With Your Family in Mind

Where have you placed your original estate planning documents?  Somewhere water or fireproof?  Does anyone else know where to find your documents?  In California, if your original Will cannot be found, it is “presumed revoked.”  This means any or all of the directives in your Will could be ignored and the persons to whom you wanted to distribute your estate could be disregarded.
It doesn’t matter how many copies of your Will exist. 

Do you remember the sad saga of Terri Schiavo?  After suffering brain damage, she had been in a vegetative state for years.  She had signed no health care directive, and her family could not agree on whether to “pull the plug” or not. From 1996 until 2005, her case was in the courts, reflecting the family’s acrimony, second-guessing and venting of personal feelings.

The answer to this question is – “only if the remarriage is a legally valid one.”  In, Marriage of Left, 208 Cal.App 4th 1137, 146 Cal.Rptr.3d 181, Mr. Left married Andrea Left in June 2001 but the marriage went sour and Mrs. Left filed for divorce in 2005.  As part of their dissolution settlement agreement, Mr. Left was to pay $14,590 a month for child support and $32,547 for spousal support.  The trial court entered a judgment as to marital status only on June 3, 2008, but reserved jurisdiction over the remaining issues.

As an intern at Inner Circle Foster Care and Adoption Agency I have learned a great deal of information that will be with me throughout my entire career.  Building relationships with staff and the children placed with the agency will help me with my internship next year with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

Joanne and Tony throw the best keg parties in town.  The beer flows and a designated teen collects car keys at the door.  Teens mill around shouting over the pounding music.  Joanne and Tony are so popular they could have been voted Prom King and Queen. 
Ironically, Joanne and Tony graduated high school 25 years ago, and this is their son’s party.

Readers of The Magazine of Santa Clarita are always sending me terrific questions about the voice-acting business.  This is the sixth part of my answer regarding voice-over demos:

Q:  I’ve voiced a number of commercials, and think I’m ready to make a demo.  But do I really need to?  Any suggestions as to how to go about it? – Roberta K., Santa Clarita, CA

Imagine a place where friendship thrives and wellness radiates from every smile.  Imagine an oasis where adults of all ages come together to enjoy every breath of life while sharing a meal, a story, a session of restorative therapy or thirty minutes of fun and exercise.
Now picture this joyful place in your heart: a safe haven where it’s okay to have a memory impairment; a circle of friends where a traumatic brain injury will not exclude you from the in-crowd; and a safe environment where intergenerational friendships bloom like marigolds in the summer fields of our beloved Santa Clarita Valley.

A lot is being done to reform and ameliorate our Immigration laws lately.  The comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) will have a big impact on would-be-immigrants, be they on the business or family side of Immigration Law.  It is for this reason that we are urging interested individuals to be involved to the extent that they can now or ready themselves for what is to come.  Already, we are seeing movement in the availability of Immigrant visas for spouses and children under age 21 of green cardholders.  That movement forward is holding steady.

“My parents aren’t really getting a divorce.  They just aren’t going to be married any more.” – Anonymous (divorceandkids.com)
While much has been written about dating and re-partnering after divorce, there is scant research on the specifics of dating and the impact on the children.  Research suggests 80 percent of parents are dating in some form within one year of filing for divorce (Anderson & Greene, 2005). 

Did you know that Koinonia Family Services, a foster care and adoption agency, has been operating in Antelope Valley for over 20 years?  With the large growth of the Santa Clarita Valley over the past decade, the need for foster and adoptive homes has also grown.  Children from the ages of zero to 18 are in need of foster and adoptive homes. 

As a pastor for the past 16 years I have seen first hand families struggle with infidelity, loss of jobs, financial hardships, conflicts with raising teens and children, drug addictions and even death of a love one.  The good news is that the Lord Jesus has an answer and a way out through all of life’s challenges.

Our VA Accredited Attorneys assist veterans with a obtaining a variety of benefits through the Veterans Administration.  Most claims involve “Aid and Attendance” benefits, meaning tax-free monthly payments are made to the eligible veteran or surviving spouse.  This payment assists with the high cost of long-term care, either in the home, or in a care facility.  Most of those applying for Aid and Attendance benefits served at least one day during World War II or the Korean War.

Is it time for a career change or do you want more from you current job?  Is your high school graduation just around the corner?  A change can be a difficult process and can often take an extended amount of time to accomplish unless you have a plan.
Sometimes the hardest part of creating an action plan is investigating your options. 

Around this time of year when the weather starts getting nice again, parents tend to catch a disease called “summer fever.”  Symptoms include: leaving work early, playing golf, and blowing off every important financial decision until after the summer’s over!
This is usually a big mistake. 

With summer vacation right around the corner, thoughts on how to keep kids busy, entertained, structured, happy, and distracted from the throes of your divorce are probably beginning.
Kids who are home from school have a lot of available time that needs to be scheduled.  Some will benefit from going away to camp or to their grandparents, while others will benefit from more one-on-one time with parents because they may find the isolation from divorce as alienating.

When someone you love needs help to stay safely and comfortably at home, finding the right person can be a challenge.  Even though the benefits of having help are clear, the idea of inviting a stranger into your home understandably makes many people feel uncomfortable.  For most people, there are really two options for finding an in-home care provider: either hire a home care company, such as Visiting Angels, or hire a private independent caregiver.

Raising kids is tricky, right?  Darned if you do, darned if you don’t.  If you get overly involved, like a helicopter parent, your kids never learn to be self-reliant.  Not involved enough, a free-range parent, and kids go off the rails of life.  How are we supposed to know where the boundaries are and how and when to set them?  If this delicate balance of involvement is not done properly, our kids (and we) will pay the price in a variety of ways: drugs, conflict, failure, defiance, disrespect and no motivation. 

Foster Parent Appreciation Month in May provides a wonderful opportunity to honor and recognize the work of people making a difference in the lives of children in foster care.  It’s also a time to bring awareness to the great need for resource families to open their homes for fostering and/or adoption to these vulnerable children, especially older children and sibling sets of brothers and sisters who wish to remain together.