Wednesdays, April 5- 26 || 6:30 - 8:00 pm
SE Uplift || 3534 SE Main St
4 weeks || Limited to 75 students

Taught by Amanda Caffall, JD & Kate M. H. Kilberg, JD, Catalyst Law, LLC

A life and estate plan can avoid confusion, conflict, and chaos for your loved ones. It’s like making sure you have a flashlight with full batteries before a power outage or a stocked pantry before a big snowstorm. With a life and estate plan, you can designate guardians to raise your children if your life is unexpectedly cut short, appoint someone to make financial and medical decisions on your behalf in case you can’t, and direct where your assets go after you’re gone.

Who cares? Just ask anyone who had to settle the affairs of a loved one who died without any kind of plan in place. The costs of probate often reach into the five-figures without breaking a sweat, and that’s to say nothing of potential conflict that can impair family and other personal relationships.

This course will explain what happens in Oregon when you die without any life or estate plan in place, what tools exist to record your wishes and smooth your family’s transition into a world without you in it, the big role taxes can play, and how estate planning tools work in real life.

Making a life and estate plan isn’t hard; deciding to make one is. This course will help you be a more informed consumer of legal services, identify common tools that apply to your life, and be better prepared to manage the affairs of a dearly departed loved ones.

Week 1: How Oregon law dictates what happens after you die. When a person dies without a Will they have an “intestate” estate. What happens with their assets and interests depends on operation of law, aka Oregon’s statutes. This week we’ll cover how those intestate statutes work and identify common problem areas and risks.

Week 2: Tools to modify your future and legacy, even after you’re gone (or incapacitated). You’ll learn how common legal tools are used as part of life and estate plans, including wills, living trusts, irrevocable trusts, advance directives, HIPAA waivers, powers of attorney, and temporary guardianship agreements. Many of these tools apply in life as well as death.

WEEK 3: Life’s two guarantees, death & taxes, are oh-so-related. Taxes have a big role to play in life and estate planning. Learn some of the tricks the rich and famous use to avoid ‘em, and learn how you might be able to leverage them, too.

WEEK 4: Workshop: Applying the tools to real-life scenarios. In this class, you’ll assess the use of legal tools in real-life scenarios to understand how these tools work in practice. Just like at a real law school, you’ll dive deep into the world of legal hypotheticals.

Amanda Caffall, JD, is the Executive Director & Staff Attorney at Catalyst Law Institute, a nonprofit law firm offering sliding-scale legal services for income-qualified people, businesses, and organizations. Amanda’s a proven resource developer & team builder with 25 years experience leading groups toward shared goals & 15 years in client- & public-facing roles. She’s a lawyer, organizer, activist, and change-agent. Get a glimpse of her work here and here.