Legal-Ease: Knowing goals creates best estate plans

When it comes to estate planning, knowing goals is the first step to getting great legal advice from lawyers. Clients who go into estate planning knowing specific goals are more likely to efficiently land on the right estate planning tools to achieve what they want. Attorneys can help clients analyze their priorities, but it’s much more efficient (and affordable) if a client goes into estate planning knowing what they truly want. 

Legal-Ease: Hot weather and electricity

During the hot summer months, electric companies request that we cut down on the usage of electricity in our homes and businesses. This request may seem odd, but utility companies such as electric, water and sewage companies are heavily regulated. The laws and regulations on utility companies help ensure that electric service and other utility service is always available without the concern for rolling blackouts and brownouts. 

Legal-Ease: Real estate taxes more complex than commonly thought

Real estate taxes in Ohio operate under a unique structure. Real estate taxes are defined in terms of “mills,” which are created through local governments or through residents’ votes for “levies.” Mills and millage are understood to be a percentage of the property value. The calculation process is much more complex, though, because real estate tax levies can fall under two different categories. 

In the first category of real estate levies, millage is calculated as a percentage of the property value. In the second category of real estate tax levies, the levies are defined as mills, but they’re capped at the total dollar amount of money that the levy brings in during its first year. 

Legal-Ease: Four questions on easements

The law requires that each and every parcel of land has access to a public roadway. For owners of a landlocked parcel, this may require a purchase of an easement from an adjoining landowner. Easements allow for the use of property without owning that property. 

Typically, easement concerns break down into four different questions. 

Legal-Ease: Signing the Declaration of Independence then and signing receipts now

We sign various documents all the time, and what our signature means changes depending upon what’s being signed. Sometimes signing a document confirms certain facts, other times a signature is a commitment, and sometimes signatures mean absolutely nothing. 

For example, signing for the delivery of an item that’s already paid for just confirms the receipt of an item. But signing a credit card slip represents a promise to pay for goods. 

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: 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.