1. When you sell goodwill. When a business sells their interest in the business including the goodwill, Oklahoma law allows a non compete agreement between the seller and buyer. While “goodwill” is an intangible assets and often difficult to define, in Oklahoma it generally means the “custom or patronage of any established trade or business; the benefit or advantage of having established a business and secured its patronage by the public.”

2. Business Partners splitting up. A non compete agreement is also allowed when a business with multiple owners or partners dissolves.  In anticipation of a dissolution of the partnership, the partners may agree that none of them will carry on a similar business within a specified county and any county or counties contiguous thereto, or a specified city or town or any part thereof.

If you have any questions about non compete agreements, please feel free to contact me anytime at sjr@shawnjroberts.com.

This document allows you make decisions about how your end-of-life are is handled and appoint a person you trust to help the doctors carry out your decisions. Most other states have the same type of living will provisions.

If the living will is done properly, the doctors, hospital and family are required to follow it:

A physician or other health care provider who is furnished the original or a photocopy of the advance directive shall make it a part of the declarant’s medical record and, if unwilling to comply with the advance directive, promptly so advise the declarant.

If you have questions about an Oklahoma living will or any other estate planning issues, please feel free to contact me and to find out more about estate planning listen to my podcast “Estate Planning Demystified“.

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A durable power of attorney is a simple power of attorney which gives the attorney-in-fact (the person to whom power is given) the power to act for you. It is “durable” in that it is written in conformity with statutes which allow it to continue beyond the time you become incompetent or have a mental incapacity (if a power of attorney does NOT contain appropriate language to make it durable, it terminates at the time you become incompetent).

The benefit of having a Oklahoma durable power of attorney is that in the event of an incompetency, a guardianship should not have to be opened with the probate court to administer your property. A power of attorney, when properly drawn, also serves the purposes of allowing the attorney-in-fact (1) to act during periods when you are on extended travel and (2) to transfer non-trust assets to your primary trust during disability or prior to your death, when you are not otherwise capable of making the transfer yourself.

If done correctly, the durable power of attorney should prevent you family from having to go to court to have a guardian appointed for you. This means you save on the expense and potential battle between people who each think they should be the guardian.

If you have questions about a living will or any other estate planning issues, please feel free to contact me and to find out more about estate planning listen to my podcast “Estate Planning Demystified“.

your written decisions on who to give your property to, who will manage the process of giving away your property, in writing and signed and witnessed according to Oklahoma law so that it is legal and binding.

The Will is created while you are alive to control what happens to your things once you have passed away. If you do not have a Will in Oklahoma, the State of Oklahoma decides how your things will be distributed. The distribution might not always turn out like you would expect it to. You can read more about that here.

If a trust is used, you still need a Will. Your Will is a simple document, which would have any probate property transferred to your trust. This Will is often described as a “pour-over will” because any property that is not already in the trust at the time of death pours-over to the trust. Probate property is your property which for some reason is not held in either of your trusts or which does not transfer outside of probate (such as by joint tenancy).

Check back for the next post on Oklahoma estate planning titled “The Last Will and Testament” and to find out more about estate planning listen to my podcast “Estate Planning Demystified“.

1. Google Apps for Business. ($50 per user, but there is a free version). The suite of products that includes mail, calendar and contacts is the backbone of my communicaiton and contact management. The Gmail-like mail is super-flexible and it is nice to be able to login in almost anywhere and see the same interface.

2. Bill4Time. (plans starting at free trial, plans starting at $19.95 a month). Without billing, I would be operating a charity. To meet my billing needs, I use Bill4Time a web-based service that allows fairly detailed time tracking, invoicing and invoice management. It appears to be written for attorneys and CPAs.

3. Google Reader. (Free) I need to current on news and cases to communicate with my clients. I accomplish this through Google Reader which easily integrates without almost every other product I use.

4. Google Voice. (Free) My go-to service for managing communications, both spoken and textual. Google Voice allows me to have one telephone number that can forward to multiple numbers and the ability to text from the same number. The ability to manage my Google Voice account to a granular level from the web is also a plus.

What web-apps are critical in operating your business?

Today, we start with the Living Trust.

The living trust is also know as a “revocable trust” a “revocable living trust”, an “inter vivos trust”.  What is a trust?  Simply put,

A trust is an arrangement under which one person, called a trustee, holds legal title to property for another person, called a beneficiary. With the revocable living trust, you can be the trustee of your own trust, you keep complete control over all property held in trust but get the benefits of the law treating the trust as a separate legal entity.

The advantage of having all of your assets held by a revocable trust at the time of your death, or at the time of your disability or incapacity are:

• Elimination of the probate process. This means that there would not be any court oversight of your estate. Since there would be no Court filings, there would be no public access to, and/or knowledge of, your assets and their value. Additionally, eliminating Court oversight would avoid the expense and delay associated with having assets administered by the probate process.
• Immediate and continuous access to assets and to cash flow. Without a revocable trust (or other appropriate estate planning device), assets would have to flow through the probate process. If assets flow through the probate process, access to assets and to cash flow is usually delayed due to the need to obtain Court permission.
• Protecting your assets and providing a continuous cash flow in the event you become mentally or physically disabled or incapacitated prior to your death (where the disability or incapacity prevents you from administering your own assets).
• Reduces the burden on the children and other family to search and gather assets after death.
•  Provides the opportunity to gather and index all your financial documents together; that way your family will know what accounts you have and where.
•  Reduces the chance of contest to your estate plan because it eliminates the chance for a will contest since the trust is the primary vehicle for managing and transferring property.

Check back for the next post on Oklahoma estate planning titled “The Last Will and Testament” and to find out more about estate planning listen to my podcast “Estate Planning Demystified“.

There is a way to prevent this type of battle.  In Oklahoma, it is done through an Advance Directive (living will).  This document allows you make decisions about how your end-of-life are is handled and appoint a person you trust to help the doctors carry out your decisions.  Most other states have the same type of living will provisions.

If the living will is done properly, the doctors, hospital and family are required to follow it:

A physician or other health care provider who is furnished the original or a photocopy of the advance directive shall make it a part of the declarant’s medical record and, if unwilling to comply with the advance directive, promptly so advise the declarant.

If you have questions about an Oklahoma living will or any other estate planning issues, please feel free to contact me and to find out more about estate planning listen to my podcast “Estate Planning Demystified“.

Oklahoma Estate Planning

• Who are you planning for? (self, spouse, children, grandchildren, parents, business associates, friends, charities)

• What do you have to plan with? (assets & liabilities)

• What plans have you already made? (existing contracts, will, other documents)

• How does the system work? (probate, federal and state transfer taxes)

• Who are you planning with? (The estate planning team of accountant, financial planner, attorney, life insurance advisor, trust officer)

You can find out more about Oklahoma estate planning by listening to my podcast series “Estate Planning Demystified here.

Oklahoma Estate Planning

WordPress Editorial Calendar

If you publish multiple blog posts each week or even each month, you need to know what is scheduled, on which day and at what time. Although you can decipher this information natively in the WordPress Dashboard, there is a much better to view it.

WordPress Editorial Calendar is a free WordPress Plugin that allow you to actually look at all your scheduled blog post as a calendar page and drag and drop them to change the scheduling. Here is a screenshot of the plugin:

This WordPress calendar plugin is a one-click simple install and you find it here. Special thanks on this post to Justin Lukasavige and his show Coach Radio where I heard about this plugin.

Do you use a different plugin to schedule and manage blogposts? Tell me about it in the comments below.

• Your property will be transferred upon your death;

• The recipients of your property and in what amounts;

• The administrator of your estate and the division of your personal property;

• The person or persons who will be the guardians of your minor children, and what type of resources the guardians will have;

• Your caretaker if you become incapacitated and a power of attorney granting the authority to handle your affairs.

From where does this sophisticated Oklahoma estate plan come?  The statutes of the State of Oklahoma (or the state in which you live if not Oklahoma) provide it.  Within the thousands of words contained in the Oklahoma Statutes (whatever state in which you reside), all the decisions are made about what you have, what happens to it, and who takes care of you and your children upon your death.  These laws set a rigid formula and make no exceptions for unusual or special needs.  Without a will or trust in place, your estate will be administered by the court, according to these statutes.  If this happens, the cost to your estate could be greater than if you have an estate plan.

Does this sound good? If not, there is an alternative: plan your own estate, determine who takes care of your family and who takes care of you, yourself. Talk to an attorney to find out how to plan your own estate (whether it is small, medium, or large), and to draft documents that fit you and you and your family’s unique needs – not the convenient one size fits all solution provided by the statutes.  In the process, you are taking care of your family the way you know is best.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if would like to discuss planning your estate.