Menu
Blog
How to Pass on Heirlooms Without Causing Family Feuds
June 30th, 2025
When it comes to estate planning, you may be primarily concerned with passing on assets that have significant monetary value, such as real estate, vehicles, investment accounts, and bank accounts. It can often be easy to overlook smaller items, like family heirlooms. Although objects such as timepieces, recipes, photos, quilts, letters, and militar…
Read More
Categories: Estate Planning
What to Expect in an Adoption Background Check
May 30th, 2025
If you are planning to expand your family through adoption, there are a number of steps that are involved in the process before the adoption can be finalized. The adoption background check is a mandatory part of the adoption home study that helps to ensure the safety of the child being adopted. Specifically, it involves reviewing the applicant’s…
Read More
Categories: Adoption
Can You Enforce a Child Support Order?
April 28th, 2025
Child support can be crucial to ensure a child’s basic needs are met. While most parents will make these payments voluntarily, this isn’t the case in all situations. If your ex refuses to follow a child support order issued by the court, it’s important to understand that there are measures you can take to ensure payments are made. Specificall…
Read More
Categories: Child Support
When to Revise Your Estate Plan
April 14th, 2025
Once you’ve created an estate plan, it needs to be updated on a regular basis. Importantly, these documents must be reflective of your current wishes, and your goals may change over time. While it’s a good idea to revisit your estate plan at least every few years, there are also certain events that should trigger a review to ensure it aligns wi…
Read More
Categories: Estate Planning
How to Avoid Probate
March 26th, 2025
Probate is the formal court process in which a deceased person’s property and assets are transferred to their beneficiaries. It is required for most estates in Oregon — even if there is a will in place. While these proceedings can be lengthy, costly, and emotionally overwhelming, many people wish to avoid probate for their family members. Fortu…
Read More
Categories: Probate
A Guide to the Home Study and Placement Report
March 17th, 2025
Adoption is a major decision that can come with many rewards for both parents and the child. If you are planning to expand your family through adoption, one of the requirements in Oregon is completing a home study. This is meant to ensure that prospective parents are emotionally and financially prepared to welcome an adopted child into their home.…
Read More
Categories: Adoption
Estate Planning After a Divorce
February 28th, 2025
Few life events bring as many changes, as quickly, as divorce does. Because there are so many details to manage, one that can stay under the radar is the need to review—or create—your estate plan. Estate planning is something many people put off at the best of times, and it is especially easy to do when you are embarking on life after divorce.…
Read More
Revisiting Custody Agreements as Your Children Grow
February 15th, 2025
It can be hard to imagine what life will be like in a year, much less several years, when you have growing children. If you have a custody agreement in place after a divorce or breakup, you made it with the needs of your children in mind. But those needs are almost certain to change over time, along with other circumstances. That means that custody…
Read More
Categories: Child Custody
What Factors Does the Court Consider in Divorce Property Division?
January 30th, 2025
Just about everyone understands that marital property division is a part of divorce. But it may not be until you are actually facing a divorce that you wonder: how exactly does the court decide who gets what? Portrayals of divorce in the media often show one spouse “taking the other one for all they are worth.” It’s no wonder that the specifi…
Read More
Categories: Property Division
Tips for Estate Planning for Blended Families
January 15th, 2025
If you have created a blended family, you and your new spouse have probably faced some challenges or loss in the past, and chosen to build a hopeful new future together. You’re older and wiser, and you’ve learned some valuable lessons that will help your new family to thrive. One of those lessons is likely that everything goes more smoothly if…
Read More
Categories: Estate Planning
Salem attorney Sarah M. Litowich is an Oregonian through and through, with roots in rural eastern Oregon and the Willamette Valley. She is grateful for these deep Oregon roots because she learned the value of hard work and building and maintaining st… Read More
