Family Law

• Divorce
  Divorce with Dignity: Lancaster Law Office helps partners divorce with dignity. Divorce creates two separate lives from one shared life. Divorce can be transition or war; you and your partner choose. If you need to divorce, we encourage partners to choose an alternative to divorce court that expresses respect, preserves relationships, protects children, often costs less, maximizes privacy, and ends sooner than divorce litigation. Many couples employ facilitative mediation in divorcing. Others choose collaborative divorce.
• Child Support
• Guardianship
  Unless a court has determined that a person is sufficiently incapacitated to require guardianship, a resident of a long term care facility has all the rights of any person living anywhere in the United States.

Criminal Law

• Sex Crimes
  Sexual abuse is nonconsensual sexual contact (any unwanted sexual contact). Examples include unwanted touching, rape, sodomy, coerced nudity, sexual explicit photographing.
• Misdemeanors
  A trustee must be over eighteen years of age, a person of sound mind, and have no felony or misdemeanor convictions for crimes involving moral turpitude.  RCW 11.36.021.  Crimes involving "moral turpitude" are those that constitute  "an act of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes to his fellow men or to society in general."  City of Seattle v. Jones, 3 Wash. App. 431, 467, 475 P.2d 790 (1970), affirmed by 79 Wn.2d 626 (1971).   Crimes involving moral turpitude are characterized by their intentional injury to the victim's physical or financial well-being, and a general disregard for the law.
• Embezzlement
  When a personal representative mishandles estate affairs, the superior court may intervene, upon the request of a person interested in the estate.  Interested persons may bring a petition for a report on the affairs of the estate (RCW 11.68.065) or a citation (RCW 11.68.070, 11.96A.060) in which proceeding the court issues a show cause order to the personal representative to answer the well-documented allegations of the interested party.  The court may limit or revoke a personal representative’s non-intervention powers, under appropriate circumstances, or even replace the personal representative.  Adequate reasons for removing a personal representative are waste of estate assets, embezzlement, mismanagement of estate assets, or any other reason satisfactory to the court.  RCW 11.28.250.
• Arson
  Brad Lancaster received his Juris Doctor from the University of Washington School of Law.  Brad graduated Order of the Coif (which means he studied too much and drank too little beer).  Brad worked at the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office during law school, first doing grunt research for the Martin Pang arson extradition, and subsequently as the Fraud Intern, prosecuting unregistered contractors.    Brad has substantial collaborative law training and alternative dispute resolution experience.  Brad has written frequently for local bar association publications.  Brad writes and publishes books in his spare time.

Property Law

• Real Estate Transactions
  Significant Non-Routine Transactions. A trustee shall not undertake a “significant nonroutine transaction” without a compelling circumstance unless the trustee provides written notice to the trustor, beneficiaries, and the attorney general (for charitable trusts only) at least twenty days before undertaking the transaction. A “significant nonroutine transaction” involves agreements pertaining to assets valued at twenty-five percent or more of the estate assets with respect to: real estate transactions lasting ten years or longer, sale of tangible personal property, or stock sales that are not on the open market. Further any stock sale that changes the trust’s interest from controlling to less than controlling requires notice. A “compelling circumstance” is one that portends immediate and significant detriment to the trust. If a compelling circumstance exists, the trustee may give notice and act, without waiting the twenty day period. The requirements of this section may be waived by the trustor or beneficiaries (RCW 11.110.140).

Health Law

• Personal Injury
  Kim Lancaster received her paralegal degree from Edmonds Community College.  She worked for a personal injury law firm, then as a Family Law Facilitator for King County Superior Court.  She has been Brad’s paralegal at Lancaster Law Office since its inception.
• Medical Malpractice
  There may come a time as you approach death when further medical intervention is fruitless.  That moment causes deep emotional stress to your family members.  If you cannot communicate with your doctor, your family members may dispute with one another, or with your doctor, about what medical steps are appropriate under the circumstances.  Your doctor may be pressured toward providing medical services he believes are not necessary or helpful, and his medical malpractice insurance carrier may support him in doing so.  Further, hospitals have a profit motive in providing care to elder patients, and most health care dollars spent in the United States are expended on persons who die within the next two years.

Trusts and Estates

• Estate Planning
  A nonintervention personal representative has little duty to keep beneficiaries abreast of developments in the estate administration.  Though a non-intervention personal representative has limited duties to report to the beneficiaries about the status of an estate, he should nevertheless do so.  Lack of information causes uninformed parties to speculate and fret, which often leads to litigation.  The PR has a duty not to waste estate assets.  Estate litigation wastes estate assets.
• Wills
  Brad Lancaster received his Juris Doctor from the University of Washington School of Law.  Brad worked for the King County Prosecuting Attorney during law school.  Brad practices in probate, elder law, Wills and trusts, and family law.  Brad emphasizes non-litigated solutions to human conflict.
• Trusts
  A revocable living trust is an agreement that a trustee (usually yourself) shall hold all the property you transfer into the name of the revocable living trust for the benefit of the trust beneficiaries (usually yourself and your spouse).  See RCW 11.120.  After your death(s), the revocable living trust transfers the trust assets to those whom you designate as your ultimate beneficiaries.  During the lifetime of the persons establishing the revocable living trust (the settlors), and while they are competent to do so, the trust may be revoked.  Persons who have a revocable living trust also need Wills, which Wills should direct the probate assets of the settlor decedent to be “poured over” into the trust.  Also, decedents need Wills to nominate personal representatives, to create non-intervention, no-bond status for their personal representative(s), and to nominate guardians for minor children.
• Power of Attorney
  An attorney-in-fact ("AIF") is the agent of his principal.  For example, if a mother asks her son to serve as her AIF under a durable power of attorney, the son becomes his mother’s agent and she becomes his principal.  Agents have only such authority to act as is given to the AIF by her principal.  Under normal circumstances, a principal under a durable power of attorney gives to her agent power to act on the principal’s behalf with respect to her property and her medical needs.  The power of attorney is “durable” if the powers granted continue even though the principal becomes disabled and unable for a time to give her attorney-in-fact instructions.  RCW 11.94.010.
• Probate
  The following are questions in probate law about which you may wish to learn more.  My answers to these inquiries summarize their topics, and do not aim to provide exhaustive knowledge, but rather an introduction to the topic.  Please read the statutes referenced for more complete details.