Kathleen A. Hunt Law Blog

You finally did it. You made a will, set up a trust, took care of all your estate planning. Whew - you're all done! Or are you?... Read More

I’m proud to belong to my local Rotary Club. So when this month’s Rotary magazine arrived, I  was delighted to see an article about ethical wills. An ethical will is a non-binding document that is intended to share important values, lessons, and blessings to loved ones. Ethical wills are sometimes used to ask for forgiveness or to forgive someone else. Unlike a legal will, which allows you to give tangible items like property and money to your heirs, an ethical will provi... Read More

I just got a call from a woman in another state. She’d been reading my blog, she said, and she just wanted someone to talk to about her situation. Well, I’m only qualified to give legal advice in California, so that’s what I told her - and then I listened. She had some real concerns, so I did give her some advice, as it turned out: I advised her to call her local bar association. That’s all I did; that’s all I could do. But before we got off the phone, she sai... Read More

Disability insurance is the last thing most
people want to pay for….but the facts and statistics are glaring.  Disability is the cause of 48% of mortgage
foreclosures and nearly half of Americans who file for bankruptcy did so after
being disabled by an unexpected illness or injury.  About 1 in 5 Americans have some kind of
disability and about 1 in 10 Americans have a severe disability. ... Read More

I was recently diagnosed with migraines. After months of dizziness and headaches, my primary doctor had me convinced that I would soon die of a brain tumor, while my friends cheerfully debated whether I was more likely to have multiple sclerosis or recurrent strokes. (The prospect of these disabling illnesses, of course, created all kinds of other anxieties - see today’s guest blog by financial advisor Leslie A. Margolies!) Many tests later, I walked into a neurologist’s office... Read More

Imagine the scene: without warning, a young woman collapses
one day at home. By the time paramedics arrive, she’s not breathing and she has
no pulse; still, emergency medical personnel manage to resuscitate her. She
emerges from her coma a mere ten weeks later, but she’s suffered severe brain
damage in that time. She is never able to communicate or respond again.

 

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We all know the mantra: “safety first”. Since it was first recorded as an accident-prevention slogan in 1873, it’s never fallen out of use. We want to make sure that our food, our children’s toys, and our communities are safe. On an individual level, inline skaters wear pads on their elbows and knees; motorcycle riders wear helmets. They don’t plan to fall, but they know it could happen, so they prepare for the worst before they begin. Similarly, good drivers... Read More

In one popular horror movie, a babysitter gets a phone call - okay, lots of phone calls  - asking if she’s checked the children. Of course, she hasn’t: that’s the audience’s cue that scary stuff is about to happen.  The funny thing is, the question is our cue in real life, too. Every parent knows that  you have to make sure your kids are taken care of; the really hard part is remembering that kids ma... Read More

Fifty years ago, Clairol tantalized the country with the question, “Does she. . . or doesn't she?" Ostensibly, the answer was about hair coloring ("Only her hairdresser knows for sure") but that certainly wasn’t the only thing on audiences’ minds. Men everywhere wanted to know: did she . . . leave anything to him in her will?

All right, maybe that wasn’t what they were asking. After all, the truth is out there. The fact of the matter is, your... Read More

Welcome to my new blog! This is a lot less formal than other kinds of publications, so I'll be using this space to talk about personal issues (I'm a parent, a bibliophile, and a lot of other things you'll soon discover) as well as legal matters (speaking as the founder of Unique Law, a law firm serving unique individuals and their families throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area). Please don't hesitate to respond: your questions, comments, and ideas are more than welcome.... Read More