Our firm's mission is to provide competent legal representation to our clients in a transparent manner and with the utmost integrity while providing our team members with a satisfying work experience.
Our primary clients are people who have a steady and secure job, but they want more out of life. They want independence and control of their own wealth potential, tired of relying upon an employer and a boss to direct their financial destiny. They often have reached a point in their career where they know they are no longer happy with what they are doing, or they desire something more. We work with those clients to help them realize their dream of a financially secure and fulfilling life.
We are a legal GPS for real estate investors, helping them to determine where they are, where they want to go, and the fastest route to get there. Many of our clients are members of Central Florida Realty Investors (CFRI) or Investors Resource Center (IRC). These are two groups dedicated to educating their members and providing a networking forum for members who are using real estate investments to secure financial independence in an ethical and legal way that not only helps their members, but also helps the greater community by renovating and rebuilding houses in blighted neighborhoods. Real estate investors often use our firm's resources to close and settle the purchase and sale of their properties. We represent their land trust trustees to prepare the land trust documents and guide the trusts' administration. We draft their contracts for sale and purchase. We evict bad tenants. We quiet their title in tax deeds, and we prepare their estate plans and entity structures to ensure that they limit their liability, protect their assets, and pass those assets on to their heirs in a way that is cost-effective for their estates and their heirs.
We represent small (1 employee) and medium-sized business owners (up to 2,500 employees) from the formation to the sale of their company. We meet with such clients early on in the process of giving birth to the business, counseling them regarding entity structuring and agreements that are needed to adequately protect their assets without burdening their cash flow. We do not believe in "over structuring." Instead, we help such clients to grow their businesses organically, adding additional entity levels only as necessary. As the business grows, we are there for our clients to help them through the inevitable growing pains of employment and supplier/customer issues that arise. We assist the client in protecting valuable trade secrets, copyrights and trademarks, including their systems for getting the work product to the customer. We ensure that their estate planning is up to date to account for the growth of the business, and then we often assist in the succession planning of the business, including the sale of the business or acquisition of other businesses, needed to help the client attain their goal of financial independence.
In addition to our representation of institutional lenders, we also work with many retired and semi-retired individuals who use their self-directed Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) or other funds to either hold title to their investment properties, or to lend funds to other investors, secured by mortgages on those properties. We prepare the loan documents and provide advice to these newly appointed lenders to help keep them within the bounds of the laws related to mortgage lending, usury, Truth In Lending (TIL), Good Faith Estimates (GFE), and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). We also work with them to ensure they do not enter into transactions that would lead to stiff tax penalties on their funds if not handled properly. When necessary, we are often later called upon to assist them in the foreclosure of these mortgages, or otherwise seizing their collateral for the loan. In our representation of such private and hard money lenders, we often find that we are again working with investors who have matured in their self-reliance, and are in need of guidance so they do not go astray of the laws and lose all they have worked so hard to save and lend. We also are requested many times to assist in a review of these clients' estate plans to ensure they are in compliance with the latest laws so the wealth will be transferred to successive generations without large tax implications or probate costs.