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When I think of a family office many things come to mind.  I think of a family that has accumulated wealth.  I think of a family that wants to protect their wealth, grow their wealth safely, and manage their wealth to provide for themselves and future generations.
A family office can provide a financial resource center for the extended family.  This can be where each member of the family can go to start the process of identifying issues and look for solutions.
A family office does not have to be a physical office for one family.  Some family offices serve multiple families.

Life just happens.  Sometimes even the best-laid plans can go wrong.  How do you respond when this happens to you?  Do you easily give up when you’re overwhelmed?  Remaining calm can be difficult when things are chaotic so the usual reaction is panic.  As a bankruptcy attorney, I often see this when people are facing a financial crisis.  But let me tell you that even the worst problems rarely mean that it’s the end of the world.  What may seem like a dead end may actually turn out to be a new path for a better life.

So you finally have a website!  It looks good, features all of your products and services, and makes it very easy for customers to find what they’re looking for.  But wait… there’s one more thing you need to check.  Can your customers and potential customers actually find your website?
Often, once your site is up the real difficult work begins.  First, try searching for your company name.  Does your website show up at the very top of the first page of results?  It should.  Then try searching for your top two or three primary keyword phrases.  Does your site show up on the first page or two?  If not, it’s time to turn your sites to search engine optimization (often called SEO).

You will undoubtedly encounter many different types of personalities in the work place, each with their own unique blend of nuances. But there are four basic types of personalities from which they are based, which is commonly referred to as A, B, C, and D.  Although volumes have been written on such personality traits, here is a synopsis:
Type “A” Personality - Is a highly independent and driven personality, typically representing the leaders in business. 

I’m not talking about the Hawaiian favorite canned meat, but the kind you get in your email.  The unwanted messages that you didn’t ask for and have no idea how they got your email address in the first place.  The emails you try to get rid of but keep coming and never seem to stop.  That is SPAM.
If you work for a large company you likely have a good SPAM filtering service and get very few SPAM. 

It is always good when parents can agree to a child support order without a court hearing.  A settlement lends to certainty; the parties are more apt to comply with the order because they participated in the making of the order; and it saves everyone time away from work and attorneys fees.
Most of the time, people try and negotiate “non-modifiable” child or spousal support orders, meaning that the agreed to amount cannot be changed. 

In these times of incredibly intense competition for too few opportunities, job seekers must evaluate every potential explanation.  But when does reaching for an explanation become a sorry litany of lame excuses?
So many times when I talk with job seekers about the positions that got away, I hear them conjecture that they think they must be too old to compete with younger people.  While it would let everything off the hook to be able to hide behind age, it’s usually not that simple.

These days, business owners are struggling with slow collection of accounts receivable and increased bad debts.  Despite accounts receivable being a significant asset, companies will insure other assets, i.e., inventory, machinery, equipment, vehicles, etc, but leave this vital cash generating component of their business uninsured and vulnerable.
Credit insurance can be a cost effective and flexible way to ensure you get paid for the goods and services you sell to customers. 

The way someone would end a marriage in California, would be to file a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage in the Superior Court.  It used to entail a “complaint” for “divorce,” but that, and a lot of other terms and rules, changed in the 1970s.  After a petition is filed, a court is then impressed with the responsibility of declaring the parties to be single persons in the sight of the law, as opposed to married persons; and to seeing that their community property is identified, evaluated and divided equally. 

If you are an owner of, or partner in a business, you may have an additional layer of estate planning to consider—especially since the business may be your family’s largest asset.  Selling your interest in your business to managers or partners through a buy-sell agreement—a document that is binding upon the parties and usually drafted by an attorney—can be an effective strategy, especially since a funding mechanism can be built into the arrangement.  There are two main types of buy-sell agreements:

I asked my daughter (now 28) to write from her perspective, the benefits of having access to a Certified Public Accountant.  This is what she wrote:
“My life is filled with things to do… run my business, take care of the kids, maintain the inside/outside of my house, pay bills, go to meetings/practice, and get together with friends and family.  On top of all that, I need to find a way to manage my money… yet I hate accounting!

How many times in the past 12 months has your computer been infected with viruses?  It is a known fact that most people get viruses in their computers at least once or twice a year.  So what is a computer virus?  Just like a biological virus which spreads through its DNA into a host cell and...

This is a very important question, for if your activity is deemed to be a hobby you cannot take a business loss.  In addition, your deductions from this activity will be treated as miscellaneous itemized deductions and are reduced by two percent of your adjusted gross income.  This means that while you would have to report as income all of your hobby receipts, you probably won’t be able to deduct 100 percent of your expenses.  A rotten deal.
Having a hobby means that your primary purpose is to have fun rather than to generate profits.  This doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun in your business nor does it mean that you have to show a profit.  But if you do incur losses you must be able to prove that your primary goal is to make money.

One of the consequences of the digital age is that many things have become very complex.  Complexity can restrict your ability to think things through.  Complexity also can reduce the productivity of employees.  This can influence the level of profit in a company.
A good goal is to strive to simplify as many things in your business as possible.  Do this on an ongoing basis.  Do not let up.  Have a sustained effort with a planned program, with a simple effective process.

Are you facing a mountain of debt and don’t know what to do in order to avoid getting buried?  Debt problems can wreak havoc on your personal life in many ways.  And left unsolved, they can spill over into other areas of your life, causing problems not only at home, but maybe even at work or in your business.
If you are struggling every month to make even minimum payments on your debts, maybe you know what I am talking about.  Maybe you’ve been trying hard to break free from the vicious cycle of debt but you just don’t know where to start in finding a way out.  

Expanding use of the Internet by Merchant Banks for direct deposit of credit card transactions and banks for bill paying has greatly simplified the banking process for the small business owner.  Unfortunately, there is still a significant amount of risk that accounts will be breached and your funds will disappear overnight.  While in most cases you’ll get your money back.  The burden is on you to drive the recovery.  Meanwhile you don’t have the use of those funds.  The purpose of this article is to help you with a strategy for setting up your cash accounts to minimize the potential for theft.

Many married couples wisely get life insurance for both spouses during the marriage.  But what about when you get divorced?
California Family Code Section 4360 provides that the Court may order a party who is required to pay spousal support to provide reasonable “security” for the support obligation, such as life insurance.

While most people will have received a promotional item at one point in their careers, the question of what exactly are promotional items can be a bit trickier - as they can be almost any business item.
The basic definition or answer to the question what exactly are promotional items is that these are items that are emblazoned with your company’s name, logo, and contact information - which are then given out to customers or prospective customers.