NC and SC Estate Planning and Elder Law Firm

It’s been said that the Vietnam War is the reason that Americans started losing faith in government, and it’s not hard to see why. The public was lied to repeatedly, and thousands of lives were lost as a result. Not surprisingly, the impacts of this controversial and costly war are still being felt. A recent story by the investigative news organization ProPublica shed light on an important, yet often overlooked impact of the war, the rise and struggle of the modern-day Vietnam widow.

The article tells the stories of women who have been widowed recently, but who argue the Vietnam War was the cause.

Earlier this month, the highest court in the land, the United States Supreme Court, heard oral arguments in a case about an issue near and dear to our heart: education for people with special needs. Thanks to this case, we may finally get an answer to the question of how much effort and funding public schools should put toward educating a student with special needs.

The case before the Court comes from Colorado, and it concerns a young man diagnosed with autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, who made little progress in public school, but was able to make significant gains after switching to a private school. The family is seeking reimbursement for the cost of sending their son to private school (he is now 17), but the local public school balked at the suggestion that the education they provided was inadequate.

The Court will decide “whether public schools owe disabled children ‘some’ educational benefit — which courts have determined to mean just-above-trivial progress — or whether students legally deserve something more: a substantial, ‘meaningful’ benefit.

Death is a difficult topic to talk about, which means that many aspects of it are shrouded in mystery. This, some crazy movie plots, a boatload of conspiracies floating around the internet, has led to a lot of myths and misconceptions about estate planning. This post will bust three of the most common myths.

Ryan Monk, already well-known as a talented estate planning attorney with bases in Charlotte and Fort Mill, North Carolina, has recently added two prestigious new credentials to his resume. He has been recognized in 2017 as both a Super Lawyer and as one of  Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite. A member of the North Carolina South Carolina State Bar Associations, Ryan Monk concentrates his efforts on legacy protection and wealth preservation, and is adept in handling issues of elder law, veterans benefits, and business law with competence and integrity.

Super Lawyers is a service that rates outstanding lawyers from all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
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It’s that time of year again! Time to make New Year’s resolutions! This year, instead of vowing to shed a few pounds, which you know is a promise that will fall by the wayside within a couple weeks, why not resolve to put an estate plan in place?

It’s the perfect resolution because your attorney actually does a lot of the work for you, and you will feel really relieved to have it done and over with. And as an added bonus, it’s calorie free in case you also make the same old “get in shape” resolution everyone else makes too!

Why It’s Important Not To Wait To Make An Estate Plan

A lot of people think that estate planning is something that can be put off until old age. That’s simply not true.

If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet over the past few years you will recognize this blog title as a little bit of click-bait. We aren’t going to take you to some shady corner of the internet and attempt to sell you homeopathic medicine though. We really are going to share one simple estate planning trick for avoiding taxes.

Working with veterans and their families to help them get all the benefits they are eligible for teaches you a lot about the challenges our brave men and women in uniform face here on the home front. Unless you are a veteran, or the family member of a veteran, or have really gotten to know a few veterans, the struggle is difficult to grasp. A new documentary about a veteran living in North Carolina is helping to shed some light on the subject and bring awareness to it.

From the way people reacted in response to the news that veterans in California were being asked to repay benefits that they had received in error, you might get the impression that our military is a highly efficient bureaucracy that rarely makes mistakes. Unfortunately, those of us that have experience navigating the military benefits system know that is far from true. Our military is excellent at many things, but accurate bookkeeping is not one of its strengths.

Why is everyone talking about military bonuses out in California?

It seems that there were a couple of things that went wrong out in California. First, veterans were given reenlistment bonuses that they were not actually eligible for.

Several years ago, an estate planning attorney I had met at a conference called looking for some advice. One of his clients had recently passed away very unexpectedly, and he was scrambling to help his client’s widow take control of her late husband’s business. Things weren’t going well.

The widow was, understandably, overcome with grief, but she was doing the best she could. Unfortunately, she didn’t even know which keys opened the front door, let alone how to run the business on a day to day basis.

With all that has been going on in the world over the past month, it was easy to miss the fact that an interesting new lawsuit has been filed against the state of South Carolina. The fact that the state is getting sued is not news. That happens all the time. What is different about this case is that it is about whether or not an innovative new company is able to do business in South Carolina.

Opternative is a Chicago-based company that allows consumers to get a prescription for glasses or contacts over the internet.

An All Too Real Horror Story

Spoiler Alert: The following includes information about this season of the popular TV show American Horror Story: Roanoke.

One of the central plots in Season 6 is recapping the actions of a pair of nurses (now ghosts) who opened an assisted living facility in North Carolina (Roanoke like the lost colony, not like the current city in case you were wondering) so they could kill people whose initials spell out their favorite word, M-U-R-D-E-R.

What many people don’t realize, is that this scary story is based on a real life horror story. Catherine May Wood and Gwendolyn Gail Graham, the “Lethal Lovers,” were convicted of second and first degree murder respectively after several people under their care at a nursing home in Michigan died suspiciously. According to a New York Times article recounting the ladies’ 1988 arrests, says it was rumored that the killers were attempting to spell out the word “MURDER,” just like the ghosts in American Horror Story.
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