Legal Talk

Insurtech – An Innovation for Insurance

Insurance is just a legal contract between the insurer, who promises to pay for a covered loss, and the insured, who promises to pay premiums. As if. Pull out one of your insurance policies and read the definition of “covered loss.” Copy the definition into a Word document. Now look at the capitalized, italicized or bolded words within the sentences. Those words are defined terms. The definitions will be found within the policy itself...

Granny Get Your Gun – Disaster Carry for Handgun Owners

Do you ever feel like you are in an unending Ad Lib game? “Today the issued a disaster declaration  regarding and advised everyone to immediately. Reaction was .“ Regardless of the crisis du jour, it would be wise for all of us to brush up on the Disaster Carry law in Texas. When Hurricane Harvey hit, it became evident that the handgun law in Texas had a gaping...

Beware the MERP – Texas offers Huge Loophole to Recovery Program

MERP is the Texas Medicaid Estate Recovery Program. Its sole purpose is to seize money from the estates of deceased Medicaid recipients and then plop the recovered funds back into the state’s coffers. The government, acting through a contractor called Health Management Systems, Inc. (HMS), does this by filing a claim in probate.       Why is this a prudent financial maneuver by the government? Because although Medicaid is a needs-based program,...

The Cruise Conundrum – Suing is not Easy Sailing

There have always been murmurs, interrupted by occasional shouts, about the dark side of traveling on a cruise ship. Some of the stories – of passengers falling overboard and drowning, burning to death in an on-board fire, being sexually assaulted, smashing onto a deck after a cord broke on an onboard bungee jump – are horrific. If any of these incidents had occurred in a hotel or recreational park on...

Shedding the Unwanted Houseguest – A Road Map to Deal with Squatters

“Friends, Relatives, In-laws, lend me your ears.  I have come to bury our relationship, not to praise it.  You need to leave my house now.” Feel free to tweak the foregoing to fit your situation.  Shakespeare most assuredly will not mind. There are few situations more fraught with anxiety than dealing with a houseguest turned squatter.  You might be dealing with an adult child who moves back home for “just a...

Amateur Hour – Loans to Family Members Can Be Complicated

During the Years of Plenty, when you could simply throw money into the air and have it return three-fold, intra-family loans were a rarity.   Ah, but that was before the dawning of the year of Coronavirus.  Nowadays family loans are depressingly common, often being the only buffer between economic survival and pandemic- inspired bankruptcy.    If you find yourself lending money to a family member, there are some points to keep in...

It is Twenty Years Later – Do You Know Where Your Lawyer Is?

Talk about an aging profession. More than 35% of the licensed attorneys in the State of Texas are over the age of 55. Ouch. Just like other professionals, lawyers can retire, move, get hit by lightning, or die. If that happens to your lawyer, then it can leave you, the client, in a mess. You need to protect yourself from the unintentional fallout. Before we get to the steps you should take, consider...

Top Ways Your Business Can Prepare for the New SBA Loan

As the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic and its threat to the American economy became increasingly apparent, Congress passed the Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act on March 27, 2020. The original law created a relief package of over $2 trillion with the purpose to provide fast and direct economic assistance to American workers, families and small businesses while preserving jobs for American businesses and industries. For small...

Butt Shaking – Accusation of Lawyer’s Bad Acts goes Viral

In 1989 the justices of the two highest courts of this great State of Texas, disgusted with the bad behavior of a “minority” of Texas lawyers, adopted a missive called The Texas Lawyer’s Creed. It sets forth aspirational rules of conduct using a consistent theme of the lawyer’s duty of honesty, candor and fairness towards clients, opposing counsel and judges. Little did the justices realize that their Creed contained a...

Getting Past the Nursing Home Lock-Down – Government Letters Help

If the impact of COVID-19 were to be illustrated by only one picture, it would be that of a grandfather and grandson, separated by a nursing home window, reaching out to touch each other’s hand through the glass.      Pitiful as that scene is, even that amount of limited communication is not being offered by some nursing homes.  If you are one of the families being denied visits or information by a...

Small Stuff – The Covid-19 Changes You Have Not Heard About

You have to give reporters due credit. News coverage on the recently enacted pandemic-related laws and actions by government officials – elected and appointed – has been phenomenal. The big stuff made headlines in every news outlet. Not so well publicized was the bunch of small stuff that happened quietly behind the scenes. Since these changes were not quite so bombastic, you may not have heard about them. Here, then,...

3 Ways That Grandparents Can Get Custody of Grandchildren

In recent years, the traditional nuclear American family that prevailed in the years following World War II – father, mother and children all living together – has undergone a number of societal strains and changes, including the frequency of divorce and an increasing number of single-parent households. Consequently, census figures reveal that today, 1 in 10 American children live with a grandparent, and that statistic includes approximately a quarter...