Some things look so easy that it’s tempt­ing to say: I can do this myself. Remem­ber, the experts make things look easy because they’ve had years and years of train­ing and prac­tice. The same is true with lawyers. They’ve had years and years of edu­ca­tion and prac­tice. They’re the experts.

This book isn’t try­ing to make you a legal expert. It’s not here to guide you to a par­tic­u­lar action. It’s only try­ing to intro­duce you to legal con­cepts and inform you about the law. It doesn’t know your sit­u­a­tion. It won’t ask you all the right ques­tions. It will just pro­vide you with gen­eral legal infor­ma­tion. So take the time and learn as much as you can. If you do, you’ll be much bet­ter equipped when you go to a lawyer. You’ll have a bet­ter idea of what to ask and you’ll bet­ter grasp dif­fi­cult legal concepts.

The other thing to remem­ber is that laws are con­stantly chang­ing. Some infor­ma­tion might be outdated.

Please don’t take this per­son­ally, but just because we’re giv­ing you legal infor­ma­tion in a book or allow­ing you to con­tact us elec­tron­i­cally doesn’t mean that you (the reader) and Vel­lum LLC (the law firm) are an item. Vel­lum is not your attor­ney until you sign a fee agree­ment or you pay for our services.

Also, Vel­lum doesn’t do tax law. Have you seen how many tax laws there are? It takes a spe­cial type of per­son to know that stuff—people like CPAs and tax attor­neys. We’re not part of that spe­cial group. So if you have tax ques­tions, go see one of those peo­ple who are part of that group.