Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, May 13, 2017

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Mountain Views-News Saturday, May 13, 2017 

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

BUSINESS NEWS & TRENDS

Simply Notice: Clear Awareness 
Is the Key to Happiness, Love 
and Freedom by Peter Francis 
Dziuban

The power of noticing led to 
something huge that influenced the 
writing of this book. It is, as they 
say, a game changer. It may be the 
game changer. This doesn’t mean you 
continue the same game, and change 
its outcome. It means suddenly you’ve 
got a brand new kind of game. The 
new game is an incredibly significant 
fact about the limitless nature of 
Life and awareness, consciousness. 
Bottom line is, there truly is only one 
universal consciousness. It is the very 
consciousness you are now aware of 
being—and it is not stuck inside the 
head of the body holding this book. 
Consciousness embraces the entire 
universe. These pages enable you to 
experience this, rather than merely 
reading theories about it. Amazingly, 
this has been known for centuries. 
Yet it has gone largely unnoticed by 
most of us, and continues that way 
today. The reason this is not more 
widely known is because it is hidden 
by an illusion. That illusion is the way 
the human senses—mostly sight and 
touch—make the everyday world 
appear. If all this sounds far-fetched, 
don’t worry. Making it crystal clear 
is what this book is for, and simple 
steps of noticing walk you carefully 
through it all. It’s like being invited 
backstage after a magician’s show. 
You see firsthand how the tricks and 
illusions work. Exposing the illusion 
begins in Chapter Twelve, “Yes, We 
Have No Bananas.” You are about to 
go way beyond “thinking outside the 
box.” This is an adventure in getting 
altogether outside of thinking. You are 
going straight to pure consciousness, 
unlimited awareness—that which 
gives rise to, and notices all thinking. 
This is similar to having a big Aha! 
To have an Aha! is great—but notice 
something about those, too. The Aha! 
itself is not really where it’s at. What 
you want is where all the Aha!’s come 
from. That’s the unlimited awareness 
you are.

Best European Fiction 2017 by 
Nathaniel Davis and Eileen 
Battersby

This anthology is the essential 
resource for readers, critics, and 
publishers interested in contemporary 
European literature. In this, the 
eighth installment of the series, the 
anthology continues its commitment 
to uncovering the best prose writing 
happening across the continent from 
Ireland to Eastern Europe. Also 
featuring an erudite prefatory essay 
written by Eileen Battersby of the 
Irish Times, Best European Fiction 
2017 is another essential report on the 
state of global literature in the twenty-
first century.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 
by Laura Furman (Editor)

The book gathers twenty of the best 
short stories of the year, selected 
from thousands published in literary 
magazines. The winning stories 
range in setting from Japan at the 
outset of World War II to a remote 
cabin in the woods of Wyoming, 
and the characters that inhabit them 
range from a misanthropic survivor 
of an apocalyptic flood to a unicorn 
hidden in a suburban house. Whether 
fantastical or realistic, gothic or 
lyrical, the stories here are uniformly 
breathtaking. They are accompanied 
by the editor’s introduction, essays 
from the eminent jurors on their 
favorites, observations from the 
winning writers on what inspired 
them.


FAMILY MATTERS By Marc Garlett


HOW YOUR TRUST CAN 
HELP A LOVED ONE 
WHO STRUGGLES WITH 
ADDICTION

 

 Substance addiction is by no means rare, impacting 
as many as one in seven Americans. Because of its 
prevalence, navigating a loved one’s addiction is a 
relatively common topic in everyday life. But you should 
also consider it when working on your estate planning. 
Whether the addiction is alcoholism, drug abuse, or 
behavioral like gambling, we all want our loved ones to 
experience a successful recovery. And a properly created 
estate plan can help achieve just that.

 The idea that money from a trust could end up 
fueling addictive behaviors can be particularly troubling. 
Luckily, it’s possible to frame your estate planning efforts 
in such a way that you’ll ensure your wealth has only a 
positive impact on your loved one during their difficult 
moments. 

Funding for treatment

One of the ways your trust can have a positive influence 
on your loved one’s life is by helping fund their addiction 
treatment. If a loved one is already struggling with 
addiction issues, you can explicitly designate your 
trust funds for use in his or her voluntary recovery 
efforts. In extreme cases where an intervention of some 
sort is required to keep the family member safe, you 
can provide your trustee with guidance to help other 
family members with the beneficiary’s best interest by 
encouraging involuntary treatment until the problem is 
stabilized and the loved one begins recovery.

Incentive trusts

Incentive clauses can be included in your estate planning 
to help improve the behavior of the person in question. 
For example, the loved one who has an addiction can be 
required to maintain steady employment or voluntarily 
seek treatment in order to obtain additional benefits 
of the trust (such as money for a vacation or new car). 
Although it might seem controlling, this type of incentive 
structure can also help with treatment and recovery 
by giving a loved one something to work towards. 
This approach is probably best paired with funding for 
treatment (discussed above), so there are resources to 
help with treatment and then benefits that can help to 
motivate a recovery.

Lifetime discretionary trusts

Giving your heirs their inheritance as a lump sum 
could end up enabling addiction or make successful 
treatment more difficult. Luckily, there’s a better way. 
Lifetime discretionary trusts provide structure for an 
heir’s inheritance. If someone in your life does (or might 
eventually) struggle with addiction, you can rest easy 
knowing the inheritance you leave can’t be accessed early 
or make harmful addiction problem even worse. 

 Of course, you want to balance this lifetime protection 
of the money with the ability of your loved one to actually 
obtain money from the trust. That’s where the critical 
consideration of who to appoint as a trustee comes in. 
Your trustee will have discretion to give money directly to 
your beneficiary or pay on your loved one’s behalf (such 
as a payment directly to an inpatient treatment center or 
payment of an insurance premium). When dealing with 
addiction, your trustee will need to have a firm grasp of 
what appropriate usage of the trust’s funds looks like. 
Appointing a trustee is always an important task, but 
it’s made even more significant when that person will 
be responsible for keeping potentially harmful sums of 
money out of the addicted person’s hands. 

 Navigating a loved one’s addiction is more than 
enough stress already without having to worry about 
further enablement through assets contained in your 
trust. But you can take that extra burden off your 
shoulders by building an estate plan that positively 
impacts your loved one and doesn’t contribute to the 
problem at hand. That way, you can go back to focusing 
your efforts on the solution. Call us today if you’re in this 
situation and would like some help.

 Dedicated to empowering your family, growing your 
wealth and securing your legacy,

A local attorney and father, Marc Garlett is on a mission 
to help parents protect what they love most. His office is 
located at 49 S. Baldwin Ave., Ste. G, Sierra Madre, CA 
91024. Schedule an appointment to sit down and talk 
about ensuring a legacy of love and financial security 
for your family by calling 626.587.3058 or visit www.
GarlettLaw.com for more information.


EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

Speech-Language Pathologist for Justine Sherman & Assoc. MS in Speech-Language Pathology, 
6 months experience and CA speech-language pathologist license required. Job in Sierra Madre. 
Email derrek@justineshermanslp.com Ref: LP

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