even when you are leaving behind a small amount of assets, protecting those assets and teaching your children how to grow them (instead of squander them) can be the seed of a huge turning point for many generations to come. It would be my honor to share more about this with you during a Family Wealth Planning Session.

Neglecting To Fix Beneficiary Designations

Lastly, make sure your insurance policies are directed to your trust and not directly to your children. This is a huge mistake we repeatedly see. Naming minors or even young adults as the beneficiaries of insurance and retirement accounts is a sure-fire way to ensure they are not used in the way you want and unnecessarily get stuck in a court process, which you can easily avoid.

A trust can both provide for and protect your children after your death, as well as ensure you are cared for the way you want in the event of your incapacity. If you’re ready to set up an effective plan for your family’s well-being and care, start by sitting down with us. As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we’ll help you protect, preserve and enhance what matters most. Schedule online.

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