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There are a lot of reasons people drag their feet on creating an estate plan. Many of my clients tell me they’ve meant to “get this done” for some time. But there are also people out there who think they don’t need anything, or at least not yet. Sometimes they’re...

I have had several cases where my client had trouble locating the decedent's (a.k.a. deceased person's) Will and or trust. So naturally, this caused them some concern, and the question arose: What happens if I can't find the Will? Before you panic, there are some...

I recently did a Q&A session with the delightful Fremont Area Writers Club, which had many thoughtful and interesting literary law questions. But, unfortunately, there was one question that we ran out of time for: How long does copyright last? It's a great...

For most people, one of the biggest reasons to have a trust is to avoid probate. For those who don’t know what probate is, probate is when the government oversees the administration of a deceased person's (or decedent’s) estate. Probate is time-consuming, expensive,...

Can I Use This Song, Video, Picture, etc It If I Only Take a Little Bit? Also known as, let's talk about de minimus use in copyright law. Whenever I talk about copyright law, I inevitably get asked, "Is it okay if I only use _____% of a [song/movie/book]?” Sometimes...

To watch the video version of this article, please click here: kawaylaw.com/videos Unlike some estate planning terms, like per stirpes, most everyone has heard of copyright. However, there’s still some confusion regarding, what is copyright, and what does it protect?...

To view the video version of this article, please click here: kawaylaw.com/videos There’s a line on my intake sheet that reads like this: Division: Intestate / Per Stirpes / Per Capita Naturally, there is some confusion about what this means since most people aren’t...

Estate Planning Basics: Steps to Create Your Estate Plan Last month in the first article in this series, I went over what documents are included in a typical estate plan. This month in part two of estate planning basics, I’ll go over how one actually puts an estate...