Articles & Publications

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  HOT MESS: Avoiding Summertime Custody Disasters

  July 21, 2020

  School is out for the summer. It was an unusual spring semester with New Jersey families coping the school closures and the increased pressure of home-schooling. Additionally, courts were closed and so families with shared custody were forced to handle the unique issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on shared family time. Now summer has come around with the usual and not-so-usual issues for parents with shared custody. Along with planning for all of the fun of the summer, comes the very real problem of splitting children's time without add "Zoom Court Date" to their summer schedule. Thankfully, there are ways to avoid these issues.

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  WHAT THE PUP? Understanding Pet Prenups

  June 05, 2019

  With summer just around the corner in New Jersey, we can look forward to days at the shore, killer humidity and of course, weddings! If you are one of the lucky love birds with your own pet love birds, this article is for you. So, before your start that “Dog Ringbearer” Pinterest Board, there may be one thing that you are forgetting: a Pet Prenup.​

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  Your Best New Year's Resolution is to Write A Will

  January 05, 2019

  It is the season for self-improvement. Many of us have resolved to lose weight, get our finances in order or make a career change. The thing about most of our resolutions is that they requires motivation beyond the first few weeks of January, and most of us just run out of steam. Going full force into the January resolutions always runs the risk of ending in unused gym memberships, cupboards full of gross protein shakes and quickly re-installing the “Seamless” app at the end of a few miserable weeks

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  THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS: Avoiding Child Custody Issues During the Holidays

  December 20, 2018

  It is meant to be the most wonderful time of the year. Unfortunately for separated parents, this can be one of the most stressful times of the year. Aside from the credit card bills, family commitments and the search for this year’s must-have toy, for co-parents living separately, the issue of where the children spend the holiday period can be a source of considerable heart-ache.

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  Millennials Disrupt Yet Another American Institution: The Divorce.

  December 01, 2018

  First we came for Blockbuster, chain restaurants and cabs. Now millennials are responsible for a decline in another American institution, the divorce. Millennials are being blamed (or credited) with dropping the U.S. divorce rate and potentially shifting the future of this no-so-beloved industry.

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  Why Millennials Need Estate Plans... Even If Only For Their Pets

  September 11, 2018

  If you are a young(ish) person in good health with few assets (like many millennials), you may not think that having an estate plan is necessary. But have you ever thought about what might happen to your pet if anything happened to you?

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  THE THREE CONSTANTS IN LIFE: Death, Taxes and Change

  February 08, 2018

  It is said that there are two guarantees in life: death and taxes. However, change could very easily be considered to be the third. Indeed, the taxation system that governs our assets in death is anything but constant at the moment. This is particularly true for New Jersey residents, who will be impacted by changes in both state and federal laws that have come into effect in the last few months.

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  iPlan: NJ’s New Digital Assets Law Explained

  November 08, 2017

  This time of year, many of us pause to reflect on how grateful we are for what we have. Often when we consider our property, we don’t consider our digital ones. From music on iTunes, ebooks on Kindle and photographs on Instagram to a humble old AOL email account (yes, they still exist), the list of your digital assets would likely shock you. Until very recently the law has struggle to keep up this type of property in times of death or incapacity. This has left decedents vulnerable to a breach of their privacy and left executors/administrators open to liability. Finally, lawmakers have caught up to these changes but this has some important consequences for New Jersey residents.

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  Am I Too Young to Write a Will?

  March 25, 2017

  Thinking about writing a will is not always easy. Most of us are tempted to kick that can down the road and deal with it at another time. For many of us in our prime we simply believe that we are too young to think about it. We also may think that we do not have enough property to justify a will. In fact, wills (and other planning documents) are not just for the rich or the elderly. In reality, a full estates plan, allows you to make a whole range of decisions that help your family.

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  Who Owns the Image of Oscar Wilde

  November 20, 2014

  The three trials of Oscar Wilde in London in 1895 proved to be both sensational at the time and a source of fascination for subsequent generations of writers. What is less known is that Oscar – or his image – had been at the center of another trial over a decade earlier, and on a different continent.

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  NIGHT OF THE LIVING DATA: Estates Law and the Phenomenon of Digital Life After Death

  May 30, 2014

  In the age of the Internet, adults in the United States are increasingly reliant on online services to manage every area of their lives. We pay bills, communicate with friends and family and shop for almost anything we may need through our computers. But also, our computers entertain us, we download movies and TV shows, we post pictures to Facebook and we Instagram our meals. We live out real life in a virtual world. However, unlike our physical bodies, our Internet alter-egos have the ability to exist in perpetuity. Despite an ever-increasing virtual presence during people’s lives, many people do not consider that when they die or become incapacitated, that these accounts can cause great issues for their loved-ones. Those individuals who have sought to deal properly which their digital assets upon their death face a lack of consistency in state laws, ranging from limited grants of access to online accounts for executors to complete silence on the subject. It is the individual contracts that we make with our online providers that ultimately govern what happens to our emails, Facebook photographs and our ITunes account when we die. The terms of those contracts, we rarely read or understand in our live-times, and are even less likely to comprehend when planning for our death.