If you are like most business owners, you’ve likely been presented with legal documents that contained terms you didn’t fully understand. You may have even signed documents that you didn’t completely read because you were intimidated by the confusing legalese. There have surely been times when a client or team member has signed a legal document you presented to them, even though they didn’t fully read or understand what they were signing.

Unfortunately, such scenarios are far too common. But it doesn’t have to be, rather than creating confusion and anxiety, the agreement process should do the exact opposite.

Indeed, the agreement process is your opportunity for creating clarity on your relationships, policies, and procedures, and delivery of your product or service. Take it from us, as your Family Business Lawyer ™, if you avoid reviewing, rethinking, and revamping your agreement process, you are not only putting your assets and business at risk, you are short-changing yourself, your work, and your relationships.

In addition to creating clarity, when done right, the agreement process is ultimately about creating connection, consistency, setting boundaries, and establishing expectations. If your current agreement process isn’t providing you with these outcomes, then this article is for you.

Contracts vs Agreements: What’s the Difference?

As we mentioned in a previous blog article, in some cases, you do not need to put an agreement in writing to create a legally enforceable agreement. As long as the proper elements exist, a valid contract can be created verbally.

But putting semantics aside for a moment, in that case, do you really have an agreement? If you don’t put it in writing, you may have a contract, but a contract and an agreement are actually two different things. A great agreement that is often overlooked in writing requires these elements of agreement as well:

• Connection,
• Being on the same page,
• Alignment,
• Clarity,
• Coherence 

This is how many business owners end up in unnecessary, expensive and messy conflicts. They have contracts, but not true agreements. To help ensure you don’t end up in the same situation, we recommend you rethink your relationship to legal agreements by implementing the following best practices.

What Do You Want From the Relationship?

First of all, before you ever sign a contract or enter into any business agreement or arrangement, get clear on what you actually want from the relationship. In doing so, it’s vital that you are completely honest with yourself—and be willing to be completely honest with the other person as well. 

When it’s unclear what you want from the relationship, be willing to seek support in order to become clear. This might mean finding a safe space to talk through what you think you want from the relationship. Or it could mean speaking out loud about your unsurfaced assumptions and receiving reflective feedback. It may also look like asking questions you may not have initially thought about.

Achieving this kind of clarity is one of the major differences between using generic template agreements you find online versus working with us, your Family Business Lawyer™, who serves as your trusted advisor. As your trusted advisor, we will support you to get clear, test your assumptions, and surface what you cannot see. This allows you to get out of your head and achieve a truly objective perspective from a position that you may not be fully aware of you can if you are solely relying on a generic online agreement.

If you are resistant to receiving counseling to create high-quality legal agreements or working with a lawyer who is not a great counselor and they are only providing you with templates full of confusing blanket terms, you are missing out on one of the most significant opportunities a business owner can have. The counseling process of a Family Business Lawyer ™ allows you to work through all aspects of a business relationship that may bring up uncomfortable feelings ahead of time, rather than having those uncomfortable feelings surface down the road, resulting in expensive conflicts that could have easily been avoided with the proper planning.

Start With The Ideal Outcome In Mind
Once you are clear, putting in place the legal agreement is easy. Follow these steps below to gain clarity on the foundation of the agreement:

Start by identifying your desired outcome of the business agreement. If you could see into the future and achieve the ideal result the relationship is to provide, what would be true for it to be successful? To understand the ideal outcome, first, imagine yourself celebrating a future in which the relationship met all expectations. Suppose you worked together in all the best ways, and you accomplished all of your goals together. What would need to happen for everything to go that well? That’s what you want to document in your agreements.

If you are hiring a team member, for example, how will they know they are succeeding? Based on what that success looks like, you should establish clear, measurable outcomes for the role, with specific metrics for success, along with time frames for specific goals and objectives to be achieved. Then, include that information in the employment agreement, so it’s abundantly clear what the expectations for the position are for the team member and for you.

On the other hand, you also need to think about how you would work with the team member if things didn’t work out as expected. What would happen if the team member needs to leave, can’t perform, or isn’t performing for some reason? Are you agreeing to any payment beyond just payment for performance? If so, that needs to be documented, and if not, that also needs to be documented.

Next, what are the reasons you can terminate the relationship? On what basis can the team member walk away? What is each of you entitled to in the event the relationship needs to end? All of these scenarios need to be thought through and planned for during the agreement process.

Along these same lines, whenever you bring on a new client, you should establish similar metrics of success for that relationship and document them in your client service agreement. What would need to happen for the engagement to be fully complete? How will you know when it’s time for the relationship to transition to the next level? What happens if the agreement is not followed or the scope of work changes? 

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, you should similarly outline your payment terms in your agreement: how much you get paid, how and when you expect to be paid, along with how late payments and non-payment will be handled. The more clarity you can achieve around these outcomes and document what the ideal outcomes would look like, the better things will be for both you and your client.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Family Business Lawyer™. 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 your appointment at 907-312-5436, or find a time for us to call you. 

Whether you are married or not, if you are involved in a committed partnership with another individual, estate planning is about so much more than planning for death—it’s about planning for life and ensuring your beloved will be protected and provided for no matter what happens to you. And if you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, estate planning is even more critical, especially if you have complex family relationships.

Although same-gender marriage is legally recognized in all 50 states, long-held prejudice at both the political and family level continues to create complications for both married and unmarried same-gender couples. Indeed, while the federal government recognizes same-gender marriage, there are plenty of cities, businesses, and people who still refuse to recognize these unions. Moreover, a recent survey found that roughly four of every 10 LGBTQ adults say they have been rejected by a family member because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

As we discussed last week in part one, such discrimination can create unique estate planning challenges, and regardless of your marriage status, if you are an LGTBQ adult in a committed partnership, you should be aware of several issues that can affect your planning strategies. Specifically, we discussed how relying on a will alone may not provide sufficient protection for your partner/spouse, and we explained why incapacity planning is particularly crucial if you want your partner/spouse to have a say in your medical treatment and the ability to access and manage your assets in the event you are hit with a debilitating illness or injury. 

Here we’ll address the final issue you should be aware of when creating your estate plan—securing parental rights for the non-biological parent of minor children.

3. Estate Planning Offers Alternative to Adoption
Although married same-gender couples now enjoy nearly all of the same rights as opposite-gender couples, there is one key right that’s still up in the air—the automatic right to be legal parents. While parental rights are of course automatically bestowed upon the biological parent of a child, the non-biological spouse/parent still faces a number of challenges when it comes to obtaining full parental rights.

Since the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the specific issue of the parental rights of the non-biological parent in a same-gender marriage, there is a tangled, often contradictory, web of state laws governing such rights. If you are a married same-gender couple, for example, some states consider the non-biological partner a legal parent based solely on your marriage, while other states do not.

Given the conflicting nature of state laws, many same-gender couples have turned to second-parent adoption to gain parental rights for the non-biological parent, since the Supreme Court has ruled that the adoptive parental rights granted in one state must be respected in all states. However, it can be extremely difficult for same-gender couples to adopt. In fact, 11 states currently permit state-licensed adoption agencies to refuse to grant an adoption, if doing so violates the agency’s religious beliefs. In other states, the law specifically forbids such discrimination, but given the Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, even those laws are susceptible to legal challenge.

In that case, the city canceled a contract with Catholic Social Services (CSS), a taxpayer-funded, faith-based foster care and adoption agency, after it refused child placement with LGBTQ families in violation of a city law prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination. CSS sued the city, arguing that requiring it to follow the nondiscrimination policy violated its free exercise of religion since working with same-sex couples would go against its religious opposition to homosexuality.

In a unanimous judgment, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of CSS and found Philadelphia’s contract with CSS to be unenforceable. However, the ruling was narrowly focused on specific contractual language, and it does not create a broad free-exercise exemption from nondiscrimination laws, as many in the LGBTQ+ community feared.

That said, the Fulton case and others like it that are sure to follow, demonstrate that when it comes to same-gender couples seeking parental rights, second-parent adoption is not a panacea. Fortunately, same-gender couples do have an alternative to adoption—estate planning. Indeed, using a variety of estate planning strategies, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can provide a non-biological, same-gender parent with nearly all parental rights, even without formal adoption.

Starting with our Kids Protection Plan®,  LGBTQ couples can name the non-biological parent as the child’s legal guardian, both for the short-term and the long-term, while confidentially excluding anyone the biological parent thinks may challenge their wishes. In this way, if the biological parent becomes incapacitated or dies, their wishes are clearly stated, so the court can do what the parent would’ve wanted and keep the child in the non-biological parent’s care.

Beyond that, there are several other estate planning vehicles—living trusts, power of attorney, and health care directives—we can use to grant the non-biological parent additional rights. We can also create “co-parenting agreements,” which are legal agreements that stipulate exactly how the child will be raised, what responsibility each partner has toward the child, and what kind of rights would exist if the couple splits or gets divorced.

Experience You Can Rely On
In light of these issues, it’s vital for LGBTQ+ couples, especially those with children, to always work with experienced estate planning lawyers, and avoid using generic online documents at all costs. As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we have the experience of creating plans specifically designed to prevent your plan from being challenged in court by family members who disagree with your relationship.Indeed, with the proper planning, we can ensure that no matter what happens to you, your partner and family will be protected and provided for in the exact manner you wish, rather than being stuck in a financial and legal nightmare. What’s more, our specialized planning services can help ensure that non-biological parents in LBGT partnerships have as many parental rights as possible, without resorting to second-parent adoption. Contact us, your Personal Family Lawyer® today to get started with a Family Wealth Planning Session.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Personal Family Lawyer® in Juneau, Alaska. 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 Life & Legacy 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 at 907-312-5436 to schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge; or book a time for our team to call you at a time you choose.

If you are like most business owners, you’ve likely been presented with legal documents that contained terms you didn’t fully understand. You may have even signed documents that you didn’t completely read because you were intimidated by the confusing legalese. There have surely been times when a client or team member has signed a legal document you presented to them, even though they didn’t fully read or understand what they were signing.

Unfortunately, such scenarios are far too common. But it doesn’t have to be, rather than creating confusion and anxiety, the agreement process should do the exact opposite.

Indeed, the agreement process is your opportunity for creating clarity on your relationships, policies, and procedures, and delivery of your product or service. Take it from us, as your Family Business Lawyer ™, if you avoid reviewing, rethinking, and revamping your agreement process, you are not only putting your assets and business at risk, you are short-changing yourself, your work, and your relationships.

In addition to creating clarity, when done right, the agreement process is ultimately about creating connection, consistency, setting boundaries, and establishing expectations. If your current agreement process isn’t providing you with these outcomes, then this article is for you.

Contracts vs Agreements: What’s the Difference?

As we mentioned in a previous blog article, in some cases, you do not need to put an agreement in writing to create a legally enforceable agreement. As long as the proper elements exist, a valid contract can be created verbally.

But putting semantics aside for a moment, in that case, do you really have an agreement? If you don’t put it in writing, you may have a contract, but a contract and an agreement are actually two different things.

A great agreement that is often overlooked in writing requires these elements of agreement as well:

• Connection,
• Being on the same page,
• Alignment,
• Clarity,
• Coherence 

This is how many business owners end up in unnecessary expensive and messy conflicts. They have contracts, but not true agreement. To help ensure you don’t end up in the same situation, we recommend you rethink your relationship to legal agreements by implementing the following best practices.

What Do You Want From the Relationship?

First of all, before you ever sign a contract or enter into any business agreement or arrangement, get clear on what you actually want from the relationship. In doing so, it’s vital that you are completely honest with yourself—and be willing to be completely honest with the other person as well. 

When it’s unclear what you want from the relationship, be willing to seek support in order to become clear. This might mean finding a safe space to talk through what you think you want from the relationship. Or it could mean speaking out loud about your unsurfaced assumptions and receiving reflective feedback. It may also look like asking questions you may not have initially thought about.

Achieving this kind of clarity is one of the major differences between using generic template agreements you find online versus working with us, your Family Business Lawyer™, who serves as your trusted advisor. As your trusted advisor, we will support you to get clear, test your assumptions, and surface what you cannot see. This allows you to get out of your head and achieve a truly objective perspective from a position that you may not be fully aware of you can if you are solely relying on a generic online agreement.

If you are resistant to receiving counseling to create high-quality legal agreements or working with a lawyer who is not a great counselor and they are only providing you with templates full of confusing blanket terms, you are missing out on one of the most significant opportunities a business owner can have. The counseling process of a Family Business Lawyer ™ allows you to work through all aspects of a business relationship that may bring up uncomfortable feelings ahead of time, rather than having those uncomfortable feelings surface down the road, resulting in expensive conflicts that could have easily been avoided with the proper planning.

Start With The Ideal Outcome In Mind

Once you are clear, putting in place the legal agreement is easy. Follow these steps below to gain clarity on the foundation of the agreement:

Start by identifying your desired outcome of the business agreement. If you could see into the future and achieve the ideal result the relationship is to provide, what be true for it to be successful? To understand the ideal outcome, first, imagine yourself celebrating a future in which the relationship met all expectations. Suppose you worked together in all the best ways, and you accomplished all of your goals together. 

What would need to happen for everything to go that well? That’s what you want to document in your agreements.

If you are hiring a team member, for example, how will they know they are succeeding? Based on what that success looks like, you should establish clear, measurable outcomes for the role, with specific metrics for success, along with time frames for specific goals and objectives to be achieved. Then, include that information in the employment agreement, so it’s abundantly clear what the expectations for the position are for the team member and for you.

On the other hand, you also need to think about how you would work with the team member if things didn’t work out as expected. What would happen if the team member needs to leave, can’t perform, or isn’t performing for some reason? Are you agreeing to any payment beyond just payment for performance? If so, that needs to be documented, and if not, that also needs to be documented.

Next, what are the reasons you can terminate the relationship? On what basis can the team member walk away? What is each of you entitled to in the event the relationship needs to end? All of these scenarios need to be thought through and planned for during the agreement process.

Along these same lines, whenever you bring on a new client, you should establish similar metrics of success for that relationship and document them in your client service agreement. What would need to happen for the engagement to be fully complete? How will you know when it’s time for the relationship to transition to the next level? What happens if the agreement is not followed or the scope of work changes? 

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, you should similarly outline your payment terms in your agreement: how much you get paid, how and when you expect to be paid, along with how late payments and non-payment will be handled. The more clarity you can achieve around these outcomes and document what the ideal outcomes would look like, the better things will be for both you and your client.

Next week, in part two, we’ll discuss how you can use the agreement process to more effectively deal with the inevitable changes that take place as your business relationships evolve and your original agreements need to be renegotiated.

For now, make the commitment to never sign or send another legal agreement again before it’s been reviewed by us, your Family Business Lawyer ™. This is a foundation of great business practice, and it’s one we support every client with. If you have current agreements that are either in place or ones that need to be signed, contact us. We can review what you do have and support you with wise counsel on your entire agreement process. It could be the make-it-or-break-it difference for your business.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Family Business Lawyer™. 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 your appointment at 907-312-5436, or find a time for us to call you. 

Whether you are married or in a committed partnership, estate planning is about much more than planning for death—it’s about planning for life. It’s the way to ensure your beloved will be protected and provided for in the event of your death or incapacity. Especially if you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, estate planning is even more critical.

Although same-gender marriage is legally recognized in all 50 states, long-held prejudice at both the political and family level continues to create complications for both married and unmarried same-gender couples. For example, suppose you have family members who are opposed to your marriage. In that case, your estate plan may be more likely to be disputed or even sabotaged by unsupportive relatives. This could mean that family members are more likely to contest your wishes, or it might result in custody battles over non-biological children in the event of the biological parent’s death.

Unsupportive family members may even try to block the ability of your partner to make medical decisions on your behalf should you become incapacitated by accident or illness. Even worse, your family members could try to kick your partner out of a shared home, if you are in an accident or fall ill, or they may even block your partner from seeing you if you require hospitalization.

Additionally, if you and your partner are unmarried, your partner would have no rights or protections should you become incapacitated or die without any planning in place, which leaves your partner vulnerable to several potentially dire risks (this is true in both same-sex and opposing sex relationships).

Given these issues, if you are in a committed partnership, you should be aware of several unique considerations regarding your estate plan. While you should meet with us, your Personal Family Lawyer®, to address your specific circumstances, here are three of the most pressing concerns to keep in mind. 

1. A Will Alone Might Not Be Enough

Suppose you’re unmarried and die without any estate plan. In that case, your property will be shared with your surviving family members according to your state’s laws through intestate succession. The state’s laws would not protect your unmarried partner, so if you want your partner to receive any of your assets upon your death, you need to—at the very least—create a will.

However, having an estate plan that consists solely of a will often doesn’t provide sufficient protection for your spouse/partner, and we often recommend that same-gender couples—even those who are married—create both a will and a trust. Although a will is a foundational part of nearly every estate plan, for a variety of reasons, having just a will could leave your partner/spouse at risk.

Most importantly, a will does not work in the event of your incapacity, which could happen at any time before your death. Should you become incapacitated with only a will in place, your partner/spouse may not have access to needed funds to pay bills, or they might even be kicked out of your home by a family member appointed as your guardian during your incapacity. 

Furthermore, upon your death, a will is required to go through the often long, costly, and potentially conflict-ridden court process known as probate. In contrast, assets that are properly titled in the name of your trust would pass directly to your partner/spouse upon your death, without the need for probate or any court intervention. 

If your will is successfully contested, this could prevent your surviving partner/spouse from receiving assets you left in your will. The process of contesting is extremely time-consuming, costly, and emotionally draining for your surviving partner/spouse.

Typically, when an attorney drafts your will, it is not set up to protect your assets after they are passed to your partner/spouse from creditors or lawsuits. However, leaving your assets in a trust that your partner/spouse can control would ensure the assets are protected from creditors, future relationships, and/or unexpected lawsuits.

2. Incapacity Planning is Especially Vital

As we touched on earlier, estate planning is not just about planning for your eventual death; it’s also about planning for your potential incapacity due to injury or illness. Proactive estate planning allows you to name the person (or persons) you would want to make your healthcare, legal, and financial decisions for you if you are incapacitated and unable to make such decisions yourself through a medical power of attorney.

If you haven’t planned for incapacity, the choice is then left to the court to appoint the person(s) to make these decisions on your behalf. If you’re unmarried and the court appoints one of your relatives as your guardian, your family could leave your partner totally out of the medical decision-making process and even deny them the right to visit you in the hospital. And even if you are married, it’s not guaranteed that your spouse would have the ultimate legal authority to make such decisions.

Though the court typically gives spouses priority as guardians, this isn’t always the case, especially if unsupportive family members challenge the issue in court. To ensure your partner/spouse has the ability to make these decisions for you, you must grant them the legal authority to do so using medical power of attorney and durable financial power of attorney.

A durable financial power of attorney gives your spouse the authority to manage your financial, legal, and business affairs, including paying your bills and taxes, running your business, selling your home, as well as managing your banking and investment accounts.

In addition to creating a will and trust, be sure to also create a living will, so that your spouse will know exactly how you want your medical care managed in the event of your incapacity, particularly at the end of life. Finally, don’t forget to provide your partner/spouse with HIPAA authorization within the medical power of attorney, so they will have access to your medical records to make educated decisions about your care. 

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can support you in putting in place a robust estate plan that will ensure that your partner/spouse has the maximum rights possible if you are ever struck by a debilitating accident or illness.
Next week, in part two, we’ll discuss the final estate planning consideration for LGBTQ couples—securing parental rights for the non-biological parent of minor children.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Personal Family Lawyer® in Juneau, Alaska. 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 Life & Legacy 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 at 907-312-5436 to schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge; or book a time for our team to call you at a time you choose.

When starting a business, you have to make a ton of different decisions. From deciding what to name your company to hire employees, getting your business off the ground comes with a nearly endless number of decisions.

Of all these decisions, perhaps none is more important or has a more significant impact on your success (or failure) than your choice of business entity structure. The entity you choose for your business will affect everything contracted by your company. Your business entity will determine the amount of taxes you pay, what kind of records you keep, and how vulnerable your assets are to lawsuits.

Among the different business entities, all companies should be one of the following legal structures: a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or limited liability company (LLC). Last week in part one, we discussed the first two of four leading factors to consider when selecting your entity, and here, we cover the final two.

Before making final decisions, consult with us, your Family Business Lawyer™. We will look at the factors below and help you find the entity that’s best suited for your particular operation.

3. Taxation

Similar to your liability exposure, your entity selection also dictates how your business will be taxed. Suppose your business entity is a sole proprietorship or a partnership. In that case, you and the other owners are legally the same as your business, so your share of the company’s profits or losses are reported on your income tax return and taxed at your personal income tax rate.

In contrast, as a C corporation, your business is considered a separate legal entity from you and the other owners for both liability and taxation purposes. As a result, the corporation pays taxes at the new flat corporate tax rate of 21% established by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Then, after-tax profits are distributed to the shareholders. Those profits are taxed at the personal rate of each of the shareholders. This rate, “double taxation,” means the corporation pays tax at its rate, and then the shareholders pay tax at their rates.

However, due to the expense and complexity of creating and maintaining a traditional corporation, very few small or mid-sized businesses are set up as C corporations. Yet you can still obtain the liability protection and tax advantages offered by a corporation by setting your business up as an LLC.

As an LLC, you have flexibility in choosing how you’ll be taxed. Unless you choose to be taxed as a corporation, single-member LLCs are automatically taxed as sole proprietorships. In contrast, multi-member LLCs are taxed as partnerships. In such cases, your company doesn’t pay any taxes on its profits itself. Instead, your share of the net business income is taxed on your personal tax return, and you’ll pay taxes based on your personal income tax rate. 

Alternatively, you can also elect for your LLC to be taxed as an S corporation. In this case, you will be responsible for paying payroll, plus payroll taxes, and filing a tax return on behalf of the corporation. 

The main advantage of choosing to be taxed as an S corporation is that you only pay payroll taxes on your payroll, not on your profit distributions from the company. In addition, there is some indication that the audit risk for S corporations is less than the audit risk for companies taxed as sole proprietors, where income and expenses are reported on your personal Schedule C.

Suppose your business is taxed as an S corporation. In that case, you will pay income taxes on your profit distributions. Still, you would save roughly 15% in payroll taxes on distributions taken as profits rather than as payroll. When using an LLC taxed as a partnership or sole proprietorship, you will pay payroll taxes on all distributions to you from the LLC up to the payroll tax limits.

However, for an S corporation election to make sense, you’ll want to have at least $75,000 of net income per year. To help you choose the entity that’s most advantageous in terms of taxation, meet with us, your Family Business Lawyer™ or Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

4. Administration & Operation

While sole proprietorships and partnerships don’t offer any liability protection from the liabilities or activities of the business, both entities are simple to set up and maintain. Suppose you start a new business and are the only owner. In that case, you are automatically a sole proprietorship in the eyes of the law, or a partnership, if you have more than one owner. There is no need to register your business with the state in either case, file any paperwork, pay any fees, and there are no special rules to follow. 

While LLCs and corporations offer liability protection and tax advantages, those benefits come with specific administrative requirements known as corporate formalities. These formalities dictate how the entity must be structured, maintained, and managed. And suppose you fail to adhere to these formalities. In that case, a court could remove the protective barrier shielding your personal assets, known as “piercing the veil,” leaving you personally liable to creditors in the event of a judgment.  

Corporations come with the most strict and complex administrative formalities. For example, you must file articles of incorporation with the state, hold a regular board of directors and shareholder meetings, create and enact corporate bylaws, and maintain detailed record-keeping requirements, such as keeping detailed meeting minutes. Additionally, you must also file annual reports with the state and pay yearly fees to maintain your corporate status.

LLCs also comes with administrative formalities, but they aren’t nearly as burdensome as those for corporations. For example, as the owner of an LLC, you must file articles of organization with the state and create an operating agreement, which governs how your LLC is structured and run. In addition, all states require LLCs to file either an annual or semi-annual report with the state agency responsible for registering business organizations.

Although there’s no statutory requirement for LLCs to hold owner meetings or keep minutes, doing so provides strong evidence that you’re abiding by corporate formalities. Combining diligent record-keeping and clear separation of personal and business finances, you can offer your LLC extra protection from creditors.

Should you choose to set up as an LLC or corporation, as a Family Business Lawyer™, we can offer support with maintaining your business records and the corporate formalities required. We offer exceptional maintenance packages to help ensure your entity meets these requirements and maintains the maximum level of protection for your assets.

Enlist Our Guidance and Support

Properly selecting, setting up, and maintaining your business entity is far too important of a task for you to try to handle all on your own. We offer you trusted advice on the most advantageous entity for your particular business and then help ensure that your entity is properly set up. We can also provide you with sound business systems to make your business more efficient and establish a clear separation between your business and personal finances, which is a crucial part of maintaining your entity’s liability protection.

In addition, we will also ensure that you comply with the various state laws and administrative formalities required to maintain your entity and safeguard your assets, so you can remain focused on the most important task—growing your business. Contact us, your Family Business Lawyer™ today to get started.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Family Business Lawyer™. 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 your appointment at 907-312-5436, or find a time for us to call you. 

When you are a kid, finding a suitable gift for Father’s Day can be a struggle. You want to get Dad something he’ll enjoy, but few young people can afford a new set of golf clubs or a shiny new grill, so you end up settling once again for the standard necktie and socks.

And even after you become an adult, that struggle for the perfect Father’s Day gift often continues, albeit in a slightly different way. When it comes to expressing your love and appreciation for everything Dad has done, more “stuff” doesn’t cut it.  

If your father is like most, he’d tell you that the greatest gift you could give him would be for you to abide by the values and principles he taught you and share them with your children. 

We may go to great lengths to protect and pass on our family’s financial wealth. Still, very few of us take the time to even document, much less preserve, our family’s legacy. The stories, values, insights, and life lessons of our parents, grandparents, and those who came before them— are typically lost forever when a beloved father figure passes away.

With this in mind, give your father a tribute to the role he has played in your life by preserving his legacy for generations to come with a Family Wealth Legacy Passage.

Family Wealth Legacy Passages: Sharing Your Family’s Story

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we know that estate planning isn’t just about protecting and passing on your financial wealth and tangible assets when you die. When done right, estate planning supports you to pass down the most precious assets of all—your life stories, lessons, insights, and values, intentionally.  

We do this with a unique service we’ve developed known as Family Wealth Legacy Passages. We will personally guide your father to create a customized recording to share his most insightful memories and experiences. We will provide you with the recording digitally to rest assured it will survive long after he—and even after you—are gone. The Family Wealth Legacy Passage is at no additional cost to you since it is part of each estate plan.

Including Family Wealth Legacy Passages in your estate planning ensures the most valuable assets never get lost and the process of documenting them is as easy and convenient as possible. We use a series of helpful questions and prompts, which makes the process both easy and enjoyable. 

Many of our clients tell us that going through this process helps rekindle life moments they would otherwise not share with their loved ones during their lives. This unique process can enrich your family with something far more valuable than material wealth. After the interview, many of our clients have told us they feel as if they’ve become better, more conscious parents along the way. And the best part is, it takes less than an hour.

In the end, your family’s most precious wealth is not money, but the memories you make, the values you instill, and the insights and lessons you hand down. If left to chance, these assets are likely to be lost forever. 

Create A Lasting Legacy

During the month of celebrating Dad, take this opportunity to ensure that all of the wisdom and experience your father has gained during his life won’t be lost once he’s gone. You can do this now by scheduling a free consultation with us, your Personal Family Lawyer®.

Even if your father is no longer with us, perhaps you have a figure in your life that you can honor with this process. No matter the father figure in your life, meeting with us, your Personal Family Lawyer®, will benefit future generations. Contact us today to schedule your appointment.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Personal Family Lawyer® in Juneau, Alaska. 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 Life & Legacy 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 at 907-312-5436 to schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge; or book a time for our team to call you at a time you choose.

When starting a business, you have to make a ton of decisions. Deciding what to name your company and hiring employees, what kind of products or services you should sell, and how to fund your operation, getting your business off the ground comes with a nearly endless number of decisions.

Of all these decisions, perhaps none is more important or has a more significant impact on your success (or failure) than your choice of business entity structure. Indeed, the entity you choose for your business will affect everything from the amount of taxes you pay and what kind of records you are required to keep to how vulnerable your assets are to lawsuits incurred by your company. 

Among the different business entities, all companies should be one of the following legal structures: a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or limited liability company (LLC). While you should consult with us, your Family Business Lawyer™ before making your final decision, here are four of the leading factors to consider when selecting the entity that’s best suited for your particular business. 

1. Number of Owners

The number of owners your business has will factor into the entity forms that are available to you to choose from. For example, if you own the business yourself, you can operate as a sole proprietorship, an LLC, or a corporation without any other partners. If you choose an LLC, its owners are called “members,” so you would operate as a single-member LLC. If you choose a corporation, the owners are “shareholders,” and you can be the sole shareholder of your corporation.

If your business has more than one owner, your choices of an entity include a partnership, an LLC, or a corporation. If you have multiple owners as an LLC, your company would be considered a multi-member LLC. Note: if your business has multiple owners, you MUST have a lawyer prepare your operating agreement or bylaws. Do NOT use a document service. Navigating ownership terms, transfer rights, what happens when a partner or shareholder wants out, and what happens at death all require consideration and custom decisions that cannot be addressed with a one-size fits all solution. If you do not have your multi-person business agreements documented by a lawyer you risk massively expensive surprises down the road when you go to sell the business, or when one of your owners dies or wants to get out of the business. Or, when the business needs additional capital. So whatever entity type you choose, if you have a multi-owner structure, contact us to get your agreements in place. 

2. Asset Protection

The second factor in your entity choice is protecting yourself from legal liability. In today’s highly litigious society, all businesses should prepare for legal conflict at some point. At minimum, that conflict could be as simple as a refund request, or as complex as an employee or team member lawsuit, or worse. If  you don’t have the proper entity in place, you could lose your home, your vehicle, and even your life savings to satisfy a judgment. 

The same thing could happen if your company ever suffers a significant financial loss or goes out of business. Your company’s creditors could seize your personal assets to satisfy your business debt. This risk arises because unless you have the correct entity in place, there’s no separation between your business and personal assets, so your personal assets would be up for grabs in the event your company ever gets sued or goes into serious debt.

For example, suppose your company is a sole proprietorship or a partnership. In that case, you and the other owners are legally inseparable from your business—your business and its owners are the same in the eyes of the law. Therefore, you and the other owners would be personally liable for any debt or court judgment incurred by your company.

However, if you set up our business as either an LLC or a corporation, you can shield your personal assets from your company’s legal liabilities, including lawsuits and debt. When correctly set up and maintained, these two structures establish your company as a separate legal entity that’s distinct from you and the other owners as individuals, preventing you from being held personally liable for the company’s debt or legal disputes.

As your Family Business Lawyer™, we can not only help you choose the correct entity for your business, but we can also support you in setting up and maintaining your entity to ensure you have maximum personal liability protection. Next week, in part two, we’ll discuss the final factors to consider when choosing your business entity.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Family Business Lawyer™. 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 your appointment at 907-312-5436, or find a time for us to call you. 

With the arrival of summer, young people across the country are about to reach a key milestone: high school graduation. If you have a child claiming their diploma, now is the time to prepare them for life after leaving the nest.

Graduating high school is a significant accomplishment. However, it comes with serious responsibilities that your child probably isn’t thinking much about right now. Once your child turns 18, they become a legal adult, and specific areas of their lives that were once under your control will be solely their responsibility. 

While your child will now be a legal adult, you still have essential parental duties. Yet, if you don’t support your child to step into adulthood with legal documents to help both of you, it can be challenging and costly for you to help them in the event of an emergency. 

For instance, should your child get into a severe car accident and require hospitalization, you would no longer have the automatic authority to make decisions about his or her medical treatment or handle their financial matters. In fact, without legal documentation, you wouldn’t even be able to access his or her medical records or bank accounts without a court order.

To address this vulnerability and ensure your family never gets stuck in an unnecessary court process, before your kids move out or head off to college, have a conversation about estate planning and have them sign the following three documents. 

1. Medical Power of Attorney

The first document your child needs is a medical power of attorney. A medical power of attorney is an advance healthcare directive that allows your child to grant you (or someone else) the immediate legal authority to make healthcare decisions on their behalf if they become incapacitated and are unable to make decisions for themselves.

For example, the medical power of attorney would allow you to decide about your child’s medical treatment if he or she is knocked unconscious in a car accident or falls into a coma due to a debilitating illness. 

Without a medical power of attorney in place, if your child suffers a severe accident or illness that requires hospitalization and you need access to their medical records to make decisions about their treatment, you’d have to petition the court to become their legal guardian. While a parent is typically the court’s first choice for a guardian, the guardianship process can be slow and expensive.

And due to HIPAA laws, once your child becomes 18, no one—not even parents—is legally authorized to access his or her medical records without prior written permission. But an adequately drafted medical power of attorney will include a signed HIPAA authorization, so you can immediately access their medical records to make informed decisions about their treatment.

2. Living Will

While the medical power of attorney allows you to make healthcare decisions on your child’s behalf during their incapacity, a living will is an advance directive that provides specific guidance. These are specifications on how your child’s medical decisions should be made, particularly at the end of life.

For example, a living will allows your child to advise if and when they want life support removed should they ever require it. In addition to documenting how your child requests their medical care managed, a living will also include instructions about who should visit them in the hospital and even what kind of food they would want to have provided. For example, if your child is a vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, or takes specific supplements. These are all things that should be considered and recorded in their living will.

Finally, speak with your child about the unique medical decisions related to the coronavirus, particularly in intubation, ventilators, and experimental medications. Your child’s quality of life decisions should also be outlined in their living will. You can find in our previous article, COVID-19 Highlights Critical Need for Advance Healthcare Directives.

3. Durable Financial Power of Attorney

Should your child become incapacitated, you may also need the ability to access and manage their finances, and this requires your child to grant you durable financial power of attorney.

Durable financial power of attorney gives you the authority to manage their financial and legal matters, such as paying their tuition, applying for student loans, paying their rent, negotiating (or re-negotiating) a lease, managing their bank accounts, and collecting government benefits if necessary. Without this document, you’ll have to petition the court for such authority.

Start Adulthood The Right Way

Before your kids head out into the world, make sure they’ve got the proper planning in place. By doing so, you are modeling good financial stewardship and setting them up right from the start. Financial and legal illiteracy is an epidemic that you can quickly address, starting with yourself and your own family. 

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can not only help you create these vital documents, but we can also facilitate a family meeting to discuss the importance of planning. We will begin what we hope will be a life-long relationship with your children as they take this crucial first step into adulthood. Contact us today to ensure that if your child ever does need your help, you’ll have the legal authority to provide it.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Personal Family Lawyer® in Juneau, Alaska. 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 Life & Legacy 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 at 907-312-5436 to schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge; or book a time for our team to call you at a time you choose.

Taking your clients out to dinner or to a sporting event can be a great way to get to know the people with whom you are doing business and help you develop a closer relationship. Plus, business-related meals and entertainment can be a legitimate business expense (with some exceptions) that you can deduct from your company’s income taxes. 

That said, the rules for deducting meal and entertainment expenses from your taxes have changed quite a bit over the last few years. And these changes have made understanding exactly what you can (and cannot) write off on your tax return pretty confusing. 

In some circumstances, for example, a business-related meal is 100% deductible, while in others, the same meal is only 50% deductible. Yet other times, a business meal is totally nondeductible. It all boils down to a few factors: the meal’s purpose, who provides the meal, and who benefits from the meal. 

Legislation Brings New Rules
To boost business spending at restaurants following the pandemic, Congress added a provision to the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) passed in December 2020 that makes the cost of business-related meals served in a restaurant 100% deductible—but only for 2021 and 2022. Previously, deductions for business meals at restaurants were limited to 50%.

While lawmakers may have temporarily increased the deduction for business-related meals, they made another change that eliminates your ability to write off most entertainment expenses—and that change is permanent. Starting in 2018, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) permanently eliminated deductions for most business-related entertainment expenses.     

Before the TCJA, you could deduct 50% of the cost of entertaining your clients, such as taking them to a ballgame or treating them to a round of golf. But after the TCJA, you can no longer deduct such expenses. Moreover, while you can deduct the cost of food and beverages consumed in conjunction with an entertainment event, the food and beverages must be purchased separately from the entertainment or stated separately on the bill in order to qualify for a deduction.

Confused yet? We don’t blame you. For clarification on the finer details of these changes to the tax code, consult with us, your Family Business Lawyer™ or Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Meanwhile, here we will highlight a few of the most significant new rules for deducting meal and entertainment expenses for 2021 and beyond.

Deducting Business Meals

You are allowed to deduct the cost of business meals (food and beverages) as a business expense, and in most cases, the meal will be 50% deductible. The cost of the meal equates to the total cost of the food and beverages, including sales tax, tips, and delivery fees.

To qualify for the deduction, you (the business owner) or an employee must be present during the meal, and the meal cannot be “lavish or extravagant.” The IRS does not define “lavish or extravagant;” instead, the agency states that the cost must be “reasonably based on the facts and circumstances.” The IRS also points out that meal expenses will not be disallowed simply because they exceed a certain price or because they take place at a fancy restaurant.

However, as mentioned earlier, the CAA allows you to write off 100% of the cost of business-related meals provided by restaurants and bars from January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2022. This temporary 100% deduction applies to facilities that provide sit-down dining or take-out. 

The following are a few examples of situations where you would be able to claim the 50% deduction (or 100% for 2021 and 2022 if the meal is provided by a restaurant) for business meals:

• Dinner with a client where work is discussed
• Employee meals while traveling for business
• Drinks, snacks, and other food items supplied for the office
• Catered food for a board meeting
• Meals you purchase while traveling for business
• Food provided for employees who are working late
• Eating lunch out with a few employees 

Fully Deductible Meals

In certain circumstances, some meal expenses are fully (100%) deductible. Examples of fully deductible meal expenses include the following: 

• A holiday party for the entire company
• A community event where you provide free food to the general public 
• A fundraising event where the proceeds go to a charitable organization
• Food provided as part of employee’s taxable compensation (must be included on W-2)
• A dinner out where at least half of all your employees are present

Meal Expenses You Cannot Deduct

Basically, most business-related meals you can think of are either 50% or 100% deductible, but there are some exceptions. For example, if you take a client out to dinner and invite your spouse and kids to come with you, neither your spouse nor your kids’ meal expenses can be deducted. The clients’ spouse’s meal expense would not be deductible, either.

The same restriction would apply for meal expenses incurred by spouses, dependents, or other individuals who accompany you on business trips. The only instance where you could deduct such expenses would be if the spouse, dependent, or other person worked for your company.

Deducting Business Entertainment

As mentioned earlier, following the implementation of the TCJA in 2018, you can no longer deduct most entertainment expenses. Entertainment is defined as “any activity generally considered to provide entertainment, amusement, or recreation,” according to the IRS.  

This means you can no longer write off the expenses for taking clients to a basketball game, football game, or other sporting events; bringing employees to a Broadway musical or on a fishing trip, or taking a prospective vendor to a Vegas show. Additionally, you cannot deduct the costs of renting out an “entertainment facility,” which includes things like a yacht, swimming pool, bowling alley, limo, airplane, hotel suite, or villa in a vacation resort. 

The same restriction applies to deducting membership and club dues, such as dues for membership to a country club or golf course—these expenses cannot be deducted from your taxes.

As we touched on earlier, while you can no longer deduct most entertainment expenses, you can still deduct the cost of food and beverages consumed in conjunction with an entertainment event, such as hot dogs and beers purchased at a baseball game. However, to qualify for the deduction, you must meet one of two conditions: 1) the food and beverages must be purchased separately from the entertainment, or 2) the cost of the food and beverages must be stated separately on the bill or receipt.

Given this requirement, you should always insist on detailed receipts whenever you visit any entertainment venue for business purposes.

Entertainment Deductions Still Available

In spite of these new restrictions, there are still a few entertainment expenses that you can fully deduct from your taxes. According to the IRS, you can deduct 100% of the cost of the following entertainment-related business expenses:  

• Entertainment expenses that are reported on your tax return as taxable compensation to your employees.
• Entertainment expenses for recreational or social activities for your employees, such as a holiday party or a company picnic.
• Expenses related to attending business meetings or conventions of certain exempt organizations, such as business leagues, chambers of commerce, or professional associations.
• Entertainment sold to your customers. For example, if you run a nightclub, and you hold a rock concert, those expenses are not subject to the nondeductible rules.

Keep Track of Your Expenses With Sound Systems

The key to taking full advantage of business-expense deductions, such as for meals and entertainment, is to keep meticulous track of your expenses, and the best way to do that is to implement sound business systems. As your Family Business Lawyer™, we can support you in setting up an array of business systems, not just for managing your finances and taxes, but for dealing with legal and insurance issues as well. 

You also need to stay on top of the latest changes to federal and state laws governing business expenses and other tax matters, and we, in tandem with your certified public accountant, can help you with that, too. Contact us today to get started with a LIFT Business Breakthrough Session, where we will examine all of your legal, insurance, financial, and tax needs, and help you put in place the proper systems to make managing these areas of your business a breeze.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Family Business Lawyer™. 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 your appointment at 907-312-5436, or find a time for us to call you. 

As we head into the peak of wedding season, if you are a newlywed or are about to tie the knot, add “estate planning” to your do list. And yes, we imagine that at this happiest time of your life, planning for your potential incapacity and eventual death is probably the farthest thing from your mind, but getting it handled as part of your wedding planning is the greatest gift you can give your soon-to-be spouse.

First, be aware of the impact of doing nothing. If you were to become hospitalized for any reason prior to your wedding day, the person you love most in the world would not have the legal authority to make your medical decisions and may not even have the authority to see you in the hospital. Your beloved would have no access to your bank accounts and could even be put into a position of having to move out of your shared home abruptly in the event of your death.

Indeed, once your marriage is official, your relationship becomes entirely different from both a legal and financial perspective. With this in mind, last week in part one, we discussed the first three of six essential items you need to address in your plan, and here we cover the final three.

4. Durable Financial Power of Attorney

As we touched on last week in part one, estate planning is not just about planning for what happens when you die. It is equally important—if not even more so—to plan for your potential incapacity due to a serious accident or illness.

If you become incapacitated and have not legally named someone to handle your financial and legal interests, your spouse would have to petition the court to be appointed as your guardian or conservator to handle your affairs. Though your spouse would typically be given priority, this is not always the case, and the court could choose someone else.

And the person the court appoints could be a family member you would never want having control over your life, or it could even be a crooked professional guardian, who would charge exorbitant fees, keep you isolated from your family, and sell off your assets for their own benefit. In any case, if you have not chosen someone to make your financial and legal decisions in the event of your incapacity, the court will choose for you.

To ensure your spouse has the ability to make these decisions, you should create a power of attorney documents to give him or her this legal authority. You actually need two of these documents, and the first one is a durable financial power of attorney. A durable financial power of attorney would grant your spouse the immediate authority to manage your financial, legal, and business affairs in the event of your incapacity.

With a durable financial power of attorney, your spouse would have a broad range of powers to handle things like paying your bills and taxes, running your business, collecting government benefits, and selling your home, as well as managing your banking and investment accounts. Granting durable financial power of attorney is especially important if you live together before you get married because, without it, the person named by the court could legally force your soon-to-be spouse out with little to no notice, leaving your beloved homeless.

The second document you will need is a medical power of attorney, which we will discuss next.

5. Medical Power of Attorney and Living Will

In addition to the durable financial power of attorney, you will also need to create a medical power of attorney. A medical power of attorney is an advance healthcare directive that would give your spouse (or someone else) the immediate legal authority to make decisions about your healthcare and medical treatment should you become incapacitated and unable to make those decisions for yourself.

For example, a medical power of attorney would allow your spouse to make decisions about your medical treatment if you are in a serious car accident or hospitalized with a debilitating illness. Without a medical power of attorney in place, your spouse would have to petition the court to become your legal guardian.

As we discussed last week, even though your spouse is generally the court’s first choice for guardian, you should spare your spouse the time, money, and trauma involved with the guardianship process by creating a medical power of attorney and naming him or her as your agent.  

While a medical power of attorney allows your spouse to make healthcare decisions on your behalf during your incapacity, a living will is an advance directive that explains how you would want your medical care handled, particularly at the end of life. A medical power of attorney and a living will work closely together, and for this reason, they are sometimes combined into a single document.

Within the terms of your living will, you can spell out things, such as if and when you would want life support removed should you ever require it, whether you would want hydration and nutrition supplied, and even what kind of food you want and who can visit you in the hospital. 

One tragic example of just how nightmarish things can become in the event you are incapacitated without advance directives in place is the case of Florida’s Terry Schiavo, who spent 15 years in a vegetative state after suffering a heart attack at age 26. Because she had neither a medical power of attorney nor a living will Schiavo’s young husband fought her parents in court for years for permission to remove her from life support, and the resulting litigation made news headlines around the world and exposed a deep divide among Americans over the right-to-die movement.

6. Name Legal Guardians For Your Minor Children
If either you or your spouse has minor children from a prior relationship, or if you are planning to have kids of your own soon, it is imperative that you select and legally document long-term guardians for your children. Guardians are people legally named to care for your children in the event something should happen to you and your spouse.

And do not assume that just because you have named godparents or have grandparents living nearby that is enough. You must name guardians in a legal document, or you risk creating needless conflict and a long, expensive court process for your loved ones.

When working with us as your Personal Family Lawyer®, naming legal guardians for your kids could not be any easier or more convenient. Indeed, creating the legal documents that will ensure your children will be raised to adulthood by the people you trust most and are never placed in the care of strangers (even temporarily) is one of our specialties. And we accomplish this using our comprehensive system called the Kids Protection Plan®.

The Kids Protection Plan® provides you with all of the legal planning tools needed to make sure there is never a question about who will take care of your kids if you and your spouse are in an accident or suffer some other life-threatening emergency. Even if you have already named guardians for your kids in your will, either on your own or with the help of a lawyer, we often find that these plans contain at least one of six common mistakes that can leave your kids at risk.

This happens because most lawyers are not trained to understand exactly what is necessary for planning and ensuring the well-being and care of minor children. However, all Personal Family Lawyers® have 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.

Best of all, we have created an easy-to-use (and 100% free) website you can visit right now to take the first steps to create legal documents naming the long-term guardians you would want to care for your children if you could not. Do it here now: https://lizsmithlaw.kidsprotectionplan.com/.

From there, you can schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session with us where we will put the full Kids Protection Plan® in place, and determine if there is anything else you might need to ensure the well-being and care of your children no matter what happens. 

Do not wait to take care of this urgent matter. In fact, if you have minor children, your number-one planning priority should be naming legal guardians to care for your children should anything happen to you. And if you need any help with this process, reach out to us, your Personal Family Lawyer®, and we will be glad to walk you through it. 

A Trusted Advisor For Your New Family

Getting married is an exciting first step for your new family, and you should start things off right by getting your estate plan properly prepared. But here is the thing about estate planning—it is not just about creating a set of documents and then filing them away in a drawer and never looking at them again until something happens.

Like your family, your planning needs are constantly evolving, so you must ensure your plan is regularly updated as your assets, family situation, and the laws change. If you do not keep your plan updated, it will be totally worthless when your family needs it. In fact, failing to regularly update your plan can create problems that leave your family worse off than if you had never created a plan at all.

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we have built-in systems and processes to ensure your plan is regularly reviewed and updated, so you do not need to worry about whether you have overlooked. What’s more, our planning services go far beyond simply creating documents and then never seeing you again. 

Indeed, we will develop a relationship with you and your family. This is so we can get to know you, your wishes, and be there for you throughout the many stages of life—and above all, be there for your loved ones if and when you cannot be. Contact us, your Personal Family Lawyer® today to get things started with a Life & Legacy Planning Session™.

This article is a service of Liz Smith, Personal Family Lawyer® in Juneau, Alaska. 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 Life & Legacy 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 at 907-312-5436 to schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge; or book a time for our team to call you at a time you choose.