Love, Law, and Legacy: Navigating Prenuptial Agreements and Business Protections with Viviana Orpeza

Prepare to be intrigued by the fusion of romance and finance, as corporate lawyer Viviana Orpeza joins us for a heartfelt yet practical conversation on prenuptial agreements. Imagine a world where love and entrepreneurship coalesce, safeguarding not just your heart but your fiscal achievements as well. In this episode, we navigate the often misunderstood realm of prenups and trusts with Viviana, whose own journey as a married entrepreneur brings a rich, personal dimension to the discourse. We debunk myths and illuminate how these legal instruments can fortify both personal and professional relationships, ensuring that your business dealings and romantic life can flourish side by side.

Then, we transition into a crucial dialogue on protecting your business legacy. With the Attorney and Heels Network as a backdrop, we discuss how unexpected life events shouldn't spell disaster for your company. Learn why legal frameworks, like partnership and buy-sell agreements backed by life insurance, aren't just paperwork; they're lifelines for your life's work. And as we wrap up, we explore the collective intelligence within professional networks and the indispensable role of legal savvy in business success. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or at the cusp of starting your venture, this episode promises valuable insights into the intersection of legal preparation and entrepreneurial ambition.

TalkStory Promo Intro

Chapters

• 0:03 Protecting Assets and Business With Prenups
• 14:01 Protecting Business Assets and Partnerships
• 24:15 Entrepreneurship

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Trends, current affairs and pathways to success. On Talk Story Business Edition podcast. On this podcast, austin Biak, an award-winning mortgage real estate guru, and William P2, a modern-day urban Robinhood, share and simplify the latest research and best practices from award-winning business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals to educate and empower you on how to make money, save money and compound the interest of earned revenue to thrive, happier, healthier and improve your business practices for greater, efficient impact. The end result is that you understand alternative pathways to roads less traveled to success that the daring duo share on the show. Together with Ignite San Diego, sparked by the BBB, we resolve the challenges and obstacles of growing a successful business to be victorious in a new era of innovation. This production is supported by the Better Business Bureau National Referral Network, countywide Mortgage Lending, business Group Resources and Kaizen Group International.

William Peetoom: 1:16

Welcome to Talk Story Media Business Edition. I'm William P2, with my co-host, austin Biak. Today we have an amazing show. We have Ms Viviana Orpeza, a corporate lawyer, a great friend, a leader in our community. She's on the board for several community organizations that advocate for small business owners. She is a pillar of our community. So, without further ado, viviana, welcome to the show.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 1:46

Thank you for having me and so excited to be here.

William Peetoom: 1:49

We're excited to have you and so we don't like to fumble your profile, your accolades, oh, okay. So if you would grace us with your 30-second elevator pitch, 30-second elevator pitch.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 2:03

Wow, that's not enough time. I'm just kidding. No well, I am the owner and founder of AtturningHealscom, which is a corporate and estate law firm that I started as soon as I passed the bar Yay, and I've been doing that for the last five years, working with female entrepreneurs. I do have some male clients, but I also work with estate planning clients doing wealth protection and business protection. I'm all about protecting assets and businesses and just keeping everybody well protected.

William Peetoom: 2:40

Yes, protect your assets and your business Well first I just have to say congratulations on your recent marriage. Thanks. I don't know which button it is, so just had to, and I was there. It was just charming, enchanting, amazing, so awesome to see two people so in love tie the knot. But which leads me to our discussion.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 3:13

Right.

William Peetoom: 3:14

So, when tying the knot, let's talk about what are those vehicles that you can use to not necessarily throw in your partner's face, but you want to be able to protect your hard work, your assets and your business.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 3:32

Right, yeah. So when we decided to get married, I immediately told him about a prenup and he's like, yeah, sure, whatever, I don't care. It's great because a lot of people think of prenups and they think of it as being romance killer, and it really isn't. It really just enhances what would be a good partnership, because it's like a business transaction and we do have to address it that way. So we did a prenup and I actually posted on my social media when we signed our prenup. I put love hard but get a prenup, which is super important. Like, yeah, yolo, but plan.

William Peetoom: 4:14

When do you initiate that conversation? What's the best way? Is there I mean a prenup reveal party? You know what?

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 4:23

I considered having a prenup signing party and inviting everybody to bring awareness to, like it's okay for us to have a prenup, guys, like, talk to your lawyer. But our conversation was very organic. I guess it just depends on, like, the relationship you have with the person. We were always very open to communicate with each other, not only about, of course, like merging our blended families, but also like what that means financially for both of us. And we're both entrepreneurs, we both have kids and if you look at it from a protecting your family stance, like, it's an easier conversation to have. It's like how do we protect our families moving forward? And that includes protecting yourself, right, because when you have a blended family, or even if you don't like, you have to be able to protect what would be a not so ideal outcome.

Austin Behic: 5:17

Well, and I've been on the other side of it. I've divorced, I have been and I've gone through all of it and this is one of the things that honestly has saved that relationship. I'm still very, very close with my ex-husband and, you know, because we were having those conversations, whether they were uncomfortable or not, it's because you love them, because you know. You know worst case scenarios. You guys don't work out that everything's already in line and it just makes that hard process that there's already so much to do and so much emotion and everything it's already drawn out because you guys were both level-headed and clear-mind when you guys were talking through these things in a, you know, loving time of your relationship.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 6:06

Yeah, and I think it really is a loving process. Yeah, planning is, you know, a prenup depending on how it's drafted will only mean something if you decide not to stay together. There are some things that obviously are well. If you have certain clauses will be triggered during the marriage. But, you know, if you approach it from a stance of you know, just a very like general prenup, you can start the conversation by like this is not to kill our romance. This will only mean something if we decide not to stay together. And if you look at it that way, then it doesn't really tap into what your current relationship is now. It would only protect you in case something goes wrong.

Austin Behic: 6:50

So I guess, like, what's the difference Do you do with living, trust and love?

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 6:55

Yeah.

Austin Behic: 6:55

So what's the difference between living trust? I know there's revocable and irrevocable, you know with a trust, but I guess those versus a prenup.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 7:07

Yeah. So what a prenupcial agreement does is it severs the person's assets. It keeps separate what would be the assets of one person and another, and it won't trigger the state law here in California, which is community property, which is like that anything you build together is community property and therefore the community is entitled to it. Each person gets half. So when it comes to estate planning, you have to know how you're going to plan that. The first thing is the prenup. The prenup will tell you whether there's community property or whether there's separate property, and if it's separate property, then you're drafting separate property trust for each of the individuals. But if it's community property, then you're drafting a community property trust. And there's instances, too, where you can actually have both a community property trust and a separate property trust.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 7:57

I went into my marriage with a prenup that severs all our assets separately. So anything that we have going into the marriage and anything that we build during the marriage stay separate. However, if we want to build something together, it will be very deliberate. I have a clause in there that says that if we want to have something that is community property, it will be titled as such and there would be the corresponding transmutation agreement, which is the agreement that states this initiative started as separate property but now we have very intentionally decided to make it community property. So it doesn't mean that you go in and immediately nothing belongs to your spouse. It just says that what you want to be community property is very intentional and you do it together.

Austin Behic: 8:42

Right, so it's not set in stone. As you grow in the relationship you guys can come back together and kind of amend it, do I understand correctly?

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 8:50

We're not necessarily amending it. We're just saying, like, everything we go in with is separate, but if, at some point, he and I build something together for example, if we start a company together and we decide that this is going to be a community asset, then we make an agreement that this is a community asset and we both own it and these are the terms of this asset and this is how it's going to be managed. So, whereas without a prenup, you go in and it's automatically assumed that you're sharing everything, when you have a prenup it becomes a very deliberate process. You have the conversation about whether or not you want to own something together, versus the legal assumption that everything is just owned together.

Austin Behic: 9:28

And I think that's huge because it's you know, when people think it's like at least when I talk to people they're thinking like it's real estate, it's all these big ticket items. But if you have a company that you started during COVID and you are now getting married, even though it might be something that you're building now, it could be much bigger in the future, and even though you're going to be buying real estate together like you might still want to look into a prenup or some kind of legal. You know, talk to you whether it's a trust or something right.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 10:01

Yeah. So the way it works is that if you own something prior to marriage, going into the marriage, the legal assumption is that it's separate property. It's not until you go into the marriage. If you acquire the asset after you get married, then it becomes community property. So the where things get fuzzy is you know you own an asset before the marriage and then you go into the marriage, right, and then all of a sudden your spouse is contributing to this asset that used to be your separate property because you owned it before you got married but now you're married. So you know they're either investing their time you know whether it's sweat equity, or they're investing money in it, or you know they're building on it with you.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 10:40

So then when you hit a divorce and there's no prenup, then it's you end up in court trying to determine like, okay, what portion of the business is actually community property, because I put this much time and this much sweat equity and even though you owned it prior to the marriage, it only blew up and grew after you and I worked on it together. So then it becomes this like very mixture of like what portion is separate, what portion is community, whereas if you do a prenup and then you later on decide you're gonna grow something together. You have a very clear agreement as to who owns what portion and who you know like. How much of this company do you own now that we started it?

William Peetoom: 11:19

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William Peetoom: 11:51

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William Peetoom: 13:08

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William Peetoom: 14:25

Right what vehicles can a business owner put in place to protect the company from, you know, possibly failed leadership?

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 14:35

Right, yeah, and I talked to clients about this too. It's a when you enter into a partnership agreement, are you entering to a business with another person is essentially a marriage. It's a business marriage, right, so there has to be an agreement. I mean, usually entrepreneurs were like we have this fire in us, we want to like launch and we want to do it fast and we're so excited about the venture that sometimes we overlook, like the you know, very important fundamentals like putting the right agreements in place, having the right protections legally. So sometimes, yeah, like if, for example, you have a partnership of two people that are creating this widget, talking like a lawyer, we always call something like okay, we're both creating this widget, right, we go into this company together, we're both, you know, equal partners in it and you know they're married, and then one of them dies. Well, if that partner didn't have a very clear agreement with his other partner as to what happens to that part of the ownership, now, all of a sudden, through California law, like Like the half of the his half of the company now belongs to the spouse, right, and the spouse is not an engineer in this widget, doesn't know anything about the business, and all of a sudden they co own it. They come in like, acting like they're all. I own this company now, like let's keep going, and the other partner starts to like basically lose his mind, right, because you now have a person running the company with you. It doesn't know anything about the company itself. So what I tell them is like, always have a buy-sell in place. Um, because things happen just like with a state planning. Not only do we talk about like how is it going to affect the family and the kids when you die, like, if you're a business owner, how's it going to affect your business? How is it going to affect your business partner, which you should also be concerned about in addition to your family.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 16:22

So what a buy-sell does? As if one of the partners dies, it triggers a clause where, um, it gives the the first uh right of refusal to the remaining living partner or partners if there's more than um two still living, and it allows them to buy that portion away from the spouse. So usually the way we do that is we fund it through life insurance, right, um, you, the company buys, um, you know, company owned and paid for life insurance on each of the partners, and then if one dies, then the um, the life insurance pays out the spouse, the spouse gets the life insurance and then the partners keep the whole of the company so that they keep the spouse completely out of their business. So there's, and that's just one way. There's different ways to fund a buy-sell.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 17:10

Life insurance is one of my favorites because it's a little, you know, it's cheaper to maintain and it's also um, very um. It's it's just quicker way to pay off the spouse versus, like, setting a little bit of money aside here to pay off the spouse or tapping into your current like capital. Like it's just better to have the life insurance If something happens. Life insurance pays off the spouse. She goes away, happy with her money of what you know would be the value of the company, and then that too, like your buy-sell will also determine, like what the value of the company would be. You could have a predetermined value, like if we were to die, we're going to assume that the company's worth this much and then this is what would pay out the spouse.

William Peetoom: 17:53

So good.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 17:54

Yeah, and it's great. And you, you know, you can also state, like, if, if it's unknown what the value of the company is at the time when you enter into the buy-sell, you can put terms of how the value of the company will be determined. What would the accounting method be? You know, um, just what would be the person that's going to be hired to do the valuation? Um, is it like? Um, is it going to be a person that's going to be mutually agreed upon? Um, just, there's so many things that can go into a buy-sell, but having those things set ahead of time will definitely avoid the headache of having to fight with a spouse who is doesn't know anything about your company. Now, they own half of it.

Austin Behic: 18:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

William Peetoom: 18:40

So good. So that leads me to your. Your tagline is the attorney and heels. So is this what the attorney and heels, uh, educates and empowers our community on finding you know ways to protect assets and business, or if you could share you know what is it that you do for our shared community? Because you're out there, you're, you're in the trenches, you've been at this for quite a while Now. You're, you've joined forces with nonprofit organizations and you're contributing. So tell us about attorney and heels network.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 19:13

So our attorney see attorney and heels network. Okay, so, attorney and heelscom is my firm itself, but the attorney and heels network I did it as a way to support other attorneys that are doing what I'm doing. So, um, I launched straight out of law school like in the trenches with everyone else. I'm an entrepreneur, like all of my business owners, so I understand you know the roller coasters they go through, um, so what I wanted to do is build a network of other attorneys that are entrepreneur entrepreneurs like me we have. We started our small law firms, but I want to be able to help us, help each other.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 19:50

So I, um, since I do corporate law and estates, like I figured, if I can tap into other small firm owners that have that cover different areas of law that I don't cover, then we can all help each other out and build like a mutual referral network. Call it a be a nai-ish type of thing, right? So I tapped into a personal injury attorney, an employment law attorney, an immigration law attorney, a even, um, a special needs attorney for kids that are in school. Um, and then I also have, um, my divorce attorney, my criminal law attorney and my bankruptcy attorney.

Austin Behic: 20:28

Wow.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 20:29

So yeah, so we're, and we're, and we are all this. We all have small like either one or two attorney law firms and we refer business to each other.

William Peetoom: 20:41

So if, if, I don't think I'd have any more room on my speed buttons for, and it makes sense.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 20:49

It totally makes sense because if because people just know you as a lawyer, they don't often pay. Most people don't know what the hell we do, they just know your lawyer if legal problem.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 20:59

You know everything, you know everything and you know what there's. I, when I went to the bar, like I had a learned 17 areas of law to pass that bar. So you know it was like. But when you come out, like your brain only has Certain room for certain parts of the lock, so you need different lawyers for different things, and I just I have a lawyer for everything. So if somebody comes to me they're like, oh, I really need a divorce lawyer. I'm like I got Dan for you. She's amazing. Let me send you to her if I need.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 21:28

If they need a criminal law attorney Like I have one in North County, I want in South County like yeah, yeah and, and I just like I think it, it's almost it's walking what you talk, right, like, yes, like I want to help entrepreneurs, but I also want to help Entrepreneurs that also do what I do you know, sure?

William Peetoom: 21:46

so, and and for those Entrepreneurs that are doing what you're doing and want to reach you, how can they find you?

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 21:53

Yeah, yeah, so I am on Attorney and heels. Calm you, there's a button on there that you could get on my calendar and talk to me, and or you can call my office and I they'll get you on my calendar. I will also be able to put you in touch with the various attorneys if even if they are in different areas of law, and I'm here to help.

Austin Behic: 22:18

Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm putting your phone number in my phone and if there's any legal problems I'm just gonna call you, and I know that you have someone that can set me up.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 22:26

Yeah yeah, I'd be glad to help. I have an amazing team of attorneys, you know, right now they're all female Because, you know, I try to, like you know, lift the people that I know we need and and most of them are latinas because, you know, like less than 2% of all attorneys are Latina. Hey, I'm like, I'm like we need more representation and we need more, you know calling all women attorneys Contact Viana.

Austin Behic: 23:00

Yeah.

William Peetoom: 23:02

Well, that's been awesome. Thank you for being on the show. Do you have any up-and-coming events or Last words of wisdom that you'd like to share with our audience?

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 23:13

I, every year I do what's called my 25 legal tips of Christmas. I know it sounds insane. One day I was in my shower and I was like Hearing in the background the TV where it's like the 25 movies of ABC on Christmas, and I was like I'm doing the 25 legal tips of Christmas. Yeah, so every year on during Christmas time I'll go on my social media and I'll blast to all of my different media methods a Quick legal tip for every day of you know Christmas, from December 1st to the 25th.

Austin Behic: 23:46

That's awesome. What's your Instagram?

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 23:52

All of my social media is attorney and heels. Okay, so I'm at attorney and heels on Instagram. I'm a turning heels on tiktok, as well as you know in the branding Love it yeah.

Austin Behic: 24:02

Very cool and she is in heels, just so. Yeah, I know you guys can't see her, but yeah, I stayed true to that.

William Peetoom: 24:09

She literally walks her talk. That's right.

Austin Behic: 24:12

Yeah Well, viviana, thank you very much for coming on. Your A wealth of knowledge and I have a half page of notes just sitting here listening to you, so I really appreciate it. No, will does as well.

William Peetoom: 24:24

We'd love to have you back on, because there's always some type of legal issue out there that we could Lean on a good lawyer for, and you know what are best practices, what's trending and how do we overcome these Obstacles of the journey in entrepreneurship.

Viviana Oropeza, Esq.: 24:41

Yeah, and then with January rolling around, there's always like new laws that go into effects.

William Peetoom: 24:45

So then I have to make sure that I have an invitation to come back in January and talk about all these new laws that we're gonna get affected by. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Austin Behic: 24:55

Yeah, and if you want to bring one of your friends from your, your mastermind group or your.

William Peetoom: 25:02

Yeah yeah, all the attorneys in heels network are all wearing heels. Yeah okay wonderful. All right, viviana, thank you so much. Have a good day. Thank you. This is a talk story media production. Talk story business edition is hosted by Austin B Hick and William P Tune, supported by the Better Business Bureau, national Referral Network, countywide mortgage lending Business group resources and Kaizen group international.