Displaying the Ten Commandments, Squatters Rights, and Supreme Court Gun Ban

Welcome in to Judica County Radio. Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, Managing Partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm are your hosts, Cassandra Nicholas joining us on the program today as well. And coming up, we will talk the news items of the week, squatters rights, Louisiana law displaying the Ten Commandments and the Supreme Court. Yeah, they're making the show again. There's a gun ban.

We'll talk about it. It's all next on Judica County Radio. Welcome in to Judica County Radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Managing Partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. They're practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina. Also joining us on the program today, Cassandra Nicholas, an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer. Just a reminder, Whitaker and Hamer, your law firm for life.

They have offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Verina, Gastonia, and in Morehead City. And again, Cassandra joins us from Morehead City. Joe Hamer on assignment this week. Josh, we've got a lot to get into. I love it when we go down the news items.

So what are we hitting first? Well, you know, Morgan, that's what we're going to do today. We're going to do we got some Q&A coming up later in the show, where me and Joe answer some legal questions. And me and Cassandra, we're going to take some some news items out of some legal news items out of the news. Talk about the Supreme Court talk about the Ten Commandments. In the classroom, talk about a bunch of different different news items. But before we before we get to that, I got to tell you, I got to tell you some bad news.

Oh, bad news. So we went to the me and me and my wife, Charlotte. We went to the Outlaw Country Music Festival.

Do you know why we go to that? Do you know why we go to the Outlaw Country Music Festival every year? And you know, the I'm going to guess you're a big fan of country music. I do.

I do like the old school. Country music. But 91 year old Willie Nelson, it's his it's his concert rights.

Wow. And so me and my wife always go watch Willie Nelson anytime he's Charlotte anytime he's close to us, we go we go see him. As I've said before, anytime you see Willie Nelson could be the last time you see Willie Nelson because he is 91 years old. Before before the concert. A couple days before the concert, they announced that he wasn't he's low under the weather wasn't going to make the Raleigh show. So he didn't make the Raleigh show this past weekend. And they offered special guests. We'll have some special guests there.

Sorry, you can't make it whatever. Which is disappointing because I wouldn't have gone right if Willie Nelson is not going to be there that I probably wouldn't have gone right. So so so the bad news is he wasn't able to make it and but there were special guests. They said there was going to be and in the two nights before the Raleigh concert there was we got nothing.

Raleigh got nothing. It was his it was his his kid who's really good. If you ever hear Lucas Nelson, that's Willie's kid and he does very good. But it was just his kid singing his songs, which most of the crowd seemed alright with. And maybe it maybe it was just me. I was not OK with that.

I felt like we really got jipped. And you know, I'm not mad at him. I mean, he's 91.

I'm not mad trying. But I feel like they should have offered us a refund or something like, hey, look, you know, he's not going to make it any other show. The main person doesn't make it. I mean, you get money back, don't you?

I mean, normally. And how that works when you're 91, aren't you supposed to be a little careful with using the phrase not going to make it? Just because, Andrew, if you're going to go to a concert, main person wasn't going to make it. Would you accept a substitute or would you expect some sort of I don't want to get all lawyery. Right.

But would you expect some sort of monetary compensation, like false advertising? They lure you in Willie's going to be there and then whoops, he's not there. Yeah. So I went to see Lucas Nelson. Willie was not there. I went to see Lucas in Wilmington a couple of years ago and it was raining all day, hailing part of the day.

It was terrible. And they did not cancel the show. And it's an outdoor show, if that's right. Rain or so. Yeah. So they did not cancel the show.

They didn't offer refunds. Nothing. So I stood there with my poncho and watched him.

In the rain. But yeah, I was expecting an offer of money at least in that situation too. Well, you know, I was, Charlotte was real, my wife was real mad at me because I was real grumpy about it. I was like, and she's like, well, I can take someone else. I was like, no, no, no, no, I'm going to go to this concert because we paid good money to go to this concert.

I'm just going to. There's got to be at least some like implied fine print on Willie's concerts these days. That was her, that was her.

She said, you just have to be, this is just something you have to deal with. This is just part of the, part of the deal. And I'm not going to sue my, I'm not going to sue my good friend, Willie Nelson or my not good friend, Lucas Nelson, but I, it just, it just bothered me. If you were coming, oh, that would have been way worse.

I would have been mad if we got, if we got Micah Nelson. But anyway, the, I just had to get that off my chest, Morgan, before I could talk about it. Anything else? Well, I mean, I don't have anything I can't Sue over this, but this is just a pet peeve of mine, uh, went out this past week and wanted to watch game seven of the Stanley cup finals, Florida and Edmonton and made time went to this place. They had it on one of the corner TVs. Um, and again, I get it.

It's technology. Some of the young managers couldn't figure out how to switch TV channels. They couldn't move the game into the dining room. Where all the TVs were. So there was, there was no hockey in the main dining room and I was just like, and the game's getting ready to start. So I'm like, forget this. I just said, Michelle, let's, let's just, let's just go home on the way home.

The first two goals of the game. Uh, you know, we have four Pomeranians. We are insane. We should not have four Pomeranians, but we do. And at a certain time of night, you have to take care of the Pomeranians. And I was by myself watching hockey and I had to take care of the Pomeranians.

And the third final goal, the game winning goal happens when I'm out taking care of the Pomeranians. I just came, I just came in. I'm like, I can't, I can't Sue anybody.

I don't know. You should try. I just yelled at the trees and I was, uh, I felt fortunate that we had enough room where I could yell and not disturb the neighbors, but I was just like, I, you, you set out, you want to watch a hockey game. You want to watch the final game of the season. It's a game seven and I missed every scoring play. You know, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot that game was on last night.

I didn't even, I didn't even, I like flipped through it. Uh, me and the boy, the boys are out for summer break. So we've been playing a lot of Madden.

And, uh, so we were playing a Madden season. Who's the kid here? Who's the kid here? The kids or you?

All right. We're going to talk about the law. That's what we do on the show.

It takes us a while, but we've, we were here. We're going to talk about the law and let me pull up here. The first one I want to talk about Cassandra, cause I thought it was a little, when I saw the news headline, I almost couldn't believe it. And, uh, but down in Louisiana, the state has passed a law that is going to require the 10 commandments to be displayed in every courtroom. Did you see that?

Yeah, I did see that. And this, there have been similar cases run through the court systems in the past. So it's interesting that kind of well established law is coming up in this, um, kind of circumstance again.

Yeah. So, you know, we'll get into the, the nuts and bolts, but this isn't, this isn't me and Cassandra saying whether we personally would like the 10 commandments in every school room, whether we think it's a good idea or, you know, but, but the, the law is quite clear. You know, this all goes back to the, the separation of church and state provision and the, and the constitution. And, and, and this is well settled. This will not stand scrutiny.

I mean, this is kind of a waste. I saw this, even if this is what you want to happen, even if this is your dream come true, that you want the 10 commandments in Louisiana classrooms for as long as you, you can, your elected officials, when they do something like this, they're really just wasting your time and money, because this is not going to survive any kind of, it's already been challenged. There's already a lawsuit challenging it and it'll be struck down. And it's going to be a down in a matter of weeks and whatever money was spent on getting this passed or trying to enforce it.

Like it's not, it's not going to happen. Which is what lawmakers expect when they, um, pass things that are counter to really well-established law, such as, um, you know, public spaces being used to promote one religion over other religions. Um, so it always makes me wonder what that state has going on in their budget that they've got like surplus legal funds that year. As you know, as I, as I get older, uh, I get older every day as I get older, anytime anybody waste public money, like it bothers me more and more and more.

And I'm sure by the time I'm like 88, like I'll just be enraged constantly, but that's what really like, this is just a complete waste. I assume this is like some kind of spitting contest between, uh, people running for office, I guess. Like, I don't know, I don't really know what's behind this, but no, no attorney anywhere would think this has any chance at all of surviving any kind of challenge. And it just, uh, it just makes for headlines, right? It just makes for headlines that, that the national news just kind of jumps on and points, points to, but, um, yeah, it really doesn't matter if you think it's a good idea, you know, a lot of times the 10 commandments are taught in school as part of history, right. Or, you know, history of law for sure. But, uh, yeah. Yeah. In a historic context, they're definitely a precursor to, um, systems of law. So we have our jobs, uh, that rely on the system of law stemming from things like the 10 commandments. But, uh, yeah, this is, this is an example of clearly established law that is not going to be upended.

This will not happen. It's all been just a reason to have a new story. And I've seen like a couple of Louisiana politicians, like really defending this and you just, you can't do it. It's just that, it's just that simple.

So that was, I'll be interested to see where that one goes, but I imagine it gets wrapped up pretty quick. Yeah. I don't know how deep we want to dive now, or if you want to wait until later, but there are circumstances where 10 commandments can be displayed in public places, alongside, um, monuments of other religious and non-religious, um, backgrounds. Like, um, there are monument gardens that are funded by public money that contain 10 commandments alongside other monuments. Um, and then not 10 commandments specifically, but there is a Supreme court case specifically about holiday displays in front of public buildings, like libraries and stuff. They can have like a Santa Claus and Christmas tree.

If there's also generic winter stuff, um, some snowflakes, a snowman, um, then it's okay. So I don't think they were looking for any type of loophole like that in this circumstance. And they're clearly not advocating for classrooms to become a public display of the 10 commandments, plus a bunch of other religious and non-religious, um, displays in every classroom.

So it, it does seem like, I don't think we're missing anything like this, this new law is on its own, it's on its face, like just the 10 commandments, one specific religion, um, being mandated to be put up in public classrooms. So yeah, we'll see Judica County radio, Josh Whitaker and Cassandra Nicholas attorneys, of course, at Whitaker and Hamer law firm offices located, Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and in Morehead city, as we do each and every week, we offer up free consults. There are five of them, Josh, real quickly, uh, why you decided to go with the five consults. Uh, it's, it's working well though. Yeah, we've been doing that.

We've been doing that for a couple of weeks now, a couple of months now, probably. And, uh, it's a good opportunity. We know a lot of people listening out there may not be to the point where they want to hire an attorney. Um, but if you've got something, if you've got a legal situation bothering you, um, you know, our firm set up to help you and I enjoy talking to listeners and some listeners we can help and some listeners we can't help. Uh, but I've enjoyed talking to listeners and, and, and giving them some, uh, some free counsel. And like I said, some folks do retain us to kind of help them follow through. Some clients are not in a position to do that, but either way it's, it's worked out well. I've enjoyed it.

All right. The five consults are available through the course of this show. You can call it anytime 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information and briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will give you a call back and of course set up that consult 800-659-1186. We've got more at Judica County radio when we return. We are back on Judica County radio. Josh Whitaker and Cassandra Nicholas are our hosts this week. Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer are the managing partners of Whitaker and Hamer.

Uh, our normal, uh, two headed monster as far as co-hosting, but Joe is on assignment this week. Again, they're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, managing partners of the firm. And of course, Cassandra Nicholas joins us also an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer.

She is out of the Moorhead city office. Uh, also convenient for you offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia and the aforementioned, uh, Moorhead city. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Uh, we go back and forth on the legal topics each and every week, but we also give you an opportunity for those consults. They're complimentary.

There are five of them while they last. All you've got to do is call 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. So leave your contact information briefly what the call is about. And an attorney will be in touch with you from Whitaker and Hamer, and they'll set up that complimentary consult.

That's 800-659-1186. All right, Josh, what's up next? All right, we're going to keep talking about legal news items, things that we pulled out of the news that we thought an attorney's perspective might, uh, might, might help. And, um, saw a lot of articles this week and over the past couple of weeks on, on squatters rights. And then, uh, so I figured we'd talk about that some landlord tenant law, squatters rights and, and, uh, Cassandra, what, what do people, what are, what are, when people talk about squatters rights, what are they talking about? So this really varies a lot by state, but there are some states that recognize the right of folks to, you know, enter abandoned properties and, um, use them, stay in them, live in them without, um, being easily forced out or evicted or removed by police or sheriffs. Um, but that there are more drawn out legal processes necessary to remove squatters, um, depending on their rights in particular states, uh, in particular Florida and Tennessee have more squatters rights than most states. Yeah, it's a, it's a problem. Like the, you see a lot of articles from like California and New York where someone dies and the family's handling the property, the property hasn't been sold yet, but no one's living there. And, uh, folks manage to, uh, well, I think folks is too nice. I mean, am I, I gotta, I got biased on this issue, but criminals, like a criminal, someone who has no right to be there gets in there and they take advantage of laws that are meant to protect tenants, like true tenants.

Right. So we have all these, a lot of these states have these laws in place where, you know, you can't easily get a tenant out. You need to go through the eviction process. And so you have all these protections that people have passed for tenants. And some, some states are more pro tenant and pro landlord. Um, North Carolina is probably a good in the middle example of a state, but you've got states that favor the tenant. Um, and these people get in there and then they get these tenant protections, um, that maybe aren't necessarily meant for them, but there's kind of a hole in the law. Cause to me, right, someone breaks into your house and is able to get like the power bill turned on or something. They're not really a tenant. They shouldn't have these protections.

And that's the problem. These folks get in the house and they duck service and they do everything else. And they kind of just, it's expensive and you have to get, you have to get them out of there. And some states that's, that's a real big mess of Florida. And like you said, Cassandra, some of these other states they're passing laws to kind of fill this gap, but like, Hey, this is what a tenant is.

Uh, if you're not a tenant, then, then you don't have these, these rights. They're trying to separate that and make that designation. And I think that is important.

Yeah. For the legislature to actually step in and fill in those, um, definitional gaps so that the folks enforcing the law know who is proper to be able to remove and who really who really deserves, um, some protections and some rights. There are other examples where it is blurrier, like hold over tenants. So they had a valid lease, the lease ended and they won't leave. So they were a tenant, but are no longer like properly paying.

I think that gets a little grayer depending on, you know, reasons like valid reasons for withholding rent, stuff like that. Um, I handle a lot of the estate administration at Whitaker and Hamer, and that's one of the first things I tell new clients that have inherited real property is to secure that property, that, you know, whatever you need to do to, um, it, as long as they're the valid rightful heirs, they should, uh, lock the place up, install security, make sure they're going by the house. Um, and unfortunately it has happened that I've, I've seen, um, I haven't had to deal with squatters being removed yet, but property that's inherited being broken into is very common.

We, yeah, and we've seen, I've had, I've had, I've had matters in my practice where we've seen people get into homes through fraud, you know, whether it's a fraudulent deed or a fraudulent lease or whatever, they, they get in and they're able to get utilities set up. And then once the owners of the property figure it out and call law enforcement, you know, law enforcement's kind of in a no-win situation. Cause these people are saying, look, they're telling the law, I'm a tenant. Here's the power bill.

I get mail here. You know, they're just mad cause I'm not paying the rent, you know, whatever they say law enforcement can't do. That's something they're not really equipped to deal with. And so they always say, Hey, it's a civil matter. So then you got to go through the eviction process. And in the meantime, you got people in your house that aren't taking care of it, you know, maybe destroying some property. And, um, but yeah, I think it's really important.

And I think, I think the, I think our government fails us a lot of times by not taking care of like the day to day. We talked about in the last segment, but we, Louisiana passing this law. That's clearly not a useful law. I mean, it's not going to do anything. It's just a complete waste of everybody's time and energy.

And you know, they do that, but they haven't fixed this issue. People are having with squatters. Cause that's what it is. It'd be legislation. Like if this, this, and this happens, then the police can do this and the landlord can do this. But if you're not going to protect people, that's way less exciting to legislators to sit there and decide the definition of a squatter versus a tenant, um, then splashy, uh, legislation like that, that it will, will not even stand.

That'll make national headlines though, during the election season. I don't want to get all libertarian on you, but like we are, we're like, uh, you know, you give the government the right to govern you in exchange for certain things. And some of that certain things is protecting your property rights. And when it refuses to do that, it's not doing you any favors. It's making life complicated. It's making people not want to be landlords.

Right. Um, which is one of the reasons I think after COVID when you could, you know, there was a period during COVID, I know we're all like mentally scarred and we don't really think about COVID very often, but one day I'm going to sit down and like, remember all the weird stuff that happened during COVID. But one of the weird things was if you were a landlord, there was like an eviction moratorium, right?

So there's, yeah. So there's, you could have a tenant not paying, destroying your stuff, stealing your appliances, and you couldn't get them out of your house because there was a moratorium on evictions. And so, you know, the more the government does this to landlords, you lose, you lose the smaller landlords, right? These big folks that come in, the big companies that come in and buy the houses, they don't care as much, but, uh, but you lose the small landlords or the people that are renting the condo they lived in while they were in college or before they got married. And, and those are usually some of your better, your better landlords, but, um, yeah, squatter's rights.

Everybody needs to nip this in the bud. Every state could just do it pretty easily. It's just, they have it for some reason, but some states. So I, my office is out in Morehead city, as you know, um, out on the crystal coast and Salter path is out on the island. It's between Emerald Isle and Atlantic beach. And it's a gorgeous area, but the history of that area is so interesting because it belongs to squatters, um, from 50 plus years ago, they squatted the entire area. There are trailers just up against each other that I don't know how that's it for sure is a fire hazard, but, um, they, they could not get, um, this community of squatters to leave and eventually turned over the ownership of the property to the squatters. Um, so they most, a lot of it's been sold off by the squatters to new buyers at this point, but a lot of it, they, they know they'll never be able to get a deal like that again. So it's been passed down through families since the original squatters.

Yeah, that's crazy. And that kind of, you know, we talk about, sometimes we talk about, I'm gonna show the adverse possession and that's when you're, you're, you're openly using hostile to the owner land, uh, for 20, 20, 21 years or what have you, and you, you can, it's called adversely possess it. And that's in the law because they want to make sure property isn't abandoned and property is always being used. And, you know, people aren't just sitting on land that could be doing something else for the public good. And so that's adverse possession. So that's like a super squatter, I guess. Right. And then a real throwback for Judica County fans, a couple of years ago, we talked about sovereign citizens. We've touched on them a couple of times, but one of the episodes was about sovereign citizens, um, creating fake documents, fake leases, fake deeds, and stuff to say that they owned property under the authority of their sovereign citizenship, essentially.

Um, those I think of as super squatters. Yeah. They're really, they're really good at it, but I know, uh, we're gonna, I think we're up against the break.

We are, and we will take that break. And when we come back, we'll have some question and answer all legal, uh, coming up here on Judica County radio, just a quick reminder, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your hosts, uh, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer. Again, Joe Hamer on assignment this week, Sandra Nicholas joins us from the Moorhead city office. We have five consults.

They are complimentary. Uh, you can call and grab one right now, 800-659-1186. If you've got a situation you're facing, got some questions, uh, you don't know where to go to get answers from a legal standpoint, you can do that right now. 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly, what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer, uh, will be back in touch with you and they'll set up that free consultation.

800-659-1186. Again, Q and a coming up next. Welcome back into Judica County radio, your host, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm offices located conveniently for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead city, Whitaker and Hamer, your law firm for life. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Josh, we are again having some of your all-star attorneys joining us on the program.

Who's up next? Up next, we have attorney Ashley Penner. She is with our firm, has been with our firm for a long time, handles estate planning and trust. Today, our theme has kind of been talking about how you can use your attorney, uh, to kind of do some planning. We've talked about business planning. We've talked about family law planning, uh, with Ashley, we're going to talk about estate planning and, uh, and, and later on in the shows to talk about, well, what happens if you don't do a state planning, what's, what becomes purview of the court, public information, what do you have to deal with, uh, if you, if you don't do your, your planning. And so Ashley, in that vein, I know one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today, one of the things I want to ask you about is this planning process, you know, and, and what you can do to keep your information private, to keep your stuff out of the purview of the court. None of us ever want to have to rely on a clerk's order or a judge's order, or, uh, get our, uh, assets caught up in, in, in, uh, in an estate probate or an estate contest or, or something like that. And people in that vein, you know, we're going to talk about, you know, your estate planning, a will, which I think everybody's pretty familiar with what a will is and what a will can do, that doesn't get you out of probate versus a trust, which a carefully crafted and managed and a monicured trust would, would keep you out of possibly probate. So that's where I'll start it with you, kind of the advantages of, uh, uh, you know, what is a trust and kind of the advantages of the trust? Yeah, the trust is a legal document that of course you would create as a part of the estate planning process. It can hold assets during your lifetime and then speak to, or control what happens to those assets, how they're distributed or how they're held in trust, who they can benefit after your death. Um, and, and it's the ability of the trust to hold those assets while you're still living, that gives you that probate avoidance. They've already been transferred into this, this legal entity, so to speak, that you've created, you've already designated someone who we call the trustee, that's going to be in control of the assets after your death.

And it streamlines that process so that you do avoid the probate process or administration process where a clerk is involved in making sure that what you've said in your will is honored in the, in the administration. So when I was, when I was growing up, I think the first, I was trying to think about earlier today, the first time that I ever heard anybody talk about a trust. And I think the first two times that I can remember hearing anybody talk about a trust was, um, oh man, who was the rich guy on, um, Gilligan's Island? Oh, who was his name? Mr. Howell. Mr. Howell. Mr. and Mrs. Howell, yeah. And, or Beverly Hillbillies.

Beverly Hillbillies a couple of times. But, and maybe that's why I think about trust and I think about they're just for the rich people, you know, they're just for people with like tons of assets and, and, uh, and, and that's really not the case. No.

Yeah. I definitely grew up thinking the same thing. Anytime I heard them, of course, no one, no one in my family ever had a trust nor, nor have I ever been the beneficiary of a trust. So, um, most of my, my actual knowledge of it comes from law school, like, like most of us probably, but, um, it is certainly not reserved for folks, you know, that have massive amounts of wealth. I tell a lot of my clients, you know, if, if the only thing you end up using your, your trust for is to hold your real estate, you have done yourself and your family a significant service.

Um, because again, it's going to really trim up what they have to do and how quickly they can do what they need to do, depending on what that is. So, yeah, I've always heard this rule of thumb of, you know, $5 million, you know, should have roughly $5 million in assets before you should even think about or worry with or bother with a trust and yeah, not the case. It has so much benefit to so many different folks. You know, and, and it's, it's kind of one of your biggest estate planning tools and, you know, a trust is basically, I think of it as, uh, you know, it's kind of like starting a business, right? You start an LLC, you start a corporation, you're starting the, the law sees that as its own, you know, entity, its own, its own thing. And so I'll, I'll talk to people a lot about probate assets and non-probate assets, but the trust is like a magic bucket that you can put things in and it, you know, a trust will not, trust isn't going to die. Uh, it may terminate on its own.

It can only go on for so many years, but in theory, it's going to outlive you. And then that's the convenience of it. It's like a, it's just kind of oversimplifying and maybe kind of dumb, but I like it as a metaphor, but it's like you put stuff in this bucket and this bucket automatically goes to your heirs.

Yeah. No one looks in the bucket. No one's going to ask you questions about the bucket. You've got some basic asset protection. If someone was going to Sue or challenge the way you're distributing your, your things.

So it's like this magic vehicle and there's tax advantages and there's other advantages too, but it's this magic vehicle to get stuff to your heirs easily. And, you know, you think about it. If you, if you've got a house with equity and you've got vehicles and you've got your 401k and you've got your investment accounts, we may not think of ourselves as, as having a lot of assets, the average American who might be looking at this, but you've got a lot of assets to protect. Certainly.

If you, you know, we might have a different stance on that. If you're being sued and you start looking at what could become subject to a judgment in the, you know, in the event that one is in place, yes, then you absolutely have a lot of assets. And then, you know, something you mentioned, I think that is also good to point out with the trust is it has so much flexibility because it is that, you know, that existing entity. It can undergo changes, you know, a little bit more easily than if you're changing how your will distributes your property. There is a lot more rigor involved in the signing of a will than in the signing of a trust. But also the privacy that it brings with it. The fact that, yeah, no one's going to be delving around into that document and no clerk is going to be looking over the shoulder of the trustee to make sure that, you know, they've, they've adhered to, adhered to the rules in the trust.

It has the privacy that a lot of folks want in keeping all of their business out of court filings. I guess there's certain things we're talking about trust and I've talked to them as magical about being magical and things like that. There's things trust don't do that you need your other estate planning documents to do. So one of the things that you've pointed out to me before is, well, you know, if you have a good trust, your will is what we call a pour-over will, right? Where the will is just saying, hey, anything that I haven't managed to get into my trust, please give it to my trust. And so that's a pour-over will, but there's, there's other things that will can do for you. And, and actually you always point out to me, guardian, I always overlook guardianship, you know, and so that's an important one to, Yeah, guardianship for your minor children, right?

Yeah. Making sure that anyone who's under the age of 18 has, that you've been in control of saying who they should be with, who should be caring for them. If you don't have a will, right, you're leaving it up to the courts to determine with whom they should be placed. And also, you know, sometimes, unfortunately, there might be people who you, as much as you want other folks to be the guardian of your children, there are folks you don't want to be guardian of your children. And the will is a place where we can make that known as well. If you don't leave a document behind that addresses that at all, it could be the person that you ultimately did not want to be guardian of your children who goes and applies for that guardianship.

And now they are being raised by someone that, you know, in your mind would have never, your children would never live with. So a trust is certainly a very important estate planning and can be kind of the primary estate planning vehicle, but it can't do everything that we need. So I tell a lot of my clients, you might have a will and not have a trust, but if you have a trust, you should still absolutely have a will because aside from addressing guardianship, let's say you don't have minor children anymore.

You go out and you acquire assets. Let's say you've gotten this trust prepared and you're working on getting everything transferred into it. And then something happens, sudden death, and you don't get a chance to continue in your funding of this trust mission. You've still got a valid will that's going to get everything there.

Yeah. I talked to a lot of clients who definitely think it's an either or situation, like, well, I've already got my trust or I've already got my will, but you really need both of them. And the will handle some things you can't handle with the trust. And there's also kind of a fail safe there.

So that does come up. I know there's other ways, we're talking about the trust being this magic bucket, which can make otherwise a probate asset, an asset that would have to go through probate, non-probate, private. But there's other ways to make probate assets non-probate.

Yeah. So you might have things like bank accounts, life insurance, retirement plans, and on all of these assets, we counsel our clients. You want to make sure you have beneficiaries designated, a primary beneficiary and a contingent. And maybe if you're a married couple with children and you have this trust, you're going to name your spouse as the primary beneficiary, but then you name the trust as the contingent beneficiary. But even on things like bank accounts, you can name a payable on death or transferable on death beneficiary. And these are ways that you can ensure that those assets avoid that probate process.

There's not going to be a significant delay in being able to access those funds. Of course, you'd have to have a death certificate. We don't want people, our designated beneficiaries being able to show up at the bank and say, hey, she died.

Can I have her money? Right. We want them to show that proof through death certificate. But that's going to be a much shorter process than going to the clerk's office and setting up that estate, that probate estate, and then transferring the account into an estate account and then documenting for the clerk what funds were in that account. That's going to hold up things.

And particularly if we have a situation where parents are lost and there are children that will have needs that need to be tended to, it'll allow for much less disruption in the basic maintenance and care for those minor children. Well, actually, I think that's a good discussion today on this, using your attorney to plan things out for you to make your life easier, to keep you out of litigation, to keep you out of the court, keep you out of the clerk's office. So I appreciate that. The first step in estate planning is to give us a call. If you call Whitaker and Hamer, if you call our law firm and you want to talk about estate planning, you're going to end up talking to Ashley.

And that's for good reason. She handles many, many, many of these every month. And she's a good place to start. And we'd be happy to help you with that. But Ashley, I know we'll talk about this again. So we'll see you before too long.

Absolutely. Looking forward to it. That's Ashley Penner again, estate planning with Whitaker and Hamer. We are again visiting with the all-star team of attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer hosted by Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer.

Again, hitting a lot of different questions that the firm gets quite a bit of. And folks, if you've got any situation you're facing and you need answers to those questions, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast info at judicacounty.com. When we return on Judica County Radio, yes, we have another attorney and she's very familiar. Cassandra Nicholas joins us. It's about estate planning. We're looking forward to this discussion.

Again, that's coming up on the other side. Welcome back into Judica County Radio hosted by Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer and the power behind this program where you can find Josh and Joe. They're the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina. They have offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you've got questions, you need some answers, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And as always, you can email your questions to the show info at judicacounty.com. We'll answer them on a future program. So we have another attorney joining us on the program. Josh, who we got?

All right. So if you've been a regular listener of our show, you know and are already familiar with Cassandra Nicholas, but she is our attorney stationed out of the Moorhead City office who deals with a state administration and probate across the state of North Carolina. Well, we bring Cassandra on to talk to us about a lot of different things. Today Cassandra is here to talk about state administration, probate, those words kind of go together, but basically you're dead and someone, hopefully someone you've named and planned is taking care of your affairs, taking care of your estate, taking care of your assets because you're no longer here. And me and Joseph, we spend a lot of time talking about planning ahead of time, using your attorney to plan ahead of time to avoid probate. We're going to try to avoid the whole process to the extent that we can to try to keep your information private, keep your heirs or your fiduciaries from having to go downtown and deal with a clerk, deal with a judge, keep things moving along. And Cassandra, in that vein, I was going to talk to you kind of about what a state administration looks like when you can't avoid it, right? So you're usually only involved if we can't avoid. And we just spent some time talking with Ashley about trust and planning to kind of keep things out of probate. But let's just say you don't do anything. You never plan and you die.

What's that going to look like? So I absolutely want to funnel people to Ashley. If you're not already in a situation where you need a state administration, please do your estate planning. Trusts are an excellent tool to be able to avoid a state administration entirely. If you're not using a trust or not causing assets to be automatically transferred to your intended recipients by some other means, either as naming them as beneficiaries on specific assets, pay on death beneficiaries on bank accounts, putting folks on vehicles with you as joint with right of survivorship so that those automatically transfer just as a function of generally a contract.

If that's not the case, then there are two camps when you get to me for a state administration. There are folks who did estate planning and have a will and everything, but still need a state administration because there are assets that did not automatically transfer by some other means. So you can die test date with a will with assets that the clerk needs to assign award to your intended recipients, or you get stuck with the state's default rules and that's dying in test date without a will.

And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The lawmakers did think long and hard about how to come up with the schemes of intestacy and how errors would inherit, but those default rules aren't necessarily what everyone wants. And understanding what those default rules are is important in your estate planning or in considering what happens. A lot of folks don't realize, they think if they are married to someone that the default rule must be that their spouse gets everything when they pass, but that's not the case. The intestacy statute, if you have a spouse and children, your assets are split between your spouse and children.

So if you want your spouse to have everything and you don't want it to be split with your children automatically, you want your spouse to have the authority to do what they want with those assets, that needs to be done through estate planning rather than allowing just the default rules to exist. Yeah, that's one of those nightmare situations that we unfortunately see. Everybody thinks, depends on how old you are, how I'm in my late 40s now, so surely I'll make it to my 70s, right? And people in their 60s, surely I'll make it to 80s. I hope you do.

Thank you, me too. But you always think you've got more time and maybe hopefully you do, but we were in that situation where someone dies way too early. So we've got the situations where the 40-year-old father of three has a heart attack and passes away. It hasn't done any estate planning because that's young. Estate planning is hard to think about. Like you said, if the house isn't owned correctly, we've had a situation where a spouse has inherited with underage kids and trying to get that house sold or dealt with when one of the owners is your four-year-old son is challenging to say the least, right? Oh, absolutely, because then we're also dealing with not just the the intestacy, not just the estate administration, you also then need to deal with a guardianship in order to... The courts are interested in protecting the assets of minors, so a parent can't just automatically make decisions in order to protect them. They can't just automatically make decisions about real estate that a minor inherited for them. You need to have permission from the courts to do so, and that is a lot of work, time, attorney expense, court fee expenses, mandatory hearings for guardianships to get a guardian assigned. Especially when there are minor children involved, it's important to do the estate planning on the front end because we are here and we're happy to help with all of those, but we want people to be aware that it's definitely going to be added time and expense when you haven't avoided those on the front end.

It's just like anything else. Me and Joe have talked today about business planning. You can do a lot of planning with your operating agreement, with your business assets, so that when someone passes away or when there's a disagreement with a partner, you've already kind of planned out what's going to happen and it doesn't necessarily have to become something that's litigated.

Our big theme today is things that the courts have to be involved with, things that have to be public versus things that you can keep private and plan around. We've talked about that in business planning, we've talked about Taylor, we've talked about family law planning, if you know pre-nup, separations, agreements, planning before separation. There's a lot of stuff you can plan and agree to and keep private rather than putting it on display in the kind of public arena. We've talked to Ashley about estate planning to try to avoid probate, but here our example, our 42-year-old who passed away way, way, way too early without any notice, he left his family with a lot of trouble because he hadn't planned and that's no knock against him. That's the way these things go, but to the extent that you can stop what you're doing and think about it, you know, when I was growing up, I felt like trusts were for rich people, right?

Rich people had trust, but that's not the case and I know we also help people administer trust. A lot of folks will create a trust and not have a son or a daughter or a spouse who can run the trust, administer the trust, so we will do that a lot for folks too. But I was going to ask you, Cassandra, in this public versus private discussion that we're having, if you have to, if you're passed away and your heirs have to go open an estate for you, whether it's a will or not, so they have to just do some estate administration, what kind of information is public at that point? So, estate administration files, the entire file is public, so some of the counties have e-filing now, so a lot of this is also available, just click the button on anyone's browser, so your heirs, whoever your heirs are through Intestacy, their ages, their addresses, what your assets are, and the exact value of each asset, what your debts are, the claims against the estate, so it's a lot of information that's public, even down to the bank account statements, the account numbers are redacted, and on the online filings, you can't pull those bank statements, but in the physical file, which is public, those are accessible as well.

So, yeah, there's a lot out there. I saw, I'm a big wrestling fan, you know, but somebody wrote a book about Ric Flair, it was supposed to be like a biography of Ric Flair, and they did it just, everything was just based on files they could pull in the Mecklenburg County courthouse, so any estate that he was a beneficiary of, divorces, guardianships, any kind of civil lawsuit, it's all public record, and the guy wrote an entire book just based on what he could get off the public record, so it's, yeah, definitely, and then, so I'm happy to keep talking about what's public or not public, but I'd also like to jump back to your example of a 42 year old man who's passed unexpectedly with some debts. There are some tools at our disposal as, or at anyone's disposal in filing estate administrations, if the person has a spouse or children under 18, there are ways to protect a spouse or minor children from creditors to a certain extent, so it depends on what assets exist, what debts exist, but through a spousal allowance, a spouse can be assigned the first 60,000, currently at 60,000 of personal property, and that's able to be protected from most types of creditors.

There are certain types of creditors, such as medical creditors, that can get at a spouse regardless of a spousal allowance being filed, so there are certain types of debts that a spouse takes on, no matter what, essentially. No, it's, you know, and again, if all this property was in trust, if all this property was positioned in such a way where it did not become an asset of an estate, you know, that really helps. It really helps in everything that we've been talking about. It really helps keep it, you know, your heirs are going to move easy, your family is going to just move, you know, it's a tough situation, but they'll be able to continue on without the angst of having to deal with what you deal with every day. We're here to deal with that angst for you, but that is something, even for my clients, that they know their estate administration is happening.

It's not completely out of their minds, unfortunately, until it's closed, and some of the clerks and courts run a ways behind. Some of this can take a while, even with, you know, good attorneys in your corner helping you through the process. So, we're here to help, but to be possible. Well, Cassandra, it was good to talk to you today. I always appreciate you joining us. Thank you. Cassandra Nicholas, fellow attorney at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, joining us on the program of estate administration.

Again, talking about the different levels of law there. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, and of course, they are the hosts of this show, and the power behind the program is Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. We are going to take a short break, come back on the other side and we'll be back with a short break.

Come back on the other side and wrap this up. Now, if you've got a legal situation that you're facing, remember, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer. They've got offices conveniently located for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia, and in Morehead City, where you can find Cassandra Nicholas. The number to call is 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information and briefly what the call is about, and an attorney will return that call from Whitaker and Hamer. And you can always email your questions to the show, info at judicacounty.com. That's info at judicacounty.com, and we will answer those questions on a future broadcast. We'll wrap up more Judica County, coming up. Welcome back into Judica County Radio. Your hosts again are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners. Whitaker and Hamer law firm offices located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia, and Morehead City.

Joe Hamer on assignment this week. Cassandra Nicholas joins us from the Morehead City office. Again, the consults we make available today are complimentary. There are five of them, so grab one while they last. If you've got a legal situation, you've got questions, great opportunity to grab a consult and see and get those answers.

800-659-1186. Well, we've got a short segment here to wrap things up, but Josh, you did want to hit one more thing. Yeah, this is the time of the year where we get a lot of US Supreme Court decisions that get kind of get handed down and released and kind of changing the way they release these things.

They used to be kind of continuous and now they kind of hold them all. So we're going to be talking about some of those as they come out. There's a couple of big ones, presidential immunity.

There's a couple of big ones out there that are going to be coming down any moment now, but they did release one. We talk about the second amendment a lot on the show. We talk about gun rights, gun ownership in America, because it is a very novel issue globally. Most countries don't have, don't allow you to just own firearms like you can in the US, but the Supreme Court handed down a rare restriction on gun rights.

So lately they've been pretty open. We've talked about a couple of decisions finding more and more, how would you say it, not relaxing kind of gun regulation, right? So anytime a state tries to prevent you from buying a gun or owning a gun, the Supreme Court has kind of sided with the gun owner and said, hey, you should be able to get this to defend yourself.

You should be able to do this. So it's nice, in my opinion, to see the court kind of going in this direction. But they did issue a restriction or upheld a restriction. Did you see that Cassandra?

Yeah, yeah. So this is pre-existing. There is a 1994 federal law that prevents folks that have domestic violence restraining orders against them from owning guns.

So it's been around for a while. And what the Supreme Court now has done, there was a challenge to that law and it's been upheld. So at least on the Supreme Court, it doesn't seem like it was very controversial between them. The decision was 8-1, which in this day and age, there are not very many Supreme Court decisions that are 8-1. So the Supreme Court, both left and right leaning justices, agreed that this law was constitutional and should be upheld. I have not read the dissenting opinion specifically in this one.

It just came out. However, I would anticipate that a potential issue with upholding this law is that restraining orders are not convictions. So the people that are subject to this law have not been convicted of crimes, but while they have these restraining orders against them specifically for domestic violence, their gun rights are being restricted in those instances. Yeah, that's important. So when you hear people talk about a protection order or a restraining order in that kind of context, it's usually short term.

And yeah, you're right. You haven't been convicted of anything. There's just been proof that you may be a danger to this other person and it's precautionary. Yeah, so I hadn't really thought about that, but the Supreme Court said in that situation it's okay to restrict your access to guns. And you'll hear a lot of stories where people have these DVPOs against them and they have to give their guns to the court or say, hey, I'm giving all my guns to my dad. He'll be responsible. He'll hold on to them.

So that's still a thing. So we'll see what the rest of their decisions are. Yeah, yeah. A lot of them coming down. I mean, we're in the studio on Tuesday. Our show usually airs Friday, Saturday over the weekend. And there may be a lot released before then, but there's definitely going to be a lot of Supreme Court decisions that are worthy of being discussed.

It'll be interesting. And that will be something that we can get to on a future edition of Judica County Radio. We are in the books for this week.

A big thank you, of course, to our hosts, Josh Whitaker and Cassandra Nicklaus. They're attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, your law firm for life. Office is conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. Again, the free complimentary consult available by calling 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. If you've got a legal situation, got questions, grab one of these consults, 800-659-1186 while they last. Another edition of Judica County Radio is in the books for Josh Whitaker and Cassandra Nicklaus.

I'm Morgan Patrick. We'll see you on the radio next week. Judica County is hosted by attorneys licensed to practice law in North Carolina. Some of the guests appearing on this podcast may be licensed North Carolina attorneys. Discussion on this podcast is meant to be general in nature and in no way should the discussion be interpreted as legal advice. Legal advice can only be rendered once an attorney licensed in the state in which you live has the opportunity to discuss the facts of your case with you. The attorneys appearing on this podcast are speaking in generalities about the law in North Carolina and how these laws affect the average North Carolinian. If you have any questions about the content of this show, you can direct such inquiry to Joshua Whitaker at jmwatmwhlaw.lawyer.