| Volume 109 Number 6 |
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The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
The costs of probate can be too high for some families, so in that case it is a good idea to make sure that you keep as many assets as you can in ways that don't require a judge to be involved when you pass. Spouses who know that they want their share of assets to go to the surviving spouse can hold title to their house, as well as their bank accounts, as "joint tenants with rights of survivorship," and avoid the need for probate filings upon death. It is also a good idea to check your beneficiary designations for insurance accounts, pensions, and retirement accounts, to make sure those proceeds go where you want them. Click here for more.
Your Money
Does your broker work for you? In many cases, investors are not aware that their broker may not have a duty to put them in the best investments, and that some brokers have incentives to put consumers in investments that produce the best fees for the broker, and not the best returns for the consumer. The good news, at least with respect to retirement funds, is that the Labor Department is proposing rules that would impose a fiduciary duty upon brokers providing advice to consumers about their retirement investments. With such a rule, brokers could be in trouble if they advise consumers to purchase investments which are better for the broker than the consumer. Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
The DC Superior Court granted an anti-SLAPP motion in a defamation lawsuit between the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) and a Ukraine-based shipping company, Kaalbye Shipping International, in which Kaalbye alleged that that a C4ADS report about the shipments of Russian and Ukrainian arms defamed it. The DC Superior Court granted C4ADS’s anti-SLAPP motion concluding that to avoid dismissal, a non-movant in an anti-SLAPP motion must “prove a likelihood of success on the merits, not that its claims pass muster under the standards of Super. Ct. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) or Super. Ct. R. Civ. P. 56.” The court noted that this is a different standard than applied by other DC courts which had looked to California’s “probability” standard, which was generally satisfied with the showing of a prima facie case. Center for Advanced Defense Studies v. Kaalbye Shipping International (USDC-DC 2015) Click here for more.