Tips to Avoid Holiday Scams

Tips to Avoid Holiday Scams
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Online Purchase Scams Most Reported Con During Holiday Season. Avoid Being Victimized with These Tips from the Better Business Bureau

holiday scams holiday seasonHolidays are a time for shopping and gift giving. With all the shopping online and with social media, holiday scams are at an all-time high. Don’t be a victim of scams this holiday season. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has just released their top 12 holiday scams to look out for. A great list! Here they are:

  1. Misleading Social Media Ads
     

    As you scroll through your social media feed, you often see items for sale from a small business. Sometimes the business even claims to support a charity to try to get you to order, or they offer a free trial. BBB Scam Tracker receives reports of people paying for items that they never receive, getting charged monthly for a free trial they never signed up for, or receiving an item that is counterfeit or much different from the one advertised. The 2020 BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report found that online purchase scams were the most common cons reported to Scam Tracker and the category

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Blast From The Past: Holidays: Just Say No & Feel Empowered!

Blast From The Past: Holidays: Just Say No & Feel Empowered!
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Holidays Got Your Down?

PUBLISHERS NOTE: “Congratulations! We all made it through Thanksgiving. So, the mad dash of the holiday season is officially upon us. This sage advice from psychotherapist, Donna F. Ferber, from 2013 warrants another repost. Take a breath. Slow down. And just say “no”.”

A Guide to Happier Holidays: Replace HO–HO-HO with NO-NO-NO!

holidaysWell, the holiday hoopla is ramping up. Displays of sparkly red and green stuff has taken center stage in our stores, catalogues are arriving in droves, internet sites are offering deals, discounts and sales on every imaginable product. Magazines at the grocery checkout display unbelievable glossy covers of gorgeous people, in gorgeous houses, serving gorgeous food. Now with the sudden drop in temperature and the promise of snow this week, the reality that the holidays are descending on us is unavoidable.

It feels impossible to slow this down or simply get a grip. It is like being swept up in some tinselly tidal wave. I don’t want to shop yet; I still am cleaning out the garden! Yet, as the heat clicks on, and my sweaters and even gloves … Read More... “Blast From The Past: Holidays: Just Say No & Feel Empowered!”

The 6 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Healing After A Divorce Or Breakup

The 6 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Healing After A Divorce Or Breakup
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Commit to avoiding the mistakes that only make things worse.

healing after divorce breakupIt sucks. It just does. The hurt, the anger, the loss (of seemingly everything — companionship, security, self-esteem). The process of healing after a divorce or breakup can feel like insult on injury. It’s tough enough trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. But now you have to fight against being your own worst enemy.

The inherent challenge of moving on from a breakup is fighting the urge to connect. You build a relationship by striving in all you do to connect more genuinely, more intimately. To suddenly have that call-to-action ripped out from under you is a real blow. It’s like expecting a moving train to stop on a dime and go back to where it came from.

Healing after a Divorce or Breakup? Read on!

But whether or not it is apparent to you now, this time of healing after a divorce or breakup is a time of great potential. Sure, you didn’t want or plan to be here. But the beauty of life is that it is an equal-opportunity benefactor, and it imbues … Read More... “The 6 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Healing After A Divorce Or Breakup”

What is a Platonic Parenting Arrangement?

What is a Platonic Parenting Arrangement?
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Platonic Parenting More Common Than Ever Before

platonic parenting divorceFor those people who want children, the typical path to follow is to find your soulmate, get married, have children and have a family. However as our society has evolved and changed, so has the definition of family. The relationship status including gender and whether or not two people are married is no longer a defining issue in becoming a parent. Many people are more focused on wanting children rather than in finding that special someone to have a romantic relationship with. Platonic parenting is becoming more and more common.

What is platonic parenting? It is when two, (or even more than two people) decide to commit to raise a child together, yet have no romantic involvement. This trend was initially spearheaded within the LGBTQ community. Until fairly recently same gender folks could not legally marry, and if one of the couple had a child and they were raising him or her together, they did not have the support of the court system to help if they were to split up.

Platonic parenting or co-parenting is now much more … Read More... “What is a Platonic Parenting Arrangement?”

Deepfakes: A Popular Growing Trend with Costly Risks to the Domestic Relations Sphere

Deepfakes: A Popular Growing Trend with Costly Risks to the Domestic Relations Sphere
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The Origin of Deepfakes

deepfakes social mediaThe term “deepfake” was coined in 2017 by a Reddit user who originally used the online platform to share pornographic videos using face-swapping technology. Fast forward to 2021 and deepfakes have long since transcended the pornographic world to now include many other forms of trickery. Generally, deepfakes  are defined as a kind of media manipulation that includes a person’s likeness in a picture or video being swapped with another’s.

Recent examples of popular deepfakes include a Hulu commercial attaching Baker Mayfield’s voice to a look-alike’s body and a highly edited video of Mark Zuckerberg touting how great it is to own people’s data. Of course, neither represent real and honest media depictions of the actors portrayed, but nonetheless each illustrates the positive and negative impacts of deepfake technology.

A link to the Hulu commercial can be found here.

While deepfake creation can be done on a highly technical scale with complex synthetic media tools, not all designs require intense skill or training. On the simplest level, to create deepfakes all one needs is a simple phone application that allows for photo, … Read More... “Deepfakes: A Popular Growing Trend with Costly Risks to the Domestic Relations Sphere”

Why Basic Estate Planning is so Important!

Why Basic Estate Planning is so Important!
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A Reminder to All for National Estate Planning Month…

estate planning guardianshipWith October being national estate planning awareness month, this is as good a time as any to reflect on why estate planning is so important. It is part of being a responsible adult and showing that we care about our family and other loved ones. We do it to make things easier for our loved ones if and when unfortunate events occur. We don’t like to talk about or even think about these issues, but life happens. Let’s take a few minutes to talk about what happens when you don’t have any estate plan in place.

If you become physically or mentally incapacitated to such an extent that you can no longer manage your financial or legal affairs, what do you do? Who can pay your bills? Who can execute legal documents? Without proper estate planning  well in advance, a loved one would have to petition the probate court to be appointed a guardian over you.

Here in Ohio that would involve guardianship training, continuing guardianship education, a background check, acquiring a financial bond from a … Read More... “Why Basic Estate Planning is so Important!”

What is a Cash Medical Support Order in Ohio?

What is a Cash Medical Support Order in Ohio?
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What is Cash Medical Support in the State of Ohio?

cash medical support cseaCash medical support is a payment of $388.70 included in a child support order that is paid by the obligor (usually the nonresidential parent) to be put towards the ordinary medical expenses of the child incurred throughout the calendar year. Every child support order in Ohio established or modified on or after March 28, 2019, includes cash medical support as part of the court’s order. A link to Ohio’s official cash medical support statute  can be found here: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3119.302.

Who Owes Cash Medical Support?

The cash medical payment is received by the child support obligee (usually the residential parent), unless he/she already is a Medicaid participant. If the prior is true and the child is already receiving healthcare benefits under Medicaid, then the cash medical payment is still owed, however it is sent to the State of Ohio in order to defray the costs associated with Medicaid and healthcare expenditures. If the paying party has a gross annual income that is less than 150% of the federal poverty line for an individual ($19,320.00 in 2021), … Read More... “What is a Cash Medical Support Order in Ohio?”

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