Jan 12

Ex-tended Family Tree Inheritance

Blended-family-tree

Like many people these days, mine is an ex-tended family, with the hyphen, meaning that it includes exes.  I know ex-tended families where the exes get along so well that at reunions there’s several sets of exes with their new spouses plus their exes, and all their kids, etc. all making up a considerable mob that rivals what our ancestors in the age before divorce were able to assemble by unrestrained serial procreation.  My ex-tended clan isn’t all that big or all that chummy, but it has some of the same legal issues that face all “blended” families where there’s two sets of kids from different ex-spouses.  Over the holidays I spent some time boning up on the problem.

In a community property state like California, what tends to happen in a second or later marriage is that one spouse dies, leaving all assets to the other current spouse.  The kids of the first spouse from a previous marriage then have to rely on the good will and forethought of the second spouse to provide for them when the second spouse dies.  Often enough, the kids of the first spouse get left out in the cold, leading to bad feelings and lawsuits.

There’s a tried and tested solution to this problem.  It’s called the “A-B Living Trust.”  Both spouses while alive transfer their property into this trust.  When the first spouse dies, the community property (such as the house) gets transferred into a Bypass Trust.  The surviving spouse benefits from, but doesn’t own, the assets in the Bypass Trust.  When the second spouse dies, the assets in the Bypass Trust get divided between the two sets of kids, so that each set of kids gets their share and everybody’s as happy as they can be under the circumstances.

Like every Living Trust, this specialized kind of trust bypasses probate and, for modest estates, avoids estate taxes.  You can get AB Trust document templates from Nolo Press and perhaps from a lawyer friend.  The one from my lawyer friend was so arcane and filled with legalese that even I had trouble reading it.  The one from Nolo was better but still written for a lawyer’s eye; my focus group of testers (OK, my wife) gave it a thumbs down for legibility.  Attached, after many drafts, is my effort to produce a version that both people who will sign it can understand without having a law degree from Boalt Hall.  Click here for the PDF.

But before you rush in, read the notes at the end, with the cautions.  This is serious business.  The template may not fit your situation, and you may still have to consult a lawyer.  Nevertheless, sometimes just knowing that there’s a solution, and having a general idea of what it looks like, can be a big help.  Achieving distributive justice in any family is difficult.  Ex-tended families pose a whole new level of challenges. It’s good to know that the law, which created some of these problems by permittiing civil divorces, also provides tools to solve some of them.

Jan 12

Forget curry powder

1-20140108_204421 That jar of curry powder on my spice rack is not going to get replaced when it’s done.  As a holiday present, my kids gave me a class in Indian cooking with Chef Vinita Jacinto, a professionally trained chef with decades of experience teaching Indian and similar cuisine.  In a three-hour session at a demonstration kitchen in Berkeley’s gourmet ghetto, a few doors from Chez Panisse and across the street from the Cheeseboard, we 19 students made three curries — Paneer Matar Masaledaar, Shahi Navratan, and Dahiwale Aloo — plus a yogurt dish (Raita) and a batch of Basmati rice.  After we made them, we ate them.  They were wonderful.  In the question session, I learned that “curry” — which I thought referred to meals made with curry powder — really just means “sauce.”  As for curry powder, Indian cooks wouldn’t be caught dead with any of it on their shelves.  “Curry powder” is a generic blend of spices put together by cynical Indian merchants for British colonial civil servants returning home.  The English gentry wanted the “taste of India,” without having the culinary knowledge to custom-blend the spices appropriate for each dish, region, and season.  In genuine Indian cuisine, said Chef Vinita, each cook blends and prepares spices according to her (or rarely, his) tradition, locality, family, season, and mood.  In our class, we used mustard seeds, cumin seeds, nigella seeds, asafoetida, chili powder, paprika, coriander powder, cumin powder, turmeric, garam masala (itself a blend of cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and cardamom), ginger, garlic, cayenne, and of course salt and pepper.  So, in with mortar and pestle, and out with the powdered vestige of British colonialism.  (It is convenient, though!)

Dec 26

Persimmon tree

P1310814

Persimmons like these near St. Helena have the lovely habit of ripening in winter after the leaves fall off the tree. They’re good as ornaments, but they’re even better to eat.  In our local market they go for 49 cents apiece.

Dec 24

Let the man go

220px-Mordechai_Vanunu_2009Now that Putin has released Mikhail Khodorkovsky and members of Pussy Riot, maybe this spirit of showy clemency will waft over to Israel and move Netanyahu to let Mordechai Vanunu hop the next plane out.  Vanunu, the whistleblower who in 1985 revealed that Israel had built nuclear weapons, has suffered for his actions like Job in the Bible.  His abduction, long imprisonment and judicial torture serve as a case study illustrating why Edward Snowden was wise to depart from his native land after telling important truths about it.  There is an extensive and not unsympathetic account of Vanunu’s life in Wikipedia, here.

On Christmas Day, the Israeli Supreme Court will hear Vanunu’s appeal to be allowed to leave Israel.  On this occasion, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire has circulated the following open letter:

This week the World’s political leaders stood united in admiration at the Memorial service in South Africa to honour the memory of Nelson Mandela, Leader of his country, and a man of courage who gave inspiration to many people around the world.

Across the world in East Jerusalem in solitude sits another man of courage: Mordechai Vanunu.

In l986 Vanunu, the Israeli Nuclear whistle-blower, told the world about Israel’s secret nuclear Weapons. For this he served 18 years in an Israeli prison, 12 in solitary confinement, and since his release in 2004 he has been forbidden to leave Israel, speak to foreigners, and is constantly under surveillance.

On 25thDecember, 2013 Christmas day, he will be brought again before an Israeli Supreme Court and will, yet again, ask for his right to leave Israel.

The Supreme Court can give him his freedom to go get on a plane and leave Israel as he wishes to do.

I appeal to President Shimon Perez, to Prime Minister Netanyahu, to let him go.

He is a man of peace, desiring freedom, who followed his conscience. He is no threat to Israel. He like Mandela, has served now 27 years and deserves his freedom.

To the World’s Political Leaders who recognized in Mandela, a man of Honour and courage and saluted him, I appeal to you to do all in your power to help Vanunu get his freedom now. You have it in your power To do so, please do not be ‘silent’ whilst Mordechai Vanunu suffers and is refused his basic rights.

To the World’s media, I appeal to you to report on Vanunu‘s continuing Isolation and enforced silence by Israel.

To civil communities everywhere, I appeal to you to increase your
efforts for Vanunu freedom and demand ‘Israel let our brother Mordechai Go. We cannot be free while he is not free’.

 

Dec 23

Religion: Walking Away

church-iconThe number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace.  So says a Pew Research poll done in late 2012.  It finds that one out of five Americans of all ages today is religiously unaffiliated, up five per cent over the previous five years.  In the under-30 age bracket, the percentage is one out of three.

The number of Americans who answer “none” to questions about their religious affiliation now stands at 46 million, including 13 million who identify as atheists or agnostics, according to the researchers.

The rise in “none” is about the same regardless of gender, educational level, income, and geography.  It reflects primarily a five per cent dropoff in religious affiliation among white Protestants.  The percentage of unaffiliated among African-Americans also rose, but only by two per cent to a total of 15 per cent.  Among Hispanics the rate held steady at about 16 per cent.

Young people are driving the trend.  Each succeeding generation is less likely to form a religious affiliation than the last.

Along with the rise in nonaffiliation, the Pew research finds some evidence that reported religious belief in the U.S., while still far higher than in European countries, is in long-term decline.

The vast majority of the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion to belong to.

The evidence is consistent with the theory of a widespread backlash against the religious right wing.  Religion, particularly Protestantism, has become identified with hostility to abortion, gay rights, and with right-wing politics generally.  This has driven people away in droves.  The percentage of white evangelicals has dropped two per cent over the five years, and is now less than the proportion who are unaffiliated with any religion.

Dec 20

Here comes the sun!

The earth wobbles.  Fortunately, it wobbles slowly and regularly.  Tomorrow morning, December 21 2013, its axis stops tilting away from the sun and begins to tilt closer.  Result: in the northern hemisphere, the days get a bit longer.  In the southern hemisphere, the opposite.  For folks on the equator, all the hoopla above and below is meaningless: the days and nights remain the same length year round, mas o menos. See explanation on Wikipedia.

As a northern dweller, I welcome the winter solstice.  This is the real and original holiday of the season.  All the religious fuss and bother is a hijack job, now hijacked in turn by the commercial interests.  Solstice is what there is to celebrate.

There’s no official winter solstice anthem, nor should there be.  But George Harrison’s Here Comes the Sun probably comes as close as anything.  Here’s five versions of the song, from YouTube, that I find particularly inspiring.


 

Dec 19

The Real Man of the Year

Time-Snowden-cover

Time magazine missed the boat when they put the Pope on the cover.  The Pope is interesting but it’s too soon to say what effect his words will have on the real world.  The man who really shook things up this year, worldwide, is Edward Snowden.  Here’s my view of the cover that Time should have run.

P.S. An interesting and long interview with Snowden is in today’s Washington Post, here.