Ask Thomas Mitchell: What Steps Do I Take to File for Guardianship of My Elderly Parents?
Video Summary
Good morning, my name is Tom Mitchell; I’m a partner with the law firm of Waller & Mitchell in downtown New Port Richey, Florida. I want to speak to you today a little bit about what you have to do if an elderly member of your family, a parent perhaps, starts to lose the ability mentally or physically to take of themselves. If your family’s fortunate and the parent has done the proper planning, they may have a Power of Attorney in place, which means that the trusted family member whose been given that power can act on their behalf, but if there is no Power of Attorney, it may be necessary to file a guardianship action on behalf of the person.
Now a guardianship action is a court proceeding and what happens is that you need an attorney and the attorney prepares certain documents that are known as pleadings and the pleadings state that we believe this senior individual is incapacitated, that’s the technical word, doesn’t mean they’re mentally unable, doesn’t mean they’re physically unable, but it’s some combination typically of both. They have had a decline in mentation and they have the usual problems of the aging process. So we file these pleadings, we describe what we think the problem is, we list who the doctor is, we list who the family members are and at that point, those papers get filed with the court, the court then appoints a medical committee, a three person committee to examine the individual and make a recommendation as to whether or not a guardianship is needed. The court also appoints an individual, an attorney, to represent the alleged incapacitated person, just to make sure that they’re not some nice little old person that we are trying to steal all their money, and by the way, if you’re thinking of that, don’t do it in a guardianship, because the court supervises guardians very closely.
If you need to file guardianship action on behalf of one your parents who may be declining in their later years, you can contact me at Waller & Mitchell and we’ll be glad to take care of it for you. This is Tom Mitchell with the law firm of Waller & Mitchell in New Port Richey, Florida.
- Published in Guardianship, Videos
How Do I Write Corporate Minutes?
Video Summary
How do I write corporate minutes? Well first let’s talk about what we mean by corporate minutes. Each year, at least once a year, you need to have a shareholders meeting and under your bylaws of your corporation you have to give notice to the shareholders that you’re holding a meeting. What you customarily do is simply have a waiver signed particularly whenever let’s say one or two shareholder corporation and they simply waive notice of the meeting. The shareholders then primary function is to elect the directors and so you write up the minutes giving the date, time and place the meeting took place, who was present and how many shares of stock that each of the shareholders held and hopefully if they were present or not so that you have a quorum and you further go on down in the minutes and say that the shareholders conducted an election and elected so and so, which is usually themselves, as the directors of the corporation. And then you have the secretary sign off on the minutes and put those in the corporate record book with the waiver of the notice of the meeting.
Then the directors usually meet immediately thereafter, if it’s a small corporation, and again, if there are just one or two directors, you have them sign a waiver of the notice of the meeting. So then the directors, their primary function are to select the officers for the upcoming year and they elect who the president, vice president, secretary, treasure is concern. Also that they may approve any major purchases that the president or someone has done during the past year, possibly approve salaries; contributions to 401K’s, compensation, bonuses, and things such as this would then go in the director’s meeting for the various officers. And then again, you have the Chairman of the Board sign the minutes as well as the secretary for the corporation and then insert the waiver of the meeting and the minutes.
We, at my office, send out a questionnaire and a notice that these minutes need to be done. Each year we try to send it out the first part of the year and ask for the information and then we prepare these in duplicate; the shareholders minutes and the director’s minutes. Once we have them prepared in duplicate, we send them back out to be signed with one copy going in our file for the corporation, the other going in the corporate record book.
I believe we charge $250 for the preparation of the minutes each year. We also remind you that you must file with the Secretary of State each year and right now the fee is $150 must be paid before May 1st, 2000, well its May 1st of each year.
It is also very critical that you have shareholder meetings and director’s minutes if you want to enjoy the protection of not being liable for the corporate debts. Because if you’re going to be a corporation, you need to act like a corporation and have your annual meeting of shareholders, elect directors, the directors need to elect the officers and then whenever you are sued and they attempt to pierce the corporate veil, then you have the corporate minutes to show that these are corporate debts and the shareholders will not be personally liable for the corporation debts.
So if you have any questions about your corporate minutes, give me a call at (727) 847-2288. Thank you.
- Published in LLC's and Corporations, Videos
Can I Terminate a Notice of Commencement?
Video Summary
Can I terminate a Notice of Commencement? Before answering the question, I’d like to first talk about a Notice of Commencement and why we have notices of commencement. They are an integral part of the construction lien law in Florida. And it’s the owner’s responsibility to record this Notice of Commencement before starting construction. In fact, in order to get a building permit, you must have a Notice of Commencement recorded.
The Notice of Commencement gives everyone who works on the property the name of the owner of the property so that they can give them a notice to owner that they are working on the property. It also gives the contractors name and address so that they sub contractor can also give notice to the contractor that he is giving notice to the owner that he’s working on it. So this all ties into the owner then, having the responsibility to obtain a waiver from anyone that is working on the property that has given notice to owner.
So in order to terminate your Notice of Commencement, you obtain an affidavit from your contractor that says he has completed all the work or he has been paid for his services and he has paid all of his subcontractors and material men. So at that point you are then in a position to terminate the Notice of Commencement and you can rely upon the contractor’s final affidavit.
There are some other circumstances whenever you may want to terminate your Notice of Commencement in the event that you started construction or you filed a Notice of Commencement and then you got a mortgage. Now you have a problem because the liens revert back to the Notice of Commencement, so now you have a mortgage and the lender won’t close on it because you can’t give them clear title or first lien position because the liens revert make to the Notice of Commencement.
So there is a process whereby you can terminate the Notice of Commencement and then later file a new one. I don’t have enough time to talk about whenever a contractor goes bad and you terminate his services, on how to file a Notice of Recommencement after a termination of a contractor.
If you have any questions about Notice of Commencements, give me a call at (727) 847-2288. Thank you.
- Published in Real Estate, Videos
If My Home Goes into Foreclosure, Can I Remove and Sell the Kitchen Cabinets?
Video Summary
If my home goes into foreclosure, can I remove and sell the kitchen cabinets and other fixtures inside the home? The answer to that question is no, you should not be selling the fixtures. Whatever’s attached to the property is real property and they have a mortgage against it, so it’s really basically a fraud against your lender if you start removing kitchen cabinets and fixtures. Now appliances, that’s something different, in that usually the mortgage does not cover appliances. But as far as light fixtures, kitchen cabinets, water heaters, windows, things such as this, that’s all part of the house and should not be removed in a mortgage foreclosure action and that is part of the real property. So hopefully if you’re in a mortgage foreclosure action, well give me a call and we’ll see about trying to help you out as far as a defense is concerned, or see what your alternatives are.
My phone number is 847-2288.
- Published in Real Estate - Foreclosure, Videos