Areas of Practice: Cottage Succession Planning, Estate Planning, Succession Planning, Real Estate and Property Tax Appeals and Related Matters

Services Offered: Cottage Law is the practice area of Wright Penning & Beamer focused on family cottage sharing and cottage succession planning. Our Suttons Bay office in the historic Depot is known nationally as "The Home of Cottage Law."

By having a solid cottage succession plan in place your heirs avoid common real estate law surprises. Our attorneys work with you to develop a flexible cottage succession plan which will move your family cottage away from the hazards of 600-year-old real estate laws to within the protection of entity laws.

We examine your family cottage property as a whole and advise you on short- and long-term strategies and legal structures to avoid the uncapping of your property.

At Wright Penning & Beamer we know your goal is to protect three things: the people you love, a place you love and the life experiences and cottage memories you love.

Let our staff of expert cottage law attorneys develop a cottage succession plan with you which will:

• Protect your family cottage from passing outside the family.
• Solve future conflicts between family members about how the family cottage is operated, maintained and improved.
• Avoid, through the right to partition governed by real estate laws, the forced sale of your family cottage.

Your Cottage Succession Plan, as prepared by Wright Penning & Beamer, moves beyond the hazards of 600-year-old real estate laws and becomes a legal, yet flexible, entity of its own to keep the family cottage in your family for generations to come.

Wright Penning & Beamer will provide a detailed, enforceable and customized plan to:

• manage the process of cottage use
• pay ongoing expenses
• facilitate the possible disposition of ownership interests in the family cottage after both parents are deceased reflecting the parents' desire regarding the family cottage

This planning promotes and hopefully preserves unity among the next generation and even future generations depending on the terms of the plan. It specifies:

• how many children if less than all can liquidate/sell their ownership interests
• at what price (including options for discounts to discourage sales)
• how expenses will be paid
• the plan can also include management of funds left to endow the payment of cottage expenses by the parents

In addition to family harmony, a well designed cottage succession plan will preserve the "experience" of the family cottage. All the memories that experience will produce are worth more than money. Also, those experiences may provide what you hoped for - a common and loving bond and closer relationship among grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Call Wright Penning & Beamer today to begin the process of creating your cottage plan. Having a simple plan in place, which you can easily change and update, is better than the consequence of not having a protective cottage succession plan for your heirs.

Dan A. Penning
231.271.4500 Suttons Bay
248.477.6300 Farmington Hills

Visit our Cottage Law website at www.Cottage-Law.com