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Sally sat in the chair, her mind reeling. It couldn’t be true. Sure, she’d been having some problems, which was why she had gone to the doctor’s office. If she was honest with herself, she’d admit that she’d been putting it off for awhile. Even so, the news still came...

When you have an income-producing asset like a copyright, it’s easy to focus on how to keep that income flowing over the next few months. It’s more difficult, but ultimately very rewarding, to plan out how that income will keep coming in over the next few years – just...

I get this question from a lot of clients. I admit, “funding the trust” is not something you hear in the normal course of your day (unless you’re an estate planning lawyer, of course). So here’s the explanation of what it means, and why it’s important. A trust is a...

My father has always loved the old Chinese proverb “The faintest ink is more retentive than the best memory.” (No, that’s not the standard translation, but that is what I grew up hearing.) He also has his own saying, which I have adopted – “If it’s not in writing, it...

When my grandmother passed away a couple of years ago, we were all devastated. Beyond the initial grief, however, there was also dismay – my father had been pushing her for years to declutter and downsize, and we knew that she had only ever made the most token of...

January 1, 2019 was a big day in the world of copyright law. In order to understand why, I’ll need to give you some backstory. Back in 1998, there were a number of corporations – Disney being the most notable – petitioning Congress to extend the duration of copyright...

Congratulations, you found a publisher that wants to publish your work! All that’s left now is to sign the contract and…oh my, that’s a lot of paper. And you’re not sure what even half of those words mean. But it’s okay to just sign it, right? The important thing is...

As I’m sure most of you have heard, Stan Lee passed away on November 12 of this year. It’s not clear at this time whether he had a will or not. What the media is focusing on is the drama that surrounded him at the end of his life, which doesn’t appear to be settling...

This question comes up a lot in my practice. Since they are two different jobs, that come with different responsibilities, I ask my clients who they want to name for each job. They’re fine with it for the trustee, since that question comes first, but when I ask them...