Choosing a person or family to care for your children is difficult. In fact, for many families, it’s the hardest part of planning their estate. It’s not easy to think of anyone else, no matter how loving, raising your child. Yet, you can make a tremendous difference in your child’s life by planning ahead. And you have nothing to lose except a few moments thinking about what you value most in life, and in childrearing.

You can ensure you have chosen the right guardian, by following three straight forward steps:

Step One: Make a List of People

Make the longest list you can stand of everyone you know who might possibly be a good guardian. When considering whether someone should be on the list, ask yourself, “would they provide a better home for my children than the foster care system?” If the answer is yes, include them.

Step Two: Decide What Matters Most

Choose a few factors that are most important to you and rank their order of priority. Here are some to consider:

* maturity and patience
* parenting style
* integrity and stability
* presence of children in the home already
* religion or spirituality
* relationship with your children
* marital or family status
* willingness to serve
* physical well-being
* social and moral habits and values
* availability of “free” time to raise children

Obviously, the perfect choice would score highly on every measure. But, because we are all imperfect, you will likely have more success in choosing the few characteristics that are most important to you. As you make your choice, consider that some factors can be influenced by you and others cannot. Integrity is something you cannot change. But if having an at-home parent is important to you, your prospective guardian might be willing to come home to raise your child if you make it possible through a well-structured and funded plan. Do not focus very much on financial resources as a factor - it is your responsibility as the parent to provide enough financial resources, either through insurance or savings, to provide for your children financially if you are not available.

Step Three: Match People to Priorities

Use the factors you chose in step two to narrow your list of candidates to a handful.

Listen to your body and feelings as you consider each person or couple as guardian.

You’ll need to rank in order this short-list into the people you would want first, second, and so on. If you select an attorney experienced in helping parents of minor children, be prepared to answer the following question whenever you have named a couple: if the couple divorces or, because of death or incapacity, only one can serve, would you like either one to be guardian, or would you prefer to move to the next name on the list? Guardian nominations can be simple or as complex as you choose.

Regardless of which spouse’s family or friends appear more frequently on your final list, it’s important to keep both families involved. One way to do that is to name members of one family as guardians to care for the children, and members of the other family as trustees, to manage the assets for the children. If there is a likelihood of conflict between these family members, be sure to share this with your attorney so that your guardianship can be customized to encourage them to keep the lines of communication open.

If you are still having difficulty, the very best thing you can do is find a neutral and objective third party to work you through this process. A friend who is totally not emotionally connected to the issue or a trusted advisor, like a Personal Family Lawyer, would be a good choice.

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In last week’s article “How to Choose the Right Trustee,” I mentioned that there are no trust police out there making sure that your Trustee is following the instructions set out in your Trust. That can be scary when you are entrusting your whole life savings and your kids’ financial well-being to this person.

But, there are some checks and balances you can put in place to ease your mind.

1. Name Different People to Be in Charge of Your Money and Your Kids

Many times, people I’m meeting with want to name the same person or people to serve as guardians to take care of their children and Trustees to take care of the money left behind.

They think if they would trust someone to raise their kids, they should trust that person to take care of the money too.

This is not necessarily the case.

The qualities you are looking for in a guardian are not necessarily the same as what you are looking for in a Trustee AND if you name separate people, then they can watch out for each other.

Your children’s guardian would be entitled to regular accountings of Trust assets by the Trustee and could monitor to make sure everything seemed right. And, on the flip side, the Trustee would be in regular communication with the guardian to ensure your kids were getting proper care.

2. Name a Bank or Trust Company to Serve as Co-Trustee

If you don’t have two separate people to serve as guardian and Trustee, you may want to consider naming a Bank or Trust Company to serve as an administrative trustee, responsible for all of the tax-filings, investments, and other compliance issues.

You could give distribution power to the guardian or other family member plus give that person to the right to remove and replace the Bank or Trust Company serving as administrative trustee so long as they were replaced with another independent entity.

3. Begin a Relationship With a Personal Family Lawyer When You are Young and Healthy

When you work with a Personal Family Lawyer to establish your planning while you are young, that is a relationship with will last you a lifetime. And, ideally, your Personal Family Lawyer will continue to guide your Trustee after you are gone so that you can have the peace of mind of knowing your Personal Family Lawyer know will ensure your wishes are carried out.

If you use one or more of these checks and balances, you’ll have very little to worry about when it comes to the care and feeding of your financial wealth after you are gone.

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Before we talk about how to choose the right Trustee, let’s talk about what a Trustee does and whether you need to choose a Trustee.

A Trustee is the legal owner of assets held in Trust. When you establish a Revocable Living Trust, you will be the Trustee of your own Trust as long as you are alive and able to take care of your own finances.

At the time of your death or in the event of your incapacity, your “successor” Trustee would step in to take over control of the assets held in your Trust.

This does not mean that the Trustee can use the Trust assets for him or herself. The Trustee is required to use the assets only for the benefit of the Trust beneficiaries, who are determined by you. If you are living and incapacitated, typically you would be the beneficiary of the Trust. If you are no longer living, the beneficiaries will be the people you name to receive your assets.

The Trustee will have control over how the assets are invested, ensuring that tax returns and other filings are handled and will be responsible for making distributions to the beneficiaries.

The number one most important quality when choosing a Trustee is, as the name suggests, Trust. While the Trustee is not supposed to use assets for his or her own benefit, there are no trust police checking on what the Trustee does. Therefore, it’s critically important that you Trust your Trustee to do the right thing. And, it’s not a bad idea to include a system of checks and balances within your planning to ensure that your Trustee is doing the right thing. I’ll share some ideas for checks and balances in next week’s article.

Once you’ve chosen someone you can trust, the next most important factor is that they have common sense, good organizational skills, and a willingness to seek professional guidance. The job of Trustee entails quite a bit of paperwork and compliance requirements in order for the Trustee to maintain his or her responsibilities (legally known as fiduciary obligations).

The Trustee should seek guidance from a team that includes a tax advisor, a legal advisor and a financial advisor. A Trustee that intends to handle taxes and investments without guidance and does not seek the counsel of a lawyer is destined to fail.

Last, but not least, your Trustee should be the person that will make financial decisions for your heirs as close to the way you would. As I like to tell my clients, choose the person or people who would give your kids the same answer you would if your kids came to them at the age of 19 and said, “I don’t want to go to college. I want $50,000 from my Trust so I can {travel Europe, start a band, start a business, etc.}” Notice, I didn’t say that the Trustee would give the “right answer” – just the same answer you would.

To recap, you are looking for someone you trust implicitly, has common sense, good organizational skills, is willing to seek guidance from a legal advisor, tax advisor and a financial advisor and will make the same choices for your heirs that you would financially.

If you’ve ever agonized over the decision about where to send your kids to school or you are doing it now or contemplating it in the future, I can relate.

We had moved to Hermosa Beach, anticipating we’d send our kids to their fantastic schools.

And, I’m a big supporter - don’t miss the annual Hearts of Hermosa event at Sangria on March 7, 2008.

But, the year before Kaia was ready to start Kindergarten, one of my good friends suggested I at least look at the private schools in Palos Verdes, just to keep my options open.

So, I did. And, I fell in love with Chadwick.

In the past three years that Kaia has been there, I’ve become certain that without a doubt it was the best choice we could have possibly made, even though we have to drive 30 minutes to get there, come up with the hefty tuition, and all of her friends are scattered throughout the South Bay and surrounding areas (which means FAR).

Here’s why:

As a more than full-time employed mom, the most important thing when it came to my kids’ education was that I would be able to rely on Kaia’s teachers to know her, teach her what she needed to know and keep me informed all along the way.

I knew I wouldn’t be the kind of parent who could be working in my child’s classroom very often or who would spend a lot of time comparing notes with the other mom’s to see how my kid was doing compared to everyone else and be able to quickly diagnose any issues.

I needed a school where they’d know Kaia as well, or perhaps better, than me and keep me informed every step of the way.

Chadwick has been everything I could hope for in this regard.

It turns out that Kaia had some reading problems that I don’t think would have been noticed in a half day kindergarten class at our local public school. I certainly wouldn’t have noticed.

Chadwick noticed - fast. At our very first parent teacher conference in Kindergarten, in fact.

And while I was initially resistant to the idea that anyone could know that early that there were reading problems, they were right on.

Because we caught it and intervened early, Kaia is getting all the tools and support she needs, is turning into a great reader and has not a shred of self-confidence issues around her reading today.

I thank Chadwick for that.

And I know this awareness will carry through to the upper class years as well.

I was mercilessly bullied throughout junior high and some of high school; it was extremely painful. Not one administrator or teacher ever did anything about it. The school was just too big and no one was paying attention.

When Chadwick sees that sort of thing happening, they nip it in the bud right away, by helping the kids and parents become aware of the issue and not pretending it doesn’t exist.

Because the school is small compared to a public school, you just can’t get away with as much and that’s really important to me.

I have a great sense of peace in knowing that Kaia will not be teased and even more importantly, she will not be allowed to tease.

What it all comes down to is that I know with 100% certainty that the teachers and administrators know Kaia, they know what she needs, and they can give it to her. She’s never going to get lost in a crowd there, be able to hide or feel unheard or unseen. And to me, that’s the greatest gift I can give her.

Now, with a little luck, we’ll have two kids there next year. And, don’t think for a minute that I don’t swallow hard when writing those big tuition checks. It doesn’t come easily, but I find the resources because it’s knowing she’s there getting her needs met that allows me to spend my time and energy doing what I love to do and so I write the check with gratitude.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Martin Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com.”

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They say it takes a village to raise a child. In my case, it takes the support of a harem, or so it seems.

When I was married, my husband and I bickered incessantly about whose turn it was to take care of the kids. We were in constant battle for “alone time.” Or so it seemed.

My husband was certain that if I wasn’t working, it was my time to be with the kids because he had been with them all day.

My position was, “hey, you’re the stay at home dad, that means you get them ready for bed while I respond to email.”

I imagine this battle goes on in many households with little children who have lots of needs and parents who either don’t want to spend the money for childcare, feel too guilty to have extra help, or think they should be able to do it all by themselves.

We were in all three of these categories.

I was making the money and thought (wrongly, I might add) that if hubby was staying home with the kids that meant we didn’t need childcare. It felt like I’d be paying twice and I was so unhappy at my job that I didn’t want to do anything that would increase our expenses and at the same time the pressure of the golden handcuffs.

And, I felt so much guilt being away from my kids everyday while I went to work that I couldn’t imagine putting them in a sitter’s care in the evenings or on the weekends too! Dear husband didn’t do much to alleviate that guilt at all and I regularly accused him of perpetuating it so that he could get some more “alone time” – our currency of trade in the house. Of course, his apparent disapproval was mostly a reflection of my own internal harping, but that didn’t make it any less meaningful at the time.

I felt as if I was getting constant messages that said “Alexis, you SHOULD be able to do this without anymore help. What’s wrong with you?”

Should or shouldn’t, guilt or no guilt, the truth of the matter was, I needed help! For the first several years though, I refused to get it and chose bitterness and resentment instead.

Ultimately, that festered into a divorce on one hand and a reunion on the other.

I divorced my dear husband, but I found my Truth in the doing.

That’s a big statement, I know.  Yet, it’s true.

I won’t bore you now with the details of my spiritual journey; that we’ll save for another time. Suffice it to say that I found the humility to realize I couldn’t do it all alone. I needed a whole heckuva lot of help if I was going to be the kind of mommy I wanted to be and run successful businesses.

Over the past three years, I have learned to know myself, accept myself and love myself.  Most of the time.

The Truth of the matter is that I am an entrepreneur and I love it; it’s my art. If I wasn’t doing it, I’d again become that bitter, dry, overweight woman I became when I tried to deny who and what I was.

I was in a constant battle with who I was and who I thought I should be.

When I was with my kids, I felt guilty that I wasn’t getting my work done. When I was working, I felt guilty I wasn’t with my kids. A never ending cycle, I’m sure you’re familiar with and if you aren’t ask any Stay at Work Mom. (I first heard the term “Stay at Work Mom” from my comrade in overcoming guilt, Denise Berger, a mom of 2 kids with a high powered job as the the Global Chair of the Aon Corporation’s Women’s International Network – fancy name for their work/life balance expert.)

It was a vicious, never-ending cycle and I was never good enough.

But then one day I woke up and realized I was good enough and I deserved all good in my life and that I had to accept myself to get that all good coming into my life.

Ok, truth be told, I didn’t just wake up one day and realize that, it came painfully and with many ups and downs, bumps and bruises, tears, retreats, and reading just about every spiritual book I could get my hands on.

But after all that, thanks to the hard work I did and hearing the right words at the right time, I realized I deserved help!

Today, I’ve got a harem of women helping me raise my kids (and a couple of great guys as well). Well, I always said everyone should have a wife; who knew I’d need so many?

So, what does it really take to keep my ship afloat?

My kids are with me every other week. On the week they are with me, Lourdes comes three days. I love Lourdes. She takes great care of me, even sewing my clothes when I rip the seam on something or pop a button. I tried 7 housekeepers before I found Lourdes, but she was worth the search.

I have two babysitters during the week because they are both in school and Anna, our first babysitter, wanted to work less than I needed someone. But, she and Noah have such a great bond that we both wanted her to see the kids at least one of the days when they are with me, so she goes to our parent participation Co-Op with him on my work day. She’s even going to make his graduation book for me. Stuff like that stressed me out to the max and I’m so relieved she’s taking care of it.

Chelsey comes the other 4 days and I’ve got so much trust and faith in her that during the work day I can focus just on my businesses and know the kids are well taken care of, loved, having a good time and getting where they need to go.

In 2 weeks, Jodi’s moving in and she’s going to do all the grocery shopping, organizing, cooking, and other domestic stuff that doesn’t happen with just me at home. Jodi and I met through a website called Co-Abode, where single moms looking for roommates connect. Jodi has a 9-month old baby who is cute as a button and I’ve got a huge house with an extra bedroom. Jodi loves to cook and do homemaker stuff and I love to work on my business. A wife without the sexual duties!

Why am I telling you all this? Because it all changed for me when I heard another Stay at Work Mom talk about the nearly full household staff that kept her home running and instead of feeling judgment, I felt this deep awareness that she deserved it and so did I.

If I can inspire one of you reading this to recognize that you deserve support and that it’s okay to ask for help and keep asking until you get what you need (even if other people seem to judge you for it), my disclosure was worth it.

This article was inspired by Penelope Trunk, The Brazen Careerist, who wrote today about post partum depression so openly and it occurred to me that I had a multi-year post-partum depression and when I really stopped to think about it, I realized it wasn’t post-partum depression it was that having my children caused me so much self judgment that I had no choice but to let go of all of it and totally accept myself as I was lest I drive myself insane.

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These are the 11 things you should ask before engaging an estate planning lawyer to help you plan for the well-being of your money, your family and your life.

1. Do you prepare a comprehensive plan for my kids’ care if something happens to me, like the Kids Protection Plan™ that names short and long-term guardians and gives specific instructions to all of the guardians and my caregivers? What about an ID card for my wallet listing the short-term guardians with their contact information?
2. Are all of your fees flat fees? What about for ongoing work after the initial completion of my estate plan documents? What happens when I call with legal questions 2 years after my planning documents were completed? What if the questions are about something other than my estate plan?
3. Do you have a whole team in place or is it just you? What happens if something happens to you or you retire?
4. What happens if I need to get a quick question answered and you are not available?
5. Do you make sure my assets are titled in the right way? How?
6. What happens when things change in my life? Do you notify me about changes in the law? How often do you communicate with me?
7. Does my planning fee include a regular review of my plan? What if I want to make changes to my plan?
8. Do you have any sort of an estate planning maintenance program or membership program for ongoing service and, if so, what does that include?
9. Do you have a process for helping me capture and pass on my intangible wealth, such as my intellectual, spiritual and human assets or who I am and what’s important to me?
10. Can you structure my estate plan so that whatever I leave to my kids will be protected from a lawsuit against them or if they are divorced in the future? How often do you build that kind of planning into client’s plans?
11. Do you guarantee your service?

Knowing the questions to these answers before you engage an estate planning lawyer will ensure you put in place an estate plan for your family that will really work when your family needs it and won’t end up just a pile of worthless paper after you are gone.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Martin Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and  plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com.”

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You probably can’t imagine how the case of a multi-millionaire, fallen from grace pop star could have any application at all to you.

Well, you might be surprised to know that Britney’s case has a lot of lessons for all of us, no matter how much money we have in the bank.

The other day I told you that Britney’s dad had been appointed as conservator of her person and co-conservator of her estate, which means dad’s now in control of what Britney can do, who she can see, and he’s controlling all access to her bank accounts and credit cards.

Well, apparently, over the weekend, Britney attempted to hire her own lawyer (Andrew Streisand) to fight her dad’s attempt to take over her personal and financial affairs.

But, the Court refused to recognize Streisand as Britney’s lawyer because the court-appointed lawyer assigned to evaluate Britney said that Brit doesn’t have capacity right now to hire her own lawyer at this point.

So, she’s out of luck.

For the life of me, I can’t imagine why Britney didn’t have a relationship with her own personal lawyer before now, but apparently she didn’t. You’d think that someone with her wealth would have a Will, a Trust, Health Care Directives, Powers of Attorney, Guardian Nominations … basically a comprehensive estate plan to protect her kids and her money.

And you’d also think that her estate planning would have been handled by her personal lawyer.

Guess not!

If it had, her lawyer would have had standing to appear on her behalf in Court today. But, because she didn’t, there’s no one representing what Britney wants in this whole fiasco.

How is this applicable to you?

Because it highlights how important it is for you to have a relationship with a personal lawyer before you need it.

By the time you need a relationship with a lawyer, it’s often too late. You are in a crisis situation and beginning a relationship during a crisis is often either impossible or very costly.

Instead, if you begin a relationship with your personal lawyer while everything is good and right in your life, you and your family will have someone to call who knows you and what’s important to you during that crisis situation.

One day you’ll need a lawyer, I don’t know when and I don’t know why, but when you do, you’ll be so grateful to have a relationship with your own personal lawyer.

It’s too late now for Britney, but it’s not too late for you … today having a personal lawyer is both accessible and affordable and if you own your home, care about your family, and want a trusted advisor to call when you are in crisis, you can and should have one of your own.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Martin Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and  plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com.”

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It’s the second week of 2008 - how are you doing on those resolutions?

I’ve had some calls from clients who were getting theirs taken care of, making sure corporation documents and estate planning documents were getting updated. Lots of new enrollments in our Family Wealth VIP Membership program to make sure that all stays up to date automatically.  All good stuff to do for the New Year.  Call your lawyer and make sure you are on top of everything.

I’m getting my emergency kit together and a stash of cash to keep on-hand in case it’s necessary.  I’m reading my kids the Magic Tree House series of books and we are on the one about the San Francisco Earthquake.  As I was falling asleep the other night after reading it, it occurred to me that I didn’t have a single dollar (you all remember the tooth fairy incident, right?) in my wallet and if we had an earthquake here and couldn’t access the ATMs, I’d be in big trouble.

And, I’ve resolved to ask for and accept more help this year, something that’s always been a challenge for me.

What are some of your resolutions?

My dad died a few years ago. The week after his death is a complete blur to me. Somehow, we arranged for his cremation and put together a memorial service at a Jewish funeral home near his house.

I have no idea how all of these arrangements were made. I was useless in my grief.

Someone had the clarity of mind to make all these arrangements; I think it must have been my step-mom, Amy.

I imagine that making decisions for her in those few days was extremely difficult, if not impossible.

And there’s no way to know if we were making smart decisions.

Did we pay too much for the service? The flowers? Did we have options we didn’t consider or did we just go with the “traditional” because we couldn’t think beyond that?

Yesterday, I interviewed Pam Vetter who is an end of life celebrant and she opened my eyes to so many things I know we didn’t think about at my dad’s death.

Pam works with families to create a personalized end of life celebrations. Even more than that though, she guides families through the decisions about how to handle after-death arrangements so you know you are making smart choices, not getting taken advantage of during a time of grief, and can focus on healing.

Pam came to this work after her sister’s death. Her family wanted to create a personal memorial service for her sister, but the church pastor wouldn’t allow it and her family’s healing was disrupted by the cold, non-personal service. Pam got trained as a celebrant so she could make sure no other family faced the uncertainty, pain and bewilderment her family did after her sister’s death.

You can hear my interview with Pam on our Family Wealth Health and Happiness call if you are a Personal Family Lawyer Family Wealth VIP Membership client. You’ll be receiving the CD in the mail in January.

You can reach Pam on the web or by calling (818) 313-9009. Whenever you experience the death of a loved one, I recommend you call Pam Vetter or a local celebrant in your area before calling anyone else.

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It’s the end of the year and if you aren’t thinking about giving, you should be. And not just because it feels good to your heart, but because it will feel good to your pocket next April when you go to file your taxes.

This week and next week, I’m going to give you an overview of a few things you should be thinking about when it comes to giving.

Giving can come in two forms – giving to your loved ones and giving to charity.

Giving to your loved ones may not have meaningful income tax benefits, but it can have substantial estate tax benefits. Estate tax is the tax paid by your loved ones at your death if your estate is more than the amount allowed by the government, currently $2,000,000 in 2007. And, when you are adding up your estate, don’t forget to include your life insurance!

People are always surprised to hear that life insurance is subject to tax when they die because they’ve heard it’s tax free. And, it is INCOME tax free. It’s not ESTATE tax free.

Giving to charity has both income and estate tax benefits.

Income tax benefits because come tax time you get to subtract from your income any gifts you make to qualified charities and estate tax benefits because gifts you make decrease the size of your estate.

So, if you’ve got more than $2,000,000 and you are not married or more than $4,000,000 and you are married (assuming you’ve got your estate plan set up right), you want to start thinking about giving assets away to decrease the size of your estate.

It’s not too late to be thinking about it for 2007. But, you’ve got to hurry.

If you’ve got money that will be taxed at your death, it’s a whole lot better for your overall family wealth if you start passing it down while you are living.

You can give away $1mm during your lifetime to your loved ones. Anything you give over that is taxed at 45%. BUT, the government lets you give away $12,000 per year to as many people as you want and it doesn’t count against the $1mm you can give away during life.

So, what does all of this mean for you? Well, if you’ve got more than $2,000,000 in assets, here’s what you should be doing:

1. Give $12,000 per year to as many of your loved ones as you want. There’s no tax to pay on this gift. The more you can pass down to lower generations, the greater your family wealth. However, you do not want to give your kids $12,000 and just put it into a custodial account. That can be a bad idea because your kids will get access to the money in their custodial accounts at 18 or maybe 21 … they won’t be ready and neither will you.

We had some clients who did better than they thought they would on some investments they had put in a custodial account for their kid and they ended up with $500,000 in their kid’s account when he turned 18 … not good!

You want to give this $12,000 in a protected trust your kids don’t control until they (and you) are ready and you want to make sure it stays protected from potential future divorces or lawsuits. Call your Personal Family Lawyer and ask about a Family Wealth Passage Trust for your kids OR talk to your parents about setting one up for you.

2. Give as much as you can to charity. For each dollar you give to charity, you can deduct that dollar from your taxable income in April 2008 and it decreases the size of your estate. You cannot deduct donations greater than 50% of your 2007 income. If you are over 70 ½, you do have an opportunity to donate up to $100,000 from your IRA without this income limitation. Contact your Personal Family Lawyer for more information.

If you are in a position to make substantial gifts to charity each year (more than $100,000) and you want to retain control of the money you are giving, want to involve your children in giving or just want to manage your giving better, you will want to establish a private foundation. It’s not too late to do this for 2007, but again, you’ve got to move very fast and expect to pay some rush fees. Again, contact your Personal Family Lawyer to get moving on this one.

If you are looking for some great charities to support this year, click on the links below to give to two of my favorites. I’ll match all donations made up to a total of $2,500 on each site. So please give!

I’m raising $10,000 to restock a Los Angeles school with books through the Wonder of Reading program.

I’m raising $15,000 to build a school in Nepal that will educate hundreds of children through a Room to Read.

Together, we can leave the world a better place.

Love and Gratitude,

Alexis