Sea asked:


We have our elderly mother moving in with us and we are considering putting a shower only in instead of the tub/shower combo. However, we will be selling the home in 3-5yrs. Would it make more sense to leave the combo and have our mother use the separate shower stall in the master bathroom? Any and all input would be appreciated.
There is a separate shower and garden tub in the master bathroom

Reprinted from the HireTrade Blog.

As Kevin O’Keefe reports in his blog, one of the granddaddies of the attorney ratings business has started to charge for the publication of its ratings.

As background information on the ratings, Martindale-Hubbell states on its website:

“A cooperative effort with the legal profession

Peer Review Ratings are established by lawyers. The legal community respects the accuracy of Ratings because it knows that its own members — the people best suited to assess their peers — are directly involved in the process.”

We at HireTrade do not agree that peers are really the people best suited to assess a lawyer’s work. Lawyers work for and are paid by clients, not their peers. Clients are the only ones with access to the lawyer’s finished work product and peer ratings are based on a competitor’s perception of the lawyer and not from first-hand knowledge of the lawyer’s work (or at least not the work for which the lawyer earns a living).

Furthermore, only a small percentage of attorneys really have much peer interaction outside of their own law firms. While peer review has some value when considered along with other information, for the most part it is another archaic relic of an age when client opinions could not effectively be collected and aggregated and the legal business was filled with small-town lawyers where peers knew one another. Back then, peer review was as good as it got although it was a very imprecise method of providing information about the level of service that clients could expect.

Hard to believe that Martindale now wants to use its market position in order to force attorneys to pay for such ratings. This reminds me of when AOL decided to increase its fees for its dial-up service…

Abhishek Agarwal asked:


Amendments in proceedings of adoption have been requested by the Guatemalan courts, and this resulted in problems. Despite the disadvantages, this has managed to attract adoptive families from America. Children of very young ages are seen at Guatemalan. In 2005, approximately 3,783 children were adopted from this place. No travel is involved in his adoption. Moreover, single parents are also accepted. But, before proceeding further, a test of DNA is done for the United States. The test is to establish the mother-child relationship. Also, after the adoption process, 6 months of surveillance is also done.

Latino (including Mayan Indian, Hispanic) and Mayan Indians form most of the population in Guatemalan. They began their international adoption process during the end of the 6 year old Civil War that came to an end in 1996.DNA testing of the birth mother and her child was asked to be done by the US as there were stories of stolen babies or of selling or giving them for adoption.

In the whole of Central America, Guatemala has the largest population with approximately 14,655,189 people. Sugar, banana and coffee are the main yield of this place. Three-fourth of the people in this place lies below poverty line. Guatemala is located in between El Salvador and Mexico and the North Pacific Ocean is bordered by this place.

The process of adoption involves the following steps-completion of application, compiling the dossier and home study-and once this is completed and been approved of, a formal referral will be sent from the agency. After choosing the referral, the agency will intimate Guatemala about the chosen child. Then documents like birth certificate, consent forms and medical records will be collected by a Guatemalan attorney. This is followed by conducting a DNA test. The adoption process is completed when all these formalities are done and the attorney goes to the court for hearings. A passport for the child is then made by the attorney. Once all the court hearings and other formalities are completed, adoptive parents have a choice to either choose a child from Guatemala or to have the child chosen by them and brought to you.

These adoptions allow both married or single women and men to adopt children. But, these adoptive parents should be of age below 50 years. After 3 to 6 months after receiving the paperwork, referrals are started. It takes around 6-8 months to finalize an adoption, once a referral is accepted.

Law makers endorsed a protocol which was international, as the United States started prohibiting the adoption of Guatemalan children by American parents. Provisions of secret systems are requested to be made by Guatemala. This is because the adoption cost is high and transactions take place through young girls and women who place their children for adoption. But this is still popular as it does not restrict single parents from adopting. This can also prove to be a good choice for people who look for domestic adoption as it involves a lawyer who deals with most of the formalities.