April 22nd, 2012
Have you given any thought to who will receive your digital photos or iTunes collection? Assets like these, which we will call digital assets, are becoming much more prevalent with so many places to purchase and store them on the internet. These assets are subject to property law as intangible assets and contract law since your use of certain media are governed by the contract that you “signed” when you joined a site. Because of their uniqueness as assets, they are not talked about much from an estate planning prospective, but probably should be. After all, if you have thousands of photographs on your computer or the Internet, who should get the rights to them?
As important may be who will get access to all of your online accounts (like Facebook, Twitter and The DocSafe) if you become disabled or at the time of your death. Imagine at your death that your loved ones cannot gain access to your accounts for a variety of reasons – they don’t know that they exist, or they don’t have the account information (username or password).
What happens if you own several domain names that are valuable? We own several domains (www.trustedcounselors.com, for example) which get renewal notices through our email accounts. If our loved ones don’t know about or have access to our email accounts, our domain registrations may very well expire and be lost forever.
Here are a few suggestions for digital assets:
1. Make an inventory of all of your digital assets and update it at least annually. Your inventory should also include a listing of all websites in which you have a username and password along with those usernames and passwords.
2. Share your inventory with a trusted family member or advisor. Give them instructions to access and secure your digital assets in the event of death or disability. In doing so, you would be smart to give this inventory to your named personal representative and agent under your power-of-attorney. Keeping your inventory in The DocSafe will also allow your trusted family members ready access.
3. If you have specific wishes for the disposition of those assets, include them in your Florida Will or Florida Revocable Trust. Failing to do so may result in family members who will fight of your digital assets.
4. Contact us if you need help updating your estate plan. Your digital assets, in particular your photos, may not have monetary value, but they likely have sentimental value. Do not let your family have unnecessary fights over these assets!
Tags: digital assets in estate planning, Estate Plan, Family Estate Plan, Florida Revocable Trust, Florida Will, Joshua T. Keleske, Last Will, Last Will & Testament, Lawyer, living trust, Revocable Trust, South Tampa, Tampa Estate Planning, Tampa Wills, Trusted Counsel of Tampa Bay
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April 14th, 2012
My clients know that I love brevity. I think that if you can say something in one sentence of 10-12 words, that’s great. In fact, if that 10 word sentence can be cut to six, then count me in. After all, why do you need to stretch it out one thought to 20 sentences?
Lawyers are often accused of writing something to death and usually doing so in some foreign language that no one can understand. I think that can happen for any number of reasons, some of which are of no consequence. However, from my experience, extended drafting usually comes from a problem that was revealed in a past document or court case that lawyers read about.
Let me share an example:
Several years ago, I was handling a trust administration dispute in which a simple phrase was at issue. The wording used in the trust boilerplate was ambiguous; this instrument was drafted many years earlier by another attorney. The language appeared to require a distribution of the trust principal to the beneficiary, but some boilerplate in the back of the document loosely suggested that the trust could retain the funds in trust. I represented the trustee who saw it one way, while the beneficiary saw it another. In this instance, the beneficiary had substance abuse problems, and the trustee wanted to hold funds back in trust.
After settling the dispute following eight months of arguing and legal fees, I soon realized that this “ambiguous” language was very common in Tampa trust documents, including my own! I immediately took that six word phrase and expanded on it so that we created clarity for future Florida trust instruments. Six words became forty-two words, but I believe that those additional words will help to eliminate these types of disputes.
This issue is presented all of the time, which causes a lawyer to expand/revise/rewrite language in a Will or Trust until it becomes an epic novel. My suggestion the next time you get a draft from an attorney is simple: read the draft, make notes throughout (including your questions), and then ask your attorney to explain the draft in whatever detail you feel is important. Do not forget that those documents, however long that they may be, represent your wishes and not your attorney’s. You deserve to understand every bit of it.
Tags: Estate, Estate Planning, Florida Revocable Trust, Joshua T. Keleske, Last Will, Last Will & Testament, Probate, Revocable Trust, South Tampa, Tampa Bay, Tampa Estate Planning, Taxpayer
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April 1st, 2012
This is our last reminder to those of you who procrastinate! If you own a company or are responsible for filing your company’s Florida Annual Report, you have until May 1, 2012 to file. The penalty for filing late is significant – $400.
Information on filing an Annual Report can be obtained at www.sunbiz.org. You can submit your Annual Report and pay the filing fee on-line. To do this, you will need the document number assigned to the business by the State. This number is located in any email that you should have received from the State in January. If you do not receive an email, you can locate the number by searching the sunbiz website for your business record. Feel free to give our office a call if you would like us to walk you through the filing process FREE OF CHARGE. - This is not an April Fool’s Joke – We will gladly help you with this process!
Also, do not forget that the act of filing your Annual Report does not negate the responsibility of businesses from following all statutory requirements to maintain those businesses, such as holding annual shareholder and board meetings (e.g., for corporations).
Tags: Business Planning, Clearwater, Florida LLC law, Joshua Keleske Corporate Attorney, South Tampa Attorney, St. Petersburg corporations, Tampa, Tampa Attorney
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