Getting Your Legal House in Order

By: Sally Hurme, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Sally Hurme

Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

The law impacts nearly every aspect of our lives, yet we seldom stop to reflect on the tools, documents, and procedures that allow our society to function. Property and contracts, insurance and credit, taxes and estate planning: These issues may be intimidating, but getting on top of your legal affairs is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your family. The good news is that a few simple concepts, a little organization, and some step-by-step planning can help you get your legal life into the best shape possible. 

If you’re like many people, you may not have made the time to consider: 

• Do you need a will, trust, power of attorney, or other estate planning tools? 
• What kind of and how much insurance is a good investment? 
• How should we prepare our finances and health care for retirement? 
• What can we do to make end-of-life care and estate planning easy for our loved ones? 

Tackling these issues doesn’t have to be a major chore. Getting Your Legal House in Order gives you a practical, accessible, and encouraging look at what you need to do to secure your finances, your home, your health care, and your future. Taught by author and elder law attorney Sally Balch Hurme, these 18 eye-opening lectures offer an enjoyable and immensely satisfying foray into your legal affairs. 

As you will quickly learn, the language of legal and financial procedures can be confusing - codicils and probate, power of attorney and advance directives, annuities and Medigap insurance - but Sally Hurme offers clear explanations and a blueprint for you to follow. For instance, something as simple as a letter of instruction can take the burden off your family and spell out what your wishes are for your personal property. 

There’s no substitute for having your own attorney, financial advisor, or accountant assessing your unique situation, but this course offers a captivating overview of personal legal issues, from identity theft to advance medical directives, and it should be required viewing for people of any age. 

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. 

©2020 The Great Courses (P)2020 The Teaching Company, LLC

Very good book

Absolutely amazing amount of information. Really recommend it to read to everyone. So condensed. Very satisfied.

Good advice, target audience is an older crowd

This course seemed like sound personal and family legal advice and information touching things like personal finance, estate planning, and healthcare. The lecturer is a practicing elder law professional who has written a few related books. This information will be most useful for late career and retired people as well as those who care for them or manage their affairs. There are portions and tidbits that are useful to any adult who wants to get a head start on some of these topics, mostly in the second half, but you'll have to sit through lectures on collecting social security and pros and cons of time shares to find it.

Besides age, the information seemed directly applicable to people of any socioeconomic class but only indirectly applicable to people outside the United States. And sticking with the elder law focus, there wasn't any discussion of other personal legal matters like liability in accidents, navigating the criminal justice system, disputes with employers, managing civil lawsuits, etc.

Anyone over 18 should listen...

Getting Your Legal House In Order gives the average person a birds eye view of the world of prudent adult decision making. Often we get caught up in our day to day lives and we don't bother to think about what happens when we fail to plan until its too late.

This course does a wonderful job helping the listener to gain a deeper understanding of common legal topics they already know about, addresses issues they "thought" they knew about, and tackles some of the "hard to talk about issues" many of us will face at some point in our lives. Be careful - you might just level up a little bit after listening to this course.

Practical and Use Advice

Very practical advice on various ways to ensure legal issues of older persons and their families are addressed or prevented. Useful listen for those who want a deeper understanding of the challenges that may face family caregivers and their loved ones. This course covers debt, identity theft, property rights, insurance, Medicare and Medicaid information, estate planning, power of attorney, medical advance directives, and others important topics of interest. The advice is fairly straightforward and easy to follow. It generates the questions that should be addressed sooner rather than later when regarding rights, care, and planning. An important listen.

She did a great job!

Was skeptical and thought it would be extremely boring, but it wasn’t. Gives an excellent overview of all the relevant material, and doesn’t get boring.

Good Information, Not so good Narration

Happy for the PDF and all the great information. Could only get through a short period of time of the narration.

Very few can narrate their own books.

For me, worth the credit just for the PDF

Reader was terrible

She made it so boring and I could not focus on the content because she kept making mistakes when I was starting to get drawn in.