Little did I know there would be a sequel..... S T A T E O F M I C H I G A N C O U R T O F A P P E A L S In re Estate of MARK E. MOON. KRISTINA MOON, Personal Representative, Appellant, UNPUBLISHED August 14, 2014 v No. 315698 Eaton Probate Court MERLIN MOON, LC No. 08-045647-DE Appellee. Before: SAAD, P.J., and OWENS a nd K.F. KELLY, JJ. PER CURIAM. Appellant, as personal representative of the estate of Mark E. Moon, appeals as of right the probate court’s order that denied her motion for summary disposition, which requested that the probate court determine that the estate has a 50 percent partnership interest in real property titled in appellee’s name. We affirm. As a preliminary matter, appellee claims that this Court does not have jurisdiction because not all interested parties appear to have been served with the claim of appeal. ... [Continue Reading]
Estate of Mark Moon
Below is the Court of Appeals Opinion on a case that I worked on in the trial court. I represented the appellee, Merlin Moon. S T A T E O F M I C H I G A N C O U R T O F A P P E A L S In re MARK E. MOON ESTATE KRISTINA MOON, Personal Representative of the Estate of MARK E. MOON, Appellant, UNPUBLISHED January 27, 2011 v No. 294176 Eaton Probate Court MERLIN MOON, LC No. 08-045647-DE Appellee. Before: MARKEY, P.J., and WILDER and STEPHENS, JJ. PER CURIAM. This case arises from a dispute regarding whether certain property belongs in decedent’s estate. The probate court held that a partnership existed between decedent Mark E. Moon and his father, appellee Merlin Moon, and that appellee therefore has a 50% ownership stake in several items that had been listed in the estate inventory. Appellant Kristina Moon, the personal representative of ... [Continue Reading]
Farmers Face Unique Challenges in Estate and Succession Planning
Planning for the succession of the family farm poses some unique challenges and should not be undertaken by those who are not familiar with the industry. While farmers are similar to many closely held business owners, there are some situations that make them unique. For example, farmers tend to have high “book value” because so much of their estate consists of land. However, they tend to have low cash value and lack liquidity. This situation used to cause a severe problem when a farmer died because the value of their estate would most often exceed the amount of the exemption or “unified credit” for federal estate taxes and the estate would struggle to find sufficient cash to pay the estate tax. However, this situation has been greatly mitigated now that the unified credit amount is over $5,000,000 per person and over $10,000,000 per ... [Continue Reading]
Blended Families Bring Special Issues to Estate Planning
Webster’s dictionary defines a blended family as a family that includes children of a previous marriage of one spouse or both. The first known use of the term blended family was in 1975. Blended families may consist of young couples with “his” and “hers” and “our” children or older couples with adult children from previous marriages and no children of the current marriage. The divorce rate in Michigan as recently as 2011 was 38%. This figure does not differentiate between first marriages and subsequent marriages and does not account for subsequent marriages of widows and widowers or marriages of those with children from previous relationships other than marriages. All told, the number of married couples who have children of any age that are not a product of the current marriage is a significant and expanding number. For the estate ... [Continue Reading]
Critical Cases to Watch: Township of Richmond v Rondigo, LLC
Macomb County Circuit Court File Nos. 2006-001054-CZ and 2006-004429-CZ Unpublished Court of Appeals Case No. 304444 While all of us enjoy our work and have a passion for the areas that we practice in, the fact is that we need to get the bills paid. The Rondigo case is not only an important case in protecting our ability to be paid for our services, but even more important in protecting farmers from nuisance cases that they usually could not afford to defend. At issue in this case is MCL 286.473b of the 1981 Right to Farm Act (the “act”). Section 3b of that statute reads: “In any nuisance action brought in which a farm or farm operation is alleged to be a nuisance, if the defendant farm or farm operation prevails, the farm or farm operation may recover from the plaintiff the actual amount of costs and expenses determined ... [Continue Reading]