Legal-Ease: Who’s your daddy?

When asking clients about their children for estate planning purposes, men often joke that “these are the children…that I know of.” While that’s almost always intended to be funny, sometimes it is actually true. 

In the state of Ohio, a man’s biological children may have rights to inherit from the deceased man. But biological children are not always the same as a man’s legal heirs. In Ohio, if a man dies without a will but with children, biological offspring will only inherit through Ohio’s “no will inheritance structure” if the man had demonstrated awareness of the child’s or children’s existence before his death. 

Legal-Ease: Herbicide drifting re-emerges as practical and legal issue

Herbicides have helped farmers control weeds for decades. Twenty years ago Monsanto created genetically modified seed that would grow into plants that wouldn’t die if they were sprayed with glyphosate, which is a chemical that will kill all living plants. This technology is referred to as “Roundup Ready,” and it created some of America’s first weed-free farms. 

Legal-Ease: Grains, trains and automobiles

In some areas, the local government doesn’t own the land adjacent to the road and instead will have an easement with the landowner. This easement is commonly called a right-of-way, and often the owner of the land gave the government the right to use the land more than a century ago for a road. If the government owns or has an easement over any area of land, the government has the right to use that area for roadway traffic, which includes ensuring clear vision near curves and at intersections.

Legal-Ease: Avoiding probate one asset at a time

While this hasn’t always been the perception about probate, the probate process has improved significantly as a result of simplification of federal estate law calculation formulas as well as administrative efficiencies that have been implemented by our local probate judges.