When he was a young adult complaining about the burdens of adult life, Parker’s parents had teased him that he was still adjusting to adulting. But after a good decade of adulting, Parker was realizing that his early complaints had indicated an alarming lack of discipline and attention. Parker now had legal issues piling up, all arising out of his refusal to give his adult affairs their due. And those legal issues, including a paternity action, license discipline, a credit card company’s money judgment against him, wage garnishment, and inability to rent an apartment no less buy a home, were now slowing him down, keeping him from moving on in life. Parker wished he’d paid more attention. Now, he was paying the piper.
Interests
To manage your legal affairs well, you need to have a reasonably clear idea of your legal interests. We pay attention to what we think matters. And when the subject comes to your legal affairs, you have a lot that matters. You have several major interests that law addresses, protects, and in some instances complicates. Manage those interests well, and law will be on your side, protecting those interests, promoting your pursuit of laudable goals, and opening doors to greater opportunities. Mismanage those interests, and law will hold you accountable. Doors you wanted open will close for you, and other doors through which you would prefer not to walk will open. This chapter surveys those interests before the following chapters dive deeper into each of them. As you read this chapter, assess the interest areas on which you may need to focus to get your legal affairs in better order.
Conduct
Your conduct is a first area where you may need to make some adjustments to keep your legal affairs in order. Set aside for a moment the questions of with whom you live, where you work, what you own, and with whom you contract, each of which raise significant legal issues. First, consider what you are doing. Take a look at the nature, quality, and intentions of your own actions. Your conduct and what you’re hoping to satisfy or accomplish through it are big determinants of whether you can keep your legal affairs in order. Crimes you commit or to which you are an accomplice, drugs or alcohol you imbibe when committing those crimes, your criminal record, your status as a victim of crime or the victims your crime produces, your civil liability for fraud or negligence, and your responsibility for regulatory violations are all legal problems arising out of personal conduct. Wander astray, disregarding the interests of others while pursuing your own temptations, and your conduct will cause legal problems.
Education
Your education is a second area where you may need to make some adjustments to keep your legal affairs in order. Education is a big deal in life simply because we spend a lot of time on it. Education can also be a big deal in life because of its impact on our outlook, vocation, income, and career. And education can have a big impact on life because of what we pay for it. Education thus involves significant legal issues. Those legal issues can include your admission and access to education or the access of your children, your parental control over your children’s schooling, your tuition, room, and board agreements or the agreements to which you commit on behalf of your children, accommodation and special-needs services related to disabilities, your safety, the safety of your children, the danger you or your children present to others or others present to you from bullying, harassment, and intimidation, your school discipline or the discipline of your children, truancy and alternative disciplinary education, your school loans, and your tax-advantaged saving for your children’s college. Keep a sharp eye on your legal affairs surrounding education. Education is a huge part of life, and mishandling its legal issues can put you at significant disadvantage.
Housing
Housing is another area where you have substantial legal interests around which you may need to make some adjustments. You have substantial rights as a renter to quiet enjoyment of the premises and equivalent obligations to provide that enjoyment if you rent to others. Law also closely controls security deposits and eviction proceedings. Public programs can provide housing at an advantageous cost. Buying a home and selling a home each come with legal rights and protections, and substantial legal pitfalls. Law heavily regulates housing loans, mortgages, foreclosures, and redemption of foreclosed property. Law also regulates the liability and loss insurance on a home, and affects how you must maintain your home when inviting others onto your land. Law also protects you against trespass onto your land while imposing duties on you not to allow your premises to become a nuisance to others. Housing is a huge part of life and a big part of the financial and other security of a family. Keep your legal affairs related to housing in good order if you wish to prosper.
Transportation
Transportation is another area where you have substantial interests heavily affected by law. Law closely regulates your purchase and sale of private transportation, the warranties you have when buying a new vehicle and don’t have when buying a used vehicle, how you must and may title your vehicle, the rights and obligations that go along with titling, your registration and insuring of your vehicle, how you must maintain and operate your vehicle, when you must not operate your vehicle, and who’s responsible when you are in a motor-vehicle accident. Law also closely regulates your rights and protections when using public transportation. Law also has a great deal to say about where you may travel, when you may travel there, and what you must and must not bring with you. Keep your legal affairs related to transportation in good order, or you may face serious problems.
Employment
Employment is another huge subject in life where you have substantial interests closely regulated by law. Indeed, the workplace is among the most heavily regulated places you’ll step foot. Law determines when you are old enough to work and the hours you may work and jobs you may take when young. Law also regulates job posting and recruiting, hiring, the terms, conditions, and privileges of employment, job security, minimum wages, overtime pay, employment benefits, personnel records, disability accommodations in the workplace, work leave and return, workplace safety, and compensation for workplace injury. Law also regulates the education, examination, skills, and licenses or certifications you must hold to work. Law can also prohibit you from working if you commit acts or exhibit conditions that impair or threaten to impair your work. Law even regulates self-employment. Keep your legal affairs relating to work in order, or you’ll soon have major legal problems.
Business
Business is another area where you must keep your legal affairs in order if you hope your business to survive and thrive, and provide a living for you. Not everyone has a business. Most of us work for others in an employment arrangement for most or all of our work life. But many start their own business as a side hustle, and some of those businesses grow to substantial size. Some of the world’s largest businesses began in the founder’s basement or garage. Law promotes business formation and ownership. Law helps business owners build value in their businesses and deploy that value to promote well-being through commercial, industrial, and technological activity. Law also regulates business activity, the sale of business goods and services, and the purchase, sale, financing, franchising, merger, and other disposition of businesses. Keep your legal affairs in order around your business interests, if you want your business to thrive in the manner that you planned.
Family
Your family matters constitute another area where you must keep your legal affairs in order if you want peaceful, healthy, and prosperous family relationships. Law regulates and affects dating relationships, domestic relations, cohabiting, marriage, obligations of marital support, prenuptial and postnuptial arrangements, separation, divorce, and protection from abuse and neglect. Law also regulates the bearing and adoption of children, paternity for children, obligations of child care and support, custody and visiting of children, parental rights, foster care of children, and emancipation. Law also regulates guardianship over family members, handling of mentally incompetent family members’ financial and legal interests, and rights to direct the healthcare of incompetent family members. When families reach the crisis point, law steps in. Keep your legal affairs in order around your family interests if you want to protect and provide and care for your family members while ensuring your own care.
Finances
Your finances constitute another area where you must keep your legal affairs in order if you want to live well and prosper. Law closely regulates your banking, borrowing, debt, investing, retirement savings, and taxes. Law also closely regulates financial advice and financial products including stocks, bonds, annuities, and insurance. Law protects your identity against theft for financial fraud and holds you accountable for financial crimes like criminal fraud, conversion, and embezzlement. Law also permits you to delegate your financial powers to others and provides for conservatorship or trust management when you are unable to manage your own finances. Law also closely regulates the financial transactions you may make and the reporting you must do when making certain transactions. Keep your legal affairs in order around your finances if you want your finances to remain secure and work well for you.
Property
Law also closely regulates your property, another area where you must keep your legal affairs in good order to own, control, secure, and benefit from your property. Law governs your purchase, lease, and sale of property, form and title of property ownership, grants of security interests in your property, property loss and recovery, and property insurance and claims. Law also governs your business property and your business interests as transferable property. Law also governs your useful designs and creative works as property and your licensing or sale of those useful designs and creative works. Law also governs how you give away your property or loan your property and how you acquire property by abandonment or discovery. Keep your legal affairs in order around your property interests if you hope to hold your property secure and get to use or dispose of it as you wish, for your benefit.
Freedom
Law also governs your freedom from government interference, another area where you’d do best to keep your legal affairs in order. Law ensures your free exercise of religion, free speech and press, and freedom of expression and association, against government censorship or interference. Law protects your citizenship, grants you rights of travel, to vote, and to jury trial, protects you against unreasonable government search and seizure and cruel and unusual punishment, and grants you due process and equal protection rights against government interference with your life, liberty, or property. Law also grants certain asylum rights, rights of habeas corpus, and freedom of information rights. Keep your legal affairs in order if you wish to enjoy all your freedom from government deprivations and interference.
Legacy
Law also enables you to direct and influence your legacy, another significant area where you’d do well to keep your legal affairs in order. Law determines the contents of your estate after your passing and tells you how you to arrange for the disposition of your estate. Law enables you to make out a will, establish a trust, form a tax-exempt charity, form a family foundation, and grant a guardianship, conservatorship, and powers of attorney to direct your affairs in the event of your incompetency. Law can help you pass your accumulated wealth down in perpetuity to provide for your future generations. Keep your legal affairs in order if you wish to influence your legacy long after your passing.
Reflection
In which of the above interest areas, including your conduct, education, housing, transportation, employment, business, family, finances, property, freedom, and legacy, are your legal affairs in the best order? In which of the above interest areas are your legal affairs in the worst order? Consider turning now to the chapters on those interest areas where you have the greatest concern over the confused or disordered state of your legal affairs. Read those chapters for guidance before reading other chapters where you have less concern over the state of your legal affairs. Prioritize your legal matters, and address priority matters first.
Key Points
Law affects several major interest areas in your life, to keep in order.
Your personal conduct can implicate significant legal issues.
Your education and the education of your children raises legal issues.
Law governs your interest in acquiring safe and secure housing.
Law also governs your acquisition, use, and sale of transportation.
Law closely regulates your employment and related interests.
Law regulates your business formation, operation, and ownership.
Law affects your family relations, especially in crisis.
Law governs your property interests including ownership and use.
Law guarantees you certain freedoms from government interference.
Law helps you control and direct your legacy through generations.