• Estate Planning
Estate planning is the process of accumulating and disposing of an estate to maximize the goals of the estate owner. The various goals of estate
planning include making sure the greatest amount of the estate passes
to the estate owner's intended beneficiaries, often including paying the least amount of taxes and avoiding or minimizing probate court involvement. Additional goals typically include providing for and designating guardians for minor children and planning for incapacity.
• Wills & Trusts
Trusts are not only for the wealthy. Many young parents with limited
assets choose to create trusts either during life or in their wills for
the benefit of their children in case both parents die before all their
children have reached an age deemed by them to indicate sufficient
maturity to handle property. This permits the trust estate to be held
as a single undivided fund to be used for the support and education of
minor children according to their respective needs, with eventual
division of the trust among the children when the youngest has reached
a specified age. This type of arrangement has an obvious advantage over
an inflexible division of property among children of different ages
without regard to their level of maturity or individual needs at the
time of such distribution.
• Personal Injury
If you've been injured in a car accident, suffered dog bite or slip
and fall injuries, or been harmed by a defective drug or product, or in
some other way harmed by someone else's negligence, you may be entitled
to financial compensation for your personal injury, and for associated
losses like time off from work, property damage, and even pain and
suffering.
If you think that another party may be responsible for your personal
injury please contact my office for a free initial consultation to help you determine
whether or not you should pursue your personal injury claim.
• Probate Law
The probate process can be complicated and tedious. A California probate attorney
needs to be able to quickly identify and resolve the pertinent issues
in every situation. I have substantial experience in probate
matters and can help make the process go quickly and smoothly.
Probate, in simple terms, makes sure debts of the deceased are paid and any remaining property is distributed to the rightful owners. Property that has been transferred to a living trust is not subject to probate. Avoiding probate, which on occasion can be costly and time consuming, is a reason many individuals use living trusts
Probate generally lasts several months, occasionally over a year
before all the property can be distributed, and incur substantial court
and attorney costs. One of the many ways to avoid probate is to execute
a living trust.
This is a separate entity to which a person transfers ownership of his
real property (house, etc.,) from himself to a trust which he controls
and can revise at any time (except in the case of an irrevocable trust.)
Upon death, the persons named as beneficiaries in the trust acquire
ownership of it and, therefore, the property the trust owns. As probate
is a public process, a living trust has the added advantage of
preserving the privacy of the deceased and his heirs as well as
avoiding some estate tax.
Life insurance, savings accounts, and joint tenancies with the right of survivorship are some of the other ways people use to avoid probate.
Avoiding probate does not necessarily mean estate taxes have also
been avoided. The laws imposing the federal estate tax have been
modified to include within the definition of the person's taxable
estate, property held in a living trust, life insurance, "payable on
death" or "transfer on death" financial instruments, and most other
property which is transferred from a dead person to a living person in
consequence of the death. Inter vivos trusts can reduce estate
taxes if they are properly structured, but that is not related to the
avoidance of probate. Generally, to avoid an estate/inheritance tax, a
person must give it away irrevocably or leave it to a qualified
charity. However the use of credit shelter trusts
(also called AB trusts) can allow a married couple to preserve both
unified credits, allowing up to twice the total estate to pass to heirs
without estate tax. This may reduce or eliminate the total tax the
couple would have otherwise paid.
• Real Estate
Robert Gordon has experience representing property buyers, sellers, and lessors in real estate litigation and transactions. We handle legal aspects of purchase and
sale, development, construction, mortgages, foreclosures, and leases of
commercial and residential real estate (the land and the structures
attached to it).