A deed is something you probably don’t think much about until you have to buy, sell, or otherwise transfer real property. A deed is the legal instrument that transfers ownership of that property from one party to another. So when you are the person granting the deed (the grantor), and especially when you’re the person […]
Divorce involves the division of marital property, and some property is easier to divide than others. The joint bank account can be closed and the contents split right down the middle. Much more challenging, for a variety of reasons, is the division of most retirement plans. If you or your spouse have an employer-provided retirement […]
Just about every adult needs an estate plan, but few need one more than unmarried partners. Many people assume estate planning needs to be a priority only for those who are wealthy or have young children. Those are certainly important reasons to create an estate plan, but they are far from the only ones. The […]
How are divorce attorneys like bartenders and hairstylists? We often get to hear secrets our clients don’t share with most other people. But unlike bartenders and hairstylists, hearing secrets—or not hearing them—can affect our ability to do our jobs well. You might share a secret with your bartender because you’ve been seeing him every week […]
An increasing number of people are deciding to sell their house without the help of a real estate agent. These “for sale by owner,” or FSBO, transactions, offer sellers a number of advantages. For one thing, when you do a FSBO, you, as the seller, have total control over all aspects of the sale. You […]
For the first eighteen years of our children’s lives, you have the authority to make all major decisions for them, including financial and medical ones. So accustomed are you to this state of affairs, that it may not occur to you that when they wake up on their eighteenth birthday, the legal landscape has shifted. […]
Divorce carries with it a number of financial considerations: will you stay in the marital home, let your spouse take it, or sell it? Will there be spousal support? How will you divide up your retirement accounts? But one thing many people fail to think about is Social Security benefits, possibly because during the divorce […]
If the phrase “estate planning for pets” calls to mind pampered heiresses with spoiled, fluffy dogs, or old ladies with wall-to-wall cats in their apartments, you probably think estate planning for pets is absurd or frivolous. But imagine for a moment the elderly widower whose dog has been a constant companion since his wife died, […]
For many people, buying a home is the biggest financial investment they will ever make. In a residential real estate purchase, you want to be sure that you are paying a fair price and getting what you expect. Part of the process, typically, is a home inspection. Are there ever circumstances in which you should […]
The family division of the Michigan circuit court system is responsible for hearing family law and domestic cases, including divorce, child support and child custody. When people enter into a family law matter in Michigan, they often imagine that they will have the opportunity to give the judge all the information that they feel is […]
