A Michigan family paid $4,500 for a comprehensive trust-based estate plan. The attorney drafted solid documents. Mom signed everything. She filed the binder on a shelf, told the kids “everything is taken care of,” and went back to living her life. Fifteen years later, she passed away. Her three adult children opened the binder expecting … Read more
The Divorce Nobody Talks About There’s a version of divorce that doesn’t make the news. No explosive courtroom accusations, no social media screenshots, no custody battle over a six-year-old. No dramatic moment of revelation that fits neatly into a story. It looks more like this: a 60-year-old woman sitting across from her husband of 31 … Read more
Serving as a personal representative or trustee is an honor, and a legal minefield. Michigan law imposes fiduciary duties on anyone who administers an estate or trust, and those duties come with teeth. Make the wrong call, and you’re not just inconveniencing beneficiaries. You’re exposing yourself to personal liability, meaning your own assets are on … Read more
Ten months ago, a five-year-old girl named AB lost her mother in a hit-and-run crash in Royal Oak. What followed was the kind of grief no family is ever truly prepared for, but the people who showed up for AB and her father in those first agonizing months were the same people who had always … Read more
Generosity Without Chaos: How to Help Your Family Without Creating Legal Problems Michigan grandparents are generous. They help with college tuition, contribute to down payments, cover medical bills, and step in when adult children face financial hardship. In many families, this kind of support is simply what you do. But generosity without structure creates problems … Read more
The motion arrived on a Tuesday. A father in Southeast Michigan, we’ll call him David, was served with an emergency motion to modify parenting time. His ex-wife alleged he had been drinking alcohol around their children and requested immediate supervised parenting time and mandatory drug and alcohol testing. David was stunned. Yes, he’d had two … Read more
Here’s a scenario that plays out across Southeast Michigan more often than most families expect: Mom lived her whole life in Macomb County, but she bought a condo in Florida fifteen years ago for the winters. She has three adult children, one still in Shelby Township, one in Texas, and one in California. She passes … Read more
He discovered his wife was cheating during discovery. Not a suspicion. Not a gut feeling. Hard evidence: receipts, travel records, credit card statements showing hotel charges in Las Vegas. Text messages. Proof she’d told their daughter she was visiting family out of state when she was actually on vacation with her law school classmate lover. … Read more
You’re 65 or older, you’ve found someone worth building the next chapter with, and you want to get married again. But one thought keeps surfacing: What happens to my kids’ inheritance if something goes wrong? It’s not a hypothetical. It’s the central tension of late-in-life remarriage in Michigan, and it catches more families off guard … Read more
You trained together every morning. You share a couch every night. Your dog knows the sound of your car from three houses away. But when your marriage ends, Michigan law sees that relationship the same way it sees your claim to the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. Under current Michigan law, pets are classified … Read more
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Phone
Main Office Address
Boroja, Bernier & Associates
Corporate Office
49139 Schoenherr Rd. Shelby Township, MI 48315
(586) 991-7611
By Appointment Only
100 West Big Beaver Road, Suite 200, Troy, MI 48084
(248) 677-2250
2723 South State Street, Suite 150, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
(734) 749-9400
120 N Washington Square Suite 300, Lansing, MI 48933
(517) 760-6600
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