Law Offices of Edna V Wenning

10/02/2022

So true

06/23/2020

The Law Office of Edna V Wenning has a new address: 680 E. Colorado Blvd., Ste. 180, Pasadena, CA 91101. The new location is across the Pasadena Playhouse District. Tel. No. (626) 795-0747.

09/25/2018

The judicial process:
1. Get the facts, unadulterated facts. Just the facts, ma’am. Nothing more, nothing less. One must not indulge in gaslighting. There should be no missing documents, torn, mutilated or altered facts. Always aspire for the truth. It may be difficult at first, but once you’ve told the truth, it gets easier after that because there is no need to tell one lie or a succession of lies to cover the first lie.

2. What legal issues are presented by the set of facts? This is the exciting part of the judicial process. Are certain constitutional rights jeopardized? The constitution guarantees certain inalienable rights held sacred by our forefathers who put a lot of thought in embodying safeguards to those rights held sacred by society. Some people even gave up their lives to protect these rights. Are there laws, regulations, statutes applicable to the facts?

3. After reasoned judicious deliberation, study and application of the law to the facts on hand, determine which side wins. This is where the wisdom of Solomon is sought resulting in an outcome that is fair, reasonable, assuring our society of a reasoned well-articulated holding that becomes a precedent for similar cases that may come before the court. The parties have had their day in court. Justice has been served.

What happened was a backtracking, “bara bara” style:
1. Determine who will win first.
2. Select the facts, get the lies, succession of lies to cover the first lie. Hide the documents, bully the witnesses. Gaslighting. Tinker with the facts in an effort to give a semblance of “supportable” victory to the chosen side.
3. Selective pocket maneuvering. Wispy grasps, attempts at legal precepts, no matter how irrelevant or absurd they are hoping for some miraculous semblance of some form of legal amnesia resulting in absurdity. Resurrect the dismissed cases, look for some technicality to explain away the selected outcome. Why bother studying law at all? Gone are the melodious symphony of arguing legal precepts before the court using the sheer power of persuasion and the application of law to the facts, the kind that inspires the youth to hold our inalienable rights sacred and the institutions protected in any civilized society. Welcome to the Star Chambers. We have gone so low, really low.

09/07/2017

"The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground."

12/07/2016

Dear Edna
"Watching you at work as a lawyer is amazing- you are outstanding in every aspect- meticulous,experienced,determined,hard working while maintaining the human touch of kindness, compassion and empathy. If you cannot help someone which is probably extremely rare, it would be because it is not possible. Anyone who retains your services will not be disappointed."

10/31/2016

We have been encountering problems with my AT &T telephone number (626) 795-0747 and (626) 795-0780 (fax) for the past few days. If anyone of you tried to leave me a voicemail message, please send me an e-mail instead at [email protected]. I am unable to retrieve my voicemail messages and the fax is not working. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.

10/13/2016

Life Is Multifaceted: Teach a Child to Be Open and Embrace Complexities
When you picture a “normal” family, what do you see? Is it the traditional notion of one male parent and one female parent, two kids, and a family pet? Or do you see something different? Or perhaps you reject the notion of a “normal” family altogether?

Recent court and legislative activity have opened the institution of marriage to same-gender couples. Regardless of your political position or whether you think this is a wise move, it is happening. Today 1 in 4 children under the age of 18 are being raised by single mothers without a father in the picture at all. And nearly 30% of all families today are single parent families. 5% of children aren’t living with a “traditional” parent at all, but with grandparents or other family members.

Simply put, mainstream society is changing in our country.

Sometimes, with affluence comes reinforcement of our personal norms. We often attend institutions – like churches and schools, for example—where most everyone else looks and thinks like we do.

While we may feel most comfortable in these arenas, we need to push the boundaries with our kids for their sake. Regardless of our politics, visible American culture is changing. We cannot expect voluntary segregation of our society—by race, socioeconomic status, or any other factor—to continue.

So how can we help our kids be open to cultural and familial differences and to embrace the complexities therein?

Children are best prepared through modeling and practice. This is the true inheritance we leave behind.

Be cognizant of the cultural norms you promote without saying a word, through your choice of neighborhoods, entertainment, institutions, and even the company you keep. It is critical that American children remain open to differences and complexities, to enable them to work and play with those who may be different from them as our society moves forward to keep in step with the ever evolving nature of our world.

Ultimately, estate planning isn’t just about passing on your money. We call it Family Wealth Planning because it’s about passing on your whole family wealth, which includes your values, insights, stories and experience, most of which is passed on without awareness. When you can bring awareness to this planning, beyond just the financial pieces, you are giving your children a true gift that doesn’t just last a lifetime, but many generations.

Parents experiencing our Family Wealth Planning process repeatedly tell us that the process itself guides you to see many of the parts of true inheritance that you are likely overlooking, and the process itself has them feel better about themselves as parents as well as adult children of their own parents.

This article is a service of Edna V. Wenning, Personal Family Lawyer, who develops trusting relationships with families for life. That's why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session, where we can help identify the best strategies for you and your family for now and in the future. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a time for us to sit down and talk because this planning is so important.

10/07/2016

Protecting Our Family When It Matters Most
A drama that previously played out in a French courtroom demonstrates that any elderly person can fall victim to financial abuse, even the second wealthiest woman in the world.
Lilliane Bettencourt, 92, is heiress to the L’Oreal cosmetics fortune, and Forbes has estimated her worth at $40 billion. According to a recent New York Times story, a current lawsuit in French court -- dubbed the “Bettencourt affair” -- is a universal story of an elderly, wealthy woman who vacillates between vulnerability and independence.
No doubt due to her vast wealth, Mrs. Bettencourt has spend almost the last decade of her life in and out of French courts. Her only child, Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers, sought to have her declared incompetent four years ago when it was discovered that Mrs. Bettencourt had gifted more than $1 billion to a society photographer, François-Marie Banier. Banier is the focus of the current case, where he is being prosecuted for financial exploitation along with several others, including Mrs. Bettencourt’s former wealth manager.
Elder financial abuse is also becoming more prevalent in the U.S., and there are a number of advance planning tools that families can employ to help prevent financial exploitation. These include:
Advance medical directives -- these documents detail your wishes as to your medical care in case of incapacity, names a person to make health care decisions on your behalf and spells out who can be given access to your medical records. This should protect you and your family from having to go to court in order to make medical decisions for you and saves them the cost and time/energy of a guardianship application, which can run into several thousands of dollars.
Financial power of attorney – these name your choices for the person who will be given the power to handle your financial affairs in case you are no longer able to do so yourself. A financial power of attorney will save your family the cost of having to go to court to get access to your financial accounts and to pay your bills if you are not able to do it yourself. An unnecessary court process could cost your family $10,000 or more. Plus, we are hearing reports from many states of children applying for financial conservatorship of their parents, not being able to qualify and watching their parents’ assets dwindle to nothing when a professional conservator is appointed.
Trusts – in the event you become incapacitated, if you are assets are titled in trust, your Successor Trustee can step right in and easily handle things on your behalf with a simple document from your attorney and not have to get the court involved at all. This is only true IF your assets are titled properly in the name of your trust. Oftentimes, when working with a traditional forms or documents lawyer or a service like LegalZoom®, your assets will not be titled properly, so be sure to double-check that now.
A Personal Attorney -- sometimes even the best documents will not keep your family out of court. What you really need is an attorney who knows you -- and knows who you trust and have a relationship with -- to ease the process for your loved ones and to ensure greedy financial folks don’t rip you off.
One of the main goals of our law practice is to help families like yours plan for the protection of yourself and your family through thoughtful estate planning. Call our office today to schedule a time for us to sit down and talk through a Family Wealth Planning Session, where we can identify the best strategies for you and your family.

09/24/2016

Writing Your Life Story: Why
How often do you wish you knew more about your family? When we’re young, we don’t necessarily pay attention to the stories our elders tell us. Later in life, we often become interested in knowing who and where we come from.
We want to learn more about what makes us who we are, and we may even become interested in genealogy. Unfortunately, for many people, the resources that were there when we were younger have become faded memories and the people who could fill us in have already passed on.
A new idea by the website FamilySearch makes recording memories easier than ever for younger generations.
A common life lesson is to take large tasks and break them into smaller parts to make them achievable. FamilySearch has taken the task of writing your life story and broken it into 52 discrete parts that you can do once a week for one year. When you’re finished, you’ll have captured the memories your loved ones will value and created a true legacy for your family.
The questions posed on this website will allow you to catalog many things about yourself, such as the following:
● The basics about you, such as your full name, how you got your name, where you were born, and where you grew up;
● Information about your immediate and extended family, including memories of your parents and the work they did;
● Important genetic information that could be helpful to your descendants, such as unusual genetic traits and medical conditions that run in your family;
● Information about family traditions and how you spend your holidays;
● Your memories about your schools and your friends;
● Information that you have learned about yourself and the world, such as your greatest strengths and challenges, as well as your life philosophies; and
● Funny stories you remember, such as fads while you were growing up and tales about pets.
You can even add pictures. FamilySearch makes it easy to store your life story online, so your family can access it easily.
We believe capturing your values, insights, stories and experiences is so important, in fact, that we incorporate Family Wealth Passages into our estate planning process through a “Family Wealth Legacy Interview” with every plan.

This way, we ensure you are passing on not just your financial assets, but your whole family wealth, and what’s most often lost when you are gone. If you are an existing client and would love to update your Family Wealth Legacy Interview, contact us. If you are not yet a client, now is the time to get started with a Family Wealth Planning Session.
Our gift to you this month when you book your Family Wealth Planning Session is a Family Wealth Legacy Interview, whether you create a full estate plan for your kids and money, or not.
This article is a service of Law Offices of Edna V. Wenning who develops trusting relationships with families for life. If you're ready to begin assessing the security you want to provide for your family, schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session today. We can help you make plans for how you want to provide for your loved ones when you can't be there. Normally, a Family Wealth Planning Session™ is $750, but when you mention this article and are one of the first three families to book an appointment this month, we'll waive that fee. Contact us today to schedule your session.

Law Offices of Edna V. Wenning, 301 E. Colorado Blvd., Ste. 204, Pasadena, CA 91101, (626) 795-0747
https://ednavwenning.kidsprotection.com; [email protected]; [email protected]

09/10/2016

Guiding Your Children to Grow Through Failure -- a Gift That Keeps On Giving

Laws and rules are created within organized societies to regulate interaction and protect citizens. A classic example is the American system of traffic laws, designed to promote consistent traffic flow while reducing accidents. When everyone understands how a four-way stop works, expectations follow. We learn how to conduct ourselves properly and to anticipate how others will behave.

Likewise, the public school curriculum nurtures expectations—expectations regarding skills which are culturally valued. Our schools promote a model of success in our society. Our students are taught how to succeed, not how to fail, learn from their mistakes, grow and evolve.

Intentionally or not, our institutions do little to prepare us to make it through failure with grace. Particularly in the middle and upper strata of our society, we are not taught how to deal with failure. There is such a focus on success that many of us have developed aversions to crisis and conflict. So how can we prepare for adversity? Since our culture is built around success and we are largely taught to avoid failure, how do we learn to overcome it?
This is where your conscious awareness comes in.

As a parent, it’s your number one job to get highly aware about what you are passing on to your kids and how you are doing that, especially when it comes to models of success and failure.
Most parents simply don’t consider what they are handing down to the next generation, beyond thinking about how much money they’ll leave behind.

We hope to support you to be among the minority of parents who understand there’s a much bigger consideration here.
Maybe you can remember back to a time in your childhood when you thought to yourself “I’ll never be like that when I’m a parent”, only to find yourself now repeating those exact same patterns.
Yes, this is how it happens. But, now that you’ve noticed it, you can begin to do something different. It won’t necessarily be easy, many of these patterns -- especially around success and failure -- are highly deeply ingrained. You can shift them though with consciousness. I’ll be writing more about this in future articles. The first step is for you to just notice where you are repeating the patterns of thought and action around success and failure that your parents passed on, that you hated as a kid, and that you want to change for future generations.

We think that this is the most important part of parenting. It’s why we don’t just focus on passing on your money through estate planning, but have a process of passing on your whole Family Wealth (intellectual, spiritual and human assets in addition to money) into the legal life planning process. Through doing so, we help you consciously pass on what you really want.

This article is a service of Edna V Wenning, Esq. who develops trusting relationships with families for life. That's why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session, where we can explain financial management techniques and help identify the best strategies for you and your family. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a time for us to sit down and talk because this planning is so important.

Law Offices of Edna V Wenning, 301 E. Colorado Blvd., Ste. 204, Pasadena, CA 91101 (626) 795-0747
https://ednavwenning.kidsprotectionplan.com

Learn more about KidsProtectionPlan.com and how you can create free legal documents to provide for the well-being and care of your kids - it's free!

08/28/2016

Five Valuable Traits a Child Can Learn from Working Parents
Those of us who work sometimes feel that we are doing our children a disservice. Sure, we bring home a paycheck that benefits our children, but we may miss their activities and other aspects of their daily lives. This can be especially true in two-earner families. But in addition to greater financial security, our jobs provide opportunities for our children to learn many other life skills that they can use throughout their lives.
#1-Responsibility
Being consistently employed and engaged in our work demonstrates an essential life skill to our children: responsibility. Duty and responsibility are implicated in every aspect of human life, from work and family to spirituality and community. Responsibility’s sister traits include punctuality and perseverance, both of which are transferable to all areas of our children’s future lives.
#2-Loyalty
Living successfully and happily requires loyalty and commitment. Many of our relationships expect loyalty from us: employers, business partners, and even family members. Loyalty is a measure of respect given to those we care about and those with whom we are interdependent.
#3-Work-Life Balance
Have you ever heard the phrase “work hard, play harder”? Our kids watch what we do every day. If we work responsibly but take out time to spend with our families and recharge, we set a good example for our kids.
#4-Money Management
One of the best skills we can pass along to our children is money management. With the influx of income comes the opportunity to teach our children about income and expenses. Kids need to understand the basic essentials of finance, especially concepts such as budgeting, income, expenses, and credit. Learning these lessons at an early age can help them avoid financial pitfalls later in life. One great thing you can do once your children are old enough to understand is bring them in to meet with your personal lawyer to discuss what you’ve set up for them, in case anything happens to you. It’s a gift to them to know you love and care for them enough to
handle your affairs in advance.
Law Offices of Edna V. Wenning, 301 E. Colorado Blvd., Ste. 204, Pasadena, CA 91101 (626) 795-0747

07/01/2016

Thank you for the vote of confidence!