If you’re looking to improve your home, at some point you will be working with a contractor.  Many people are understandably nervous about entering into a construction contract.  It’s an often expensive, and almost always disruptive, project to get involved in, and people share horror stories of the terrible contractors who overcharged them or left […]

Will and estate lawyers in Santa Clara County are becoming intimately aware of their clients’ financial situations, and it’s just a fact of life that many people have considerable debt.  Whether it is the person setting up an estate plan or one who has inherited from it, there are often questions regarding what happens to […]

For those who love their stepchildren as their own, it may come as a surprise that this bond isn’t enough when it comes to estate planning in California.  Because of the laws of inheritance, stepchildren do not always automatically inherit when a stepparent dies. Let’s say you’re creating your estate plan, and you stipulate that […]

Most business contracts feature some “boilerplate” clauses covering a number of items that may seem incidental to the main thrust of the agreement.  Many people are tempted to skim past this language or ignore it entirely, assuming it is “just standard,” but these clauses can sometimes make an enormous difference. This month, I would like […]

As our lives become increasingly digital, more and more of the assets we accumulate are based in technology or created online.   Estate attorneys in Santa Clara have the important job of educating their clients on how to handle “digital assets” in the event of a person’s death or incapacity, and then helping the client […]

By the time most people reach adulthood, they have experienced leasing property.  Whether it’s a house, an apartment, or just a room in a shared home, leasing a living space is a common experience. Leasing a business property, however, is very different from leasing a residential property.  A lot of the terms of a residential […]

Generally, we hear about prenuptial agreements when a celebrity split is splashed across the tabloids.  What you don’t usually hear about are the Bay Area prenup lawyers who are charged with making sure the stars are covered in the case of a high-profile divorce.  We may not have a lot of famous folks here in […]

A good Santa Clara estate planning attorney is going to help you take a lot of things into consideration when putting together your plan.  Various factors influence your estate planning after all: finances, children, age… but what about your gender?  Is estate planning for women different than it is for men? Actually, there are some […]

Part I of a two-part piece looking at the most important estate planning documents for young professionals. Bay Area estate planning for young professionals?  Perhaps nothing about the word “young” makes you think of the need for estate planning.  The truth is, however, that those folks who have recently graduated from school and into professional […]

There are a lot of advantages to organizing your business as a Corporation or LLC: limiting your personal liability, having a clear business structure when adding owners, and allowing your business to continue after you are gone, just to name a few.  But it is true that (like most things in business) these benefits come […]