Share Your Stories to Make Those Family Heirlooms Truly Priceless

As an estate planning lawyer in Cornwall and area, I have discussions with clients all the time about the assets they will leave behind to their loved ones after they pass away – their investments, their real estate, and their personal items in their home. Although personal items normally have the lowest monetary value, these items are often priceless to certain people.

When I talk to clients about their wills and estate planning, I stress the importance of leaving a legacy for your loved ones that is about more than just the money in the bank and the “stuff”. The stories that people have to tell are equally important and should be captured and shared. It is the telling of your stories that creates sentimental value in a personal item and makes that item a family heirloom, whether it be valuable in monetary terms or not. This was recently made very clear to me.

Allinotte Law Office has expanded, and with the expansion, things are looking a little empty and the walls seem bare. I need some art work and prints to cover these bare spaces. Conveniently, my parents have just done some work at their house and have taken some of their pieces down and were looking to store them or get rid of them. So I went to take a look to see what might work at my office. I walked away with some items that are very special to me and to my family.

Two of the pieces were crocheted doilies that my mother had framed several years ago. These doilies were made by my maternal great-grandmother when she was a girl in the Netherlands. My great-grandmother passed away in her nineties over twenty years ago, so these items are likely close to a century old. My daughter is named after my great-grandmother, so I will pass these pieces on to her when she is older.

The other two items that are priceless to me are two charcoal sketches that belonged to my maternal grandfather. They were sketched in the early 1940s and are of a mine and a castle in the Netherlands. Although I will likely never see the places in the sketches (if they are even still standing), looking at them makes me feel closer to my grandfather. My son has the same name as my grandfather (although he is actually named after his great-grandfather on my husband’s side, but that is another story!), so I will likely give these sketches to him later in life.

In addition to being aesthetically pleasing (and filling up the empty spaces), I now have these pieces that I will see every day that belonged to my relatives who are no longer with us. They are family heirlooms to me and I will treasure them. But if I didn’t know the stories behind them, I could have easily passed them over. At one time, the doilies were yellowed and folded up somewhere and those charcoal sketches were in a drawer or a box. So I thank my mother for sharing the stories about these items with me. I encourage you to look around at your important possessions and to share the stories about them with your loved ones so they too can see that these items are priceless.

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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, estates and 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.

Love Stories for Valentine’s Day

For Valentine’s Day I thought I would share this lovely post by my colleague, Candice Aiston. Candice is a lawyer (and a friend) who is an Estate Planning Attorney for families in Portland, Oregon.  Wherever you are and whomever you are sharing your Valentine’s Day with, I wish you a wonderful day.

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Love Stories for Valentine’s Day

by Candice N. Aiston

In my adult life, I have learned a lot about love, and I guess the biggest thing I’ve learned is that love is not a feeling, love is the things we do. Do you remember what you thought about love when you were younger? I remember thinking that love must be thrilling, exhilarating and blissful. My ideas about love probably started with some Disney movie, and then continued with 90210 and whatever other TV shows and movies I was into as a teenager. Although I heard from many grown-ups in my live that “love is in an action”, I didn’t really grasp that until I was older.

You know what else I’ve learned about love?  I’ve learned that martyring myself doesn’t prove my love for someone.  I’ve learned that taking great care of myself is a way of loving my family.  I’ve learned that sometimes, when it comes to my kids, I don’t have to say yes to every single thing.  They might not understand my love now, but they will when they are older.  I didn’t always understand that my parents loved me, and I’m sure there were several years when they didn’t feel very warm and fuzzy about me, but their acts of love continued – making sure I was fed, clothed, educated, and given opportunities – and I can see that today.

The truth is, most of us are suckers for love stories, but not the unsexy stories that focus on real acts of love.  We like romance.  And when it comes to our kids, we enjoy those special warm and fuzzy moments like Christmas or birthdays, but we don’t feel warm and fuzzy about the loving acts that we do every day.  Changing a diaper is a loving act, trust me.  (Consider the alternative.)  Going to work every day is a loving act.  Making sacrifices to raise your kids according to your beliefs is a loving act.  Sometimes, sacrificing the feel-good moments for the greater good is a loving act (like when you have to say no to something your kid wants to buy, because you are spending that money on something more important, like contributing to your retirement account).

And here are some love stories that I see in my line of work every day:

~The spouses who execute healthcare directives, so that one spouse is not left agonizing over important medical decisions.

~The spouses who organize their assets so that a surviving spouse doesn’t have to go to court to gain access to them.

~The working spouse who buys a life insurance policy so that a stay-at-home spouse is not left penniless and hopeless if something happens.

~The parents who start planning for retirement and end-of-life care early, so that theirkids are not overly burdened with their care later in life.

~The parents who execute a KidsCare Plan, so that their kids are always with the right people, no matter what happens.

~The parents who ensure that their family always has quick access to financial resources and are never left paying thousands of dollars to get access to the money they need.

~The parents who make sure that the kids’ inheritance is safeguarded until they are through college so that they have every opportunity in life.

~The parent  who makes sure that their child always has an inheritance, even if the surviving spouse remarries.

~The parents who record a special message to their kids, so that their kids always have guidance, even if the parents are no longer there.

And there are so many more.  Estate Planning is the ultimate act of love – ensuring that your family is cared for even if you’re not here.  It probably won’t give you that warm fuzzy feeling that you get when you see your kid on her first ride at Disneyland, and you won’t get any I-love-you’s from your kids for doing it, but you’ll know that your loved ones will always be taken care of, no matter what happens in life.

That’s what love is all about.

Candice N. Aiston is an Estate Planning Attorney for families in the Portland, Oregon area.  She helps loving parents to prepare their families for a lifetime of security, prosperity, and guidance.  If you would like to receive her free report, “The 9 Common Planning Mistakes Parents Make,” please visit http://candiceaistonlaw.com/.

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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Are you interested in using this article in your newsletter or on your blog or website?

You can, but  please use this complete caption with it:

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.

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.

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!).

Time To Straighten Up Your Financial Accounts

It’s not uncommon to accumulate things over the years, without taking time to straighten them out periodically. That applies to our finances as well as to our possessions. How many credit cards do you carry? How many stocks and bonds, brokerage accounts, mutual funds, and RRSPs or RRIFs do you own? It’s not just a matter of finding time to keep track of all these different financial assets. Often, these assets are acquired without a clear-cut strategy, so you may own assets with similar investment objectives or that are not compatible with your financial goals. If you feel it’s time to straighten out your finances, consider these steps:

• Make a list of all your assets and debts. List each one individually, so you have a sense of how many different accounts you’re dealing with.
• Go through each one of your investments. Make sure you understand why you own each one. Are you really adding diversification to your portfolio or do you have overlapping investments? Assess the prospects of each investment and decide whether you should continue to own it.
• Look for ways to consolidate accounts. Try to get down to one bank account, one brokerage account, and one RRSP. This can significantly reduce the time needed to review and reconcile accounts.
• Assess your outstanding debts. Do you really need all those credit cards? Consider keeping only one or two cards, so it’ll be easier to monitor balances. Look for ways to reduce the cost of your borrowing. Is it time to take another look at refinancing your mortgage?

Modified from a post from financial-topics.com. For the original post, click here http://www.financial-topics.com/37020/e_article001557073.cfm?x=bg90W4s,bgjH7Mb7.

Get it in Writing … Real Life Reasons for Legal Agreements

Legal agreements are so boring, aren’t they? And, if you are like most people, you are making a lot of deals in life without documenting those deals. I always give people the benefit of the doubt and trust, so I do it myself. And, I’m a lawyer!

That means, if I do it, you do it too. 

But, having an agreement isn’t about not trusting someone. It’s about knowing that you’re on the same page. You might think you both agreed to something when in reality you thought one thing and they thought something else.

When you have an agreement in place, that risk is minimized.

Below are some real life examples (including one from my own life) of how putting it in writing can actually increase the likelihood of success for whatever you are doing, whether it’s personal or business related. And I’ve got some easy tips for creating your own legal agreements.

I recently hired a live-in nanny/house manager. She’s great and she’s saving my sanity. She worked with me for about 6 weeks and everything was great.

Then, things started getting not so great. Not bad, but I noticed little things starting to slip through the cracks – meals not ready on time, cats food bowls not refilled, not waking up on time a couple of times. Things like that.  Little things, really.

But, enough of these little things could add up to unhappiness and resentment.  So, I wrote up an agreement.

It’s a simple agreement that spells out my expectations. (If you want to see it, post a comment on the blog with your email address and I’ll send it to you.) You are more than welcome to use it as a basis for your own agreement.

I emailed it to her and let her know I wanted her input on it as well.  It’s an agreement, meaning we both need to agree to what’s included. We sat down together, went over each of the points, and we each signed it.  Simple. And, it fleshed out some places we were not on the same page, which could have become a problem later.

Here are some other situations in which you want to have written agreements:

• Buying property with another person
• Hiring an employee or an independent contractor (in fact, if they are an independent contractor, an agreement is even more important because otherwise you are at risk of them being reclassified as an employee, which means you owe all sorts of back taxes)
• Getting married
• Having a baby
• Starting a business
• Buying a business
• Moving in together
• Subletting your house
• Contracting for services
• Hiring a handyman or contractor

So, how do you get your legal agreement done easily?  Here’s a few simple steps:

1. Find a Template To Start From

Even lawyers don’t create legal documents from scratch. We use something we’ve created before or ask our friends to send us something they’ve used in a similar situation.

You can do the same by searching Google for the basic document you need … i.e., nanny agreement, cohabitation agreement, roommate agreement, parenting agreement, independent contractor agreement. You may be able to find something free or you may have to pay a few bucks.  It’s worth it.

For a template nanny agreement, post your email addy in the comments section of this blog post and I’ll send you my nanny agreement as a starting place for your nanny agreement.

2. Modify the Template to Fit Your Situation

The template you find is not going to be perfect for your situation.  It’s going to need modification based on the specifics of your situation. Use the template as a guide to spark your imagination of what you might want to include. There are generally very few mandatory parts of an agreement (other than the date and your signatures), so get creative. This is about your agreement and what you want.

3. Get Buy-In

Once you’ve put in everything you want, email it to the person you are creating the agreement with and ask them for their thoughts on the agreement. Make sure to mention the agreement is a starting place for discussion (if it is) and that you welcome their input.

4. Sign It, Date It and File It

Written agreements just need to be signed and dated to make them valid. Each of you should sign the agreement and date it. You generally don’t need witnesses or notarization.  Just your signatures and the date should do. Then, make sure that each of you has a copy of the agreement to refer back to in the event of uncertainty or a later disagreement.

5. Get it Reviewed … Maybe!

Sometimes, you need to get your agreements reviewed by a lawyer, sometimes you don’t.

So, when should you have a lawyer review your agreement? Generally, when it has anything to do with money or your business, it’s a good idea to get it reviewed. If you think there’s a possibility you might need to legally enforce the agreement some day, get it reviewed. One important note here on prenuptial agreements or marital agreements, in some states, like California, the agreement is not legally valid unless both parties were represented by a lawyer. That doesn’t mean it’s not helpful to have an agreement, but it won’t be legally enforceable.

If the purpose of the agreement is about setting and managing expectations, it’s not necessary to get a lawyer involved. Just having the agreement is the point.Don’t have a personal lawyer in your life who can review simple agreements for you?  You should!  Get your own Personal Family Lawyer here.

By Alexis Martin Neely. Reprinted with permission from www.familywealthmatters.com