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National Drive-Thru Day: Why There is No "Value Menu" for a Good Will By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi July 24, 2026 Today is July 24th, which means it is officially National Drive-Thru Day . It is a celebration of the ultimate American innovation of convenience. We’ve all relied on them. You pull up to a speaker, read off a standardized menu, hand over a few dollars, and a minute later, a paper bag is handed through your car window. It is cheap, it is fast, and it satisfies an immediate need.  Parenting two teenagers who run cross country as well as track means we have our fair share of trips through the Culver's drive-thru.  It's fast and relatively affordable.  But it's not exactly a quality meal for two athletes.  We are living in the digital age.  Are you bombarded with social media ads for online will kits or do you receive email offers from a nonprofit you donate to that wants to give you a "free will"? In the internet era, it is incredibly tempting t...

Image Credit:   www.sxc.hu - free image As May gets into full swing, so do the meetings on my calendar that involve marital property agreements.  Why?  As summer approaches, so does an increase in the number of weddings.  And with marriage, one often finds the martial property agreement (hereafter MPA), otherwise known as a pre-nup.  If you are planning to say "I do" this summer, you might wonder if you need to add creating a MPA to your to-do list. First, a MPA is a contract between husband and wife that classifies property (assets and liabilities) as either marital or individual, and would be reviewed by a court upon either divorce and/or death.  If property is classified as individual, then the spouse who owns the property may give it to anyone he or she wishes.  This means that the other spouse has no legal interest in the property, which is contrary to Wisconsin’s Marital Property Law.  By agreeing to classify property as individual, ...

Image credit: www.sxc.hu - free image Marital property agreements are a contract between a husband and wife that clarify how property should be treated upon death and or divorce; either as individual or marital.  The State of Wisconsin asserts that a sound marriage is a partnership of equals, a concept that provides the foundation for the Wisconsin's Marital Property Act, enacted in 1986. The law presents benefits and pitfalls.  The law is complex, and is full of exceptions.  Wisconsin’s Marital Property Law  recognizes that both spouses contribute to supporting a marriage — even if only one earns a salary, or if both draw an income but one earns more than the other. The law says that whatever the couple acquires during their marriage should belong to them equally. This translates into certain advantages. For example, a nonemployed spouse has easier access to credit, and each spouse can make individual decisions about bequeathing assets. Marital property incl...

According to Capital Times Reporter, Steve Elbow, changes may be coming for Wisconsin's prenuptial agreements . A prenup, or post-nup in some cases, is a contract between a husband and wife about how property shall be classified during marriage as well as at death and or divorce. They are commonly used in the case of blended families, when their are assets and children that pre-date the marriages. According to Elbow's report, State Rep. Joel Kleefisch is proposing changes so that judges cannot alter an agreement even if a spouse failed to disclose asset or debt information, if the agreement was coerced, or deemed "unfair" by the judge. The proposal, AB 235 , is not without opposition. The bill was met with concern by other members, all attorneys, who clearly feel contract law calls for a remedy if the agreement was entered falsely. I will be monitoring this legislation and will post updates as needed.

Working up a deed today, I came across a new situation. A client has come to be after the death of her husband. The deed to their home was in both names....she thought. If so, we can complete the HT-110 to remove his name, placing it in her name only. To do this we need the original deed. I went onto Tapestry and discovered that the deed for the LOT was listed, but it did not reflect the home later built on the lot. One quick email to the Dane County Register of Deeds confirmed that we can use that original deed, nothing would have been created upon building the home. Once again, the HT-110 will help keep a widow's home out of probate.

I'm married to an electrical engineer, and for those of you who are not, you may not realize how many questions they ask....engineers are very thorough. Especially in the area of finances. Several years ago my husband asked questions related to Wisconsin's marital property law. He understood the part about assets being considered 50/50 regardless of how they were titled, but he could not get his mind around liabilities being 50/50. How can one party be bound to a liability they may never know about. The fuzziness apparently festered in his mind over the years, but was cleared up this past weekend. Last week I applied for a new credit card for my legal practice. Several days later I received an approval letter. The next day my husband received a letter notifying him that I had applied for credit, on my own, giving him notice to this new source of liability. And with that letter, Wisconsin's marital property law became a bit more clear in his engineering mind. As alwa...