With Your Family in Mind

As every holiday rolls around, families repeat and make new traditions.  These evoke memories of years past and celebrate the years to come.  The Christmas holidays are a wonderful time to make memories together, decorating the house, baking delicious cookies and seeing family and friends.  If you are looking for ideas of how to make your holiday this year special and new or to come up with some wonderful new holiday traditions, we have a couple of ideas for you to use this year.

The Magazine of Santa Clarita readers write in regularly about the voice-acting business.  Our question this month addresses bilingual work for Spanish-speaking voice actors.

Many couples are unaware of the effects of separating as a prelude to divorce.  The key questions are: Why does it matter? and When does separation begin?

Studies have found that frequent family dinners were associated with lower rates of teen smoking, drinking and drug use. 

CCRC will host its 18th annual Legislative Forum on Friday, November 16, 2007 at the Odyssey Restaurant in Granada Hills at 7:30 a.m.  This annual event brings together elected officials, educators, caregivers and advocates to enjoy breakfast while participating in a panel discussion on early care and education in CCRC’s community of the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope Valleys.

I am proud to be a board member of the Santa Clarita Valley Bar Association, which now has well over 100 local attorney members.  Our Bar Association members have been very hard at work these past few months.

Compassionate professionals share qualities that elicit a sense of trust and hope in their clients.  Honesty, empathy, understanding, and sincere concern provide a strong foundation for the professional relationship and allow clients to develop and practice new skills within the supportive environment of the therapeutic relationship.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is reaching out to inform wartime veterans and surviving spouses of deceased wartime veterans about an under-used, special monthly pension benefit called Aid and Attendance.  The Aid and Attendance pension benefit may be available to wartime veterans and surviving spouses who have in-home care or who live in nursing homes or assisted-living facilities.  Many elderly veterans and surviving spouses whose incomes are above the congressionally mandated legal limit for a VA pension may still be eligible for the special monthly Aid and Attendance benefit if they have large medical expenses, including nursing home expenses, for which they do not receive reimbursement.  To qualify, claimants must be incapable of self-support and in need of regular personal assistance.

At the August 28th meeting, all five City Council members unanimously selected Duane Harte to serve as the City’s Parks, Recreation and Community Services Commissioner.  Commission member Duane Harte was nominated to serve on the Commission by Councilmember Tim Ben Boydston, replacing previous Parks Commissioner Karin Nelson, who resigned on June 8, 2007.

One out of every five children will encounter a child predator.  You can keep children safe from these criminals with some of these tips.

Assemblyman Cameron Smyth, R-Santa Clarita, joined his colleagues in rejecting legislation introduced by Democrats that would have established an unaccountable new sentencing commission with wide authority to alter California’s mandatory sentencing laws.  Smyth said it would weaken California’s tough-on-crime public safety laws and place families at risk.

One of the greatest fears of elderly Americans is that they may require nursing home care.  This not only means a great loss of personal autonomy, but also a tremendous financial price.  Depending on location and level of care, nursing homes cost between $35,000 and $150,000 per year.  Most people end up paying for nursing home care out of their savings until they run out.  Then they can qualify for Medi-Cal to pick up the cost.  However, with careful planning, whether in advance or in response to an unanticipated need for care, you can protect your estate for your spouse or children.

The announcement of a completely new line of iPods by Apple Inc. on September 5 is great news for consumers.  The iPod continues to be the coolest Media Player on the market.  I don’t know how many iPods Apple can sell, but it seems to me that there is no end in sight.

Now is the time to think about and plan for holiday schedules involving children with divorced or divorcing parents.  If a parent thinks that there will be some conflict about where the children will spend the holiday, the parent should address this issue now and not wait until later.

Here in the Santa Clarita Valley we enjoy one of the lowest crime rates in the country.  Still burglaries do occur here.  My advice is never think that it can’t happen to you.  Although no actions you take can definitely prevent your home from being burglarized, there are some simple proactive measures that work well as deterrents.  These include the following:

We are born to love, but eventually we learn to fear.  In October kids gleefully don superhero masks and costumes on Halloween.  Adults swapped superhero masks for others.  ‘Trick-or Treat’ becomes ‘I’ll be happy if only’ – if only I lose 10 pounds, if only my bills were paid or I worked harder and longer, my children could have more.

As an attorney who designs estate plans, handles after-death issues and counsels clients on disability and long term care issues, I see hard working and honest people in my office shocked when they discover their previously prepared estate planning documents are poorly drafted.  The documents have not been prepared to protect them from financial ruin should they have the misfortune of suffering a stroke or a major illness such as Alzheimer’s or some other catastrophic disease. 

None of us are born in debt.  We all start out in life with a clean slate.  But we can fall into traps along the way.  The most common trap I’ve encountered is committing to a future lifestyle that is not based on current income.
This can happen early with college students.  For example, Sandy is 21 and lives at home with her parents.  She earns $20,000 a year.  Her parents cover her basic living expenses while still in college and she covers her personal expenses.