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Consider Keeping Your Teen Driver Safe This Summer with a Driving Contract

Lucere Legal helps parents of teens with estate planning

With summer here, more teen drivers are on the road than ever–if that’s not scary enough, one of them may even be yours! Teens are twice as likely to be in an accident during the summer, and studies show that alcohol is often an underlying factor.

Neuroscience has proven that the teenage brain does not consider risk as heavily as a more well-seasoned mind. Even the most obedient and well-intentioned teen will take bigger chances while behind the wheel–it’s simply how their brain functions. There’s no such thing as a safe teen driver.

Unsurprisingly, insurance companies and childrens’ hospitals support a great number of the studies into the driving habits of teens. One such study found that of all the fatal accidents caused by teen drivers on the road, three quarters centered on three deadly mistakes:

  • Excessive speeds in unfriendly weather conditions
  • Insufficient attention paid to the road in front or to the sides
  • Distraction by something – or someone – inside or outside the vehicle

One-car crashes make up more than half of all fatal teen accidents–due primarily to speeding. High velocity goes together poorly with inexperienced teen drivers’ tendency to misjudge curves or bumps in the road. Thousands of fatal accidents occur every year.

The best defense you can take against teenage driving tragedies is communication. Sit down with your teen and do your best to get across the danger of unsafe driving. Though largely symbolic, a contract between you and your teen does more than just put in writing a promise not to drink or use a cellphone while driving: it provides them a concrete point of reference that may well orient their thought process as they approach a risky situation. You can use this contract developed by the American Pediatrics Association and the Centers for Disease Control.

You may also want to send your teen to a safe driving school.  The American Automobile Association (AAA) is just one of several organizations that offer classes in safe driving for teens.

Our focus is the well-being and care of your family, no matter what.  If you would like to have a talk about protecting your family through legal planning, call our office today at (612) 206-3701 or fill out our contact form to schedule a time for us to sit down and talk.

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The plain-English guide for Minnesota small business owners

When it comes to business, ignorance isn't bliss; ignorance is risk.

There's a handful of legal topics that business owners should be familiar with, at least on a rudimentary level, to reduce the risk of having something horrible come out of left field.

This book is a legal guide to help you put the most common business legal issues on your radar, with enough information for you to be on the alert for when you may need to get some professional advice.

The intention in arming you with this information is so that you can proceed in business confidently and with fewer legal quagmires.

Do you have a cabin?

The first generation that buys a cabin enjoys it to the fullest and it’s a magical place where happy memories are made and families go for some much needed respite. Unfortunately, without thoughtful planning, the chances of the cabin staying a place of happiness and tranquility into successive generations is very, very slim.

If you haven’t done the planning in advance and made it legally binding, the family members (and their ex-spouses and new spouses) will have to work every detail out for themselves. If they can’t, what is likely to happen is a lawsuit called an action for partition that forces everyone to sell their interest. This lawsuit is expensive, and the costs of litigation will come out of the proceeds of the sale of the cabin, so to add insult to injury to those who wanted to keep the cabin but couldn’t afford to buy the others out, they are footing part of the legal bills in the lawsuit against them. Ouch!

It’s no wonder that family members stop speaking for years after the cabin conflict is “resolved.” You can’t make family relationships perfect, but you can take away much of the fuel for the family conflict fire. That’s what cabin planning does, and it has the nice side effect of giving you peace of mind now.

That’s why Kimberly wrote The Minnesota Cabin Planning Guide and Workbook, and you can get a free electronic copy of her book on our cabin planning website, or you can find it in many county libraries in Minnesota, or you can get it on amazon.com.

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