June 12, 2008

Ask The Lawyer

Make a pre-vacation legal checklist before you travel

This week's question:
Our family is flying to London in August for a much-needed vacation. We will be taking our children with us. I was wondering if you could give us a pre-vacation legal checklist. I have searched online and cannot seem to find a thing.

Valerie V.
Almaden Valley


Dear Valerie,
Great question, Valerie. I hope that all of our Almaden readers give some thought to a legal checklist before they leave on vacation.

Here are some things you might keep in mind, because you never know what might happen. The various ideas mentioned below are not necessarily in any chronological order of importance.

--Make sure your living trust is up to date. If you live in Almaden and own your own home, chances are excellent that you would benefit from a living trust. Check it out with your own attorney.

If you have a living trust already, good job. Then make sure it is up to date. If you need to have one done, along with several other documents, allow sufficient time for all the paperwork to be done and the transfers to the trust completed. I would think that four weeks would usually be needed to do everything right. If you do not have that much time (as some of us tend to procrastinate on these projects a bit), don’t despair. Get done what you can get done. Right away.

--Make sure your wills are up date. Most need a will even if we have a trust. If it is out of date, this would be a good time to update it. Make sure your Alternate Executor is properly identified and that he or she knows where to find the original wills and a comprehensive listing of all of your assets and liabilities.

--Be sure to check all of your beneficiary designations. This is often easily overlooked when you are busy getting ready for a trip. Check your IRA, 401K, life insurance, and other beneficiary designations. Including group life insurance. If that airplane goes down, where does the money go? Beneficiary designations are so critical since they usually take priority over the living trust or will. In other words, beneficiary designations in such documents usually take priority over the terms of a trust or will.

--Check your Advance Health Care Directive. I saw in the news last week another story about another family fight about someone on life support. Such stories should be non-existent if we all have Advance Health Care Directives.

--Check your Durable Power of Attorney for Asset Management. If you lose your legal capacity for some reason, you could well benefit from an agent exercising powers contained in a Durable Power of Attorney for Asset Management. This document might alleviate the need for a costly, time consuming, and public conservatorship court proceeding.

--Make sure the title to your assets is correct. If your house is held in joint tenancy, you might want to see your own attorney as to how joint tenancy with right of survivorship works if the airplane goes down or some other catastrophe occurs. Exactly how we hold title to our various assets is so very, very important.

--Make sure your Successor Trustee and/or Executor knows where important papers and assets are located. This sounds so simple but it is obviously important if the need arises. If you are careless when it comes to things like this chances are it will not help you one bit and could be damaging. While it’s on your mind, get things organized.

--If you have minor children, you may well need a Nomination of Guardian. If dad and mom are gone and if they leave minor children surviving, the court will of course review carefully any Nomination of Guardian the parents have properly signed. What is more important than this I do not know.

--Have your wishes concerning burial and funeral arrangements in writing. This also sounds simple, but you would be surprised at how many people just do not want to talk about this. Talk it over with your family and loved ones. And then put it in writing and update that writing as needed.

--Turn off the water. Right about now you may say to yourself, “Huh?” This may not be a legal point of any kind, but it may be very important.

If you take that vacation to London you may be gone for several weeks. If your plumbing springs a leak while you are gone it could result in substantial damages to your home. It happened to some good friends of ours.

You might give some thought to either turning the water off or having someone check your property each day while you are gone. And it may result in a legal problem after all since there may not be any homeowner’s insurance for a slow water leakage problem. In other words, a “leakage-seepage” exclusion in the policy may control.

So, there you have a pre-vacation legal checklist, Valerie. I hope that some of this information may be of benefit to you. Have a good trip!

Donald J. DeVries
Almaden Valley


Donald J. DeVries is an attorney practicing law in Almaden Valley. If you would like him to answer your question in his next Almaden Times column, you can reach him by e-mail at don@almadenvalleylawyers.com, fax at (408) 268-6502, telephone at (408) 268-9500, or mail at, 6475 Camden Avenue, Suite 200, San Jose, CA 95120. Your matters are personal and private, so of course, he will not disclose your identity or any details about your situation. To view Almaden Times columns since 1986 visit www.almadenvalleylawyers.com. DeVries writes this column to provide you with general information about important legal matters affecting California residents—not to give you legal advice about your specific matter. No attorney-client relationship is created by these articles. The law is complex and constantly changing and varies from state to state. So you should consult an attorney before taking any action that would affect your personal or business matters.