Below is a review of the posts on Facebook and LinkedIn from the past week. You can check out the full posts by clicking on the links.
NOTE: remember that we post every other day.
The posts on Sunday 6/14/2026, here and here, told us synagogue, HOA reach near $1M settlement in lawsuit correcting antisemitic actions. Don’t put your condominium or homeowners’ association in this situation!
The Chabad Israel Center reached a settlement with the Loggers’ Run Homeowners’ Association and its management company in Florida on the Chabad’s claims for illegal, discriminatory, and antisemitic actions against the Chabad and its founders, Rabbi Naftaly Hertzel and his wife Henya. The settlement requires the HOA to remove anti-religious language from its governing documents, permit the Hertzels to use the community newsletter to advertise events at their synagogue, and pay $850,000 to the Hertzels. That is not a typo!
Quotes from counsel for Chabad and Rabbi Hertzel are in the post.
The claims in the case alleged that since 2015 the Hertzels and the Chabad community, who reside in the HOA area, have been denied the same rights as all other residents and groups within the community and have been the victims of discrimination and harassment. It was specifically alleged that the HOA repeatedly singled out the Hertzels for selective rule enforcement while ignoring violations by other residents. The Hertzels alleged that they were told on one occasion that the homeowners “didn’t want Jews” in Loggers’ Run; further, what a representative of the HOA allegedly told them is in the post (and should make your heart and mind cry). Vandals knocked down religious symbols, spray-painted buildings, and took other actions noted in the post outside their worship space while meetings were being conducted.
TAKEAWAY: Community (condominium, cooperative, homeowners) associations are not immune from prohibitions against harassment, including in the FHA; just don’t do it. It is wrong and can be very expensive.
The posts on Tuesday 6/16/2026, here and here, asked: Is a Living Trust right for you (and your estate or business succession planning needs)? Trusts can provide potential benefits such as control, incapacity protection, potential probate avoidance and tax planning opportunities. A trust can be a useful tool to incorporate in your estate strategy, including business succession. Let’s take a closer look.
There are many types of trusts and reasons why each type could make sense for you, depending on your financial and personal situation.
First, what is a living trust?The most common type of trust is called a revocable living trust. Some of the key characteristics are that it:
- May allow you to retain control of your assets if the type of living trust you establish is revocable and/or amendable;
- Does not allow you to retain control of your assets if the type of living trust you establish is irrevocable and not amendable;
- And more as noted in the post.
So why should you set up a trust?It could be a good financial decision if you want to protect assets while creating a legal framework to manage and distribute those assets. With a trust, a trustee (an individual or designated third party) acts as a custodian for the assets held within a trust. What the trustee does is described in the post.
The potential benefits of a trust include:
- Allowing for someone to continue to manage your assets (such as property and investments) if you become incapacitated;
- Stating how your assets are distributed upon your death;
- And more as noted in the post, including the relation to probate.
What are some considerations when setting up a trust? First, assets normally must be titled in the name of the trust to be considered part of it. But there is also an alternative way of setting it up as detailed in the post.
Next, creating a trust involves upfront costs (attorney fees, etc.), but it can help avoid (bigger) expenses and hassles later. One example that might hit home is noted in the post.
There are 4 common steps to set up a trust:
- Designate a trustee. The trustee you choose will manage your trust in the event of your incapacitation or death. Some examples of people or entities who can serve as trustee are in the post.
- Designate your beneficiaries. Beneficiaries are individuals or a group of individuals for whom a trust is created. How many beneficiaries you can have and more details about beneficiaries are in the post.
- Draft trust documents. Work with an attorney to create trust documents to ensure your legacy and financial goals are legally handles.
- Fund your trust. Once your trust is set up, the final step is to fund it. What this involves, and some examples, is all in the post.
TAKEAWAY: An estate and succession planning attorney can help you determine whether the benefits of a trust for outweigh the costs and if the strategy makes sense for your situation.
The posts on Thursday 6/18/2026, here and here, explained that property owners’ association pays up after grandmother killed by ‘massive’ alligator while walking dog. Condominium and homeowners’ associations (HOA) should not over-promise when it comes to security.
A South Carolina grandmother was killed and eaten by a 10-foot alligator after her private community promised to protect residents from attacks but made “no effort” to actually do so, her family said in a lawsuit. The community where 69-year-old Holly Jenkins lived, Spanish Wells on Hilton Head Island, reportedly recently agreed to settle the lawsuit in which it was accused of failing to keep her safe following public promises to mitigate “risks” that they were “aware of and responsible for.”
Court records show that a settlement for a confidential sum was approved on May 5. The language of the order approving the wrongful death settlement is in the post.
According to the Jenkins family, the Spanish Wells Club and its property owners association, as well as the management company, were aware that alligator attacks in Hilton Head were “on the rise” before Jenkins was killed while walking her dog on July 4, 2023. The suit alleged that residential neighborhoods and their authorized representatives were “aware of and responsible for mitigating the risks associated with these large and frequently dangerous animals,” but that Spanish Wells failed to do so after vowing to provide “on-site alligator risk management services” for the community.
The complaint said Jenkins’ husband and her adult son were at her residence and saw their family dog in the backyard wearing its leash, but Jenkins was nowhere to be found after she said she was going to walk the dog. They began searching the neighborhood and her son heard splashing in a pond near the family home. What happened next is recounted in the post. The post also mentions what was in the alligator’s stomach after a necropsy was performed.
Jenkins’ family blamed her death on her community’s “failures to provide reasonably safe premises.” More details from the complaint (what the association did not do but could or should have done) are in the post.
TAKEAWAY: When it comes to security, community associations must be careful not to overpromise as that might make them liable for injury or damage to persons or property. Discuss this with a community association lawyer (and the insurance broker)
The posts on Saturday 6/20/2026, here and here, told us that the Feds and a PA home care company eye $3M deal to end overtime, misclassification claims. Yep, it’s better to just pay properly the first time around …
The US Dept. of Labor announced that a Pennsylvania home healthcare company has agreed to pay $3 million to resolve claims that it intentionally misclassified employees as independent contractors to avoid paying overtime.
The suit against Amazing Care Home Healthcare Services stemmed from a 2021 DOL investigation (linked in the post) that allegedly found the company did not pay a group of 284 employees an overtime premium for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per workweek. The amount of overtime DOL’s investigator estimated was due is noted in the post (and is not small which you probably knew given the settlement amount). DOL also alleged that the affected employees were improperly classified as independent contractors despite how Amazing Care treated them (which is detailed in the post).
A federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania had allowed the case to proceed to a jury trial in February.
Per the terms of the settlement agreement, Amazing Care would be enjoined from violating the relevant portions of the Fair Labor Standards Act or failing to follow the statutory record keeping requirements. The court must approve the settlement. Amazing Care confirmed the details but didn’t respond to a request for further comment by the post’s press time.
The timing of the settlement is perhaps telling: DOL formally rescinded the prior administration’s overtime rule just days prior to issuing a release about this proposed settlement. And DOL’s independent contractor rules (the other issue in this case) have also just been overhauled.
TAKEAWAY: Employers must know how to properly classify and