I have come across this question a lot from landlords and property managers who have provisions in their rental agreements to conduct an annual inspection or twice yearly inspections. The main reason for wanting an inspection is to make sure a rental unit does not fall into disrepair. But some landlords want to use inspections [...]
Well, last week was an interesting week for me. For the first time ever, I was selected to be on a jury. I was in court and out of the office for nearly four days on a misdemeanor jury trial. Being selected to serve on a jury is probably one of the last things you [...]
An issue I always run into in my landlord-tenant practice is the do-it-yourself owner who wants to maintain a landlord-tenant relationship and do everything from another state. This is often a huge problem for landlords who live quite far away. If a problem arises, they may have to travel long distances to handle their rental [...]
You may be wondering, Do I need to put my cars in my living trust? Here’s the short answer: if you are talking about the cars you use every day to go to and from work, you probably do not need to bother going down to the DMV and changing your ownership records. After all, [...]
One of the key tenements of estate planning is making your wishes known about who you want to raise your children if something were to happen to you as a parent. No one wants to think about a morbid situation like this. But your decision can be the key difference between choosing who you want [...]
I just got finished reading another online post about a living trust plan going wrong. The decedent had used Legal Zoom to create his legal trust plan. According to the post, the decedent had sent form letters provided by Legal Zoom to his banks and financial institutions to change the title of his assets to [...]
I was just reading on a legal website about how an uncle held a power of attorney over the deceased grandmother, and now the uncle is excluding certain family members from attending the grandmother's funeral. It sounds like that family had some major issues with one another to get to the point that one family [...]
Many of you may have heard about California allowing property owners to designate a “Transfer on Death” designation to automatically transfer ownership of a piece of real property as of January 1, 2016. This new “Transfer on Death” deed works a lot like a “Payable on Death” designation on a bank or other financial account [...]
You worked so hard to save your money. You put plenty away for your retirement, you paid off your home, and your financial house is in order. It took years of sacrifice and planning to put these things together. You did such a great job that your kids will have a good head start getting [...]
Over the Christmas holiday, I started thinking about our family’s real estate investments and other families in similar situations. As I mentioned in my personal bio, I grew up in the real estate investment business by working with my dad in his rental homes, gutting them, painting walls, and the like. My parents have several [...]
