Free Legal Advice Online

posted by admin on Feb 10

You’ve heard it all before. Don’t drink and drive. Everyday, hundreds of people get into car accidents resulting from drunk driving. Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) is a crime. DWI laws are strictly enforced various states. DWI penalties include loss of driving privileges, fines and possible jail time. Any amount of drinking will affect your judgment and coordination and will reduce your ability to safely operate a vehicle. The degree of impairment depends on five factors: 1.) the amount you drink; 2.) whether you’ve eaten before or while drinking; 3.) your body weight; 4.) length of time spent drinking and; 5.) your gender. There is no quick way to ’sober up’, except to wait for your body to metabolize the alcohol. The average metabolism rate is about one drink per hour.
DWI can also result from taking drugs. Drug possession is a grave offense under the law and an accompanying DWI will mean more trouble for the offender. Most often DWI offenders take drugs to stay awake and operate the vehicle. However, these drugs can also cloud your judgment, such as estimating distance and speed, which puts your life and the pedestrians in danger.
Many people caught for DWI have tried to evade the police by convincing them that they are not intoxicated. Here are the top three DWI myths and the truth behind them:
Myth 1: “Alcohol on the breath” is a reliable sign of alcohol consumption and intoxication.
Fact: Alcohol is actually odorless…. it has no smell. What people perceive as alcohol on the breath is actually the odor of things commonly found in alcoholic beverages. The breath of a person who drinks a non-alcoholic beer will smell the same as that of a person who has consumed an alcoholic beer.
Myth 2: People who abstain from alcohol are “alcohol-free” and can’t be arrested for DWI.
Fact: The human body produces its own supply of alcohol naturally on a continuous basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s called endogenous ethanol production. Therefore, we always have alcohol in our bodies and in some cases people produce enough to become legally intoxicated and arrested for DWI.
Myth 3: Breathalyzers and other breath testers used for DWI confirmation are accurate
Fact: There are many, many sources of error in breath testers.
Penalties on DWI offense are serious. You may even have to go jail with maximum time of seven years and have your driving license revoked. DWI is serious because you are not just endangering your life but also the lives of the people around you. Not only that, you stand to pay for any damages done on state and personal property because of your DWI offense. Furthermore, if you cannot pay the said amount, it will mean additional jail time for you.
The worst DWI incident that can take place is a car accident that concerns a death on either of the parties. Such accident could result to a homicide case and may mean a prison sentence of 12 to 15, may even life depending on how many died due to your DWI recklessness.
So heed the advise given to your by anti-drunk driving organization. Do not grab the wheel and commit DWI when you’ve had more than a glass of alcohol to drink. If you must get home, hail a taxicab instead and leave your car with a friend. DWI can mean your death. Better be prepared than sorry in the end.
By Michael Sanford

posted by admin on Feb 10

Strategies on Paying for Nursing Home Care and Qualifying for Medicaid the Right Way!
The decision to place your loved one into a nursing home is an extremely difficult decision, often causing much guilt for the caregiver. It is a very emotional decision for most clients we see and most are under a certain amount of stress, often great, when facing what they consider to be a drastic course of action.
I counsel our caregiver clients to get beyond the guilt as quickly as they can, because the situation their loved one is in is not the caregiver’s fault. And besides, the longer you remain under this stress, the less healthy you eat, or you eat way too much, the less you sleep, and some start drinking (my own mother started this late at night after she got my dad settled in bed for the evening – not healthy to say the least).
The stress of caring for a loved one is constant and unrelenting. It is a physical, mental and emotional grind. On numerous occasions, we have actually had caregiver clients die before the spouse in the nursing home. Sometimes, the caregivers die shortly after the nursing home spouse dies. The stress of being a caregiver can be deadly serious, especially for older clients who are caregivers for their spouse.
You have to recognize it and develop a plan to deal with it.
Get your children involved in developing a plan to deal with your loved one’s incapacity. And remember, plan for the absolute worst case scenario. Get to an attorney who can help you develop a plan to help you with your particular situation. And this is especially important as soon as you detect any signs of dementia in your parent or spouse, or as soon as you begin to detect physical problems with your loved one. The sooner you begin the plan, the better off the family will be.
NOW, HOW DO WE PAY FOR MAMA’S NURSING HOME CARE? There are really only three ways to pay for a stay in a nursing home.
LONG TERM CARE INSURANCE (LTCI). If Mama was far-sighted enough, she may have purchased LTCI in the past before she needed it. This would be an excellent source of funds to help defray some or all of Mama’s long term care costs. Unfortunately, very few seniors, those over age 60, have LTCI coverage.
SELF PAY. This essentially means that Mama has enough income or financial assets to pay her own way in the nursing home. However, many families don’t have the income or the financial asset base to be able to pay $4,000 to $7,500 or more a month for a bed for very long in a nursing home.
MEDICAID. This is a state-administered medical benefit program which will pay for the cost of a nursing home stay if three tests are met, i.e., medical need, asset, and income. Medicaid is obviously a needs-based program, funded partially by state funds, but mostly by federal funds. Many people are under the mistaken impression that MEDICARE, which most seniors in this country over age sixty-five participate in to one degree or another, will cover the cost of their stay in a nursing home.
By P.L

posted by admin on Feb 10

There’s a new Michigan state register (at https://www.protectmichild.com/) in the works to create a database of e-mail addresses that cannot (under penalty of the law) be spammed with content that could be deemed objectionable to children, most notably porn. The database will extend to include pager and cell phone numbers sometime in the future. Right now, it’s sort of like the national DO NOT CALL registry, but for electronic mail.
What happens is that parents and guardians write or phone in the addresses that their children and wards have access to. The project is in the registry phase right now, i.e e-mail addresses are still being compiled (as of July 1). The actual DO NOT EMAIL statute takes effect on August 1.
E-mail advertisers must, from here on in, crosscheck this state list before sending out their e-mail newsletter or advertising to ensure that they’re not sending mail to an address that kids under 18 have access to. The penalties for infringement are reasonably stiff, not too much so. They’re certainly stiffer than the ones for the DO NOT CALL register (I checked because I’m on that one).
Someone needs to send this to Capitol Hill so that our national legislators can see what a child-protection law looks like; for the next time they try to come up with a statute as half-hearted - supposedly well-intentioned, but flawed in design - as Title 18 U.S.C. §2257.
I believe that a noble, decent, and well-intended law/statute - at it’s basic core - should do three things:
1. Lay down boundaries for proper conduct;
2. Seek to punish those who cross those boundaries; and in so doing
3. Do everything within its reasonable power to prevent transgressions in the future.
Everybody and their brother in the adult industry knows that the new 2257 statute regulations that just kicked in are a joke. The spirit of 2257, as it is expounded upon in the entire 110th chapter of that section of the US code, is to prevent the abuse of children, sexually and otherwise. Now it’s one thing to require that porn content producers ascertain and maintain proof of identity and age for prospective adult performers. It would be irresponsible on the part of government and the adult industry not to keep up on such record-keeping.
As a matter of fact, long before the biggest underage actress hoopla came along, in the guise of Traci Lords, porn studios were checking IDs. (For those who don’t know, Lords was an underage porn actress that “snuck” into the business and appeared in many videos. When the studios that produced her videos got wind of her actual age at the time of her performances, they pulled her content from store shelves.)
But this notion that a consistently enforced 2257 (like that which is imposed at the present) would have prevented the Lords incident is mistakable. 2257 would not have made her authentic-looking proof of age look any more fake. A lot of people may not believe this but the adult industry does a pretty good job of policing itself. The only way a minor could enter the industry is if he or she made a conscious decision to apply to be a pornstar, and took certain premeditated steps to make the dream a reality (in terms of obtaining said Ids). Where is the punishment for minors who knowingly attempt to enter the industry while underage?
I’m sure some manner of punishment, in terms of juvenile detention, would deter future mid-teens from trying to pass off some fake IDs. Isn’t that what correctional facilities are for? The primary purpose of a prison or a detention facility should be (if a detainee can be salvaged or rehabbed) to prevent mal-behavior in the future, primary to punishment of said offenders.
The jailing of unwitting and honest porn execs (and I do know there are a lot of shady people in the business) for a crime perpetrated by an unethical minor seems highly unfair. It would be like punishing the makers of a completely legitimate pharmaceutical or hospital drug like opium because there are illicit dealers who dispense their products on the street. Are not only the offenders (the drug dealers) in this case punished?
Granted, under the Michigan law, giving admitted or intended pedophiles (who pose as electronic spammers) access to children’s phone numbers and e-mail addresses is almost like putting a leash on a wolf and walking him right up to the sheep’s pen. But you would be mistaken if you thought a pedophile determined to strike again would otherwise have no other means to re-commit his heinous crimes.
The Michigan statute just serves to lay down boundaries and define precise, justifiable repercussions for crossing such boundaries. In the end, the law does what it’s supposed to do: protect the children and see to it (within reasonable expectation) that pedophile crimes don’t happen again - by putting away and/or deterring would be molesters. On the other hand, 2257 as it stands does little to protect or serve anyone.
Finally, a child-welfare law (The Michigan Children’s Protection Registry) that actually serves its purpose. If President Bush, Attorney General Gonzales, and the Department of Justice were not so hell-bent on ridding the US - or maybe the universe for that matter - of pornography in all shapes and forms, they would see that 2257 just doesn’t do what they believe it will do. Or maybe they already knew that, and their mind set is bye-bye, see-ya to porn anyway?
By Sonny

posted by admin on Feb 10

If you are ever arrested for drunk driving (also called DUI for “driving under the influence” or DWI for “driving while intoxicated”), your experience will begin with an officer stopping you because of some questionable driving pattern, or possibly because you encountered a DUI “sobriety checkpoint” or you were involved in an accident. The officer will approach your car and ask some questions. You will then be asked to perform “field sobriety tests”. He may also ask you to breath into a handheld device, technically called a PBT or “preliminary breath test”. You will then be arrested. On the way to the police station, you will be asked to submit to a breath or blood test — and told that if you don’t, your driver’s license will be suspended.
What should you do and say during all of this to minimize the risk of a criminal conviction and a license suspension?
1. Politely decline to answer any questions without an attorney present. It is a cardinal rule in legal circles that only incriminating statements are included in police reports and later testified to in court; statements pointing to innocence are invariably ignored, forgotten or misinterpreted. Bluntly put, whatever you say will almost never help you and can only hurt you.
2. Decline to take any so-called field sobriety tests. These are theoretically intended to determine impairment, but in fact are designed for failure. In most cases, the officer has already made the decision to arrest and is simply going through the motions and gathering further evidence to bolster his case (he is the one who decides whether you “pass” or “fail”). In almost all states, you are not required to submit to this “testing”. It’s unlikely that taking it will change the officer’s decision to arrest.
3. Decline to take a “PBT” (preliminary breath test). These handheld units are carried by officers in the field to help decide whether to arrest or not and are notoriously inaccurate. In most states, drivers are not required to submit to these tests (in some they are required if you are under 21). Although most states admit the results of these tests into evidence only to show the presence of alcohol, some permit them to prove the actual blood-alcohol level.
4. Do you choose blood, breath — or refuse to take any chemical test? This is a case-by-case decision, and involves a number of considerations. First, although blood tests are subject to many possible errors, they are generally more accurate than so-called “breathalyzers”; if you feel your blood-alcohol level is below .08%, then you might want to choose the blood test. Secondly, whether to submit to testing at all requires some knowledge of your state’s laws — specifically, the consequences of refusing. If the increased criminal penalty and license suspension do not outweigh the possible benefit of depriving the prosecution of blood-alcohol evidence, then you may wish to refuse. Bear in mind that the prosecution will charge you with two offenses, DUI and driving with over .08% blood-alcohol; without a blood or breath test, he cannot prove the .08% charge, and there will be no chemical evidence to corroborate the officer’s testimony. You should also realize that in many states chemical evidence of a very high blood-alcohol level, say over .15%, can trigger more severe penalties.
5. In almost all states, your driver’s license will be immediately suspended if either (1) the chemical tests results are .08% or higher, or (2) you refuse to submit to testing. You have a right to a hearing to contest this administrative suspension, and there are many possible defenses, many of them technical in nature. This hearing is usually separate from the criminal proceedings, and involve different procedures and issues than in court; it is not uncommon to lose the criminal case but win the suspension hearing. However, as most motor vehicle departments do not really want the time and expense of providing these hearings, they tend to provide notice of the right buried in fine print given to arrestees. The critical information is the requirement that an actual demand for the hearing must be made by the arrestee — usually within ten calendar days. If you do not contact the DMV within ten days, you lose all rights to a hearing — no matter how good a defense you may have. Tip 5: Get an attorney right away, or make the call yourself — and make sure you can later prove you made the call within the ten day window!