Get Your Legal and Financial Affairs in Order in 2011
As you may know, I write a column for one of our local community papers, the Seaway News. Here is an article that was recently published on their web site. For the original article, please click here.
If you are interested in getting more information on getting your legal and financial affairs in order, you can attend my Busy Parent’s Legal and Financial Boot Camp on Thursday, February 24th at the Cornwall Public Library. For more information, visit my Coming Events page by clicking here:
Get Your Legal and Financial Affairs in Order in 2011
The start of a new year is the perfect time to review and evaluate your important documents. We’re approaching tax time, so you’ll need to organize all your financial documents anyway. Why not get it done now? Investing a few hours will provide you with peace of mind about your financial and legal security.
Some key components to get your financial and legal affairs in order include:
1. Review your estate plan
I recommend that everyone have a Will, and if you don’t already have one, consider setting up an appointment with a lawyer. Reviewing all of your assets and documents should help you prepare to meet with your lawyer.
If you already have a Will, make sure you (and your loved ones) know where the originals are located. Review it annuallyto ensure that the decisions you made still work for you and your family. Contact the individuals you selected as your guardian and executor and make sure they’re still able to take on these roles, if needed.
If you’re making the conscious choice not to complete a will, you should still review your assets and beneficiary designations. This means pulling out all of your Deeds, policies, benefit statements and other information about your assets and where they would go in the event of your death or incapacity.
2. Make sure that someone can make decisions for you if you cannot
A Power of Attorney for Personal Care allows you to choose someone to make your health care decisions if you are unable to do so yourself. While a “living will” is not really a legal document in Ontario, you can indicate in your Power of Attorney for Personal Care your specific wishes regarding end of life decisions and other important matters.
A Power of Attorney for Property allows you to choose someone to make financial decisions – and to deal with your property – if you were incapacitated. Think about what would happen if you suddenly were unable to sign cheques or make bill payments. If you haven’t appointed someone, your loved ones would need to bring a court application to be appointed as the Guardian of your property, which is expensive and time-consuming.
3. Get your financial and legal documents organized
It’s extremely important to “get your affairs in order,” As part of my estate planning process, I provide my clients with a Peace of Mind Personal Inventory, a tool to record all their important information, from their doctor’s contact information to their office security code. There are a lot of things that most of us store ‘in our head” that our loved ones would need if we were gone.
Don’t wait until someday–resolve to get organized today! To make the process easier, I’m offering $150.00 off all estate planning fees for clients who book an appointment before the end of February, 2011. Call Allinotte Law Office at 613-933-7720 to book your appointment today. Please mention this blog post when you call for an appointment.
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Michele R.J. Allinotte is the owner of Allinotte Law Office in Cornwall, Ontario and she helps her clients make the best decisions for themselves, their families and their businesses. Her practice focuses on the areas of business law, estate planning and real estate. Visit www.YourCornwallLawyer.com to get her FREE Peace of Mind Personal Inventory to make sure that your family has all the information they need.
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Celebrating One Year Of Allinotte Law Office
Wait! Don’t Sign That Contract!
I hear it all the time from my clients in Cornwall and area, “Can I get out of this [insert name of contract here]?”.
People are asking about leases, guarantees, agreements to purchase a home, weight loss center memberships, you name it.
My answer is usually the same. “Well, I would have to review the agreement first.”
Some agreements do contemplate how to “get out” of the agreement, or, in legal speak, how to terminate the agreement.
If the contract says you can “get out” of an agreement before the term is up, normally you will need to have a reason (which would be set out in the agreement), or you have to give notice to the other party for a period of time, or it is going to cost you.
Most of the time there is a cost to ending the agreement early.
In other agreements, there is nothing in the document that discusses ending it early.
So what do you do then?
Well, you can try to negotiate with the other party, or you can stop honouring your obligations under the agreement and wait for the other party to sue you.
Because that is what generally happens when you don’t fulfill your side of the bargain – someone is going to pursue you for whatever money they have lost. If it is a lot of money, they are going to sue you.
Depending on the fact situation, you might be sued successfully if you break your contract.
And then you will be responsible not only for your initial obligations in the agreement, but you also might have to pay interest, and, sometimes, part of the legal costs of the other party.
Many of my clients are surprised at what their obligations are under the agreements and contracts they have signed.
Problem is, they come to me AFTER they have signed the agreements.
It doesn’t do much good for me to explain all of your obligations under a contract once it has been signed. I cannot change the contract for you (unless the other party would agree to amend the contract, which isn’t likely).
So, next time someone puts a contract in front of you to sign, don’t just sign it blindly.
First of all, READ the contract. It may not be what you agreed to, or you may not like the terms and want to renegotiate some items.
Secondly, if you aren’t sure what it means, ask to have a few days to review it before you sign. You can use that time to have your lawyer review it, or to look it over in more detail yourself so you can figure out what the heck it means.
I know not everyone can afford to hire a lawyer for every contract they sign, but think about what it might cost you if you want to get out of the contract. If you couldn’t handle the cost of fulfilling your end of the bargain if certain things do or don’t happen, you should get some legal advice on what it all means and also, if you can “get out” of it if you need to down the road.
I can almost guarantee that the cost of having me review a contract after it is signed to see if you can “get out” of it (and to help you deal with attempting to get out of it) is going to be greater than the cost of reviewing the agreement up front before you sign.
I can also tell you that almost every time I review a contract for a client, we end up asking for changes.
Some of the things we end up changing could have cost my clients a lot of money if they had signed the contract as is.
And sometimes, my clients decide that once they know their obligations and the true cost of the contract, it is not worth it, and they don’t go through with the agreement.
I recommend that you review in detail EVERY agreement you sign. A gym membership, a lease, a loan agreement, an agreement to buy a home or other large ticket item, you get the picture.
And if you aren’t sure about what is in the agreement or what your obligations are (or what the other party’s obligations are), you should get legal advice.
This is especially important for small business owners and entrepreneurs.
I have membership programs available for clients who want to have ongoing access to legal advice for contract reviews and other issues but who are concerned about managing the cost of legal services.
If you are interested in Allinotte Law Office’s membership program, give us a call at 613-933-7720 or email erin@allinottelawoffice.com.
I’m Thinking About Selling My Home, What Do I Need to Do?
There are many things you need to think about when selling your home, but the focus here is on what information you need to gather to help your lawyer (and also your real estate agent) when you are selling your home.
If you are thinking of selling, you should try to get together the following information:
- A copy of your Deed and Mortgage (or at least some information about your mortgage – a statement or contact person at the bank);
- Your final tax bill from the previous year and any bills from the current year and proof of payment;
- You water bill, if any;
- Your heating information – is the property heated with oil, gas, or propane? Information on what company you use, and, if you use propane, information on whether the tank rented, and copies of bills are all helpful;
- Information and copies of bills for any items that are rented (such as hot water tanks);
- If you are selling any items with the property (dishwasher, garage door opener, et cetera) find the manuals for them so you can leave them with the new owner;
- Copies of any surveys or plans you might have for the property, or any building permits if you did major work while you owned the property;
- Information on your insurance company and what they require to cancel the insurance on the property; and,
- If you have the file/letter from the lawyer when you bought the property, that can be a great source of information.
While not all that information may be needed, getting it all together is helpful so the information is readily available if your lawyer or real estate agent would need it.
How Canadian Citizens Should Own Florida Property
Note from Michele: This is a guest post by my colleague, Maura S. Curran of The Curran Law Firm, P.A. in Jupiter, Florida (www.TheCurranLawFirm.com), which originally appeared on her blog at: http://thecurranlawfirm.com/blawg/?p=37. This issue is an important one for those of you who own or are thinking of buying a vacation home outside of Canada.
By Maura S. Curran
Are you a Canadian and own real property south of the border? Far south, say in Florida?
If you are like many Canadians, you own a second home in the US, and in particular, the Sunshine State, Florida. Why not? Florida has beautiful winters – no need for parkas and galoshes here, nope, just sunscreen and sunglasses. But do you understand what happens if you die leaving property in the US? What about if you become incapacitated?
There are many questions to consider if you become incapacitated or die while owning real property in Florida when you are not an American citizen. Will there be US federal estate taxes? Do you have to probate? Who is allowed to be the personal representative? Does my estate need an attorney?
Florida law requires anyone dying and owning Florida real property in their own name to file a probate in a Florida Circuit Court so the property can legally transfer to your beneficiary. The probate process can take several months, cost thousands of dollars in fees and costs, and is public record plus it can create unnecessary stress on everyone involved with an international probate.
But did you know that probate is voluntary? You can legally avoid the cost and time and public nature associated with probate. One common way is to have a revocable living trust own your property. When a trust owns the property you avoid probate and your beneficiaries can avoid the hassle, delays, costs and stress of having not only a probate, but an international probate.
Do not be confused however, a trust alone will not avoid federal US estate taxes. Depending on the size of your assets, your estate may be subject to federal estate taxes. Currently there are no federal estate taxes, however, starting in 2011 depending on the size of your estate, your estate could be taxed at 55% ! So if you own property exceeding $1 million you need advanced estate planning in order to minimize, if not avoid, federal estate taxes.
Want yet another reason to have the property held in a trust? Should you become incapacitated, there is no need to have a Florida probate court approve the guardianship of the owner – another time consuming, stressful court procedure. Rather, if you are the Trustee, the successor trustee will assume your duties – much quicker and easier process to change a trustee than to get court approval for a guardianship.
If you are a Canadian citizen and own or are considering purchasing property in Florida, call my office and ask to have a consultation regarding your Florida home or visit my online virtual office at www.AbacoaVLO.com – serving all of Florida!
The Dirty Little Secret About Laundry
Yes, that pun was intended.
We all do it. You wash the laundry. You dry the laundry. You fold the laundry. You put the laundry in baskets. But many, many times, that is where the laundry stays. In the baskets. It never gets put away.
Apparently, laundry baskets are not meant for storage. The baskets are merely to be used to transport the folded laundry from the laundry room (or wherever you fold) to the room of the owner of the clothes and then the clothes are supposed to be put away.
It’s the putting away that becomes the problem.
Why?
Well, because you can get away with not putting it away. The clothes are clean and if someone needs them, they are right there in the basket.
Time management gurus would tell you not to put off anything that takes less than a few minutes to do.
They are right.
What happens with the laundry? You do a load and then fold it and say “oh, I will wait until the next load is done to put it all away”. And then the next, and the next, and then there is a ton of laundry to put away and it just never seems to get done.
So yes, it would be easier and more time efficient to put away the laundry as it is folded.
But I’m not going to tell you to do that. Do whatever works for you.
I’m no time management guru. I understand that some times, we have to let things slide.
Like this blog. Oops. It has been a while since I posted something. What have I been doing this whole time? Well, not putting away my laundry for one.
I’ve been on holidays a couple of weeks and trying to enjoy as much of the summer as I can. So I let some things slide.
But now I feel like my batteries are recharged and I’m ready to take on the world (ok, not really the world, but you get the idea). I’m actually looking forward to the routine that September will bring, but I’m not quite wishing away the summer yet.
So you can once again look forward to my regular posts each week. If you have any topics you would like me to address, please send me a message and let me know what you are interested in hearing.
Enjoy the rest of your summer and “see” you next week (or sooner!).
Buying A Home: Why Do I Need A Lawyer And What Does My Lawyer Do?
In Ontario, a lawyer is needed to register any transfer of land, and two separate lawyers are needed to represent the buyer and seller.
First, I speak with clients about title insurance, which is a great product, but isn’t for every home buyer, so I conduct an overview of whether it’s right for your property at the outset.
I also speak with clients about how they will “take” title to their property. Althought most couples take title together as joint tenants, meaning on the death of one the survivor becomes the owner, there may be reasons in your situation why that isn’t a good idea. We can review that together.
When you’re getting a mortgage, I am the lawyer for you and the bank. The bank will send specific instructions on searches they need and how they want the mortgage registered, which we’ll complete before closing.
As the lawyer for both you and the bank, I’ll give an opinion to both of you after closing. I’ll conduct searches relating to the property you’re buying to ensure there’s nothing affecting the property that will cloud your interest. If an issue comes up, we ask the seller to fix it. If they refuse, I’ll speak with you about the situation, outlining the problem and its impact on you, giving you both the legal and practical sides of the problem so you can decide how to proceed.
The seller must tell us the exact purchase price for the property. Costs such as taxes, water and fuel oil are adjusted on the Statement of Adjustments. You’re also credited for any deposit that you made. So, the amount you have to pay for your home will vary a bit depending on what expenses the seller has pre-paid. We adjust everything on the day of closing.
Once we know the amount you’ll give the seller and what we’re getting from your bank, I’ll let you know how much you’ll need to complete the transaction. This amount is usually what you’d budgeted as your down payment when you obtained your mortgage approval.
On closing day, I exchange documents with the seller, and give them the funds to purchase the property and then register the documents (i.e. the Deed and the Mortgage). Once things are registered, I do the best part of my job – give you the keys to your new home!
Cornwall lawyer Michele R.J. Allinotte, founder of Allinotte Law Office focuses on guiding families and small business owners to make the best legal and financial decisions over their lifetime. For more information, please visit www.yourcornwalllawyer.com.
This post originally appeared on the Seaway News online: http://www.cornwallseawaynews.com/Business/Personal-finance/2010-05-18/article-1118151/Buying-a-Home:-Why-Do-I-Need-a-Lawyer-and-What-Does-My-Lawyer-Do%3F/1.
Are You Planning On Getting Hit By A Bus?
As you know, I do estate planning, which means I talk to clients about what might happen should they die or become incapacitated.
For some reason, the phrase “So, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow …” tends to come up quite often during my conversations with clients. Realistically speaking, many of my clients will have no need for their estate planning documents until they are well into their old age, so some of the things we plan for will never actually happen.
But we do plan for them because, you never know, you just might get hit by a bus some day. And if you did, what would happen?
I’ve been thinking about this for a few days from a few different angles.
The first is that my husband was at a work meeting and one of the topics was planning for succession at his place of work. The complaint was that there was not formal training to mentor those employees who might eventually move up the ladder, so to speak.
When my husband and I talked about that, I said that yes, there needs to be a plan for when people retire, but also, you need to think about people getting hit by a bus (see, it comes up often!). What would happen if an employee/supervisor/manager didn’t show up for work one day? Would people know what he was working on? Could things be picked up where they were left off? Is there essential information about the work place that only that individual knows? These are all things that every work place needs to consider.
See, the thing is, I actually know someone who got hit by a bus. When I worked in Ottawa, it happened. One of the IT employees was walking to work and was struck. He was conscious and so he was able to make a phone call. His first phone call was not to his family, but to his supervisor at work! Thankfully he was ok, but what would have happened if he wasn’t?
Another reason I have been thinking about this is because I knew I was attending a meeting last week and the presentation topic was succession planning for business owners.
It was a great presentation on a topic so many business owners tend to ignore or delay their decision making (sometimes until it is too late). The statistics back me up on this one – according to an October 2006 study by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, over 65% of small and medium sized business owners were intending to retire within 10 years. Of all business owners surveyed, only 10% had a formal plan to exit the business. Some had an informal plan, but over 50% of business owners had no plan at all!
Thinking about your death isn’t exactly fun. But we all have a 100% chance of dying. Hopefully, we won’t get hit by a bus tomorrow (or any day) but it is much easier to plan for it now than to leave our families, our work places and our businesses to pick up the pieces if we don’t have a plan.
If I Don’t Own Anything, Why Do I Need A Will?
One of the most frequent questions people as me is “Do I need a will?”. When I say yes, everyone over the age of 18 who is competent to make a will should do so, the reply is often, “Well, I don’t own anything.”
Firstly, if you have children, even if you think you don’t own anything, you absolutely need to make a will. A will is the only way in Ontario that you can appoint who should take care of your children in the event that both you and their other parent were to die. I could go on about more reasons why parents need to make a will, but that is the most basic and essential reason.
Secondly, are you sure you don’t actually own anything? Do you have a bank account? Are you entitled to receive recurring income from employment or other sources? Do you own life insurance? Do you have any sort of pension, RRSPs, RESPs, no matter how small? Do you own any investments, GICs, mutual funds, Savings Bonds, etc? Do you own a car, a motorcycle or other personal property? Do you rent an apartment? Is there furniture, a TV, stereo equipment, et cetera in your apartment or your residence? If you answered yes to even one of these questions, you own something.
When you own something, that “stuff” needs to go somewhere if you die. Your will can say who gets your property and who deals with distributing your property (and dealing with your burial and other matters) after you die.
Also, if you rent an apartment or a house, someone will need to clear that out and terminate your lease with the landlord.
If you don’t have anything in place when you die, do you know who would step forward to make arrangements and deal with the items you left behind? Do you know if they would be able to deal with your items without a will? Do you know if they would have enough money to make funeral arrangements? Do you know if they would need to apply to the court to administer your estate (which could end up costing more than the value of your estate’s assets)?
These are all things that a lawyer can talk to you about so you can figure out what it is that you want to happen after your death and make a plan so your loved ones know what to do.
