George wanted to do well for himself and his family, not just as a provider but as a wise keeper of the family’s legal, financial, and other affairs. George didn’t just want to earn a good living for his family. He also wanted to show his family members that they could trust him to make wise decisions for how to manage household affairs. George wanted to take secure steps, avoid the traps and pitfalls, and lead his family in a confident, stable, effective, and reputable manner. And George knew that to do so, he needed to learn more about his legal rights, obligations, and interests. He needed a method for keeping his legal affairs in order.
Order
You’ve now seen from the above chapters just how numerous and complex your legal affairs can be. Many different laws, rules, and regulations affect you and your family and interests. You’ve also seen from the above chapters how not having your legal affairs in order can adversely affect your interests. In the worst case, you could end up in prison for disregarding your legal affairs, and not just the criminal laws but even the tax laws, traffic laws, property laws, family laws, and other laws, rules, and regulations. Short of prison, ignoring your legal affairs could cost you your spouse, children, money, home, vehicle, job, career, reputation, and everything else important to you. On the other hand, keeping your legal affairs in order could lead you to achieving your dreams and to a prosperity beyond your imagination. The good news is that for the most part, you get to choose. This chapter suggests some steps to get your legal affairs in order and to keep them in order.
Assess
A good first step for keeping your legal affairs in order is to take stock of your affairs. Call it management by walking around, or call it what you will. But to till the fields effectively, you first need to know the lay of your land. Take a good, hard look at the condition of your legal affairs in all the areas this guide suggests. Start by evaluating your personal conduct, and move on from there to evaluate your education, home, transportation, family, finances, employment, business, freedom, and legacy. The above chapters in this guide give you a blueprint for orderly legal affairs. The chapters and their sections also end with audit questions to help you evaluate your legal affairs. List the areas where you know you have adjustments to make to reduce your legal risks and improve your legal security and prospects. Save the list somewhere, like an electronic file on your cell phone, so that you can readily access, review, and update it. You might already have a daily agenda, task list, or to-do list. Add a list of your legal affairs that you need to get in order.
Investigate
Next, investigate the legal affairs you listed. Don’t plan any actions to address them until you have the information you need at hand. The legal affairs you initially listed may be in better order than you expected, or they may be in worse order than you hoped. Either way, find out with appropriate investigation. Investigation may take looking through your personal files for insurance certificates, vehicle titles, tax records, and other items. Investigation may also involve obtaining account agreements and statements from your bank, a deed from the county register, a criminal history or record online, or an old divorce judgment from the local civil court. Or you may need to inquire of your spouse or adult children, or check with your tax preparer, business partner, or accountant. Do whatever you need to do to get to the bottom of your legal situations. Investigate until you know what’s up.
Prioritize
Your next step is to prioritize the legal affairs in the order you need to address them. Some legal affairs are urgent. If you do not address them immediately, bad things could happen quickly, like your arrest or endangerment, the arrest or endangerment of family members, civil infractions and fines, financial losses, civil lawsuits and liability, and the like. Other legal affairs have no particular timetable; you just need to attend to them, sooner or later. And other legal affairs fall in between, needing diligent although not urgent treatment. Move your urgent legal affairs to the top of the list and the rest of your affairs in order of priority on down the list. Priority legal affairs may include a due or overdue tax filing or timely answering a regulatory complaint or request for investigation. Legal affairs needing diligent attention may include executing a will amendment to reflect a divorce, marriage, or birth of a child. Legal affairs of lower priority but needing attention sooner or later may include removing a satisfied lien from a vehicle title to be able to sell the vehicle some day. You can’t do everything at once. Prioritize so that you get the critical things done timely.
Plan
Your next step is to plan how to address the legal affairs you now know from your investigation are out of order. Start with your highest-priority legal matters. If it’s obvious what you need to do, then immediately plan the action, gather the documents or other items necessary to act, and schedule the necessary appointments to get things rolling. If you can’t tell what you need to do to address the legal matter, then plan the research or consultation to find out. Identify the government official, private agent, private attorney, or other professional whom you can consult and who would be able to guide you. Make the necessary call, send the required email, or schedule the necessary meeting, and then use the information you discover to plan and schedule the necessary action to address the legal matter. Go down your list of legal matters from top to bottom, planning actions to address each one or find out how to do so, until you have clear plans in place, ready to implement.
Implement
Your next step is to implement the plans you’ve made to address your priority legal issues. Implementation means acting. Plans mean nothing if you don’t execute them. Procrastination can be your worst enemy when legal affairs require prompt attention and action. If you know that a tax or regulatory filing is due or overdue, act immediately to complete the filing or request an extension. If you know that a response to a professional licensing board request for investigation is due or overdue, act immediately to respond to the request or to ask for an extension if you need more time to get the accurate and complete information with which to answer. If you know that you need to appeal an unreasonable increase in your home’s assessed value, then promptly file the appeal so that you don’t miss the appeal deadline. Whatever plan you’ve made, take the first small step toward implementing it. The second step will be easier, and the third step easier after that. You’ll feel the momentum, and before you know it, you’ll be crossing items of concern off your legal-affairs list.
Evaluate
Evaluating your progress as you implement your plans to address your legal affairs is also important. Some legal problems are persistent. You think you’ve got just the solution. You implement your solution, and check your legal issue off your list. Yet then the issue pops back up. And so you repeat what you did the first time, assuming that this time your solution will stick. But the issue pops back up yet again. The persistent problem may be erroneous tax-delinquency notices you keep getting and correcting, a competitor who keeps complaining that you’re interfering with business opportunities, a lawyer who hasn’t yet drafted the document you need despite reminders, or a licensing board that keeps refusing to renew your professional license or certification for lack of documentation you’ve already provided. Keep evaluating whether the plan that you’re implementing is producing appropriate progress. Don’t try once and assume you’ve addressed your legal issue. Instead, evaluate the results.
Adjust
If your evaluation finds that your actions are not producing the expected result and that you’re not crossing legal issues off your list as you expected, then adjust. Don’t beat your head against the proverbial wall. Only fools repeat the same action expecting different results. If your first attempt at a solution to your legal issue doesn’t work, try a different solution. If the lawyer who owes you a document isn’t responding, then reach out to the lawyer’s assistant or partner. If the assessor’s office keeps sending you erroneous delinquency notices, then schedule a meeting with the chief assessor to get to the bottom of the problem. If your professional licensing board keeps denying that you’ve provided needed documentation for a license renewal, then invoke the board’s grievance procedure with the help of qualified counsel. If you need a solution to your legal issue and your actions are not achieving it, then elevate your actions to the next level until you get to the root of the problem to finally solve it.
Repeat
The above steps describe an iterative process. The above steps are simply a good way to go about achieving things in life, whether to address your legal affairs or to pursue other interests and solve other problems. Assess, investigate, prioritize, plan, implement, evaluate, and adjust. And then repeat the cycle. You must first see and investigate your issue, then plan and implement a solution, then evaluate the result and adjust and try again if your efforts didn’t work. That’s how we interact with the world effectively, producing results. You can’t act effectively if you don’t first know what’s out there and what’s up. You can’t assume that your actions produce the desired result but must instead go check out and confirm the results. And when we don’t succeed, we should try again in a different manner making appropriate adjustments. Acting in this way simply shows faith in the process, shows perseverance, and recognizes providence. Wisely pressing on in this manner works to address legal affairs just as it does elsewhere in life.
Anticipate
One other thing you can do to manage your legal affairs well is to anticipate them. We tend to learn about our legal affairs gradually over the course of life. As we move through life’s stages and transitions, we naturally encounter new legal issues, from school to work, family, home, and business, and on to retirement. You don’t, in other words, have to learn everything all at once. You couldn’t do so. It would be too much. Yet anticipating legal issues can help. A little bit of investigation about the legalities of home purchases can help you make wise legal decisions when you buy your first home. A little bit of investigation about the legalities of banking and investing can help you make wise legal decisions when you make your first significant financial transactions and investments. You may not be retiring for decades yet. You may not even have started to save for retirement. Yet a little bit of learning about the legal advantages of preparing early for retirement may help you get there in good shape. If you can, anticipate legal issues before they arrive, and they may never land on your legal issues list.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, rate how strong your procedural skills are in identifying, addressing, and resolving problems. Can you see how keeping your legal affairs in order requires consistent application of an orderly process like the one this chapter describes? Do you see other areas in your life where you are already following a similar process or could improve those areas of your life by doing so? Can you readily identify your legal issues? Have you adequately investigated your most urgent legal issues? Do you know which of your legal issues are most urgent? Do you have a plan for addressing your most urgent legal issues? If not, who can help you with your plan? What actions can you take today to implement your plan to address your most urgent legal issues? Are you stuck in your attempts to resolve any of your legal issues? If so, how could you adjust to get unstuck? What legal issues can you see coming up in the near future? Can you prepare for those issues so that they do not become problems?
Key Points
Maintaining order in your legal affairs can follow a reliable process.
First assess your legal matters to be sure that you identify them.
Next, investigate your legal matters to learn everything you can.
Then, prioritize your legal matters from most to least urgent.
Next, plan how to best resolve your most urgent legal issues.
Diligently implement your plans for resolving urgent legal issues.
Evaluate the results of your actions addressing your legal issues.
Adjust your actions by results to ensure you address your issues.
Repeat the process from assessment to results until you resolve issues.
Anticipate coming legal issues so that they don’t become problems.