The bible is replete with stories describing ill consequences when a parent favors one child over another. Jacob’s deception of his father Isaac in order to receive the blessings of the first born, even though Jacob’s twin brother Esau was entitled, happens to be one of the most famous. A related biblical story regarding Jacob’s [...]
A potential client called to ask a question that he claimed was “simple”. After a ten minute dissertation outlining a very complicated fact pattern – all I could say was, “It depends.”
He wasn’t very thrilled with my answer, and I can understand why. It would seem that lawyers sell more “Depends” than Walgreens and CVS [...]
I’m following the nation’s health care debates with great interest, as I assume most of you are as well. As a partner in a small law firm, I’m keenly aware of how costly it is to provide health insurance to our own families and to our employees – yet how important having adequate health coverage [...]
I’ve sat on many boards over the years. Business boards. Charitable foundations. Religious institutions. Some boards only had five or six members. Others had two dozen. Most had men and women sitting on these boards together. Young and old. Rich and poor. I’m happy to say that most of my board room experiences have been [...]
Much has been made of Barack Obama’s pledge to reduce taxes on 95% of American citizens while at the same time allowing the Bush tax cuts favoring the wealthiest Americans to expire. Ari Fleischer, former press secretary under President Bush editorialized in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion page that it is unhealthy to increase [...]
John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group lectured a Columbia University audience earlier this month and what he said was both surprising and illuminating. His lecture focused on the problems leading up to our current financial crisis. While pointing a finger at the usual suspects (lenders, mortgage brokers, regulators, Wall Street traders, borrowers), he [...]
This just in from the “reaching out from the grave” department: Can you impose conditions on your grandchildren’s inheritance such as requiring them to marry someone within your faith or else they lose the trust funds? This interesting question is currently in litigation before the Illinois Supreme Court.
Looking at In re Estate of Feinberg, [...]
While I was growing up in Indianapolis in the 1960s and 1970s my grandparents, father and uncle owned small men’s and women’s retail clothing shops. At one time there were seven such stores scattered around the metropolitan area. When the 1970s recessions hit, displacing many mid level executives at insurance firms and automobile manufacturers, the [...]
Insanity is humorously defined as “doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result.” Many of us appear to be going insane with worry over our economic future. But doing the same thing that you’ve always done in response to the daily dose of bad news isn’t going to make your [...]
We’ve all recently learned that Wall Street financier Bernie Madoff’s surreal investment returns was just that – surreal – built on a Ponzi scheme that collapsed amid FBI and SEC investigations. Initial reports indicate that investors were bilked out of at least $50 billion.
While Madoff may not have been well known here in Southwest [...]