Brainerd Minnesota Law Blog

Many spouses who file for divorce in Minnesota will have to co-parent with their ex. While this can be difficult no matter the age of the kids, co-parenting teenagers comes with unique challenges. It's important to consider some of the most common mistakes parents make when co-parenting teens.

Failing to communicate is a major blunder that many exes make when co-parenting teenage children. Lots of parents assume that their child will naturally share important information with them. This may not be true when it comes to teenagers. It is important to talk to the other parent about what is going on with a teenage child.

In Brainerd, Minnesota, people who invest in IRAs often neglect to name primary beneficiaries when they open their accounts. People think they will name their beneficiaries at a later date but then forget to update the information. It is always a good idea to name beneficiaries on a retirement account to prevent holdings from going into an estate. Failing to update an IRA is another mistake. For instance, a person may have named a beneficiary several years ago but neglect to update the information after the beneficiary passes away.

People who value the amount of time they spent working to earn their investment monies should name their beneficiaries on the appropriate IRA documents. A single person with no heirs may want to name a charitable organization as their beneficiary. Whether leaving money to a nephew or a charity, the main thing to bear in mind is that naming a beneficiary is a simple task that only takes a few minutes.

Most of the time, the criminal justice system works. People commit crimes, the police investigate, they make a report to the prosecutor, in Minnesota a city attorney or county attorney, the prosecutor files charges if they are guilty of a crime. Part of the job of the prosecutor is to weed out reports that do not add up to a crime, even if the police want a crime charged. The prosecutors independence from law enforcement is one of the checks that protects all of us from being charged with crimes based on a mistake by a police officer, or worse, a police officer wanting to get someone. The vast majority of police officers are hard working, honest, and would not think of accusing someone of a crime unless they think they did the crime.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, prisoners in Minnesota and throughout the country lost over 1,600 years to wrongful convictions in 2018. That was the highest figure since this statistic was first tracked in 1989. In 2018, there were 151 prisoners who were released after it was determined that they hadn't committed the crime they were convicted of. Those individuals served an average of 11 years in custody.

In 70 cases, the crime that an individual was convicted of had not even occurred. One man was on death row after being convicted of sexual assault on a 21-month-old child. It was determined that the girl's injuries were likely sustained in a car accident. In another 17 cases, an individual confessed to a crime that he or she had not committed. Police and other official misconduct was a driving force behind many of the wrongful convictions.