We Help Entrepreneurs and Families
Keep the Skies Clear and the Future Bright
Sky Unlimited Legal Advisory offers you the perfect combination of trusted advisor, problem solver, keeper of secrets and deep listener.
Our team is specifically trained to help you keep more money in your business and personal accounts, watch out for pitfalls, handle sticky situations (ideally before they even get sticky) and effectively tend to the parts of your business that are especially challenging.
At the same time, we work as your trusted advisor who helps you make the very best personal, financial, legal, and business decisions for your family throughout your lifetime.
You always said you wanted someone who could do all “that” stuff - the tasks that you’d rather not handle.
That's precisely where we step in - protecting your business and your family!
Notes from Our Chief Counsel's Desk
How to Pay Up to $5,250 of Your Adult Child's College Tuition Through Your Business
If you're a business owner helping an adult child pay for college, you may be wondering whether there is a tax-efficient way to provide that support.
While many families focus on education savings accounts, scholarships, and student loans, there is another option that is often overlooked: a Section 127 Educational Assistance Plan.
When properly structured, a Section 127 Educational Assistance Plan may allow a business to provide up to $5,250 per year in tax-free educational assistance to eligible employees. For some business owners, that employee may include an adult child who works in the family business.
Here's what you need to know.
WHAT IS A SECTION 127 EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANCE PLAN?
Section 127 of the Internal Revenue Code allows employers to establish educational assistance programs for employees.
Under current federal law, employers may provide up to $5,250 per employee, per year in qualified educational assistance that is generally excluded from the employee's taxable income while remaining deductible to the business as an ordinary business expense.
Before You Load the Car: What Your Business Needs Before You Leave for Summer Vacation
The cooler is packed. The kids are arguing over the back seat. Your partner has already asked twice whether you remembered the sunscreen. You toss all the bags in the trunk, do one last check of the locks, and climb in.Somewhere between the driveway and the highway, it hits you.
What would happen to my business if I couldn't come back?
Not "what happens if I'm offline for a week," because you have an out-of-office for that. But what if something actually happened? A car accident on a mountain road. A medical emergency. Something that kept you genuinely, unexpectedly unavailable: not for a few days, but for weeks. Months. Longer.
Most business owners push that thought away and turn up the music. But if you are reading this, you might be ready to actually answer it.
BEING OFFLINE AND BEING UNAVAILABLE ARE NOT THE SAME THING
An out-of-office message is a plan for inconvenience. It says: I am temporarily unreachable. Here is who to contact. I will be back on Monday.
A business continuity plan is a plan for a real emergency. It says: if something happens to me, here is who has legal authority to act on behalf of this business, here is how they access the accounts, here is what decisions need to be made, and by whom.
The Document That Fails When You Need It Most
This happens far more than it should.You signed a Power of Attorney (POA), named someone you trust, and filed it away with your important documents. You felt the quiet relief of having that handled. But here's what most families don't discover until they're already in a crisis: a perfectly valid POA can be rejected by your bank, and there may be very little your family can do about it in the moment.
What that means is that they would have to go to court to get access to your financial accounts, be able to pay your bills, and make financial decisions when you can’t.
We've seen this happen far too often. We've gotten calls from clients' adult children who are standing at a bank counter, valid POA in hand, being told the document is "too old" or that the bank has its own form. By the time anyone calls me, they're in crisis mode, and the options are much more limited than they would have been six months earlier.
Our job is to make sure that never happens to your family.
WHAT WE SEE WHEN THE PLAN ISN'T COMPLETE
Here's the scenario we hear most often. A parent has a stroke. The adult child, named as an agent on a durable POA for years, goes to the bank to pay bills, cover care expenses, and keep the household running.
Your Mid-Year Business Check-In: 5 Things to Review Before Summer (and One Deadline You Cannot Miss)
There is a particular kind of business owner who discovers a problem in October.They missed an estimated tax payment in June. They hired a contractor in July who is actually functioning like an employee. They brought on a new partner in May without updating the operating agreement. By fall, what started as an oversight has become a liability.
Mid-May is a natural pause point. Q2 is not over yet. Summer has not fully taken hold. You still have time to catch and fix the things that are easier to address now than in December.
Here are five things worth reviewing before summer arrives.
1. YOUR ESTIMATED TAX PAYMENT: THE JUNE 15 DEADLINE MOST OWNERS MISS
If you are self-employed, an S-Corp owner, or running a partnership, you may be responsible for paying estimated taxes on a quarterly basis. The Q2 payment covers income earned April 1 through May 31, and it is due June 15, 2026.
Many business owners underpay, or miss it entirely, and discover the consequences when they file in April. Choosing not to pay quarterlies may be a wise cash flow management strategy, but it’s one you should choose with your eyes wide open, not because you didn’t think about it or overlooked making the payment.
In all events, this is the moment to review your Q2 earnings, compare against what you paid in Q1, and confirm you are on track to hit your financial goals. If the numbers have shifted, talk to your accountant now, and bring your legal advisor in if they point to the need for a structural change.
He Sold His Company for $1.2 Billion. He Died Without an Estate Plan
If something happened to you tomorrow, would the people you love know what to do? Would they have the legal authority to do it?Most people think they have a plan, or at least that they will.
What they rarely picture is what happens in the days and weeks before anyone can act: while the courts sort it out, while the family waits, while everything that was carefully built sits in limbo.
Tony Hsieh spent his career building things that worked. He turned a struggling online shoe company into a billion-dollar brand and wrote a bestselling book about it: Delivering Happiness. He spent his career publicly, vocally devoted to the idea that joy was something you could design, build, and give to people. And then he left the people he loved with one of the most painful, chaotic estate situations in recent memory.
He never built a plan for what would happen when he was gone.
When Tony died on November 27, 2020, at 46, in a house fire in New London, Connecticut, he left behind an estate estimated in the hundreds of millions. He also left behind no will, no trust, and no instructions for the people who loved him.
What his family inherited instead was a legal crisis that would play out in courtrooms and headlines for years. And the hardest part? None of it had to happen. Not a single day of it.