Avoiding Common Legal Pitfalls

Welcome into another edition of Judica County Radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. Coming up on today's show, what happens when you don't have a plan? Are you just wandering around the universe? We'll talk about that.

Understanding your rights as a property owner, and we've got common legal mistakes that people are making, but also how do you avoid these? That's all coming up next on Judica County Radio. Whitney. Hamer presents Judica County. with Joshua Whitaker and Joseph Hayner.

Welcome into Judica County Radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, right here in North Carolina. That's where they practice law. They have offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fucuvarina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City, spanning this great state. I'm Morgan Patrick.

My pleasure to jump on with the attorneys. We want to remind you: there's going to be an opportunity for a complimentary consult on estate planning, and we'll tell you how you can grab those as we move through the program. But, gentlemen, as we always do, we start off with how was the week? And I have to. I have to backtrack on a comment I made last week, but go ahead.

That's fine. That's fine. You know, I was thinking about it, Morgan, before we go on air. I always think about what I did. The prior week To get ready for your questions, so I don't sound so unprepared as I do sometimes.

And I didn't do anything. Like this weekend. This weekend, you know, the kids are getting ready to go back to school and we made them try on some clothes to see what still fit them, you know, because they're in that age where. They don't put on School clothes for three months, nothing fits, you know. And I was thinking back, they hate it.

Kids hate it when you do that. And I was thinking about how bad that was when I was a kid. Like, I still remember when your mom would just burst in your room and tell you, hey, school starts next week, you got to try on some clothes, see what still fits. I remember that being like the worst. It's very, it's a very, it doesn't really affect you very much.

It's not that bad. But in retrospect, you know, thinking back, because my youngest is going into fifth grade. Yeah. And you'd have thought someone shot him in the leg when we told him he had to try on some clothes and see what fits. But, Joe, do y'all have to do that?

Your kids just went back. Yeah, my my kids my kids started Monday. Which was on yeah, they they were the same way, man. Real not at my youngest, you know, my youngest started. This is her first year kindergarten, my last baby.

And she was super excited, pumped, couldn't wait, real jacked up about it. All the other kids. Much more like your kids. But you think back to that time, man. Think back.

And like, that's the biggest problem you had in your life, right? Like, that's That's like You did feel it. It sucked, right? You hated it. But.

Wouldn't you trade that being the only issue that you've got? Instantly. What a beautiful, simple existence.

So, when my kids get upset about it, I like to yell at them. Really come down hard. What do you have in second period? Figure painting? Pick the youngest one and really make an example of her for the others.

Yeah, exactly. They're all grounded. We're getting upset about it. But I mean, they started back, and it's in full swing. Summer really blew by, man.

It's uh You blink and it's gone. Yeah, you really only get June and June and July, and then like. July the weather was bad again, man. It was like last year. Too much rain.

Too much rain and heat, man. The heat. The oppressive heat. It's actually been... Tolerable, I feel like, the last few days.

So that's a nice, welcome change.

Well, it's too, this is too cold to get in water, right? You think so? This is, yeah.

So this is kind of a cigar pose at the lake and it didn't work out. But we were going to go to the lake this weekend and the rain kept us, and so that's why we had the kids try on our clothes and get the old clothes out and see if they fit the younger kids. If not, get them to the, you know, get them, get those clothes donated and uh. That was it, man. That was my whole weekend.

There was no sports on TV. I was watching ice cubes. Oh, it's coming though, brother. Oh, you watch that? You watch War of the Worlds?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Ice Cube's three on three. Ah, see, Ice Cube came out with a War of the Worlds movie. I don't know if you saw that, and it's like the worst reviewed movie of all time. Is it worse than Anaconda? Anaconda's wow, man.

I saw it. It's way worse than Anaconda's Citizen Kane compared to this, but I watched a clip. It was bad, man. It was rough. It was pretty rough.

Can you imagine the press tour for Anaconda? I mean, I don't even know if they had one, but I mean, was it John Voigt and John Voigt Ice Cube? Yeah, I mean, I was jacked for that. Let's talk good about the movie. Yeah, I was pretty.

I think I went there on a date. I think I was on a date, and that's what she wanted to see. She was like, let's go see Anaconda. I was like, does your wife know about this date? Oh, this is before you got married.

Yeah, this was before. This was a long time ago. Anaconda was what? This is back when things were still good. This is like 1990.

Eight, maybe Anaconda. I don't know. I don't know. Right. Yeah.

But it was terrible. Anaconda. Yeah, yeah. I didn't fall asleep though. The only movie I've ever gone in, and I may have said this on the show before, but I've only fallen asleep in the movie theater.

One time. You gotta tell us. Chicken run. I went for a chicken run and I fell asleep in the theater. I've only taken one for the team, took the kids.

No, no, no kids. It was Josh by himself. No, this is another. This was another date type type adventure for me, but I've only called to go see Chicken Run. Oh my god, how do you come to that conclusion?

Let's go to Chicken Run for a date. It's not my first date right there. Morgan, you know me. I didn't select it, you know? But.

I've only fallen asleep at one concert. I ever tell you guys this? Oh, no. Really? How do you do that?

One concert. Mm-hmm. Have you ever fallen asleep at a concert or a movie? No, no, I made a movie. I probably slept there in a movie I took my children to the side.

I'm not into the movie, but I haven't fully fallen asleep. Dave Matthews Band in the 90s. I had to go see Dave Matthews band. That's all one song. Did you fall asleep because of inebriation, or was it just sheer boredom?

I woke up in the morning to unload a truck. And I had to unload a truck at the grocery store, and then I had to go to this concert, and I didn't want to go, and I fell asleep on the lawn.

So you're not a Dave Matthews guy, I take it. The saxophone didn't wake you up. Right. Slept like a baby. Yeah.

Yeah, one song, same song. Over and over and over. A lot of people are into him, though. A lot of people are really into him, man. We run into a lot of we go see Willie Nelson a lot, which you may like or may not like.

That's fine. Yeah. But he often would tour with Dave Matthews, like on the Parmaids and stuff, so he'd be there. and the Dave Matthews fans would come in to watch just Dave Matthews and then immediately leave. You know.

But they really liked him. Yeah, it's like the Jimmy Moffat has some dots. That's true. Parrot heads. Yeah.

Yeah. People who like Dave Matthews really like Dave Matthews. Mm-hmm. And that's good. Hey, uh guys, I have to um I have to have a retraction.

Uh last week we were talking about Happy Gilmore two. And if you remember Happy Gilmore the original, uh there was a big sponsorship in its subway, and Vern Lundquist was in the booth with someone who looked remarkably like Jared Gilbert from Subway. Yeah, Fogel or that's in big, big trouble and in prison. Yeah, in prison. Yeah, and then Happy Gilmore 2 comes out and it's this it looks like the same dude.

I'm like, did they use AI?

Well, it turns out. that Adam Sandler's college roommate at NYU that's him How would you l how would you like to be going through life? You're doppelganger? Is Jared from Subway? I didn't think he looked that much like Jared, to be honest, William Morgan.

We were telling you this the last show. You did. You did. You did. I sent you pictures.

It's close. It's close. It's close enough. Thank you. It's close enough.

But I don't feel too out of the sheer absurdity of using AI to throw a child predator. And I can see the angle, right? I get it, the Subway angle, but. Yeah, that's why it clicked with me. I'm like, oh, that's got to be him because it's Subway.

And then. You know, at the end of At the end of Happy Gilmore Two, this isn't a spoiler. Right, he looks up in the sky at Dead people, kind of like he does at the end of the first half of Gilmore. Yeah. I think they did use AI to make Bob Barker move.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure they use some, but Using AI Bob Barker is a far cry from AI Jared from Subway. That's a reach. You see, they announced Big Daddy 2 now, right? Happy New War 2 was a big end. Yeah, I'd say a couple of years away, but I I heard Big Daddy too was uh Netflix was gonna do that.

I can uh Yeah, I could get behind.

So we got that going for us. Yeah, you got something we can look. Yeah, you got something to look. I guess I'll stay alive for cancel that into 2027. Yeah.

I need things like that to keep me going, man.

Well, we've made it through the summer. We've got football now and fantasy league football drafts, NFL, college. Even though college is now pro, I mean, it's still here, football season. Yeah, we got to get the Whitaker and Hamer Fantasy Football League draft day nailed down. We haven't done that yet.

Morgan join us on that, man. Yeah, Morgan, you're talking about it.

Now that we've talked about it in front of you, we have to see. I was going to say, you got to invite me now. I'm in the three leagues. I won two of them last year. We're the fantasy football types that.

Forget that we're gonna do it, and then we decide last minute we're gonna do it. That's what we did last year. And then last year, we were like, next year, we're gonna really put some thought into this. We're going to make it very auto-draft, and you don't even have to show up. Oh, we showed up, but it was very impromptu.

Look, every group, whether you're like a business or you're your group of friends growing up, look, every group needs. the guy or the girl. Who plans things. The commissioner. The commissioner of all things.

Critical piece of anything. We don't have that. Thanks. Critical piece of any functional friend group, if you're ever going to do anything, is the planner. And this fantasy football league, the Whitaker and Hamer official fantasy football league, has no planner.

Yeah, we're looking for one. We yeah. If you're out there If you're out there and you have strong calendaring and time management skills, which we apparently lack, you can organize people and know when the season starts and when things have to happen. We're just too busy serving our community, man, and taking care of the legal needs of the people. And that's my priority, Josh.

Right. That's my priority. That's job number one. I'm sure. Yeah, making sure that the legal needs of the community are taken care of first.

Okay, so let's kind of bring this all back. We've got consults. Josh, tell us about the consults and also kind of preview what we're going to hit first coming back from the break. Yeah, yeah. So if you listen to the radio show, if you listen to Judica County, what we always do is we have free estate planning consults.

You can look us up. You can give us a call. If you listen to the radio station, we're going to give you a free estate planning consult to sit down with me, Joe, one of our estate planning attorneys, and talk to you about your estate plan. We always do that on the show. Because we talk about a lot of different areas of law.

But everybody needs an estate plan. And so we figure that's the most effective use of our. Free consult, free consult offer on the radio and um So that's kind of what we're going to keep doing. That's been working. We've been hearing from a lot of listeners.

We've been able to sit down with a lot of listeners, and I like doing that. And so we're going to keep doing that. And then I think up first. The next segment, when we come back from the break, we're going to, I gave everything titles, right? I gave all of our segments titles today.

I don't use that. Nice. I like it.

So the next segment, we're going to do most common legal mistakes that me and Joe see and how to avoid them, right? That's what we're going to talk about next segment. All right.

So grabbing a consult for estate planning, here's what you do. Call this number 919-772-7000. Again, a complimentary consult on estate planning. Everybody needs to have their affairs in order. You can get started with a complimentary consult.

Again, there's no obligation here, 919-772-7000. As the attorneys always say, they are here to help. You can also go to the website wh.lawyer. We've got more adjudica county radio coming up on the other side. Again, common legal mistakes that a lot of people make and how to avoid them.

That's next. We are back on Judica County Radio, hosted by Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, right here in the great state of North Carolina, where they practice law. They've got offices across the state: Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquevarina, Gastonia, and down on the coast at Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick. My pleasure to go back and forth with the attorneys.

If you've got a question you'd like answered on a future program, send it to us. Questions at JudicaCounty Radio.com. That's questions at judicacountyradio.com. And again, the complimentary consults this week, estate planning. You can grab one at any time.

919-772-7000. There's no charge to this. There's no obligation to this. It's a great way to kick the tires on Whittaker and Hamer. And estate planning 919-772-7000.

Josh. All right, so This segment, we talked about it. Most common legal mistakes Joe and I see and how to avoid them.

So, me and Joe sit down. We think about kind of some of our consults that we've had here recently. And some of the common mistakes we see people make. And one I've seen very recently. is people who We'll call it do-it-yourself legal forms.

So, this is do-it-yourself legal forms gone wrong. And so. Um I always preface this by saying I know people don't like to pay attorneys' fees. No one wants to pay for something they don't think they need. Myself included.

Um But I I just I had to I had to consult with someone. Actually, it wasn't even.

So, I've had to do this consult several times over the past 12 months. Where people decide they want to rent out their old house or they have a rental property and they want to rent it. And they've got a tenant. Usually, they know the tenant somehow, it's a cousin, it's a friend of a friend, and they just use a lease maybe they found online and add some stuff to it and uh. and kinda roll with it and in this tenant doesn't pay their rent.

or does something else damage the property? uh has folks in the house who are participating in criminal activity. All these things that Normally, you would evict someone for, and then they've got a bad lease.

So it makes getting them out hard. It makes. Using a security deposit the way you want. you know hard And so, Joe, I don't know what you see on these do-it-yourself legal forms, but the one that I've seen the most often recently is a bad. Residential Yeah, that's common, man.

That's something we see. And I think it's important to note if you're. If if you own real property that you're considering renting. You got to understand the state gives a lot of protections to tenants. There's a lot of built-in legal protections for tenants.

They want to take care of tenants and You know, in the absence of a well-crafted lease, you know, you could get into a situation, just like you said, Josh, where you've got. Presumably, valid reasons for evicting somebody, but you've got a shoddy lease, and it can be a whole lot more difficult and cause a whole lot of trouble for you. And again, you talk about the fact that it's a cost-benefit analysis, right? Like, you may not want to pay legal fees, you may want to go the route of the cheaper do-it-yourself option. But if you get into one of these scenarios where you're stuck and you've got to go to an attorney, anyways, I can guarantee you that you're going to be paying.

substantially more to correct that issue than you would to to just get it done right on the front end and and to make it easy for yourself. Yeah, like I said, Joe, there's a lot of statutes, federal and local, that protect a tenant. From a landlord doing something, maybe that's wrong or unethical. And when you go to evict somebody, The magistrate, it's done in small claims. That's where you start it anyway.

And the magistrate is going to ask you a bunch of questions. You're going to have to prove. Your case, right? This is why we're evicting, this is what has happened. And the only thing that protects the landlord is the lease, right?

So that's why when you go rent like an apartment from a big time. Leasing company that lease is like 89 pages long, and they make the initial a bunch of places because they know. how hard it is to evict people. And so you really have to have your ducks in a row. And you have to, you know, you gotta have records of rent paid.

If you're arguing some damage to the property, you need to have evidence of what the property looked like when you leased it out. And I see people all the time who just did not expect to run into that issue and just have not prepared for it. And they'll have like a one-page lease. Um I've seen leases that You know, that's what happens, right? If your tenant If your tenant breaks your lease, doesn't pay, you evict them in small claims.

That's kind of what you do in North Carolina. And this lease they pulled from another state had an arbitration clause, right? You don't want to have to take your tenant to arbitration. That's That's kinda useless, but that's what these folks were. we're looking at having having to do.

That's the biggest one. You know, a lot of people will do the do-it-yourself wills. And power of attorneys. And those are the things that are going to be a lot of fun. That's the one I was going to say.

I haven't seen a lot of wills that have gone south, but the POAs, that's not an uncommon scenario when we've got someone who comes in with a POA, whether it be for a real estate closing or whatever it may be, and we've got to tell folks that this is legally insufficient for North Carolina or this doesn't. cover the things that you want it to cover and you can't do the thing That you need to do in this scenario. And that's a tricky one too, man, because a lot of times with POAs, you're in a situation where you need to use it because the person you're using it for doesn't have capacity or they're not able to make those decisions. And once you get to that point, it's not like they can sign a new POA. If they lack capacity, they can't execute and delegate that authority.

So, yeah, we've seen some pretty. rough nightmare scenarios where you have folks who can't do what they need to do. And then again, you're back to the drawing board and whatever money you save by using the DIY form, you're spending four or five times that to fix the issue.

So Spend that money up front, man. That's the advice. Leases, wills, power of attorneys. I haven't really seen anybody attempt their own. Trust.

Um that would be tricky. uh depending on what state you live in and and what's going on. But uh Here at the Lawford, I'm not a big fan of do-it-yourself forms, and we usually only see them because people are trying to use them. They're coming to us, something's gone wrong, or somebody doesn't have capacity anymore, and they're coming to us saying, Oh, I can do this because here's this form. And then we look at the form, we're like, No dice.

No good, man. And I think it's important. You know, we've made this point a billion times on the show in our long and illustrious history, but. Everybody's situation is different. There's very rarely going to be a one-size-fits-all solution for you.

So. It's like dress shirts, man. It's like dress shirts. That's right, man. It's like dress shirts, which dress shirts.

I cannot, I have never had a dress shirt off the rack. I don't know if my arms are too short. I know. It's your amazing body. No, it's your body, man.

You've got a very unique and amazing body type that the. The folks who do the fabrication of those shirts just can't. They can't. It's kind of like a cross between a Weeble and a Lego. I told her the first time I had to go into a store, you know, I figured out like if you're, you know, collared shirt, If your next size is over 18 and a half, you're big and tall, right?

Once you get into 19 and bigger, you're big and tall. I don't know. I think eighteen, eighteen and a half is pretty big. It's pretty big. You would think that.

But. Once you get over 19, It's big and tall. And so when I have to go to the big and tall store to buy clothes, I'm not that tall. You look like you're wearing a tent. I can do the mat.

Yeah, and they come down to your knees. Don't give yourself some credit. You look tall today, at least. I don't know. You do since the last time.

You seat up higher today. I don't know what's going on over there. You made the comment, I looked like I was very small today. You do. It's because of your camera angle.

Yeah, I like that, though, man. I like. I like it.

Makes me feel skinny looking at myself.

Well, your head's the size of a bowling ball, but other than that. You know, I've been working. I've been doing a lot of head exercises, trying to get my head volume up, man. See if it makes me smarter. Brain.

Brain exercises. Yeah, that's what I do, man. The uh they said, all right, so this is the most common legal mistakes we've seen, how to avoid them. Number two, for me, and I've had this come up several times recently: don't ignore if you live in a subdivision that has a homeowners association, and that homeowners association threatens you with violations, sends you a violation notice. Sends you notice of a lien or collections.

You can't ignore the HOA. Yeah, that's a great point, man. And there's a lot of folks who take the approach that, like, these folks, they can't do anything to me. This is made up. It's kind of like that sovereign citizen approach to like getting pulled over.

And you roll the dice and you find out that, in fact, much like the law offers a lot of protections to tenants, HOAs get a whole lot of authority, man. And they can literally come and foreclose on your property. And that blows people's minds a lot of times, right? Because, you know, you don't sign, you're not signing any agreement necessarily directly with this HOA. You're not signing a contract.

But the way that things work, man, if they've got valid restrictions on your property and they're recorded and it's public notice, if they're properly formed and they do things the right way, they can come after you. And we've seen it. We've seen people get foreclosed over. $200 worth of HOA dues just because they thought, what are you going to do? I've seen folks who had a violation, and this is an HOA that I think the annual dues were like $100 a year.

And they got a violation. They ignored it. And they ended up with $14,000 worth of fines. And they had to pay that.

So you go from paying less than you'd pay in years of home ownership to having to pay this incredibly high fine. And there was a foreclosure action. Like, this is a real thing that can happen. And every year it seems like we're getting some new statutes to kind of protect you from what had been. Kind of like unchecked HOA Homeowners Association power.

But yeah, man, you can't throw those in the trash, can't shred them, they can't go in your burn barrel. You need to address it. You know, I lived in an HOA. I don't live in an HOA anymore, neighborhood with an HOA anymore, but I used to. And I used to get the grass notices, right?

You know, if you want your grass, if you miss a weekend because it rains, you get the lawn notices. And then one time I got like a bush notice because they wanted me to trim my bushes, and it drove me nuts.

Well, I didn't ignore it as much as I hated it. You know, I did whatever. No one likes it. No one likes to get that letter. And you can hate it all you want, but I think you made a great point.

And this just goes for most legal documents that are sent to you. Shredding those does not make them go away. It does not magically take care of the issue for you. Yeah, we all we all got problems we gotta deal with and uh You know, that stuff's not going away. You know, collections, you know, if somebody files a lawsuit against you, you got a certain amount of time to answer.

If your HOA threatens a lien, you don't want to see a lien. But anyway, most common legal mistakes we see in how to avoid them, not ignoring. Important legal documents that are usually sent to you by certified mail. Yep. Yep.

Judica County Radio hosted by Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Managing Partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. Again, complimentary consult in and around estate planning. You can call and grab one 919-772-7000. That's 919-772-7000.

You can also head to the website wh.lawyer. Sign up there as well. That's wh.lawyer. We're back with more at Judica County Radio right after this. Judica County Radio, your host, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker-Hamer Law Firm.

They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. They've placed offices convenient for you in Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fucuv Arena, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick. Pleasure to go back and forth with the attorneys on different topics. We also give you an opportunity for a complimentary consult, leave in the checkbook at home.

When it comes to estate planning, you need to have a plan. And as the guys say almost every single week, everybody's different. You need to have a customized estate plan. 919-772-7000. Grab one of those consults right now.

Again, no cost, no obligation. 919-772-7000 or go to the website, wh.lawyer. Josh. The.

Alright, so we're going to a news segment now. I've titled, you know what? You know what I was thinking about the other day? I thought we had a new theme song. Didn't we do a new theme song?

Probably. We may have, man. We've done a lot of theme songs and uh They're out there somewhere. We could find them if we needed to. We could bring it back.

I feel like we need a theme song for every segment. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. But you get an intro and an outro.

I feel like we're barely coming up with these segments as it is, man.

So you're really, you're really putting a burden on us. Again, I'm out here serving the legal needs of the community, man. That is, again, that's always going to be my priority.

Well, it's like I was watching SummerSlam this weekend, and it's like wrestling, right? You come in with a theme, and then you win. Walkout music. Yeah, I got it. You go out to your theme.

Yeah. Yeah, you do. That is very true, man. And this podcast is very much like wrestling. Very we we dress up in our singlets Yeah, I was going to say, let's not show up in tights.

Let's not do that. Oh, I've got them on. That's why only my head is visible on the camera.

Alright, so this segment, this theme song lists. segment is entitled Uh What happens when you don't have a plan? And we were kind of getting into We were kind of getting into that. Um, in the last segment, we were talking about not ignoring certified mail, and so the top one here I have is don't. One of the things that happens when you don't have a plan is you're not handling disputes.

Proactively. A lot of these, a lot of this, maybe if I ignore it, it'll just go away. I mean, that might work. Every now and again. A low percentage chance of the ignore and it goes away, man.

I've used that approach, and I could say. Most of the time. It does not work out that way. But when it does, man, that's a great feeling. We really like to get people into the office if you do have a legal dispute brewing.

Or you think it's going to be litigation, or you think you might owe some money, or you were just in a car accident. We like a car accident or something. We like to talk to you. And help you formulate that plan. Because me and Joe, one of the things that we have.

is a lot of experience helping people deal with some of the worst parts of their life, right? A wealth of experience. That's how I'd phrase it.

So a lot of people come in with problems that individually they haven't seen those problems before. A lot of people just don't know what the legal Uh The legal effects are going to be, and they don't know that they have options. And a lot of time, once you sit down with an attorney, Who's seen a thing or two? That attorney can help you be like, hey, you've got option one, two, or three. This is what they look like.

This is something you could try. This is your total exposure. A lot of people don't know what they could stand to lose. And I think just knowing that. And not being afraid.

And that's one of the things I tried to do with people because we meet with people who have bad things going on. We meet with people who have bad situations, and they're going to have to make some tough decisions, and it's tough. Um but a lot of people add to that Fear of the unknown, not knowing what they can and can't do, not knowing what their liability is. And I think. Just getting those basic questions answered can really help you.

Yeah, proactively handling Disputes. If you don't have a plan, those things seem to spiral relatively quickly. Yeah, and along those same lines, you know, we talk about estate planning a lot, and I think this. not having a plan really It's really applicable to that estate planning situation. If you pass away with no estate plan, if you die what we call intestate.

Then You know, the burden that you're leaving on your loved ones that you're leaving behind, I mean, it's increased exponentially. And that's not to say that you're going to have the most complicated and complex estate, but I can tell you from. experience sitting down with folks all the time. You know, there's there's a drastic difference between the person who comes in With, you know, after the death of a loved one with a well-crafted estate plan, everything ironed out, no confusion versus the person who comes in and they're just picking up the pieces and they're trying to make sense of everything and they're having to go through the probate process completely with no guidance. He it's It's a big difference, man.

It's a very big difference. Yeah, and you see people, we see clients come in, and their spouse, their partner has died, like Joe said, intestate.

So there's not an estate plan. Maybe they died very young and they thought they'd have more time. Maybe they had an old estate plan that's not been updated. But we see people coming all the time, you know, accidentally disinheriting stepchildren who were never adopted that they wanted to provide for. Um Yeah.

We have folks who end up leaving things to aunts and uncles they would rather not have left anything to. If you don't have a plan, Uh If you don't have a plan, you don't have a plan, and it's up to who you leave behind to kind of figure it out and hope for the best, and especially if people depend on you. income-wise, you know, you don't want them to just not have any plan at all if you're if you're gone. And as much as it's up to the the folks you leave behind, I mean, that's partially true. But more than anything, it's up.

That's you're dealing with state statutes that dictate How things pass.

So, in a lot of ways, it's out of your hand, it's out of everyone's hands. And it's going to be, you know, the statutes are going to dictate. What happens in the situation where you're truly intestate and you've got nothing in place? And, you know, we've talked about this whole cost-benefit analysis and. What better cost?

Is there than zero dollars? Completely free to come in and sit down and talk about these things. And again, maybe your situation is buttoned up tight and you don't have to make any changes, but. Highly encourage anybody who's listening who hasn't done it, get over that. That analysis paralysis that takes place, and you just bite the bullet and get it done.

And it's the type of thing where, again, you can come in, sit down. Figure out what you need to do and get a good estate plan in place so that the folks that you really love and care about don't have to go through that gauntlet when they're already dealing with. Hopefully, they love you a lot. Hopefully, they think highly of you and they're real sad when you go. But you don't want to burden them any more than you have to.

And that's an easy fix. The other bullet point I had in this section was. Failing to title property. Correctly, right?

So if you've if you own real property, You know, if you're married. You know, make sure your spouse is on there and that you own it as tenants by the entirety. If you're leasing it out, Make sure it's in an LLC or something that'll protect you from liability if your tenant's injured. Or a guest of a tenant's injured on your property. We've seen that before where people left it in their personal names and then they got sued.

By a tenant, and if it's in your personal name, then all your personal assets are kind of on the line. Um And so Failing to title property correctly. You need to plan for that. That's another kind of a state planning adjacent issue. And you touched on it, but I think the most common way we see that manifest is when you've got folks who have.

Bought property and they own property in their sole name, then they get married. Um, and That's a situation where if you want your spouse to be able to inherit that property, if something happens to you in the easiest, most streamlined way, that's a situation where you're going to need to redeed the property to the two of you and have some kind of joint tenancy. And, um, Yeah, the the L O the example of the Individually owned rental property. Anybody who's listening to this that owns rental property in their individual name, I tell folks all the time. Perfect scenario, nothing ever goes wrong.

You never have an issue with that. You never have any problems, but it's so easy and cost-effective to. To create an LLC, indeed that property into an LLC, and shield yourself from personal liability. And as much as you may not anticipate or may not think that's going to happen to you, we see it happen every day. It's not uncommon.

that that things happen. And you can get stuck in a really rough situation. That was super easy to correct. Yeah, you know, I think it is true, you know, as society, as we, as we, as we kind of. I think society has has definitely gotten more litigious, you know.

Since I've been alive, right? I'm I'm not that old, I don't think, but uh People will not hesitate to sue you, and especially a tenant. Um If something goes wrong. And so that's an easy one. That's a no-brainer.

You go to an attorney. That problem's fixed in a couple of minutes, and without a lot of attorneys' fees. Um That's about all I had in this segment, Morgan.

So we got one more segment to go. The next segment, we're going to. It's gonna I titled it, Understanding Your Rights as a Property Owner. And so there's gonna be some issues with real property that we see come up. And just understanding the terminology and knowing what's going on, all right.

Good teas. And we want to remind you: there are complimentary consults available on estate planning with Whitaker and Hamer. Simply call 919-772-7000. That's 919-7727000. Just say, I want a complimentary consult on estate planning, they'll sign you up for that.

Again, there's no obligation to become a client. 919-7727000 here to help. You can also go to the website wh.lawyer. We've got more at Judith County Radio coming up next. Judica County Radio, you're tuned to it.

Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer are your hosts, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. Offices located for you conveniently in Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuclade Verina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. Complimentary consults on estate planning. You can call and grab one right now: 919-772-7000. That's no charge to it.

There's no obligation to it. See if you're on track. 919-772-7000. You can also go to the website, wh.lawyer. Understanding your rights as a property owner is where we're going next.

Yeah, and and You know, we've talked about some of these before, but when you buy a house, Um you own the real property. All right, that's what we say. You have it's deeded into your name, you, you, and your spouse, however, you want to hold title, you own the real property. But you own the real property subject to. Or can own it subject to a couple of different things, and one of them that comes up.

All the time. are easements. And we've talked about easements before.

Well, I definitely meet with a lot of people who don't have a good working like they knew that easement existed, but I don't know that they really knew what it was or what it entailed. And we we get litigation all the time over people's rights. In easements, and there's all different kinds. But Joe, you I know you see that too. I see it, man.

I see it. I feel like we have very similar experiences with seeing these things. But yeah, you touched on it, man. There's a lot of different kinds of easements. The most common easements we see, you see a lot of utility easements, right?

That's something that, you know, essentially any platitude subdivision, there's going to be utility easements that are going to give a narrow easement area where, you know, lines can be installed. And you got to understand, you own the real property, right? Like, you're going to own your lot, but there's going to be a portion of your lot that that easement touches. And the utility companies that have a valid easement, they're going to have limited rights to come in and potentially access that area to make repairs, do installation. And.

You know, there's There's parameters within that easement that restrict what they can do, but they're within their rights. To do what they can do. And there's nothing you can do about it. Like, it's not a thing. Regardless of the fact that you own the land, you may own, you know, you're going to own the land.

Outright, but they can still come in and do what they need to do. That's the entire purpose of the easement. And uh That's something uh that It's just a reality of property ownership. You know, there's that meme. It's not really a meme, but there's that thing online, you know, where they show a picture, somebody looking at the blinds or doing something.

Anytime anybody just turns around in your driveway, right?

Some strange person, because I do that too. I walk outside, I like look around, you know, dogs start barking. But, you know, there's, there's, there's people, the utility companies can come dig. Right, then come survey. I get that call a lot.

Hey man, somebody's out here surveying, and I'm like, who is it? And he goes, Duke, Duke Energy. I was like, well, they could probably do that, you know, if it was your. Um so yeah, utility easements are one of them, so they have the right. They have the right to enter upon your property, install things.

You know, they have to put everything back. You know, they have to they can't leave ditches out there and stuff like that, but uh The other bit the one that gets litigated the most. Is a Easements for ingress and egress, right?

So, easements that you use or someone uses over your property to access their property, like driveways, private roads. Those seem to cause the most. Confusion, right? Because if me and Joe own property and I'm behind him, And I need to I need to drive over his property to get to the main road. Joe might give me an easement if he's nice to me.

He'd say, All right, Josh, well, this fifteen feet on the most western side, you can use that to access the road, and we put it in writing and we record it down at the register of deeds office, and it runs with the land. And me and Joe might get along just fine. But then let's say Joe sells his property to somebody who doesn't like me. And they think they can revoke that easement or block that easement or make it hard on me, and they can't. Um, you know, we me and Joe memorialized our agreement and recorded it, and it's part of the land.

People 100 years down the road will be able to use that easement. And we see a lot of people kind of run into that problem. The new neighbor moved in and put up a gate and told me I had to pay him for a For an easement, I love suing those people. Those are the best people to sue. The ones who just think they can block an easement because it's always nice to see the judge.

Just lay the SmackDown on him.

Now, what made you think you could block the season? Did you do a title search? Have you looked at this? Did you see this? Didn't the attorney tell you about this?

And But yeah, you can't block someone's if it's If it's done right, now sometimes it's not done right, that's different, right? If you don't have a If you don't have a written easement and you've just always trusted your neighbor to let you use it, you may have some other rights on the property. But there are times when you, but if you have a good, clear easement, Um You know, your land could be subject to one. Like Joe's land, that's he can't block that easement. He never built a shed there, can't put a fence there.

It's an easement that he's dedicated for me to use. It's still his property. He still pays taxes on it. Um but easements get people all kinds of confused. Um And and access in general, man, access to property is a is a huge, huge issue.

And a lot of people don't understand the significance of it. But as attorneys who handle a lot of closings, do a lot of title searches, you know, access is a paramount issue. It's one of the. the the f main things that you're looking for and it it If you've got property, we've seen folks who come to us with contracts for landlocked property that. Don't have an access easement in place, and that's not a good situation.

That's not a property that you want to purchase without figuring that out. And you're going to get into a scenario if you do that potentially where you can't do it, you can't even get on the land, period. Um And so yeah, it's very, very important and we see a ton of issues. Around just the general idea of access easements because there's a lot of these. Private roads that service multiple properties.

And another kind of subset of this issue is maintenance, right? You know, who's going to maintain this easement? Who's going to take care of this road? And so, all things that are very important to consider. And if you're doing our closing with us, it's something that we're going to talk to you about ahead of time.

But, you know, always be aware of how you're accessing your property. And if it's a private road, you need to do some due diligence on what kind of agreement is in place. What are your responsibilities going to be? Because that's a very, very common point of litigation: these situations where you've got a private road, and either there's an issue with getting that access or enforcing that access, or a dispute between everybody as to what everyone's maintenance obligation is. And that's something that's way easier to figure out on the front end than it is on the back end.

Yeah, you know, we talked about homeowners' associations too, and and homeowners' associations. One of the things your closing attorney does is checks in with the HOA to make sure your sellers pay dues. Up to date, and there's no fawns, and there's no existing violations that we need to know about because that stuff. You talk about running with the land, that runs with the land, right?

So if you don't figure that out at closing, That's your problem now, right? Your seller owes $14,000 in HOA dues, that doesn't get paid at closing.

Well, that's your problem now because that runs with the land.

So, you know, buying real property comes with all these different. Things that a good closing attorney is supposed to figure out, you know, assuming people tell your closing attorney what they're supposed to tell them, but. You know, encroachments is one that comes up a lot too. And Joe, you see that. There's all kinds of encroachments.

A lot of times people are buying property. We always recommend you get a survey. Survey can show a lot of different things: fence encroachments, shed encroachments, driveway encroachments. Encroachments. Yeah, encroachments are common, and that's a thing we do see.

And, you know, An encroachment may not be fatal to your purchase, right? Like, there's that's not to say that if there's an encroachment, that that's going to kill everything dead and it can't be dealt with. But, but I think the most important thing that you touched on, Josh, is the fact that. Virtually every real property issue runs with the land.

So if your seller has an issue, And you purchase that property without resolving it, that is going to become your issue. And you're going to have to deal with it whether you like it or not.

So, in the case of an encroachment, You know, whether you have that encroachment corrected or you do what we call an encroachment agreement, where you sign an agreement with the neighboring landowner that's involved in the encroachment, you want to have something done. Because you don't want to get into a scenario where you're coming in. As having to deal with that yourself, you want the seller to have to handle that for you ahead of time, and they're obligated to do that.

So, yeah, just. You don't want to inherit these issues from other folks. I feel like we've done an uncommonly good job of staying on point this whole show. I hate it. We've got.

I hate it. Those are the worst ones. Yeah. No, I kind of agree with you. We have, you know, we've had a plan.

And we've stuck to that plan. The uh I feel like normally we'd get waylaid more. I've been sitting here just thinking about SummerSlam because I watched SummerSlam and I haven't talked about it with anybody. Did you enjoy it?

Okay, did you watch it? Nah, I caught the I caught some highlights. I'm aware of what what took place, but uh No, man, I did not catch it.

So you'll have to give me your review when we get out the area. Play by play on men in tights. Judica County Radio, your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, not wearing tights, but they are managing partners. Whitaker and Hamer law firm and practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina. Again, offices are.

Basically, everywhere for your convenience: Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuque Verina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. And the complimentary consult on estate planning is available. All you got to do is call 919-772-7000. Complimentary means no charge, it also means no obligation. You're not required to become a client.

919-772-7000. You can also visit the website wh.lawyer. We're back to wrap up another edition of Judica County Radio right after this. We're back on Judica County Radio, hosted by Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker-Hamer Law Firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. Offices in Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay Farina, Castonia, and in Moorhead City.

I'm Morgan Patrick. My pleasure to be on with the attorneys. Again, complimentary consults on estate planning. Call 919-772-7000. Ask for one of those.

Again, no charge, no obligation. See if you're on track with your estate planning. 919-772-7000 or go to wh.lawyer. Short segment, guys. Let's wrap it up.

Yeah, you know, Morgan, I figured it'd be good to tell people: you know, we talk about the free consults for estate planning a lot. You know, the firm has a lot of different practice areas. You can come meet with us about any of those practice areas. It may not be free. We talk about how attorneys get paid from time to time.

And so sometimes we'll do free consults on things. And sometimes we charge for consults.

Sometimes we charge hourly. Which you can call the 919-772-7000. That's our statewide number that we've had for a lot of years. And Our intake folks will get you set up with an attorney who can help you. And if it's not something we can help you with, we're definitely good at suggesting maybe some other attorneys who have those practice areas.

You know, we talk on the show, one of the things we don't handle is bankruptcy. We don't handle bankruptcy at the firm. But we work with a lot of different bankruptcy attorneys who we like and we can recommend and kind of refer out. And I think last week we talked about rates. Interest rates, mortgage rates are still fairly high.

I think they're low for 2025, but they're still high. But we've seen a lot of people refinance. And we do a lot of refinance closings. And so, if that's something we can help you with, you know, our goal really is to be. the attorney that you turn to.

the law firm that you turn to Uh when something comes up. And most of the times, I think we can be pretty helpful to you, and if for some reason we can't handle it or we don't handle it. You know, we're pretty good at getting you where you need to go. But we do that. I've had people that have been their attorney for.

22 years. And help them out on different things as they've come up. And that's. I know Joe does the same thing, but that's what we try to do. We try to be as helpful as we can.

Serving the legal needs of the community, man. Yeah, that's what we're here for. And that was a great pitch, man. I want to get in some legal trouble and reach out and use you, man. That was a real.

And we hope, you know, there's good reasons to hire an attorney, right? And there's bad reasons when you have to hire an attorney.

So, you know, everybody needs an attorney at some point, right? You're probably going to buy a house and need a closing attorney. You're going to. You're going to need an estate plan. There's all kinds of good reasons why you need an attorney.

Uh not just bad reasons, you know, there's the traffic tickets and uh And the HOA sent you a violation letter to your neighbors trying to sue you about an easement. There's bad things that make you have to come. visit us uh But it's not all bad. Right. Nah, there's good and bad.

But I think the important point is. We're here for both. We're here for whatever you need. We we uh That's the goal, right? To to be the law firm for Both situations.

So, hopefully, we can share some good times. And some not some bad hopefully no bad times, but if if there are some bad times, maybe come back for the good times too, right? Right. Make it as pleasant as possible in a legal way. Exactly.

That's right, Morgan. The uh Yeah, yeah.

So that's you know and we try to have fun on the show. We try to Not be super boring like we were today, maybe, and give you, you know, we try to give you information. I was riveted, man. I was gonna say, way to sell that. They've already listened.

We already had their attention.

So if I had to-line fellows, just show about nothing. If you didn't like it, jokes on you for listening. You're not going to get the next hour back. You're done. We already got your hour.

All right.

Complimentary consult on estate planning. You can call this number 919-772-7000. Again, 919-772-7000. You can also visit the website, wh.lawyer. Great resource for you.

That's wh.lawyer. Just a quick reminder: Judica County Radio is hosted by our attorneys, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners. Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're practicing attorneys here in our great state of North Carolina. And they have placed offices for your convenience: Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay Verina, Gastonia, and down in Moorhead City.

I'm Morgan Patrick. It's always a pleasure to jump on, sometimes play referee. I thought it was an exciting show today, Josh. Again, to get a complimentary consult, call this number. It's on estate planning.

If you've got any questions, 919-772-7000. That's 919-7722. Or visit the website wh.lawyear. Again, for Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, I'm Morgan Patrick. We'll see you on the radio next week.

But I don't know what to do. Yeah, yeah. 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 jmw at mwhlaw.lawyer.