Living in her parents’ basement humbled Deborah. After all, she was a forty-year-old career woman with two college degrees, not at all a poster child for the failure-to-launch generation. Living in her parents’ basement forced Deborah to look back not just at what had gone wrong but also why things had gone wrong. Deborah’s legal problems were clear enough. First, her graduate-school mentor had accused her of falsifying research data during her graduate program, when errors in his published work had come to light. Deborah had barely managed to keep her graduate degree, but the reprimands the graduate school imposed caused Deborah’s professional board to yank her license. Losing her license meant Deborah lost her clinical practice and job. And when she and her long-time boyfriend split as a consequence, Deborah was out of her home. Yet Deborah kept pondering: what had caused her downfall? Could her downfall have been her own ambition?
Roots
As you read the following chapters on the several significant areas in which you have substantial legal interests, keep in mind the roots that may be leading to your legal issues and problems. Keep the roots in mind even if you don’t yet have significant legal problems in some or any of those areas. That’s the danger with roots: they take hold before you see them. Only after they’ve gotten a grip on your legal affairs do they begin to manifest themselves in outright problems. Not every legal problem has a long and deep root. But many of them do. Some legal issues emerge out of a deep character flaw that might have first taken shape as early as childhood. Other legal issues emerge out of a misguided ambition adopted in college or graduate school. Other legal issues arise out of a sloppy practice or habit that slowly developed early on in a career or job. And perhaps the sloppiness itself arose from a general indiscipline or inattention to detail characteristic of a weakened family line. Try to discern and address the root of your legal problem, even while cutting away its ugly entanglement.
Character
Character can indeed be a contributor to legal problems. Character expresses itself in a habit or tendency so deeply ingrained as to be a part of one’s natural or inherent makeup. Anyone can make a mistake. Law often excuses a single mistake. But make a series of similar mistakes over an extended period of time, and the problem looks more like a bad character for carelessness than an excusable mistake. And law isn’t so likely to excuse repeated carelessness. Likewise, a single factual mistake in a communication is generally excusable. But a series of factual mistakes in one’s own favor begin to look more like deliberately deceptive and fraudulent lies, traceable to dishonest character. Law may excuse the mistake but won’t excuse the fraud. Law looks at character as much or more than conduct. You should examine your character and the character of others when evaluating your legal affairs. Character matters in legal affairs.
Flaws
The character flaws that contribute to legal problems, and to watch for in both yourself and those with whom you deal, include the common vices. Greed, referring to the desire to take more for oneself than one needs, deserves, or can enjoy, is an obvious contributor to legal problems, especially around issues like theft, embezzlement, conversion, trespass, and fraud. Envy is a close sister, inviting the same problems. Greed and envy together nurture dishonesty and deception, enabling the same criminal and tortious misconduct. Lust undermines marital and family relationships while inviting the legal issues surrounding relationship loss, divorce, job loss, loss of positions of trust and confidence, and criminal charges. Sloth leads to carelessness and attendant claims for waste, negligence, malpractice, regulatory violations, and violations of others’ rights. Procrastination is another fault commonly associated with legal problems. Unduly putting things off, and thus violating the standard of care, can lead to a host of legal and regulatory violations. Watch out for character flaws when examining your legal affairs or entering into relationships and transactions with others.
Psychosis
A surprisingly high percentage of legal problems arise out of not just subtle or rank character flaws but full-on psychoses. Lawyers delve deep into marital breakups and other family court issues, guardianships and other probate court issues, business failures and other contract and civil disputes, and of course criminal cases. Within those legal disputes, lawyers quickly become familiar with moderate to severe psychoses better diagnosed and treated by a licensed psychologist. Legal disputes reveal antisocial personality disorder, narcissism, impulsivity, excessive risk-taking behavior, inability to experience empathy or show remorse, entitlement, manipulative behavior, schizophrenia, and (saving the worst for last) psychopathy. Litigation can even expose the dark triad of narcissism, manipulative behavior, and psychopathy, although often one sees only dysfunctional family backgrounds and negative peer influences. When you are evaluating your legal affairs and issues, watch closely for the presence and impact of psychoses. Poor psychological makeup breeds legal problems.
Causes
General causes can also be important to legal problems, issues, and affairs. Not every legal problem begins with someone’s poor character. Legal problems can also arise from natural, predictable, unpredictable, and systemic causes. Sometimes, the problem isn’t another’s misconduct. Sometimes, the problem is a predictable and avoidable natural cause. Other times, the problem is a systemic cause resulting from poor system design. And other times, the cause is unpredictable but insurable or otherwise protectible, and thus something a person wise about legal risks could manage. For example, the collapse of the facility where you stored your beloved classic yacht for the winter, under the weight of an unusually heavy snow, might have been only marginally predictable. But the storage agreement might have disclaimed loss liability, required insurance, provided for indemnity, or otherwise allocated the loss. For another example, the grain mill that sold you the poisoned feed that killed your chickens and hogs might have had a fault in its mixing system that led to the poisoning. And once again, law is going to have something to say about who bears the loss for the mill’s system failure. Causes matter to legal outcomes. When you see a legal issue looming seemingly out of nowhere, trace it to its cause.
Triggers
Legal problems also have triggers. A trigger isn’t something rooted deep in an individual’s character flaw. Nor is it truly a cause, without which the legal problem would never have arisen. A trigger simply sparks into action conditions that might otherwise remain dormant, at least for a time. You can’t really blame a trigger for causing the legal problem because triggers are innocent, only doing their job. They’re not flaws, and they’re not causes. But you might try to minimize and avoid triggers, especially if you know that you’ve got underlying conditions of concern. Operating a motor vehicle, for one example, can have several triggers leading to the intervention of law enforcement. Your vehicle might, for instance, stall on the side of the road, requiring law enforcement rescue. Or you might have a tail light go out or forget to turn on your blinker, leading to an officer pulling you over. Well then, you’d better be sober, have no illegal drugs, arms, or open alcohol in the vehicle, have a current driver’s license, and have your vehicle properly insured, or you’ll suddenly have a legal problem because of the otherwise innocent trigger. For another example, a little cooking fire in your kitchen, promptly put out, might bring a firefighter’s emergency visit or a code inspection. Well then, you’d better hope you have nothing illegal visible in your home and that your home meets code, or you’ll have a legal problem. Many big legal problems begin with small triggers. When you’ve got potential legal problems, beware the triggers that could set the problems ablaze.
Complaints
Legal problems also often begin with complaints. Who is doing the complaining and the nature of the complaint can affect a legal problem’s outcome. Everything may have been going along fine. Yet then, someone complains about something. And before you know it, the complaint has led to a series of investigations, discoveries, legal claims, and significant and painful adjustment of legal rights. When you see a potential legal risk around your affairs, and a potential legal problem looming, think of the potential complainants. Imagine, for example, that you just completed a beautiful and expensive new addition to your waterfront home. Yet when the neighbors finally return from their winter quarters down south, they complain that your new addition encroaches on their property across the boundary line. They have a serious complaint. They own the property over which you just extended your home. Not every complaint is of legal consequence. People sometimes complain about things they do not know and that do not affect their substantial interests. But some complaints carry enormous legal weight and significance. With legal affairs, always consider the potential complainants. Know whom your legal problems might harm.
Conditions
Legal problems also often arise out of conditions, whether known or hidden. Your setting, circumstances, or environment composes the conditions out of which your legal issues emerge. As much as you may prefer order and stability in your life, conditions are so numerous, so easily affected, and so swiftly changing as to be naturally chaotic. You simply cannot maintain order in everything significant to you, all the time. Despite your best planning and effort, your circumstances may change so surely and swiftly as to leave you with big legal problems. The examples are frankly countless but begin with things like economic changes, political changes, changes in legal rules themselves, relationship changes, job changes, technological advances, market changes, health changes, and even changes in the weather. The farmer or rancher who faces a severe drought can soon have serious legal problems related to water use, failed crops, dead livestock, unfillable contracts, and unpayable debt. When examining your legal affairs, issues, and problems, understand how changing conditions may have affected those issues or may soon affect them.
Finances
While financial issues differ from legal issues, financial issues can certainly bring about legal issues. Lawyers don’t generally give financial advice. But plenty of lawyers are very familiar, from their efforts to help suddenly destitute clients, with the legal problems wrought by poor financial practices or just unavoidable financial reversals. A significant portion of legal planning has to do with anticipating and minimizing the adverse impact of financial reversals. Your legal problems may have begun with financial problems, whether you had any role or not in causing or failing to prevent those financial problems. When examining your legal affairs and issues, understand how financial issues are affecting or may affect those legal issues.
Health
Health issues can also contribute to or bring about legal problems. Disability due to accidental injury or declining health can lead to job loss, further leading to an inability to meet current financial obligations. Inability to meet financial obligations due to poor health and a decline in earned income can bring about serious legal issues like contract breach, vehicle repossession, mortgage default, tax delinquency, home eviction, benefits and insurance loss, child-support delinquency, and loss of driver’s license and professional or trades license. Poor health can also implicate legal issues involving health insurance, disability insurance, worker’s compensation benefits, and other private and government benefits programs. Lawyers sometimes observe that many Americans are only an illness or injury away from a collapse in financial, legal, and property interests, and homelessness. Watch for the impact or potential impact of health on your legal affairs and interests.
Relationships
Relationship issues can also contribute to or bring about legal problems. You may be doing quite well financially and with your health. But beware the impact on your legal affairs of falling into an unstable, unhealthy, and deleterious marital, business, dating, parental, friendship, or other relationship. The people with whom we travel through life influence substantially not only our life’s course and trajectory but also the legal issues and problems we may face. Have a child with someone who isn’t as responsible and trustworthy as you’d thought, and you’ll soon see the legal issues over custody, visitation, support, and perhaps even allegations of child abuse and neglect. Marry a psychopath, severe paranoid schizophrenic, or raging narcissist, and you’ll soon have more legal problems than you’ll know how to address. Get into business with a habitual liar or hopeless procrastinator, and you’ll soon have more legal problems coming. When examining your legal affairs and issues, watch for the impact of difficult or changing relationships.
Audit
The above introductory chapters, together with this chapter’s discussion of conditions that undermine legal affairs, may have given you a sense of the state of your own legal affairs. To better gauge where your legal affairs stand, rate the state of your legal affairs from 1 to 5 along the following scale:
[1] My legal affairs are so seriously out of order that I am suffering serious losses and facing profound uncertainty, negatively affecting me, my family, and others around me. I need help putting my legal affairs in order and plan to take immediate action.
[2] My legal affairs are largely unattended even if not seriously disordered, when attention is clearly due now. My legal affairs expose me, my family, and others around me to significant risks that could at any time lead to serious loss if not addressed as I now plan.
[3] My legal affairs are in basic order as things now stand but would not hold up well in the event of likely developments. While attention to them is not an immediate need, I am missing important opportunities to order and improve my life, which I plan to soon do.
[4] My legal affairs are in good order for now and in the event of foreseeable developments. While they leave me and my family peace of mind and need no attention, I nonetheless suspect that with review and counsel, I could make them work even better.
[5] My legal affairs are of no concern whatsoever. I have so effectively addressed, managed, and ordered them that they contribute substantially to my well-being and the well-being of my family and others around me, even to the point of fostering a legacy.
Key Points
Legal problems often have deep roots in other issues. Know the roots.
Character issues, both yours and others’, can lead to legal problems.
Severe character flaws can manifest in serious legal problems.
Legal disputes often involve a party with diagnosable psychoses.
Legal issues also have natural or systemic causes.
Some legal problems manifest themselves after an unusual trigger.
Other legal problems manifest themselves from a complaint.
Changing conditions give rise to other legal problems.
Financial setbacks can lead to serious and burgeoning legal problems.
Health issues can also lead to serious and spreading legal problems.
Relationship issues are another frequent source of legal problems.