Reena Gulati Blog

There certainly are advantages to a living trust. However, whether it is the right decision to incorporate a living trust into your estate plan requires an analysis of your unique circumstances. Just like most things in life, it’s not one size fits all. You may come in wanting some level of planning but what is going to work with your objectives of transferring your assets, planning for estate taxes or incapacity, or surrendering total or partial control over your assets is going to depend upon your end goals. It all begins with an inquiry into your situation and exploring various legal avenues in achieving your intended goals.

1. Don't wait. Often during the course of the tenancy, the tenant falls behind in rent or is a habitual offender and fails to pay rent in a timely manner. You as the landlord hope that it will come any day or the next week, as promised. If the tenant is behind in rental payments, the landlord should start a legal proceeding to evict immediately. In most circumstances waiting any longer is almost always detrimental to the landlord. This is because the law requires that adequate notice must be provided to the tenant prior to evicting them, which causes further delays in evicting the nonpaying tenant. The landlord continues to lose time and additional rent.

My client’s grandmother passed away without a will. Therefore, under New York law, my client should have inherited the house and the investment property of her grandmother. Unfortunately, at the time of her death, the house was owned by the grandmother and her mother, the great-grandmother.

Have you ever experienced attempting to refinance or obtain a loan only to find there is a judgment against your name or your business? Do you believe that the judgment is erroneous? Or that the incorrect entity has been sued? Often, the business owner does not find out about the judgment until the service of a Marshal’s Notice. In these instances, the business owner either never received proper notice of the lawsuit or failed to respond to a complaint and a default judgment was entered against the business owner.

Often I get inquiries from potential clients who are in the process of employing a contractor to renovate their homes, asking if they should have a formal contract with the contractor. In a couple of instances the clients' projects were worth several hundred thousand dollars and they had no written contract with the contractor. However, the homeowners didn't feel comfortable turning over tens of thousands of dollars to the contractor at the very beginning of the project without an agreement and hence they called us.