What If?

Before I get to today's topic, I want to let everyone know that Kai Jacobs, P.A. has now survived two months on its own thanks to your support. I appreciate and thank you all. Please, please, please keep those referrals coming. I enjoy certain luxuries - like eating and living indoors.

On to our topic - the "what if" scenario. Are you prepared? What if you fall ill and can't make decisions for yourself? What if you are laid up in the hospital and can't make your medical decisions? Is there someone who is designated to make these for you?

Do not assume that just because you have a spouse that you are in the clear. You may remember that Terry Schiavo had a spouse and we all know how many court fights that engendered. What can you do to avoid a situation like this? Three things- you can get a living will, a durable power of attorney and an advance health care directive. Right- legal mumbo jumbo.

Actually, these are three documents that can save your family a lot of heartache, a huge amount of money and ensure that your wishes are observed should you be unable to articulate them.

The living will makes it clear that you do or do not want to be kept alive if you slip into a coma or prolonged vegetative state (what a horrible phrase but one apparently recognized by the legal and medical communities).

The durable power of attorney allows you to designate someone to manage whatever affairs you name during your incapacity. You want this to make sure your bills get paid and your business is taken care of, should something happen to you.

Finally, the advance health care directive allows someone else to make medical decisions for you, should you be unable to do so. This happens a lot more than you think. Recently, clients who are unmarried but lived together for many years learned this lesson the hard way. One was hospitalized and, while under anesthesia, the doctors wanted permission to perform another procedure. Guess what? The boyfriend was unable to give consent because he was not a legal spouse and did not have an advance health care directive.

Of course, no one likes to think about what if. The good news is, you only have to think about what if for a very short time. You can get these documents put together easily and then all you have to do is keep them someplace safe and hope that they never do anything but collect dust.

Have a great weekend everyone.

I Know You Won't Believe Me

So, you haven't heard from me for the last couple of days because I was in Jacksonville putting out a client fire - well, maybe just trying to get flames under control until we can get into court. But that's another story.

From every circle of my social stratosphere I get questioned about lawyers, as if being one somehow makes me an expert on all of them. One of my favorites is the regular comparison of bureaucracy to the practice of law. You know, "Of course the government is screwed up, it's run by lawyers;" "Of course that law is incomprehensible, it was written by lawyers." You see where I'm going with this.

Now, you may not believe me, but the courts are sympathetic to the layman's troubles. Yes, many laws are incomprehensible, as are government regulations and, worst of all, government contracts. For those of you who have had the misfortune of being embroiled in a multi-party contract with any part of the government, in which statutes, administrative regulations and local rules apply from several different subject areas and locations, you will be happy to see that the courts feel your pain, as follows:

United States should not require contractors to wade through maze of numbers, catalogs, cross-reference tables and other data resembling crossword puzzles in order to find out what the government requires in an invitation for bids, particularly when requirements can be clearly specified by ordinary words and figures. Gorn Corp. v. U.S., 424 F.2d 588 (1970).

See you tomorrow.

As long as we're bring patriotic....

So, having gone off track yesterday with a little editorial about the Declaration of Independence, I thought I would follow out my train of thought - this being the week of Independence Day and all.

Below is a copy of the Gettysburg Addresss, a speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg in the midst of the Civil War. We live in an era in which the President's every public utterance and image is carefully staged and crafted in advance and vetted to ensure its appeal to the most common denominator. This speech is remarkable because Lincoln himself wrote it (and, as far as my research shows, revised it). Perhaps even more amazing, it is only 288 words long and is largely regarded as the speech against which all presidential oratory is measured.

So, here it is:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Sounds about right for Independence Day.

33

The Fourth of July is coming up on us, so I dusted off a copy of the Declaration of Independence and read over what the Founders came up with for their Preface to the American Owner's Manual (the Constitution, kids, in case you didn't get joke).

Now, I'm a fan of high rhetoric when it's good and went to law school, in part, because I was genuinely impressed by the principles that this country was based upon, but I really have to hand it to Thomas Jefferson. He was 33 years old when he scripted the Declaration - a document that served as the unequivocal break between the Colonies and British Empire and was the most courteous declaration of war ever written. When I was 33, I was just happy to have been elected partner at my firm.

I see a lot of good (and bad) writing in my day to day experience, but, seriously, who can beat this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Really? I'm supposed to live up to this? It stinks when the first guy sets the bar that high. It's like trying to outdo the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. History ultimately bears out that these guys were not only great because they were first, but because they were just plain great at what they did.

All men are created equal. As a fictional president from the mass media once said, strange as it may sound, that was the first time that anyone bothered to write that down.

Now, come the Fourth, I will be, like everyone else, devoted to baking in the sun and grilling my burgers, but it bears noting that Saturday is the 233rd anniversary of an unbelievable historical achievement. Subjects rebelled against their king, citing the equality of all "men" as a universal absolute. The best part- they won. This is a republic born of a will to be free. You don't have to look very far to see that most other people in the world do not have anything remotely resembling the gift given to us. Be very grateful, Americans.

(who was 26 years old when he wrote this)