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California Domestic Violence Counselor – Victim Privilege

In a prior post, I described California’s Marital Privileges under the guise of illustrating that there are benefits to being married versus just living together. That post was general — this post will be general as well — but the idea was to introduce you to the idea of a privilege and, also, to show that the law does confer some benefits on married couple over unmarried couples, regardless of how outdated some people might think the institution of marriage is. To refresh, the idea of a privilege is — in general — that it allows you to do something or refuse to do something that would ordinarily garner a punishment under the law. In my Marital Privilege post, I described how that privilege can, depending on the situation, allow communications between spouse to be kept private, for instance. Many people have probably heard of the Attorney-Client privilege under which an attorney is allowed to refuse — even refuse a judge’s order — to disclose what the lawyer and the lawyer’s client talked about. Attorney-Client privilege is certainly not unique to California, but if you’re interested, the statute for Attorney-Client privilege in California is section 954 of the California Evidence Code. The Marital Privileges as well as the Attorney-Client privilege are just two kinds of privileges California recognizes. This post will be about another privilege, namely that between a victim of domestic violence and a domestic violence counselor. The California statute for this is section 1037.5 of the California Evidence Code. As always under the law, definitions are extremely important. The privilege exists between a victim and a domestic...

Small Estate Administration in California (CA Probate Code section 13101)

Many people have estate plans these days. Depending on the person’s situation, they may have a will, a trust of some kind, as well as a Power of Attorney and an Advanced Health Care Directive. Having all of these in place can be very prudent given what can happen — under intestate succession, for instance, — if a person dies without these documents in place. Having these documents in place is, however, only the first part of the solution. The second part is knowing what do with the documents once the person actually passes away. Death, obviously, can come unexpectedly so it is prudent to always be prepared. This post is about a process called Small Estate Administration. I’m going to talk specifically about California, but the idea of small estate administration is not unique to California. Many other US states have it as well. As always, if you are outside of California, you need to look up the specific small estate administration process and requirements for your state. In California, the Small Estate Administration process is described in California Probate Code section 13100 as well as the sections that follow. The basic idea behind a small administration process is that when someone passes away, an estate is created automatically. An “estate” is an intangible legal idea that encompasses all of the property (e.g. cars, bank account, stock, etc) that the deceased owned at the time of their death. The individual items in the estate can be valued at some amount which means it is possible to determine the total dollar value of the deceased’s estate. The “small” in...