Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

The Tax Consequences of Mark Zuckerberg's Marriage

Excerpt from TaxProf Blog: (click for entire article)

    Forbes:  How Mark Zuckerberg's Taxes Change Now That He's Married, by Robert W. Wood (Wood LLP, San Francisco):

    What a week! First an unprecedented IPO, then marriage. Yes, Facebook’s Zuckerberg Marries His Longtime Girlfriend Priscilla Chan. ... [W]hat does this latest one-two development mean for the Zuckerberg family tax return?

        Joint v. Separate?
        Separate v. Community?
        Business and Investment Management?
        Gifts During Marriage?
        Divorce Rules

How Can Children Have More Say Over Their Custody?

Excerpt from The New York Times: (click for entire article)

“In divorced families,” the family therapist Ruth Bettelheim wrote in The Times Sunday Review, “whose needs count for more: those of parents or those of children?”

The current system of creating custody and parenting plans during a divorce, she argues, tends — in spite of the “best interests of the child” standard — to favor parental need for finality over the child’s need for flexibility. “In reality, a custody agreement that meets the needs of a toddler is unlikely to be right for a teenager,” she writes.

    Imagine yourself as a 13-year-old who wants to spend more time with your friends over the weekends. Unfortunately, your parents are divorced, and you spend weekends with a parent who lives two hours away. You would be unlikely to request a change in custody because it would mean altering a longstanding agreement and plunging into a morass of conflicting loyalties and guilt over betraying whichever parent would lose out. Faced with such dilemmas, children in divorced families frequently end up suppressing their own needs to reduce conflict with, or between, their parents. Even when children are driven to speak up and request custody modifications, their voices carry little, if any, legal weight.

Grandparent Rights - Obtaining Visitation With or Custody Of Grandchildren

Excerpt from ABA Bifocal: (click for entire article)

A Connecticut grandmother sought visitation with her four-year-old granddaughter, who was born out of wedlock. The child had been placed in foster care at the age of four months, and the mother’s parental rights were terminated. The child’s father (who had never lived with the mother) established paternity through a blood test. He then gained visitation with the child, followed a few months later by sole custody. During the more than two years the child was in foster care, the maternal grandmother visited with the child in the grandmother’s home twice every week for three hours per visit. When the father gained sole custody of the child he cut off visits with the grandmother.

The grandmother sought court ordered visitation with her grandchild. The trial court found that visitation would be in the grandchild’s best interests and ordered visits on the third Saturday of each month from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the grandmother’s home. The father appealed, and the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed. Crockett v. Pastore, 789 A.2d 453 (Conn. 2002). The court held that under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 120 S. Ct. 2054 (2000), granting visitation to the grandmother violated the constitutional right of the father to raise his daughter as he saw fit. The Connecticut Supreme Court held that the grandmother was not entitled to visitation because she did not establish that she “had a parent-like relationship with the child” and that “the child would suffer real and significant harm if the trial court were to deny visitation.”

3 Legal Issues You Should Handle for Your Mom

Excerpt from Reuters: (click for entire article)

And no, that doesn't mean pay off any pending lawsuits against her. Though that'd be nice (other than your Mom being sued, of course). The kind of issues contemplated here relate to your mother's long-term care.

So here are three important future-planning needs you can handle for your Mom:

1) Estate Planning

A lot of the items on this list may seem morbid, but that doesn't make them any less necessary. And helping your mother plan her estate is perhaps one of the most important.

An estate consists of all the property and assets owned by a person at the time of their death. This includes everything from cars, homes, and bank accounts to insurance policies, bonds, and family heirlooms.

The first step in helping your Mom plan her estate is cataloging her possessions, accounts, and passwords. This will help her create a trust or write her will much easier.

How to Establish Financial Independence (with Some Help from Mom and Dad)

Excerpt from Kiplinger: (click for entire article)

Not only is it difficult for us twentysomethings to wholeheartedly embrace adulthood, it's often also a challenge for our parents to let us go. Baby-boomer parents are generally known for mollycoddling their children, even after we move out of the house and into our own adult lives. Some parents have shown up for their kids' job interviews, and others have called up human resource departments at their adult kids' workplaces to complain about bad performance reviews or to negotiate salaries on behalf of their children.

They may mean well, but such extreme helicopter parents are actually hindering their children from growing into independent adults. "If a child is receiving too much help, then they have no incentive to succeed or become independent," says Erin Baehr, of the financial planning firm Baehr Family Financial, in Stroudsburg, Pa. "They may also be setting themselves up for some possible financial trouble down the road."

Consult lawyer to protect finances from bullying son-in-law

Excerpt from the Los Angeles Times: (click for entire article)

Dear Liz: I am 84, and my husband is 88. We have two daughters, the elder of whom is married to a very controlling man. In the past, we lent them money and were paid back. But starting in 2009 his small business began to do poorly. They borrowed nearly $100,000 from us. Then in 2010, he begged us to get a home equity loan on our home, which was paid for.

They now owe us $300,000. We make the home equity payments of $800 a month because they are not able to pay that amount. He said he planned to sell a parcel of land to pay us back. Now he wants to borrow from my individual retirement account. He is telling our daughter to go after us and what to do. So I told my daughter and her husband, no more!

We are so sad. We didn't expect to have money problems at this age. We wanted our estate to be divided equally between our daughters. But we're wondering if we should make a new living trust to reflect the debt owed to us. Should we consult a lawyer?

Choices: Who will care for Mom and Dad?

Excerpt from Naples News: (click for entire article)

The next 25 years promise demographic changes that will reshape the face of America and transform the lives of all who live here, claims Andrew Zolli, a futurist working at the intersection of design, technology, culture and futures research.

"These changes will amplify one another and deeply alter our national concerns, assumptions and agendas," he says.

At the helm of a continuing dramatic change is increased longevity. People are living longer. People living longer will result in the need for more governmental and social resources. Added to this demographic reality is the fact that a great wave of Baby Boomers has begun their initial decent into old age.

Evanston Parents Discuss The Impact of Disability on a Family

Excerpt from Evanston Patch: (click for entire article)

Seven years ago, the Lassmans daughter Penelope was born with multiple disabilities and there began a wild road of navigating the world anew. In this video — part of a new Patch series by Patrick and Brigid Hughes — the Lassmans discuss their experiences.

Each week, my mom, Brigid, and I post stories about how disabilities impact people's lives. We look at how businesses work to make their buildings and practices more inclusive and we also look at things many people think about but might be afraid to talk about.

Our hope is that these video stimulate conversation, so please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Relative Caregiving: What You Need to Know

Excerpt from Michigan.gov: (click for entire article)

This guide will provide basic information about resources available if you are caring for related children in foster care. Foster care provides temporary care and supervision for children who are unable to live with their parents. Whether you are a relative caregiver or a licensed foster parent, providing temporary foster care for a child will be challenging. Understanding Michigan’s child welfare system will
help you meet the needs of the child(ren) placed in your home.

The main goal for children and youth in foster care is a permanent, safe and stable home in which to live and grow with a nurturing caregiver. Relatives play an important role in ensuring the safety and well-being of children in foster care. Relative caregivers provide children with safe, stable care and help keep children connected with their siblings and communities. In many cases, relative caregivers help reunify children and their parents. Relative caregivers can also provide children with stability through guardianship or adoption if they cannot return home. Your willingness to take a child into your home  shows a great deal of commitment and love. We are here to help by off ering the assistance you may need in supporting your additional family member(s).

More than 2.5 million grandparents take on role of parent

Excerpt from USA Today: (click for entire article)

These are supposed to be their golden years. They worked hard, earned a decent living and raised their family. Now it's time to relax and reap the benefits of a life well lived.

But not for those who have had to take on the responsibility of raising grandchildren. Their golden years have been put on hold as they have begun another cycle of child-rearing.

Delores and Larry Kling have been parenting their 8-year-old granddaughter, Amber, since she was an infant. The Klings' son and the child's mother abandoned their baby and have yet to remember her on birthdays and holidays.