By Thomas G. Glick
I know a lot of parents think about the summer being time off from school; however, many of the cases I take related to kids in school are best addressed now. This includes special education cases related to Individual Education Plans (IEP’s), but more importantly, kids that are going to start a new school that require guardianship in order to attend that new school in the fall.
The process of obtaining uncontested guardianship is not terribly expensive or difficult with an experienced attorney. However, it does have many steps including a home study and waiting for the appropriate monthly docket from the court. I always like to warn parents or guardians as soon as possible that the appropriate time to think about a guardianship for a child is as early as possible so we can be sure it is in place for the start of school in the fall. Most schools will require guardianship in order for a student to attend the public school of a non-parent.
It is also important for obtaining health insurance and other benefits for the child from a non-parent’s employer. The best time to start work on that is at the beginning of the summer. Often times by mid-July it becomes difficult to get a home study completed, record checks completed, and a court date set before the school year begins. Now is the time to start doing that.
05/24/11 2:08 PM
Special Needs | Comments Off |
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School’s Over – Time to Think About Fall
By Thomas G. Glick
I attended and graduated from a public school and I received an excellent education. However, I am often struck by the fact that of all the lessons I learned in high school, the vast majority that I use in my everyday life, flow not from the curriculum but instead from an extracurricular activity, speech and debate. This is true in the most intuitive way in that my duties as an attorney bring me to a courtroom where public speaking skills are beneficial. Moreover, my recent term as President of the Bar Association required that I make frequent public presentations. However, focusing only on the public speaking experience gained from high school speech and debate competitions (and later in college) overlooks the most important lessons I learned from speech and debate; the ability to critically think.
Most people are familiar with the famous line from the movie, The Paper Chase when Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman) states that the purpose of law school is primarily to teach you to “think like a lawyer”. My interpretation of this phrase is that law school is about learning critical thinking. It is having the ability to not just know what the legal precedent is but being able to ascertain, then present, the respective value of potentially conflicting legal precedent. This skill, more than any other, was highlighted throughout my education as well as during my participation in speech and debate. Speech and debate required that I research form and enunciate arguments on both sides of any given question including arguments that I did not personally believe in.
In retrospect, I think that this was the greatest educational benefit I learned in high school. (I do not intend to devalue much of the other education I received from my high school as much of it serves me well in a more practical context. I would also acknowledge that critical thinking skills were taught in high school but speech and debate made it so the lessons had to be learned in order to excel in head-to-head competition and not merely in the more ephemeral competition in achieving good grades.)
05/4/11 12:57 PM
Uncategorized | Comments Off |
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High School Speech & Debate For Future Lawyers; Not Just Public Speaking Skills
By Thomas G. Glick
A lot of clients call me looking for contingency fee agreements. You hear a lot of talk about contingency fees. In part because of lawyers that are advertising them. Lawyers that use contingency fee agreements typically advertise as “if you don’t win, you don’t pay any attorney fees” (though you may pay costs). The problem with contingency fees is that lawyers take on additional risk for them. Many clients think of contingency fee agreements as an excellent opportunity for people who would otherwise not be able to afford a lawyer to gain access to the justice system, and they are. However, it is important to recognize that there is also a down-side to contingency fee agreements for clients.
As a rule, in my probate and trust practice, I do not take contingency fee cases for a variety of reasons. Clients are often let down by this because they wish that I was able to do that in order to represent them. In a contingency fee case, a lawyer is taking on more risk in representing a client. That is, the lawyer that takes on a contingency fee case, knows that if he loses he does not get paid. All risks have costs. He might well spend hundreds of hours working on the case in order to prepare for trial or even prepare settlement negotiations. The risk that they won’t get paid causes lawyers to increase their percentage fee. For this reason, contingency fee cases result in higher fees for attorneys.
In order to run a successful overall law practice, attorneys that rely on contingency fee cases must collect enough in the cases they win to make up for the cases that they lose. This means that if you have a case that you can win, you pay more money to your lawyer in order to achieve that victory because of the risk that you will lose.
Instead of contingency fee cases, I try to set my hourly rate at a reasonable level in order to assure that my clients are paying appropriately for my services and enough so that I can pay my staff and other overhead costs, but without the need to cover any additional risk.
If you want to learn more about contingency fee agreements from the lawyer’s perspective, in order to gain a better perspective from the client, you may wish to read the following articles from the American Bar Association and The Missouri Bar.
04/13/11 8:50 AM
Litigation, Probate, Uncategorized | Comments Off |
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Contingency Fee Agreements – The Part They Don’t Tell You
By Thomas G. Glick
In the 1981 film Body Heat directed by Lawrence Kasdan , the character played by Kathleen Turner uses her smoldering sexuality and an arcane rule of common law to trick her attorney, William Hurt. The arcane principal that she relies upon is the Rule Against Perpetuities. The Rule is an aspect of law which we inherited from our British colonizers, along with much of the rest of common law. The Rule Against Perpetuities has been the bane of existence of law students and young lawyers for generations because of its obscure purposes and complex phrasing. I could argue that the Rule Against Perpetuities was the basis for many general practice attorneys choosing not to practice probate law and instead refer probate and trust cases to lawyers who concentrate their practice in this area. Alas, the Rule Against Perpetuities has been repealed or partially repealed in most American jurisdictions. Missouri repealed its version ten years ago because the purpose was no longer being achieved by the rule and tax laws were achieving the original goals.
Essentially, the purpose of the rule is to prevent control of wealth and property by people who have died long ago. It is one aspect of a broader common law principal archaically known as prevention of restraints on alienation. These types of laws seek to make sure that living people who own, occupy or oversee property have the ability to use and sell that property anyway they wish otherwise society suffers because property becomes unused and unusable as time passes and situations change.
For example, in many families where property has passed down from one generation to the next, over the course of several years, the ownership of the family home has not followed the uses by the family and the occupants. One or more members that own the property no longer live there, have died or have lost touch with the family. These sorts of problems arise not only in wealthy families but also in families of more modest means whose principal asset is the family home. After only one or two generations, the legal ownership of a home can be hopelessly confused such that correction of the pending issues requires the services of a probate and trust lawyer. I find that I am often able to help such families at a cost less than the purchase of a new home but at a substantial cost. I have talked on television about a similar false economy when people attempt to save money with the internet and other form wills but generate much larger legal bills for their heirs.
The best course of action in preventing property from becoming entangled in legal confusion is to plan ahead. It can often be difficult to choose amongst heirs but there are many ways which a skilled attorney can assist a property owner in transferring their wealth in ways that ensure their heirs benefit but does not restrict the families ability to use the property with legal entanglements. Unfortunately, I find that a great many people attempt to address these issues themselves through simple, inexpensive means such as quit claim deeds and simple wills in order to avoid attorneys fees. Matters of titling property are amongst the most complex areas of the law. Frequently, inexpensive solutions generate much larger legal bills later than is saved by the attempted shortcuts.
Even families who have had ancestors take ill advised shortcuts that complicated their problems, or created problems where there were none still have options. I find that I am often able to correct these matters, admittedly with an expense, but still in a way that ensures continued use of the property in question and without property becoming a blight on neighbors or others with interest attached. Of course you will need to catch me when I am not enjoying a classic film noir redux…
03/4/11 3:10 PM
Estate Planning, Probate | Comments Off |
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Controlling Family Assets
By Thomas G. Glick
Most people don’t realize that in Missouri Probate Courts have jurisdiction to involuntary commitment of people who are mentally ill. These can be initiated by the police, by doctors or by the friends and family of the person with a mental illness.
Locking up a person who hasn’t committed any crimes is a pretty extreme measure but this provision is for people who are so sick that they represent a threat to themselves or others. My associate Misty Watson and I recently wrote an article [download PDF] aimed at other lawyers on the subject. The relevant lengths of time may also be helpful to non-lawyers as well.
07/1/09 8:02 AM
Estate Planning, Family Law, Probate, Special Needs, Trusts | Comments Off |
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Helping a Family Member with Mental Illness
By Thomas G. Glick
A lot of people ask me about quick probate, particularly for small estates. It allows people to quickly and cleanly transfer items, including bank accounts, brokerage accounts even homes and real estate to heir or beneficiaries under a will with nominal assistance from a lawyer and quick.
Missouri has adopted a super-fast, super-easy high speed probate tool called the Small Estate Affidavit.
I have written about it and given CLE presentations to lawyers and judges [download PDF]. I’m always surprised by how many people don’t know more about it.
This is a great tool for people.
05/1/09 8:22 AM
Estate Planning, Family Law, Probate, Trusts | Comments Off |
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Small Estates in Missouri
