Navigating Estate Planning Challenges

Coming up on this edition of Judica County Radio, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer managing partners Whitaker and Hamer law firm will tackle estate planning.

We'll have a general discussion plus we've got question and answer again in and around estate planning coming up on Judica County Radio. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer managing partners Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. They have conveniently placed offices in Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia and Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick. My pleasure to go back and forth with the attorneys each and every week. There's going to be an opportunity to get on their calendar. A complimentary consult will tell you about those as we move through the show.

But let's go ahead and start off with guys. How was your week? Josh, you go. How are you guys coping with that national championship game?

What's the what's the fallout there? I forgot I forgot it was even happening. I was I was at the house.

850 start time. I mean, when my team loses, man, I pretend like basketball doesn't exist. And that's my coping mechanism. So I don't even know what you're talking about. Well, we had we had an office pool for entertainment purposes only. Sure.

And everybody except my boss and myself. Everybody picked Duke. My nail in my coffin was in the second round when St. John's and Rick Pitino just absolutely crushed me. Yeah. Not getting out of the second round.

A lot of trouble. That's your bet on the Big East team. I picked Houston to win the whole thing. And I was hanging around in fourth place until last night. If Houston wins, I win the whole thing. If not, I don't place.

And I didn't place. I've been buying into Joseph's good vibes and I was all in on Duke. So once Duke went out, like I didn't even know the championship game was on me and my oldest were sitting around trying to find something to watch. And I like all the baseball was boring. I was like, I saw the valid man. The vibes were valid. The game went exactly the way I thought it was going to go for the majority of the game. And then it just didn't. And that's the nature of the beast, man. And that's why you shouldn't bet on sports, Josh.

I was trying to help learn that it's a bad, bad plan. I went I went heavy. I did. I did it watching the first half of the Houston, Florida game and went in heavy on Houston and then went to bed because that was way past my bedtime. I had a massive, massive, massive Duke money line bet. And as soon as they I just saw it coming, man. I don't know why I saw it coming, but I just kind of knew Duke had been in close games.

So I cashed that baby out. And I'd say that would save me from being real depressed here. That really was a nice silver lining and an otherwise rough night, man. Well, college basketball is over. So we're in that weird baseball limbo time, which I enjoy.

I like the beginning of the baseball season. I guess the Masters is this weekend. That's right. Yeah, that's why I wear this green shirt, obviously. When you love golf, you may be listening to us on several. You know, we we air different times, different places. And so but but we're recording before the Masters gets started.

So that's that's the thing, I guess. I'm not I have a hard time getting too into it, though, but I know that's a big deal for a lot of folks. It's a huge deal. It's a huge deal.

And it's kind of that rite of passage for spring. Augusta is just absolutely gorgeous. And if you've ever been to the Masters, you know what I'm talking about? I was able to attend probably, gosh, 12 or 13 years ago, I went to a practice round. No, I went to a Friday round.

So second round action at the Masters. And for our local listeners here, if you've ever been on Capitol Boulevard and just absolutely loathed Capitol Boulevard, just because of the traffic and the concrete. And it's just so bland. It's like it's like you're on the Death Star. Everything's concrete.

You don't love that. So picture. OK, picture.

Hang with me. Picture Augusta, Georgia. You're driving down a street just like Capitol Boulevard. Yeah. And then you turn into the gate, you go park and it's like you just go into this golf heaven that's located right behind a Capitol Boulevard type city structure infrastructure. It's just it really is jaw dropping. So this tournament, it's kind of like here comes summer. Yeah.

And it's just it's it's gorgeous. And I'm going to go I'm going to go out on a limb and say Rory McIlroy that you're going all in. All right. All in on Rory. I'm going to go ahead and put all the money I have on that. That's right.

Based on Morgan's enthusiasm. You're Duke national championship winnings. Go for it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So no, but it is it is spring. That's that's awesome. I was down in our Moorhead City office yesterday and it was just it was just beautiful. And yeah, the weather's great, man. That's helping a lot. That's a. I like the warmth as you get older.

Yeah. As you get older, I think we were talking about this a week or two ago, but the cold, man, it hurts my bones. Yeah, I'm very excited when it gets warm again.

My knees loosen up, hips get loose. He's so old, man. Look, look, Morgan, we're going to we're we're going to play.

Josh is going to come out of retirement, play some basketball this. Oh, no. Oh, that's right. Oh, no. Oh, yeah.

I'm looking for that. I'm expect I'm expecting we can't record this week injury. Oh, man, he's taken all all these years he's taken off. It's going to turn him into I got just a real specimen. I'm going to rely on muscle memory this week, but you should come out, Morgan. You should come out. Yeah, you'd love a dictator.

Can I have a beverage while I watch my comedy show, man? The it was crazy, though. You know, I always know, you know, it's you know, I work with Joseph and I talk to him every day. It's always know where he's at. So I never just accidentally run into Joe. And this weekend, I accidentally ran into Joe down in Clayton.

That was crazy. Yeah, he came to Clayton and intentionally made a point to not the person he says he talks to every day. We just left that information out randomly, you know, but you guys don't have locators on each other. I've got one on him. That's how I knew he was there. And I popped up like, hey, man, you're getting away from me.

But yeah, we're done. And Clayton needed Vincent's have to plug Vincent's. That's a good place to take out Vincent's. That's a family establishment and a great eating.

If you're down in the Clayton, very affordable food. Very good. So so you were you were both solo and you ended up sitting in a booth together or Josh families out.

What are you talking about? Josh? I was with him.

He didn't want to invite me to be part of his family. I was I was down there with in-laws and I've been angling for Josh to adopt me into his family so I can be heir to the Whitaker family fortune. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Old oil money. I'd love to have any kind of old money. I didn't. Maybe you got some lying around somewhere. That plan didn't work out for me. If your dad will surprise you, man. Josh, I didn't tell you. I didn't tell you about the millions I've been stashing away. I'm leaving to your brother, Michael.

All right, guys. So this this week on Judica County radio, we're doing state planning listener questions. So these are common questions we get from folks when we sit down for these free estate planning consults.

And, you know, I kind of think about this when we when we get together every week. I try to think about questions that I've gotten in our in our practice of law, just in the in, you know, questions that that people have for me, because I assume if I'm getting asked these questions at the firm, other people have these questions as well. And so we are going to stay on the estate planning focus today and got several questions. Power of attorneys, guardianships, trust, all the good stuff that we like to get down and talk about. And these are kind of questions based on things went wrong for somebody. Things, things didn't really work out. They didn't have an estate plan. So these are kind of worst case scenarios that kind of show up. And then what you have to do to to fix them, you know, a good estate plan would have fixed them.

But we didn't have that luxury in a lot of these. So, Morgan, that's where we're going to go today. Again, kind of showing you why you should get your estate plan done. I know I sit down with people every day who, you know, just put it off because it's one of the easiest things like every everybody needs an estate plan.

And it's one of the easiest things to put off because no one wants to think about. It's a morbid thought, man. Yeah. Like Joe says, everybody, everybody's we're all going to die. Me, Joseph, Morgan, we're dying, especially Morgan. Yeah, it's going to happen.

In game is coming. Yeah. And then and you get caught up in your day to day life. Everybody's busy. You don't want to have to do it. We do the free estate planning consults to try to make it as easy as possible. We've really just spent a lot of time on this. We really try to make our whole estate planning system as streamlined and as easy as possible because we know because we're the same way.

I need to I need to sit down with Joseph and update our buy sell agreements and kind of update our estate plan. And it's not something you want to think about. And it's easy to put off.

But today we're going to talk about the people who put it off and it it kind of burned them. OK, I like it. And again, the consults are available.

They are complimentary. The number to call to grab one of those again on estate planning. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact information. And again, they'll reach out to you and they'll set up that complimentary consult. Judica County Radio, your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They're the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Practicing attorneys here in North Carolina offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Duquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Morehead City. Again, we'll be back with more estate planning listener questions when we return.

Welcome back into Judica County Radio, your hosts, as always. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, and they have put offices almost everywhere. Morehead City, Gastonia, Duquay, Verina, Goldsboro, Clayton, Cleveland, Garner, Raleigh.

I mean, again, almost on every street corner for your convenience. I'm Morgan Patrick. It's always a discussion between the attorneys on the latest. And right now we're spending time on estate planning, general estate planning and listener questions.

Josh, take it away. The first one I wanted to focus on is one that we is one that we get a lot. And, you know, we talk about and we'll talk about it again. But we talk about having as part of your estate plan that those are several documents. So your estate plan is going to that that refers to a will that can refer to a trust. Health care power of attorneys, general durable power of attorneys, living wills. There's all kind of documents that go into your estate plan. And so one of one of those documents is a general durable power of attorney.

And and Joseph, you know, you don't need the document until you need it. And if you don't have it and then something happens, right, you're incapacitated. You're in a coma found incompetent due to dementia. You might just be stuck overseas somewhere and you need something done here in the states.

There's all kinds of reasons why you might need a general durable power of attorney. If you have one, great. You just keep moving.

You just keep rolling along. If you don't have one, you got it. No, it's it's no bueno. Yeah. And so I would separate the need into two categories, right? Like there's the there's a convenience aspect.

And like you said, you could be out of the out of the country, out of the state on a trip. And and having that document could be something that just is it's convenient because it allows, you know, it allows something to be done in your absence and saves you from having to make a trip back somewhere potentially. So there is a an element of, you know, having it is nice.

It's a nice thing to have. And then there is a time where it's absolutely necessary. And and those are the situations you talked about the the something happens to you. You lose competency. You you're you're in a coma.

You have a stroke. You know, there's all these scenarios where things can happen. And, you know, it's not the law. There are ways around it, right? Like there are ways that the law creates to account for those situations. But it's so much less convenient than just you being the one that has the control that stipulates who you want it to be. Then the alternative, which is someone has to essentially go and do a guardianship proceeding to get that authority. And we'll talk. We'll talk about the guardianship part.

That's the that's the other end of the spectrum. But just as a basic review, the general durable power of attorney is the document where you appoint a fiduciary to handle your day to day affairs, buy, sell, mortgage, roll property, cut checks, make payments. That's where you appoint a fiduciary to do that. If you're married, a lot of times it's your spouse.

Right. Because your spouse can do a lot for you by virtue of being your spouse, but they can't sign your name. They can't handle things that are solely in your name.

They can't they can't do things like like that for you. And you can even appoint a backup or another backup, you know, successor backup. You can kind of lay out some people, you know, have children who are old enough to kind of fill that role.

But that's what you're doing. You're saying, hey, if something happens to me, this is who's going to take care of this stuff. And if they're not available, this is the backup who's going to take care of this stuff. And so that's what a power of attorney does. And so if you don't have one and something happens and you need somebody to handle your day to day affairs, then all you got left is the is the guardianship procedure that's left that's under the that's available to you under the North Carolina statutes. And that's where whoever is going to whoever would have been your fiduciary, your agent, your attorney, in fact, who would have handled your day to day affairs instead of being able to just pull up a document that you've had done and keep moving.

They're going to have to stop. More than likely, they're going to have to go hire an attorney and you're going to have to go downtown and get approved to be guardian of the person in your in your state to handle your affairs. And that's that's a public record. Right. You're getting a clerk or maybe even a judge, depending on the circumstances involved in your affairs.

There's going to be a file down at the courthouse if you're once a guardian's appointed. And that's a whole process. That's not a one day thing. And I think that's the big piece, man.

I think that's the you touched it. It's a process. Right. And so usually in these scenarios that you're talking about, if you get you get caught, what what is the saying? You get caught with your pants down.

Is that the way we would say it? And you get caught in a scenario where you're just not you know, it's not usually that that happens and you're good. And you're just doing you know, someone loses capacity and you're like, oh, we better get this sorted. It's usually more of an urgent situation. Right. Like you really need this thing immediately.

And this unexpected event happens. And like you said, man, it's a process. It takes time.

It takes energy. And you may be in a situation where you need something done much more quickly than that. And so when you're caught with your pants down, as we say, you don't have the document in place. Yeah, there's ways around it.

The statutes give you methods to to to to fix it. But it's a process and it's time consuming at a time when you're already in a struggle. Yeah, exactly. As a general rule of thumb, I like to keep my pants up in most situations. Yeah, man. Most of the time. I mean, there's there's times, man. Josh, are you wearing pants during the show today?

I am. I am on to you, man, because that's how much he's committed to keeping his pants up at all times. But but yeah, the guardianship, you don't want to have to do that. That is a that is a no other. You got no other avenues.

It's a last ditch effort. But I also like to keep my affairs private and in the time. Josh Whitaker is not even his real name. That's how committed the privacy is. I like I like to you know, I don't you know, like I did one day I was down at the Wake County courthouse and I pulled my my grandma passed away in the 90s and her state file still down there.

And I was just in that year and I pulled it. It's all there. You know what? She died with you know how you know, it's all it's all public record. And I'm a big proponent of keeping everything private. And when you have to go downtown to the courthouse and get a guardianship, it's all public. You have to do annual accountings.

You need special permission to sell real property. It's kind of a little bit of an ordeal if you've had to go through it before. If you have a POA, you just keep moving.

And that seems to be the thing we will talk about trust later, but we talk about having everything set up. So if something happens to you, whether you die, you become incapacitated, you know, dementia and Alzheimer's is something that we have to deal with a lot, you know, in today's society. But you're the people that depend on you just keep moving.

And that is that is worth a lot. I mean, that is that is that is why you do it to keep the folks who depend on you from being greatly inconvenienced. So you have two options. You do your state plan and they're not inconvenienced at all. You know, they're dealing with your health and things like that. And that's that's never fun, but they do what they need to do to pay the rent, pay the mortgage. They just keep on moving in and having to go downtown and get a clerk to approve it and ask a bunch of questions. And it's it's not preferred.

A POA is a very power of attorneys, very easy document to produce. And and it's a critical sometimes we overlook it. Sometimes we don't talk about it a lot. But, you know, I've had several consults over the past two weeks where people were getting guardianships for them because that piece is missing and it wasn't done.

So we see it quite a bit. And, you know, some people some people to remember their loved ones, you know, visit their gravesite, look at pictures, you know, watch videos. Josh Whitaker goes and pulls the estate file trip down memory lane.

That's where you go there. But but yeah, but it's it's it's it's such an easy thing and it's not, you know, it's very affordable. A power of attorney is not something an attorney should should charge you very much for unless you're doing something complicated.

But, you know, a standard power of attorney is part of an estate plan is not is not is not a big expense. And just can't can't emphasize that enough because that that one that one causes causes people some some problems. And like and like Joe said, when you need that document, something's going on.

Right. Something something's happening and you need it sooner than later. And the guardianship just doesn't move fast. You know, there's some emergency things you can do, but it it's not a fast moving.

It is to be avoided at all costs. I would I would say it just seems like you've got to find, I guess, that that that trigger for people just to kind of get off the side. I mean, everybody procrastinates when it comes to what is your end game. And as you guys have pointed out, it's not that complicated. It's not that expensive to take these kind of steps and be proactive. But a lot of people don't do it and they end up scrambling at the end and some things get missed. If you sit down and and map this out well before, even though it might be a little bit of a headache, it's going to it's going to benefit you down the road again. Get ahead of it.

All right. So we have complementary consults with Whitaker and Hamer with estate planning as the subject matter. If you've got some questions, you can certainly grab one of these consults. There's no charge. They're not going to try to sell you anything.

It's a conversation. The number is 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information. An attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch to set up that complementary estate planning consult.

Again, 800-659-1186. We'll be back on the other side with more at Judica County Radio and more estate planning question and answer. Judica County Radio, your hosts, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They're the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. They're practicing attorneys here in our great state of North Carolina.

They have placed offices in Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and in Morehead City for your convenience. We are in the middle of an estate planning discussion, the importance of having that estate plan. I'm Morgan Patrick. My pleasure to go back and forth with the attorneys.

Josh, we've talked about the importance of having an estate plan, durable power of attorney. Where are we going next? We're going to talk more about estate planning, but I want to let you guys know I got really excited over the past couple of weeks about NC State basketball. I think we're all excited about it. Morgan is super, super excited.

Yes. Morgan can't contain his excitement. I've never seen Morgan as excited about it. I think my entire UNC Tar Heel roster is in the portal. I'm just saying.

Well, I think that's the way it goes. Drake Powell, right? That's a guy.

He's a person. So I've been getting excited about it. My kids, man, my boys are really excited about it. And I just want to tell you guys during my lifetime, I've had season tickets to NC State basketball three or four different times. And something always happens to make me be like, no, that's it.

And I give them up and I don't I don't go back. Right. That's there was a time under Herb Sendak. There was a Carolina State game under Herb Sendak. And I got so angry, I left and I canceled my it was the last game of the year and I canceled my season tickets. I was like, nope.

And that's happened a couple of times. But I went back in. I got my got my season tickets this year for North Carolina basketball.

Will Wade's got me pumped up. I just wanted to share that with you and and just kind of take in the rooms, the studio's enthusiasm. I mean, I thought I thought the way you started this, you were going to be like, but now it's dead to me. But no, that's a very positive take. You know, you guys deserve positivity, man.

Yeah, you deserve it. I think I think as an NC State fan and we've mentioned this before, I think there's a degree of just underdog mentality and why we can't have nice things, you know, and the final four run helped us. Right. It helped us.

I think we all need like Band-Aid. NC State fans need like group therapy. Yeah. I was just going to say, I sense it. It's palpable. Yeah. You're you're excited about NC State and and and rightfully so.

But I do agree with you. I think there's there's there's this Eeyore-ism when it comes to NC State. It's like, well, we might be good, but I don't know if we're going to be good. I don't want to, you know, buy in 100 percent. You can't get too excited. And it's just it's just right there.

And then if it really gets rolling and I think it will. It's all good. But yeah, Eeyore-ism. And I and again, I have a lot of a lot of family, a lot of friends that have state connections.

So I want I want it to quit raining on Eeyore. And I want I want state to have a year or two. I feel like there's a lot of NC State fans think NC State just wants to get us excited. And then as soon as we're excited, they like pull that rug out from under us. This is an elaborate plan.

It's a ruse. I mean, you got to get it. That's a very NC State mentality, man. So I'm going to load up to get out of that. You know, I'm going to load up my I'm a load up my DraftKings account and just go hard on every NC State game. That's that's and I'm going to retire. Go ahead and put you in a few futures bets now, man.

While you can. Yeah. Well, you know, on top of your tickets, go ahead and set up an auto draft to the NIL fund for NC State.

And they can just go buy to players. That's the way it's that's the way it's going to be now. Yeah, Duke's got it. Duke's got the dark money. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. Carolina's got the light blue money. You know, I read about I read about Duke's dark money in the Wall Street Journal. You said dark money.

You got it. It's like, who cares? It's a private school. They got people that throw money at them.

They're paying players. It's legal now. Yeah. Yeah, it's perfectly legal.

And they literally just started it brand new brand. So, yeah, I just want to share the optimism with you. Let that let that the optimism to share it with you and see if that helps you get through the day. It does, man. Anytime you're optimistic, because sometimes I worry about you on here, you know.

And so the fact that you've got that at optimism, it really does things for me, man. The estate planning listener questions we're talking about when things go bad, what we see in our practice to try to get you. If you're listening and you don't have an estate plan to try to get you off the off the off your seat, get you to do the estate planning again. We try to make it as easy as possible. I doubt I don't know this for sure.

I can't say this with an absolute guarantee, but I doubt any other North Carolina firm makes estate planning as easy as we do. Oh, yeah. No, they did that. They did a study on it. And they actually the scientists, the scientists that study the estate planning process, they came together in a lab and they said, yeah, it's the easiest. It was it was fancy.

It was a very stream rigorous. You could do the whole thing other than signing. You got to come in this panel made up of your kids. Yeah.

Josh's firm in North Carolina. Oh, if you poll Josh's kids, two out of two out of the three say I can't get the easiest process. Yeah. Yeah.

My youngest I had I had sold him yet. Yeah. We're working on we put them in the Whitaker family dungeon and he gets one pack of ramen noodles a week.

And he's coming around. Yeah. And you got to watch 1983 reruns of the National Championship. Yeah. I did that one time in our Goldsboro office. We put we put we were putting TVs and lobbies.

And I got a TV up in our Goldsboro lobby and I found the Houston State 83 championship game and just put it on repeat. Yeah. I thought that would really inspire people. Lorenzo Charles was my limo driver from for the prom in high school, actually. Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah, it was a very it was a very cool, cool driver. Yeah. Right there shed some basketball light on you guys from my day. I'm a little bit older than you guys. But when I was at Carolina, it was we were two or three years removed from the 82 National Championships. So when you would go to trolls, which is no longer there, a basement bar in Chapel Hill every Saturday night at eight o'clock, they would replay nice the national title game and you'd have a packed bar watching the game like it was live. I like that. Jordan, worthy Jimmy Black, dirty. I mean, it was just like on and on and on.

It was the name for a bar in Chapel Hill. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Troll. Yeah.

I guess trolling was a thing. Yeah. Yeah.

So here's here's I've seen some I've seen some problems come up here over the past couple of weeks. We talked about power of attorneys. We're going to talk about this is this is kind of you know, if you if you have kids, when you go to do your state plan, if you have kids under 18, you we have to talk about guardians. Right. So if you were going to take a couple.

Right. We're going to take two spouses. They have kids under 18. They do their state plan. One of the questions we're going to ask you is, all right. Something happens to both of you at or about the same time. Who do you want to be guardians of your kids?

And this question holds up a lot of estate plans because spouses, you know, spouses can be super duper close, be very much in love, have a nice loving family, and they can vehemently disagree on who the guardian should be of their kids if something happens to them both. Right. So we see that a lot. Joseph, you see that? We do, man.

We do. And, you know, some families get along great and they have no turmoil, no trouble answering that question. But again, it's a tough conversation for some folks, you know, because not every family gets along with their in-laws.

And not everyone agrees like this is the best thing for for my kids after the fact. So tough, man. A big theme in estate planning is tough questions.

You know, these are tough questions, but they're questions that you got to answer because otherwise, you know, you leave it up to so many factors that you can't control. And so do it while you retain control. That's my philosophy. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. And and sometimes it's not even like it's sometimes the issues more of should we name someone who's on the younger side?

Right. You get in that conversation. Should it be like a sibling or a friend who's younger, who's raising their kids, kind of like the way we'd want to raise our kids? Should it be a parent or, you know, it would be a grandparent to the kids. But would it be one of the spouses, parents that should do it who might have a better idea about how to deal with money and deal deal with assets? Or are you more concerned about, hey, these people will, you know, take the kids to church or raise them in the way that we want to raise them or whatever. And so you see these conversations. And so my first bit of advice on this guardian is don't let it hold you up too much.

You know, in my 20 some years, I've only seen it happen once or twice where two parents pass away at or about the same time, you know, so it can definitely happen. But you don't don't hold up your whole estate plan on that one on that one issue, which is I see what happens to folks. That's great advice, too, man, because, yeah, you're right. People will get stuck on they'll agree on everything and they'll let one issue just completely torpedo the whole deal.

And so, you know, you don't want to let that one thing slow you down because, again, it's just not worth it, man. There's still very real issues that you can can't agree on everything. You don't have to come to terms on everything, but get done what you can, if nothing else. And what I would also throw out, you know, we're usually talking about guardianship if something happens to both of you. But we're also talking about, OK, you're going to be creating a trust, like if someone's under 18, they can't take title to real property. You're going to want someone to manage. Your assets are going to go into a trust to be managed for the health, education, maintenance and support of your underage children.

Right. That's another decision you have to make. So who should this trustee be?

You're gone. You and your spouse are gone. So you've got to name a guardian for the kids and you got a name who will have physical custody of the kids will be raising the kids.

And then you're going to have a trustee who's going to be managing the assets you've left behind for the health, education, maintenance, support of your of your kids. And those can be the same person. Right. Those can be different people.

Right. So if you're hung up on the guardianship question, you can make the guardian in our example. Let's say you make the guardian your your high school best friend who's down the road and is raising their kids very similar to how you want your kids raised.

And you can put, you know, a parent or a sibling in charge of managing the trust that the guardian is going to need support from to to to raise the year to help support the kids. And so those those are two fiduciaries. Right.

And they don't have to be the same person if that helps you. And it could help. Right. Like in the scenario that we've talked about where maybe you have some disagreement, maybe you split the difference. And, you know, you have you know, you can you can kind of that's a way you can compromise is have somebody managing the money and have another managing the day to day watching of the kids. You know, I mean, that's not to say that's going to be the best solution. But again, it's always better to make these decisions yourself than to just leave it up to everybody to work out in the wake of, you know, a tragic death. Usually that's just that's, again, something to think about.

And that can that can help you. I think sometimes that adds another layer of complexity that people don't want. Sometimes it's kind of a solution because I think that's what if something happens to both parents, you've got grandparents involved who who want to make sure they see the kids.

And, you know, it gives them it gives us some leverage to you. And you might not even have they can be the same person. Right. You can make the guardian and the trustee the exact same person. If you trust that person enough with your kids, you probably trust them enough to to manage the assets you leave behind for the kids. But if it helps you in any way, they can they can be separate people.

So that's just a that's a piece of the puzzle. You can kind of move around to to to handle your your specific concerns. Judica County radio, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your hosts of the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. We are tackling, again, a state planning with listener questions. And we've already talked about today just the importance of having that estate plan, durable power of attorney and also being proactive with guardianship.

Again, these are things that you can discuss in one of the complementary consults with Whitaker and Hamer. How do you get one? You call this number. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Leave your contact information. Say, hey, I'd love one of the estate planning consults complementary and you will get signed up for those.

Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. We've got more Judica County radio coming up. Welcome back into Judica County radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They're the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina and they have placed offices in Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Moorhead City for your convenience. We have complementary estate planning consults available during the course of today's show. All you've got to do is call eight hundred six five nine one one eight six and leave your contact information and tell them, hey, I'd like one of those complementary consults come in and talk about your estate plan because we all know we all procrastinate. We put this off and you can be proactive. Grab one of the consults. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

There's no cost to it. All right, Josh. All right. So we've been talking about things that we've seen go wrong for folks, things that we've seen hold up estate planning. So these are all concerns that we get from our clients. And we're kind of sharing sharing them with you on the on the show today in case these are concerns that you have or things that are delaying you from from getting started. And so we talk about this a lot. We talk about this a lot. We talk about you'll hear me talk about keeping things rolling, you know, after something happens to you, incapacitated death.

Right. Allowing your family members to continue moving along. They'll deal with their grief. They're going to be sad that you're gone. But they won't. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully.

But really bummed out. But there won't be a mortgage getting foreclosed on. Right.

There won't be things happening that they're that kind of kind of is out of their compound, their misery. I like that. You like that. Yeah, I've been working on that.

This whole show in the background. So we've talked about a couple of things. And so I talk about that. So I talk about keeping things moving when you're gone.

And then also you hear me talk about a lot. And maybe maybe this isn't a concern shared by everybody, but I like my private information kept private. Right. I don't. You know, we talked about how the other day, like my grandma's estate file is still down at the courthouse. And anybody who goes in there can can pull it and look at it. Not that anybody would write. There's no reason for it.

But it's there. It's a it's a public record. And, you know, what I was going to talk about this segment is we've had that come up a lot where, you know, where when you open up an estate, you're going to you might get some creditor claims. You're going to have to list probate assets. The clerk's going to want to know that those were divided. According to a will or according to North Carolina laws, there's a couple of trips to the courthouse. And then that file is going to be there forever.

I'm going to pull up. I pulled up a file from the 1930s the other day as part of a real estate title search. So that stuff's just going to be there. It's a public record.

It ain't going nowhere. And those are those are two concerns that I hear a lot from people, you know, keep moving, keep rolling along after the death of of someone and then keeping things private out of the public sphere, out of a clerk's office, a judge's desk. And one of the ways we can work around that is a trust, Joe. And, you know, I always talk about a trust is kind of like a magic, you know, this magic drafting that we can we can do to keep everything moving, keep everything out of the courthouse, keep everybody moving along. And I think sometimes people think about these trusts or trust in general as this like high level, you know, for only the rich kind of kind of vehicle, kind of estate plan.

But it's not know that it's not at all, man. And, you know, a lot of people get in their own head about the about that. I've had folks sit down with me and trust makes perfect sense for them. And it's the it's the most logical and beneficial thing in terms of what their estate plan should look like.

And they're there. They come in with these preconceived notions that that, you know, it's not it's too fancy or or, you know, they're not fancy enough. I've literally heard that like that's that's beyond the scope of what we need when, you know, a trust isn't you're not talking about. It's it's a trust based estate plan traditionally.

And I can only speak as to what we do. But I think it's pretty universal is going to be more costly than a will based estate plan because there's more drafting involved and there's more thought that goes into it. But at the same time, you're not talking about a crazy expense a lot of times and the benefits there for everybody potentially. And it may not be for you, but it's always worth the consideration. And to your point, Josh, one of the one of the big things about it is you're going to retain a ton of privacy and you're going to keep your personal affairs, your personal affairs and a lot of in a lot of ways, which is a great benefit to folks like Josh Whitaker in particular.

That's right. You know, it's there's all there's all kinds of different trust, you know, in estate planning. We're usually talking about some form of a revocable living trust.

And and, you know, it's such an easy tool, you know, and anybody who if you own your home right, if you own your home, you own some vehicles. You have the assets necessary to make it a viable part of your estate plan. It'll it'll make sense, you know, if you know, if if any assets at all you want to keep out of probate, you want to keep out of the courthouse. And a revocable living trust is this this this great invention that just keeps it all keeps it all in the family and just and just keeps moving. You know, the trustee that you appoint, that's your fiduciary, that's the person acting on your behalf and your beneficiary's behalf. They can do what they need to do.

Refinance property, sell property, liquidate assets, divvy things up. And and they don't have to go ask a judge for permission. They don't have to get the clerk's approval.

They're just going to. And they don't. And to your point again, coming back to the privacy piece, they don't have to.

There's no file. There's nothing that's on file that is going to to air out, you know, things that you may want to keep private. And and that's not to say that a trust is the only way to accomplish that goal. Right.

Like there's other ways to accomplish it. And there's ways to take pro assets and make them non probate assets without putting them into trust. But a trust that I just think it's important that everyone understands that no matter what your situation, like you said, Josh, if you own any assets whatsoever, a trust is worth consideration and talking about. And again, maybe it's not the right solution for you, but it is worth a conversation for sure.

Guys, I am. Joe, I think you hit on something a couple of comments ago and I didn't want to interrupt. But along the lines of, you know, people think a state plan, it just sounds fancy and they're not fancy and they don't need an estate planner. They think that they don't have enough to have this kind of estate plan as they are kind of moving to and through.

And when I say to and through, you're getting close to retirement, you know, you're getting on up there in years. But, you know, you look at your life and you look at what you've accumulated and you're like, it's not really an estate. I don't think I'm fancy enough to have an estate plan.

I think there are a lot of people in the audience that are probably in that category. And if you're if you own anything, if you own property, no matter how fancy you are, you're you're going to have an estate. Right. Like you're going to have to those assets are going to have to be disposed of in some way after you're gone. And so you no matter how you classify your level of fancy, you're going to there's an estate that's going to be involved. And intelligently approaching that while you're alive is going to be vastly superior to letting the chips fall where they may after the fact.

Yeah, I think that's a good that's a good barrier. I mean, if you own real property, if you own a house, if you own land for for absolute certain, we're going to recommend a trust. Because once you die, if that property is not in a trust, it's still going to be the handling of that after you got the handling of that real property, whether it's your kids are going to buy it from the estate or one of your kids want it or a surviving spouse is going to need to refinance. Those handling that real property after your death, if it's not in a trust, is going to involve an estate. It's going to involve giving notices to creditors who can make claims. It's it's going to move slow and be more complicated than you want it to be for your heirs and putting that in a trust.

If that's all the trust does for you is very useful and very and very practical. So if you own real property, it's going to be something that we talk to you about. We're going to mention it in an estate plan no matter what.

But owning real property, it's like a red flag for us. And we'll you'll get this ready. You'll get all this information from the radio show in our our focused estate planning console. But it's it's it's worth it's worth the thought. It's worth thinking about for sure. Judica County Radio, your host, Josh Whittaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whittaker and Hamer Law Firm, the practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. We have been discussing estate planning, going to continue that discussion no matter what your level of fancy.

I like that as a tagline. Make sure you have an estate plan. Again, you can grab a complimentary consult by calling 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Just leave your contact information. They'll call you back and sign you up for one of those complimentary estate planning consults.

Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. We've got one more segment of Judica County Radio coming up. Judica County Radio, your hosts are Josh Whittaker and Joe Hamer. They're the managing partners at Whittaker and Hamer Law Firm here in North Carolina, where they practice law. They have offices located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Cleveland, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Morehead City.

I'm Morgan Patrick. Want to remind you that today we are tackling estate planning listener questions and there are complimentary consults available. You can call at any time and grab one. 800-659-1186. Estate planning questions. It's a consult about estate planning. 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information and they will get back in touch with you and schedule that complimentary estate planning consult.

800-659-1186. Josh? Yeah. So I think I think today we did a good job talking about some of the maybe some of the things that might prevent you from getting your free consult. Right. Talking to an attorney about your about your estate plan.

And we've talked about some of the things that we see go wrong for folks when when they don't have a very simple estate plan would have solved a lot of the issues that we that we've kind of talked about today. Yeah, that's right. So again, the we're talking about a scenario where you're getting great value for this consultation. Right.

It's it's a very good value considering it's literally free and and and you could do it from your couch in your pajamas if you wanted to. That's the type of flexibility we're offering. You know, don't get don't get it in your head that you got to go super fancy and put a suit and tie on necessarily because because you can just come as you are.

Right. That's one of our that's a selling point. And and don't come at all if you don't want to sit and sit on your couch. Give us a call and we will make this process so easy that you won't believe how easy it is. I'm doing I'm doing this radio show in my undershirt. I've barely got anything on. But yeah, we can make it easy for you. And we're not going to over over fancy you. But we will get you we will get you squared away. We're not going to under fancy you either.

It's going to be the exact right amount of fancy. And that's a that's our promise to you. We will make that promise.

We're going to feel like I feel like after a couple of segments me and Joseph we run out of steam and that's when we need you to come hard and help us close these out. Well, I think you guys you provide such a nice service from the legal aspect for our listeners. I mean, you if you you go in and you sample anything on the weekend when it comes to radio, you're going to find financial shows, garden shows, probably political shows, maybe community interest shows. But you don't hear a lot of legal shows and people are going to be faced with so many different legal questions.

And you should not take them lightly. I mean, right now we're talking about on this particular program about estate planning. And that's that's your stuff, right? This is your property. This is your estate. Why wouldn't you want to sit down and map out how you want it handled before it's too late, before it goes to probate, before, you know, your family members end up getting in, you know, fisticuffs over, you know, an acre of land or whatever it is.

And you hear these horror stories, guys, where families just absolutely fall apart when it comes to divvying up maybe their parents or their grandparents' estates because there wasn't a plan. And this can all be avoided. It can all be in writing. It can all be legally handled and buttoned up. So there is no question.

Yeah. And and and like I said, you can you can do that with a will. You can you can you can do that more so with a with a trust. But, you know, think about things, too. You know, I know we were we're kind of at the end of the show, but, you know, before you talk to us and we can help talk you through it.

But think about things. You know, if you have if your biggest asset is is your home and you've got four kids, you need to think about what distribution looks like after you pass away. You know, does one of the kids want to buy out the other kids? Should you give them that option?

Should you require the house to be sold so there's no argument about it? You know, you can you can think through all those things ahead of time. You know, a lot of a lot of times people pass away without a plan in place. And then even families that get along well, you know, might might have a hard time talking through what the next steps were. And there might be one child who wants to keep the family home and the family and then the other two want it, want it sold. And so you can kind of think through that and kind of think think ahead to problems your beneficiaries might have. And you can solve those ahead of time because you can mandate what happens to things. And and so we talked to a lot of people who are trying to think through those issues because they don't want no no father or mom wants their kids, their heirs to to fight over anything and or even be in kind of disagreement.

And so it's it's a good way to kind of think through some of those issues as well. You can handle those in a will or a trust. All right, guys, I think another great show, estate planning. We are doing the consults.

They are complimentary. If you've got questions about your own estate plan, maybe you haven't started, but you're thinking about it now after this discussion. You know, have something in place. Talk about a trust. Talk about the powers of attorney.

Just being proactive when it comes to guardianship. These are all things that you can discuss during a complimentary consult with Whitaker and Hamer. Call the number and grab one eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Leave your contact information and just say, hey, I'm really interested in one of those complimentary consults and they will call you back and set it up on the calendar. You can do that in person. You can also do it over the phone. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Well, another edition of Judica County Radio is in the books for Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, the managing partners of Whitaker and Hamer law firm, the power behind this program. And they are practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

I'm Morgan Patrick. We will see 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 the show, you can direct such inquiry to Joshua Whitaker at JMW at MWH Law Lawyer.