Skip to main content

Author: JGPC Business Law

What To Expect From a Small Business Law Firm

At JGPC our entire focus is on small business law.  Our business is Business, privately owned Businesses. That means we are always working with business owners and startup entrepreneurs. When you start working with a small business law firm very often your attorney’s first step will be to see if you’re operating with the best form of business organization for your business. In fact, the most common question we get from new clients is: “how should I be doing business?” Should I be using a corporation? Am...

Continue reading

What You Should Know About Judgments

What You Should Know About Judgments by Thomas von Thury, Esq. Most people don’t think about court judgments until they are faced with one, either about to be or already issued. Yet everyone should be aware of the basic principles underlying a court judgment so that they can judge the relative importance of avoiding one and develop a plan (and budget) to deal with the possibility of either (i) trying to collect a judgment in their favor or (ii) deal with a judgment about to be or already issued...

Continue reading

Suit As An Effective Settlement Strategy

Suit As An Effective Settlement Strategy by Thomas von Thury, Esq. Most lawyers know that the objective of a lawsuit is settlement, not a trial. After all, one can never absolutely sure what a judge or jury will do. By the time that most clients seek a lawyer’s assistance with respect to a dispute, at least many who come to me, they have already expended considerable time trying to resolve the matter themselves. In those situations my recommendation is almost always to promptly initiate a lawsuit....

Continue reading

Estate Planning Strategies Using LLC’s, Part One

Estate Planning Strategies Using LLC’s, Part One Why and how do we use LP’s (limited partnerships) and LLC-P’s (limited liability companies taxed as a partnership) for estate planning? (a) Why is entity ownership of assets better than individual/fractional ownership? California Transfer Tax Reasons: Real estate tax and transfer tax freezes, IRS Chapter 14 Rules anti-abuse regulations, valuation discounts. Non-Property/Transfer Tax Reasons: Asset protection, facilitates interest transfers,...

Continue reading

LLC Design and Implementation

LLC Design and Implementation Tax Considerations and Consequences LLCs come in four basic forms based on tax treatment which is usually chosen by the members. The four forms of LLC’s based upon tax treatment we shall call: (i) LLC-D’s (those LLC’s taxed as a disregarded entity) (ii) LLC-P’s (those LLC’s taxed as a partnership) (iii) LLC-S’s (those LLC’s tax as an “S” corporation) (iv) LLC-C’s (those LLC’s taxes as a “C” corporation) These four forms of the LLC are functionally very different...

Continue reading

LLC Asset Protection Strategies

LLC Asset Protection Strategies Inside-Out Liability: As far as inside-out liability, members of an LLC have the same level of personal liability protection as the shareholders of a corporation. That is, creditors of the entity, whether corporation or LLC, cannot get thru to the owners, shareholders or members, unless the shareholders/members have personally guaranteed a corporation/LLC debt, have received an improper distribution or a court allows a piercing of the corporate/LLC veil because...

Continue reading

LLC Attorneys Scale

What is a Limited Liability Company?

What is a Limited Liability Company? Many business transactions lawyers spend much of their professional lives creating, structuring and manipulating the “unnatural persons” of the legal world, those entities identified as “persons” under the law that are not “natural persons”. These “unnatural persons” are the building blocks of modern civilization. They are the conceptual entities or “legal entities” that we natural persons use to organize our lives and to bring continuity, stability and structure...

Continue reading

Alert – Online Notarization Services Illegal In California

The California Secretary of State recently issued the following Alert Customer Alert – Online Notarization Services Are Not Legal In California Online webcam notarization is invalid and illegal in the State of California. A private company claims to have the first online notarization website and has sent misleading information and made false claims to California notaries public concerning a new online notarization service. The web-based platform purports to allow a person to submit copies...

Continue reading

Level 4 & 5 Asset Protection

Today we wrap up our discussion of asset protection with a brief analysis of the fourth and fifth levels of asset protection. Level 4 Asset Protection involves the use of entities such as LLCs, LPs, FLICs, FLIPs, foreign or domestic asset protection trusts, QPERTS and other entities for protection of personally owned assets. Level Four Asset Protection would involve the use of domestic or foreign asset protection trusts. Many states now authorize the use of “self settled trusts” that can be used...

Continue reading

JGPC Business Law is a business law firm providing cost-effective, quality legal services to privately held businesses, corporations, limited liability companies (LLCs), general partnerships, joint ventures, limited liability partnerships (LLPs), limited partnerships (LP), trusts, business start ups, entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, executives, investors, buyers & sellers throughout the Tri-Valley and the East Bay Area, including Pleasanton, Dublin, Livermore, San Ramon, Danville, Walnut Creek, Castro Valley, Fremont, Tracy, Modesto, Manteca, Stockton and all of Alameda County and Contra Costa County. We are here to serve all of your business and corporate law needs.