Rov_Scam
3mo ago
I have a friend who fits this description, at least the obnoxious, mediocre, self-obsessed part. She's the kind of person who will ask a question and interrupt your response to ask another question. She watches Real Housewives. If the people she's with are having a conversation she isn't interested in she'll interrupt to say she doesn't care about that and change the topic. She speaks loudly and has an irritating voice. She complained that someone put a sign near her townhome development that pointed the direction to another, less-prestigious townhome development because she was concerned people would think she lived in that one (for the record, no one outside the immediate vicinity has ever heard of wither of these developments, let alone their relative prestige levels). She regularly professes ignorance of basic concepts that one would assume all educated adults are aware of.
The twist is that she's also a trump supporter. We watched the election returns together and, not knowing my political opinions, she referred to Team Red as "we". I had to explain to her how the electoral college worked. She referred to electoral votes as "points". She works in some kind of low-level management position with the customer service department of the IRS; if there are more expendable positions in the US government, I can't think of any. She's constantly complaining about how stupid and entitled the people who work under her are. I have no reason to doubt her on this, considering the kind of people that become supervisor. I don't exactly want her to lose her job, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't take a small amount of pleasure seeing her hoisted by her own petard.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
This is the reasoning of a cartoon villain from an anti-capitalist morality play.
And your implication that woke doctors are intentionally letting pregnant women die so they can make a political point about a law they don't like is somehow more plausible?
Reasonable professional judgement is demanded of doctors (and other licensed professionals) all the time; it comes with the territory.
And in medicine, getting sued for malpractice also comes with the territory, especially OB/GYN. Over 60% of this population of doctors has been accused, at some point in their career, of not exercising reasonable judgment. And the vast majority of these cases settle, because the attorneys damn well know that no matter how good you think your argument is the person at the other table thinks their argument is pretty good too, and there's no way of knowing what the jury is going to do. Luckily, in malpractice, the stakes aren't that high. Your carrier will pay out a settlement and your rates will go up, but you won't be doing any jail time, and it's unlikely you'd even lose your job. And yet doctors still provide all kinds of treatment and testing they deem unnecessary because they know the plaintiff's expert is going to say they should have done it. No doctor is going to take a risk where the only thing standing between him and a 99 year prison sentence is convincing 12 people who know nothing about medicine that his actions are "reasonable".
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
Aside from the benefits, one of the attractions of government work was always that it was usually a job for life. Obviously you can still be fired for cause, but there was no concern that you'd be caught up in a corporate downsizing or let go because a manager gives you a bad performance review. The actual buyout or deferred resignation plan or whatever you want to call it was a nothingburger; the concerning part of the letter that no one is talking about is the part at the end where it says:
If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce. At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.
The White House is trying to claim that the offer is nothing more than an opportunity for employees who don't want to go back to the office to resign and be given an 8 month exemption they can use to find new work. In light of that paragraph, however, it looks more like he's trying to give people the opportunity to get out now before he starts eliminating positions. There was already some indication that anyone who accepted the offer would be placed on paid administrative leave, so they wouldn't be getting any work out of them during the 8 months, though the letter didn't actually say this, so anyone resigning has to assume they would still have to work.
The upshot is that Federal employment no longer has the perceived stability that it once did. Forget side benefits like WFH, at least in the private sector mass layoffs only happen at occasional, unforeseen intervals when market conditions change. If the Federal government has the same firing power as the private sector, every job essentially becomes a four year contract position, subject to renewal at the whim of whatever administration takes power. As someone who has worked his fair share of contract positions, I can assure you they don't come cheap.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
The second and third hospital were the same hospital, just at different time. I agree that nothing in the case itself indicates that the law played a factor in her lack of treatment and subsequent demise, but I did notice this tidbit from the end of the article:
Last November, Fails reached out to medical malpractice lawyers to see about getting justice through the courts. A different legal barrier now stood in her way.
If Crain had experienced these same delays as an inpatient, Fails would have needed to establish that the hospital violated medical standards. That, she believed, she could do. But because the delays and discharges occurred in an area of the hospital classified as an emergency room, lawyers said that Texas law set a much higher burden of proof: “willful and wanton negligence.”
No lawyer has agreed to take the case.
Under the guise of tort reform, the Texas Legislature passed the Texas Medical Liability Act which, among other things, capped noneconomic damages at $250,000 and imposed a much stricter standard on plaintiffs in cases involving emergency room treatment. In this light, the hospital's actions look completely rational. If they admit a pregnant woman with sepsis they run the risk that she may need an abortion and then they face the dilemma of either exposing themselves to criminal liability on the one hand and a malpractice suit on the other. As it says in the article, she wasn't diagnosed with sepsis, it was merely suspected that she had sepsis. Either way, if they send her home with antibiotics they can just avoid the whole hornet's nest and not have to worry about a malpractice suit. This is all merely speculation but it makes sense in context: She comes to the ER, they suspect she's septic, they check the fetal heartbeat, they know what they have to do but they can't do it, they know that if they admit her for further observation their liability increases exponentially, so they send her home. When she comes back a few hours later, they don't find a heartbeat and still know what they have to do but need a sonogram so they can meet documentation standards and they fuck that up, which probably isn't related to any liability concerns but it's unclear if the two hour delay would have made any difference. Either way, all that happened before she was admitted, and there's no indication that any malpractice took place while she was in the ICU, so they're in the clear. They avoided dealing with the law and they avoided a malpractice suit, so it's a win-win. The only loser is the dead woman.
A physician who tells a patient, “Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,” and in the same breath states “but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances” is simply wrong in that legal assessment.
They can say whatever they want to in dicta, but the actual opinion tells a different story. A physician telling a patient that isn't magic language that shields him from criminal liability. Not only that, but a physician with a good-faith belief that an abortion is necessary isn't shielded from liability. you can point to whatever snippets of language you want to, but the court made it crystal clear that it's an objective test based on what a reasonable physician would have done. And, as I said in my first post, that means it's a question of fact for a jury and you're expert will battle it out with their expert, and you hope they believe your expert. And if you lose, the consequences are similar to those of being convicted of non-capital murder. Unless there's a well-recognized, bright line exception, I don't understand how you can argue with a straight fact that doctors should get within 200 miles of a case like that. Would you commit a crime that came with serious jail time if your boss thought you'd have a good defense?
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
respecting a 200-mile zone around the abortion law's actual strictures would and did force the hospitals and doctors into non-compliance with other laws and regulations. Unless discharging patients with life-threatening conditions like sepsis is somehow black-letter legal?
I mean, I'm not sure what you're talking about. First, none of the Texas cases at issue involved patients who were discharged, but lets forget that for a minute because it doesn't mean that future cases won't. What is it about exercising extreme caution that requires the hospital to discharge a septic patient? In one of the cases the septic woman was being monitored in the hospital the entire time, so this is obviously the preferred course of action. Third, even if the hospital did discharge a septic patient, well, I'm unaware of any laws that prohibit that, black letter or otherwise. the closest laws I'm aware of are those that prohibit hospitals with EDs from turning away patients with emergency medical conditions due to inability to pay.
So doctors and hospitals realistically have two options:
-
Perform the abortion, which creates a potential criminal liability, the consequences of which are up to 99 years in prison, substantial fines, loss of license, and various other administrative penalties. If this liability is pursued I have a good defense.
-
Don't perform the abortion and treat the patient using other means. This MAY create a civil liability IF the patient actually suffers adverse consequences, which they may not. In the event that happens, the civil liability is limited to money damages the doctor and hospital are insured against it. The doctor and hospital have a good defense here as well, as they can argue that they reasonably assumed that the abortion would have been illegal under Texas law.
the defenses cancel each other out. So what you have here is a fully mature criminal liability with severe consequences that can't be indemnified, vs. a potential civil liability with mild to moderate consequences that already are indemnified. What doctor in his right mind would select option 1?
The other interesting thing I would point out about this is that, for all the guarantees I've seen here and elsewhere that the doctor's actions in any of these deaths would have totally been covered by the exception, they've been curiously absent coming from anyone who actually matters. I haven't heard Ken Paxton or anyone else from the AG's office saying that performing an abortion in those circumstances would not be criminal, nor have I heard it from the governor. I haven't heard any state legislator suggest that those circumstances were of the type the exception was intended to cover. The Supreme Court declared that the law wasn't vague and declined to offer any further guidance. The only Texas politician who has done so was Ted Cruz, but he's in no position to actually make determinations about these things. It's easy to say what we think would have happened because we know that the woman ended up dying. But if she lives, it's a different story. We now have a perfectly healthy woman and a dead baby and the Terri Schaivo crowd who is behind limiting these exceptions would claim that there's no way we can know that the baby wouldn't have been perfectly healthy had it not been killed in the womb. There have been no prosecutions thus far, and as such we have no idea what to expect. Any doctor who decides to perform an abortion he can't absolutely, 100% say is necessary to prevent death or permanent impairment, not simply a reasonable precaution against an increased risk, is taking a 99 year gamble. You'd better believe he's not getting within 200 miles of that law.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
Am lawyer. Spend a lot of time here defending lawyers.
One of the things I've always told clients asking for advice on specific actions is that you don't be the one who finds out where the line is. Yes, you may have a strong argument that your actions are legal, but you don't want to put yourself in a position where you have to make that argument and hope that someone with your liberty and livelihood in your hands agrees with it. People on this sub who were responding that these women's cases were obviously covered by the exception were woefully misinformed on how these things actually work. First, unless you're a doctor, and I mean an OB/GYN with 30 years of experience and a CV as long as your arm, AND you have access to the patient's medical records and anything else that could be used as evidence in the case, you're not qualified to offer an opinion on what treatment was appropriate.
Second, I remember a lot of arguments along the lines of "If you can get a hundred doctors to say the treatment was reasonable..."; well, no, that's not how it works. Maybe you can get a hundred doctors to say so, in which case you can ask them to write letters to the DA asking him not to prosecute. At trial, you get one. You'll have your expert, the prosecution will have theirs, and you have to hope the jury believes yours. And you have to keep in mind that the prosecution expert is going to be just as qualified as your guy and sound just as reasonable to a lay audience as your guy, even if you know the guy is a witch doctor who is full of shit.
And then you have to consider the political elements at play. This is a new law passed by parties who are strongly ideologically motivated. The case in question, IIRC, involved a woman with a nonviable pregnancy who was forced to wait until she miscarried before they would remove the fetus, and in the meantime she became septic. The Texas legislature has been under pressure to amend the law to specifically allow for termination of nonviable pregnancies, but has steadfastly refused to do so. So now the doctors have to rely on the much vaguer "risk of death or serious bodily injury" standard. Was there some extenuating circumstance that made this particular woman's risk of infection substantially greater than that of the average woman with a nonviable pregnancy? Unless there was, by terminating this woman's pregnancy they would effectively be instituting a policy that all nonviable pregnancies are covered under the exception. Since the legislature explicitly refused to carve out that exception, the prosecutor is likely to view the policy as pretext to perform prohibited abortions, and will be under pressure to prosecute to reassert that the exception does not exist.
Arguing something on the internet where you can press enter and not have to worry about any consequences is one thing. Making a decision that could result in a lengthy prison sentence, substantial fines, and loss of your license in quite another. Regardless of how ideologically captured they may be, their actions are reasonable. I know that if I were advising any of these doctors, I'd tell them not to perform any abortions at all unless they were on the right side of a bright line or the woman was on her death bed. If it comes down to an argument about increased risk or relies on some reasonableness standard, I'm not touching it with a ten foot pole.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
Each of those actions probably took about five minutes, maybe a few hours tops. And they could have been having a slow night. When you put someone under surveillance you don't get to watch them at your convenience.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
They occasionally do this, but psychiatrists don't like it because they see it as schools pawning off their disciplinary problems on doctors rather than solving them themselves. I can't find it, but the local news did a story a few years back after one of the school shootings about how some local districts had adopted zero tolerance policies and were sending any kids who exhibited violent tendencies to Western Psych at the drop of a hat. The doctors they interviewed basically said that the ED is there for people who have acute mental health crises and not kids who got into fights. So what was happening was the kids were waiting for hours at the bottom of the triage list and when the doctor concluded they didn't meet the criteria for admission they were sent home. But the school got to say they referred him to psych immediately and didn't take any chances.
The upshot of what the one doctor was saying was that long-term behavior problems are the kind of thing that needs to be dealt with over the course of months or even years, and that psychiatric hospitals aren't equipped for that. He said that if the schools were concerned they needed to hire their own mental health staff that could work with students and parents to resolve the problems. I can tell you right now that this isn't going to happen because the incentives are aligned against it. If a school hires its own counselors and starts its own program for troubled youth then it's going to cost a lot of money and if one of those kids ends up doing something terrible the program is going to be put under a microscope and probably won't come out looking good. If they say "we sent him to Western Psych after we saw the red flags" then their insurance will pay for it and Western Psych can explain to the media why the treatment didn't work.
Realistically, though, the doctors were right: Not all problems are mental health problems. If a guy keeps getting into fistfights at bars that don't cause any serious injury we don't send him to the nuthouse. It's a criminal matter. And realistically we don't even do that much in a situation like that; while misdemeanor battery has around a five year max in most jurisdictions, first offense you can likely plead down to disorderly conduct. After that you'll get a combination of fines, probation, and suspended jail sentences until you either get into a fight while on probation or the judge looks at the rap sheet and simply loses patience. The most you might get in the way of treatment is court-ordered anger management classes (I know three people who have completed these and they all say it works). I've never heard of anyone going to Western over a barfight unless there are obvious extenuating circumstances.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
Helen Reddy had 19 chart hits in the 1970s that spent a cumulative 245 weeks on the Hot 100. Barry Manilow had 15 hits that spent 233 weeks on the charts. Pink Floyd had 2 chart hits in the 70s. As far as total weeks are concerned, that's not in my source since they're not in the top 100 of 70s artists, so I consulted AI and got contradictory results. DeepSeek confidently tells me that:
Pink Floyd had several songs chart on the Billboard Hot 100 during the 1970s, but their cumulative weeks on the chart were relatively modest compared to some other artists of the era. Here are the songs that charted and their respective weeks on the Hot 100:
- "Money" (1973) - 13 weeks
- "Us and Them" (1973) - 1 week
- "Time" (1973) - 1 week
- "Have a Cigar" (1975) - 4 weeks
- "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" (1979) - 23 weeks (though this song peaked in early 1980, it spent most of its chart run in 1979)
Adding these up:
- "Money": 13 weeks
- "Us and Them": 1 week
- "Time": 1 week
- "Have a Cigar": 4 weeks
- "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)": 23 weeks
Total cumulative weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1970s: 42 weeks.
Note: The exact number may vary slightly depending on the specific chart data source, but this is a close approximation.
ChatGPT was more circumspect:
During the 1970s, Pink Floyd had limited presence on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Their song "Money," released in 1973 from the album The Dark Side of the Moon, reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, specific data regarding the total number of weeks "Money" remained on the Hot 100 during the 1970s is not readily available. It's worth noting that "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II" became a number-one hit, but it was released in late 1979 and achieved its peak chart position in 1980. Therefore, its chart duration primarily falls outside the 1970s. Overall, Pink Floyd's presence on the Billboard Hot 100 during the 1970s was minimal, with "Money" being their primary entry.
Gemini's response was similar to that of ChatGTP, except with the added caveat that "To get the precise number, you would need to consult detailed Billboard chart archives".
To be clear, DeepSeek was clearly the worst of these in that it confidently gave an incorrect answer. The other two gave technically correct responses that nonetheless don't qualify as answers. Pink Floyd only had one chart hit in the 1970s, "Money" which spent 15 weeks on the chart between 5/19/1973 and 7/28/1973, peaking at No. 13. While "Another Brick in the Wall was released in 1979, it wasn't released until November 30, and it did not debut on the charts until January 19, 1980. This was not difficult information for me to find on my own, considering that Billboard publishes it on their own website. "Not readily available" my ass. The Gemini response pisses me off more, though, because Google has detailed Billboard chart archives in the magazines scans that are available on Google Books for all to see. Apparently Gemini's training data doesn't even include their own archives. For the record, "Us and Them" was released as a single in 1974 but didn't chart, "Time" was the b-side of "Us and Them", and "Have a Cigar" was released as a single but also did not chart.
Anyway, getting back to my original point, while Pink Floyd sold a lot of albums, their music just isn't the kind of immediately arresting, memorable thing that @coffee_enjoyer is describing. They didn't get played on the kind of AM Top 40 stations that most college undergraduates were listening to. (Yes, Pink Floyd was, and to a large degree still is, popular among college students, and "College Rock" has largely become a synonym for the kind of independent music that gets played on college radio. But this is the minority. Most college kids listen to Top 40 or other contemporary radio and aren't particularly tuned into progressive music.) Their current iconic status is based on people who bought albums they spent 40 minutes listening to, not catchy radio hits. They aren't particularly memorable, their music is just intriguing enough that it demands multiple listens.
Yes, but to my knowledge, John Paul Jones never wrestled, so that didn't seem relevant. The move from music to wrestling isn't unprecedented either, with Sid Vicious taking up the sport after getting kicked out of the Sex Pistols. As an aside when Sandra Bullock was married to Jesse James I didn't know who that was and just assumed she was married to Road Dogg Jesse James, who had a second act himself as tight end for the Steelers. Currently experiencing a second act is Cam Ward, who decided to try his hand at football with the Miami Hurricanes after a long career as goaltender for the Carolina Hurricanes.
By that logic we should value Barry Manilow and Helen Reddy over Pink Floyd, and Neil Diamond over the Rolling Stones.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
What's even more amazing is that he went back to England and ended his career as a rock musician, playing bass and occasional keyboard for Led Zeppelin. This wasn't entirely without precedent, however, as Booker T. Washington had recently had his own career revival as a soul musician, having a series of hits with the Stax record label with backing band the MGs. Remarkable men both.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
I don't think this would have the results you're looking for. Most people are more likely to remember pithy doggerel than the works of say, Alfred Lord Tennyson. The highest-value poems would invariably be dirty limericks.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
Oh boy. As you may know, I'm an attorney, and before I proceed I want to give some general disclaimers. First, I'm not your attorney and none of what I'm about to say should be taken as legal advice. I don't know your exact situation or even the state in which you reside, so I'm not in a position to give specific advice. As for my qualifications, I had my own practice between November 2019 and May 2023 and I did estate planning and administration work, but not exclusively. This work was in Pennsylvania, which does not have ToD deeds. For a decade, includign when I had my own practice, I did oil and gas title work. While this may not seem like it has much to do with estate planning, a large part of it was dealing with the consequences of poor estate planning and figure out how to clean everything up. I did this in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. OH and WV have ToD deeds, but I didn't see them much, for reasons I will make clear below. I currently do litigation in PA and WV primarily and still do estate work very occasionally, but it's more of a side gig where someone will ask me about a will and I'll do it through my firm or a coworker's friend will ask them and I'll get it because I'm one of the three people here who have done that kind of work. I don't mess around with anything that involves the Federal Estate Tax or the word "irrevocable", but I've been to plenty of seminars involving this kind of stuff so I have a decent working knowledge. Basically, I know enough about it to know that it's a liability minefield I don't want to get involved in.
With that out of the way, I'd generally recommend against ToD designations for real estate. Certain charlatans like Suze Orman try to convince everybody that probate is the worst thing in the world and is to be avoided at all costs, but that's not necessarily true. One of the most common questions I was asked when I did estate planning is a variation of the following question I actually got a call about a couple months ago: A woman's husband recently died. She had three children, including a 36-year-old unmarried son who was living with her. She already had a will that left the house to the son, but asked me about possibly conveying the house to the son. Her intention was to avoid the 4.5% inheritance tax.
My answer was an immediate and unequivocal "no". Her plan would only work if her son stayed in the house and continued to live there indefinitely after her death, and he continued to be a responsible single guy in good health with no financial difficulties. The most obvious issue, though, was the tax issue. If the son continues to live in the house after she dies then it's not a problem. But the woman is only in her 60s; she could easily live another 20 or even 30 years. Suppose the son buys his own house in the meantime. When his mother dies, he now owns a house that he doesn't live in. If he sells it, he takes a short-term capital gain that is taxed as regular income since he isn't entitled to a homestead exemption. To make matters worse, the capital gain is on the entire sale price, since he got the house for free. On the other hand, if he inherits the house in that situation and wants to sell it, he can take advantage of the step-up in basis and only pay capital gains tax on the difference between the sale price and the market value at the time of death, which is likely to be zero. He'd still have to pay inheritance tax, but this is only 4.5% as opposed to the 20%+ he'd be paying in capital gains tax.
Beyond tax considerations, though, this woman would risk dealing with what I call the five Ds:
-
Death: If her son dies before she does, the beneficiaries of his estate will become the owners of the property. The woman probably assumes that she'll outlive her son and even if she doesn't, he'd leave his estate either to her or another family member, but he could leave it to anyone. It could end up in the hands of a charity or an ex-girlfriend who is disinclined to let this woman keep living there for free.
-
Divorce: If her son were to get married, the house could be an asset subject to distribution in any subsequent divorce proceeding.
-
Disability: If her son becomes disabled, owning a significant asset will affect his eligibility for SSDI, Medicaid, and various other benefits.
-
Debt: If the son were to file for bankruptcy, the house would be an asset subject to distribution to creditors. Chapter 13 bankruptcy allows debtors to protect equity in a home by entering into a payment plan instead of liquidating the estate. The catch is that the payment plan has to raise at least as much money as the creditors would get in a Chapter 7. This realistically isn't an issue, since most people filing for bankruptcy don't own their houses free and clear; they've already mortgaged them to the hilt. If the house isn't complete shit it probably forces him into a 100% plan, which could be unfeasible depending on the amount of debt. Worst case scenario he's forced to sell the house to cover the debt. On the other hand, if he doesn't own the house it's likely a no-asset Chapter 7 or a straightforward Chapter 13.
-
Dumb: People do dumb things all the time. He could mortgage the house to buy a boat and leave her vulnerable if he can't make the payments. He could neglect to pay property taxes. He could try to save a little money by not insuring the property. He could decide to rent out an extra bedroom to a hobo. Those examples are downright idiotic, but even well-intentioned gestures can fit this category. Say he wants to do some kitchen renovations. His mother thinks he's just paying for them, but in reality he took out a home equity loan. Six months later he loses his job and can't make the payments. Now she's looking at foreclosure as the result of actions she had no control over.
ToD deeds were created as an attempt to mitigate the effects of the five Ds. By creating a revocable future interest in the property instead of an irrevocable present interest, the beneficiary can't really do anything to affect the property while the grantor is still living. Sounds good, but this creates its own problems; by taking assets out of probate, any issues must be dealt with outside of the probate process. Probate isn't a boogeyman. It's a process specifically put in place to deal with these kinds of issues. Wills allow you the flexibility to provide precise instructions regarding your intentions, and allow you to appoint an executor to ensure that these instructions are carried out. Probate courts provide a forum to resolve any issues that arise. Outside of probate court and it's centralized process; you're out of luck. Just a few issues I can think of the top of my head, using the above case as an example:
-
Instead of conveying the house outright, the woman executes a ToD deed naming her son as the beneficiary. Several years later, the son becomes disabled and cannot work, and relies on government benefits. The mother then dies. The son now has an asset that cuts off his eligibility. Hod the house been transferred by will, she could have created a provision that created a testementary trust in the event that any named beneficiary were receiving benefits at the time of her death, and the trustee would have been able to ensure that the house would remain property of the trust for the son's benefit and that he could continue living there and receiving benefits.
-
The woman executes a ToD deed conveying the house to her son and two other children in equal proportion upon her death, at which time the house is worth $300,000. Two of the children want to sell the house and get their $100,000 share. But the son, who is still living there, doesn't want to sell, and correctly claims that as part owner he has the right to the premises. He further refuses to buy out his sisters' interests. If the sisters want anything out of the deal, they'll have to file a partition action, which will cost 5 figures and could take years to resolve. They're also unlikely to get their full shares, since the son will be able to claim any mortgage payments, taxes, repairs, insurance, or any other allowable expense he made towards the house over the course of his time living there. The house will be sold at auction, invariable resulting in a lower sale price than could be had if it were properly marketed. A will could expressly include buyout provisions (I usually included these if a child was living in the family home), expressly direct the executor to sell (though he could sell to the son), or give any number of other guidelines. Even in the absence of these, this is a dispute the probate court would be able to resolve before title ever transfers. It could get complicated, but nowhere near as complicated as a partition.
-
The son gets married and has a child. The woman executes a ToD deed naming the son as beneficiary and the child as contingent benificiary. The son predeceases the woman. The woman then dies while the child is still a minor. The mother is still alive. The mother now has to petition a court to establish a legal guardian for the child's estate, so that the real property can be managed for the child's benefit until she is of legal majority. This is a complicated and expensive procedure. If the guardian wishes to sell the house to use the money for the child's ongoing support, they need to get a court order. If they sell the house and get the cash, they're required to invest the money and only spend the interest; if they need to dip into the principal, they need a court order. They need to file an annual accounting with the court. It's a complicated process. On the other hand, and will would contain automatic trust provisions for the event that a minor had to inherit a major asset. The trustee could be named in advance, and the trust set up shortly after death without court involvement. The trustee doesn't need court approval to do anything, and the accounting requirements are much looser.
-
The woman executes a ToD deed with her three children as beneficiaries in equal proportion. The house is the only item of value in the estate. Shortly after the woman's death, the children sell the house to a third party. They do not consult an attorney because they believe that since they aren't opening an estate and there's only one asset they don't need to. A year later, a man claiming to be a creditor of the woman calls the son, asking about the money he is owed. After the son tells him that his mother passed and no estate was opened, the man discovers the ToD deed and subsequent sale to the third party. He then sues all three of the woman's children for their pro-rata share of the debt. If the woman had a will, or died intestate, the estate would have been advertised and the creditor would have had a chance to make a claim. The executor could have settled the matter out of the proceeds of the sale before the money was distributed.
These are just a few things I can think of off the top of my head. The point is, DIY estate planning is a bad idea. I talked to a lot of people, smart people, who thought they were doing something really smart by avoiding paying a lawyer to have a proper estate plan done. These people usually ended up doing things that would cost their estates significantly more than the most expensive estate planning lawyer in the area would charge. A couple thousand bucks may sound like a lot, but you have no idea how easy it is to spend that much when an estate goes haywire. People who tell horror stories about probate are usually referring to instances where something got fucked up and the matter was held up or needed to be litigated. These are unfortunate circumstances, but in no case was there some easy self-help fix that could have avoided the situation. Please, consult with an attorney as soon as you can.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
You knew, but did you care? I think that's what ultimately did the platform in. Seeing pictures of people you actually knew was one thing. Seeing the wedding pictures of someone you hadn't talked to in a decade was just crap that cluttered up your feed. There was a certain novelty to it for a while, but as soon as people realized that that was as far as the relationship was ever going to go (or, more ominously, that they had no interest of pursuing the relationship any further), the novelty wore off and people stopped caring. I'm not going to lose any sleep over the fact that I no longer know what some guy I was sort of friends with in college is up to now.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
I think Facebook simply died a natural death that can't really be attributed to anything Zuckerberg did or didn't do. I don't think it's a coincidence that the demise of Facebook roughly corresponds to the rise of Reddit as a mass-market phenomenon. Though the platforms seem very different, they essentially serve the same purpose — a time suck for bored people. People who used to spend their free time scrolling Facebook now spend it scrolling Reddit, and Reddit offers more in the way of content than Facebook ever could. Message boards have existed since the dawn of the internet, but they were mostly specialized. Now, everyone has a whole universe of them in one convenient place, and the more popular subs like AmItheAsshole aren't the kind of thing that can exist as a stand-alone site.
That and there was just a general weariness about some of the shit that went on there. I'm not talking about politics, except in the sense that everyone had a friend that posted about nothing but politics and you didn't give a shit about their opinions regardless of whether you agreed with them or not. And then there were the people who posted nothing but memes. And the people who posted nothing but pictures of their kids. This was all relatively benign, though. The worst was the people who overshared personal information, or hinted at personal problems without giving details, all of it for the express purpose of generating lazy sympathy. The politics was often the most interesting thing about it, because at least it gave you the chance to engage in a way similar to how you would in person. But even in person, the guy who always has to bring up politics is annoying.
So the normal discussions that you would have with these friends were few and far between. Then sponsored content began taking up a greater and greater percentage of your news feed (I don't look at my account often anymore, but when I do I'm lucky to get one or two posts from friends, even if profile checks show a significant number of them still posting regularly; it's really something to behold). So people lose interest and go to places that aren't as irritating. Also, like Reddit, they changed to a "modern" interface that does the site no favors. The best thing they could do is go back to the 2010 UI. But it won't happen.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
Even if HR does initial screens, they aren't throwing the resumes of qualified applicants in the circular file just because they're (probably) white. Most of it is throwing out the massive volume of garbage applications from people who have no hope of getting the job in any universe. Usually they don't even do a great job at this, especially if this work is outsourced to a recruiting company. My brother had a manager who was completely incompetent but only ended up getting fired after it was discovered that he was sharing personal information of female employees with people who didn't need to know about it. A friend of ours (who used to work with my brother) works for a company that was looking to hire a manager and the hiring team was complaining that all their staffing company was doing was sending them this loser's application over and over again.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
Fire them for what? Affirmative Action doesn't give private companies license to ignore Title VII. Any "affirmative Action Hires" you can find are likely going to be marginal cases where the resume was similar to a qualified non-minority candidate. The upshot is that any AA on the part of your HR department isn't going to be consequential to the point where it's worth laying off the majority of your HR department so you can pay them unemployment on top of the increased rates you're going to be paying an outside contractor to do the work. Not to mention the fact that this outside contractor isn't going to be as familiar with your company and it's policies as your existing staff. My firm outsources its billing to a third party firm and my boss has hour-long weekly Zoom meetings with them just to make sure they're doing what we need them to do. And this is a relatively small firm. In any event, let's not pretend you're going to give some company in India major say in hiring decisions.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
Jimmy Carter's death. The Flag Code calls for the flag to be lowered to half staff for 30 days following the death of a former president.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
This is a total myth that was fabricated by the Right to excuse the absolutely inexcusable behavior of Trump supporters. If you spent the summer of 2020 watching Fox News point to a few high-profile incidences of police cowardice or listening to NPR's defund the police nonsense then it's understandable how you would get that impression. But if you watched local news or actually paid attention to what was happening you'd have seen that there was no shortage of people who were arrested and charged. Hell, here in Pittsburgh there were news reports on an almost weekly basis that consisted of a grainy photograph of people the police were looking for in connection to spray painting buildings, or throwing rocks at police, or some other minor crime that wouldn't even merit a mention in the newspaper let alone a media-assisted manhunt. I can't speak to this happening in every city, but I know the same was true for Los Angeles and Atlanta, and the Feds were looking for a ton of people as well, which is interesting considering that they only had jurisdiction over a small percentage of the total rioters.
The reason you didn't see many high-profile convictions is because the BLM protestors were at least smart enough to commit their crimes at night and make some attempt at concealing their identities. For all the effort police put into tracking these people down, if there's no evidence there's no evidence. To the contrary, the Capitol rioters decided to commit their crimes during the day, in one large group, in an area surrounded by video cameras. Then they posed for pictures and videos and posted it on social media. Were these people trying to get caught? Which brings me to the dismissals. Yes, a lot of the George Floyd riot cases were dismissed, and conservatives like to point to this as evidence of them being treated with kid gloves. But the prosecutors often had no choice. The tactics of the Pittsburgh Police (under the administration of Bill Peduto, no one's idea of a conservative) were to simply arrest everyone in the immediate vicinity the moment a demonstration started to get out of hand. Never mind that they didn't have any evidence that most of these people committed a crime. If a crowd throws water bottles at the police and they arrest everyone they can get their hands on, good like proving that a particular person threw something. Unless you have video or a cop who is able to testify, you're entirely out of luck. So they'd arrest a bunch of people and ten the DA "(Steven Zappala, no one's idea of a progressive) would drop the charges against the 90% against which they had no evidence. In any event, I didn't hear about Biden or any liberal governor offering to pardon any of these people.
Seriously. The Capitol rioters were morons operating under the assumption that their sugar daddy Trump would bail them out because he agreed with their politics. If he wanted to give clemency to people who got swept up in the crowd and trespasses where they shouldn't have, I could understand that. But by pardoning people who assaulted police officers, broke windows, and the like, he shows a complete disrespect for law enforcement and the rule of law. And all of it coming from a guy who is supposedly about law and order. It's absolutely disgraceful.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
This is a typical suburban street in the Pittsburgh area. Every house has an attached garage (technically an integral garage, but whatever). The garages on the downhill side of the street aren't visible, and the garages on the uphill side are below the grade of the main level. This is more a consequence of topography than anything else, but the whole problem is solved in flat areas by designing neighborhoods with alleys in the rear where you can have a garage and a place to put out the garbage and not have to worry about aesthetics.
And no, cars don't have to be stored outside, but it's still better to garage them. It was 3° this morning but my car was 55° when I left for work. It's also snowed about every other day since Christmas and I don't have to spent 10 minutes clearing my car before work, when I'm least in the mood to do so. I don't roast in the summer. I don't have to worry about punk kids trying door handles. When a storm rolls in and branches are blowing around I don't have to worry about them hitting my car. And blocking in a garage isn't the answer. Aesthetically speaking, you're probably not going to be able to match the existing exterior, so you either find something "close enough" or use something totally different; either way, it screams "this used to be a garage". And since most fire codes prohibit running ductwork in garages you have to retrofit it for HVAC. It's also probably not insulated so now you have that to deal with.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
There being other ways to utilize the interior space is only a benefit if you're actually going to use it. I already have a basement I don't really use for anything; I'm not parking my car outside so I have more wasted interior space.
Rov_Scam
3mo ago
Justice for what, though? If what he's technically being accused of would have been attributed to some faceless administrator whose name didn't come up until the middle of the investigations, few people would care about whether this person technically lied about funding an organization that may or may not have been funding gain of function research into coronaviruses. No, the ire directed at Fauci is almost entirely due to the recommendations he made during the pandemic and the people who didn't like them. These people had no love for Fauci before he was dragged in front of the committee and were looking for an excuse to nail his ass to the wall.
The most charitable take on this is that since Trump has been getting some pushback for ordering people back to the office, he's giving them an opportunity for an out. My IRS friend mentioned in the comment below says that they're phasing in the full return over the next month. So if you're WFH and don't want to go back you can resign now and get an 8 month runway to find a new job. It doesn't seem like a totally unreasonable option, given that he could have just ordered everyone back and left it at that.
The problem is that it's executed so poorly it isn't even entirely clear what is being offered, and it doesn't do much to inspire confidence in the US Government as an employer. If any normal employer were offering something akin to this, the email announcing it would only be an announcement. Someone from HR would go to every department to give a presentation to interested employees and answer any questions. There would be a packet explaining everything in detail. There would be paperwork to sign. There wouldn't be a mass email that didn't provide any details and required employees to accept within a week by texting "RESIGN" to 48463 (standard messaging and data rates may apply). The speed at which this was depolyed suggests that OPM didn't do a thorough job of identifying who to offer this to. I mean, no one in the administration even can say what's going to happen to anyone who takes this offer. I don't know why anyone would except it (except maybe if you had planned on leaving anyway), and the matter in which it came about would make me suspicious of anything coming from my employer.
More options
Context Copy link