Listener Questions in and Around Business Entities

Coming up next on the Outlaw Lawyers, we're going to get into listener questions again this week concerning businesses, again legal entities, and merging and acquisitions. Okay folks, there's a lot coming on the program today. You don't want to miss it.

Plus we'll have our regular antics. That's all coming up next on the Outlaw Lawyer. Managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm.

Offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and now in Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Each and every week it's always about the law. We'll get into listener questions today.

Looking forward to that. I want to remind you, look, if you're facing a legal situation, you've got questions, you can always get answers from Whitaker and Hamer by calling 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information briefly, what the call is about, and the lawyer with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch with you to talk about it. Also, you can email your questions to the show questions at the outlawlawyer.com. Josh, take it away. You know, Morgan, our favorite shows are always listener question shows, and we've done a couple in a row. Joseph, we've done a lot in a row, man.

That's because that's because they're our favorite. We're going to do listener questions on a couple of different topics. We're talking about business formation. We're going to talk about, I know a lot of folks who listen to this show are self-employed or they run their own businesses. So we're going to, we're going to talk about the LLCs and the corporations as a, as an entity, but we also are going to talk about some contract law. We got some listener questions about contract law, so we'll talk about that. You know, we can never just talk about, we can never just go right into the listener questions.

We never just go right into talking about the law. We got to waste some time first, get, get ready, get in the mood. So, Joe, what you got going on? I think you need to get your ears checked, man.

That was a blast that dude. Could you not hear things? I don't know, man. I just had to turn it down. I was blasting my, my brain at the, uh, I don't know. Sometimes, uh, sometimes they, I listened to the, uh, the rock music growing up, right? The rocks music, like the wrestling theme, but, uh, my kid, my kid, you asked what's going on, man. And my, my youngest boy, he's, he's getting into the wrestling man. They, they've kind of ebbed and flowed in and out of that, but he's getting into it.

I don't know how, I guess he's watching YouTube. But he's found Rikishi and Rikishi is his favorite wrestler. And so he was asking, he was like, I want his birthday was coming up. He's like, what do you want for your birthday? He's like, I want a Rikishi outfit. And you know, he wears like a man thong, basically. I don't know how we're going to do that, buddy. So he starts, he's like, I'm going to find it.

And he gets on Amazon and he's pulling up off this like launch rate for men. So you can't find a Rikishi outfit for a kid to put on. It's probably illegal. Yeah. He's like, I want to wrestle you. I want to do Rikishi's move, which is just basically his bare butt in your face.

This isn't going to work, man. Yeah. If you're, if you're listening to us, Rikishi was a wrestler in the early two thousands. Like still, he's still alive. Well, he's still alive, but I thought it would be dead.

You, you think of all those old and some of your wrestlers die, man. And he wasn't great help. He was probably what?

400 pounds? Yeah. You know, we need to, we need to do a show guys where the first thing we do is we go in and we look at each of yours, your Google searches.

Cause I, I can just picture, I can, I can picture Joe as being okay. Men's lingerie. What? It's on Amazon actually, but it wasn't men's lingerie, man. I don't know what he, I don't even know what he searched for, but he was like, dad, this is a good one.

And it was literally like sheer, it's like a sheer man thong. And I'm like, dude, that's not, that's not a good one. We're not buying that.

It's going to mess up my algorithm now. It's all I'm going to get. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Facebook and whatever's just going to send you the ads. Yeah. You can't see me cause this is a radio show, but if you could, I wasn't built, I was not built for Amazon men's lingerie. I remember a long time ago. When I was coming up, uh, the, the South side of Raleigh, two seven six Oh three. I, uh, two seven six Oh three.

You said that like you're in a game. I got a job at the old, uh, the old Hudson Belks. Uh, yeah.

Yeah. That was before they had one kind of on the side of town. So it was the carry gets back in it. It's back in the day when, if you wanted to do anything or you wanted to buy anything, you had to drive in the carry. You had to go to the carry town center, uh, which is no longer the carry town center, but I worked at worked at Belk's and they stuck me in the, uh, men's furnishings.

That's what they called it. Underwear. It was men's furnishings. I worked on commission. So you had to sell, like you were out there selling clothes, the men, they paid you like four bucks and you had a, you have to dress nice.

I mean, nicer than I normally would. I was in high school, you know, but I know when I go into Belk's man, I look for the best dressed man to sell me my clothes, but every time I go into Belk's and I'd be behind the counter where all the ties are. That's kind of where I, I got stationed, you know, and we had this whole wall of like different underwear, right?

Jockey or whatever underwear. It was in boxes, you know, but there was one stack of like, you could buy, we sold a men's thong. Nice. It was in a box.

Nice. And every now and again, someone would buy those. And that's all we talked about. Like if you ever bought men's thongs at Belk's in the early nineties, like we talked about you, like right when you left, did they, did they ask questions to you or did they just come in and was it like a get in and get out? It was like going to the video store to the adult section. You don't look anyone in the eyes.

You just throw it on the counter. They would just get it. But I knew where they were. Did you have the Muzak playing the thong song, you know, did you have that going on in Hudson Belk back in the day? The Muzak man. The Muzak, you'd have the Muzak going in the thong area, the thong song, you know, the thong section.

As soon as the pressure activated tile and they step in the thong section. Yes. I also worked at, I also worked at Arby's when I was in high school down here in Gardner and they had the Muzak box, you know, Muzak was a big business in the, in the eighties and nineties. And they had like a special box and I was back before satellite radio and they beamed via satellite. That's how you got your music. Wow.

That's pretty sweet. And it was a little box and you couldn't change the channel or anything. And you paid. It was like the whole restaurant heard that, or was it just like you guys cooking in the back?

No, it was the whole restaurant. And that's how, that's how Muzak worked is you paid for like a package and it would have like Arby's man. If we had 30 songs, I'd be surprised because it was the same song. Was it like stock music or was it like real songs?

It was real songs. Nice. Yeah. I like that. I like to get my hands on that Arby's Spotify playlist. Back in the day in Arby's, they play, I don't remember what all the songs were, but I did a lot of washing dishes. Right.

That'd be back there. And the best song they have, it's not even like a song. Like I really like, but Steven Sills has a song.

I was the one, love the one you're with. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I do know what you're talking about. I know that song. Yeah. That's the best song they had, man. And that was like, it was this last one on the playlist. Cause then it would reset. Right.

So it was like 28 out of 28. Yeah. It's love the one you're with, man. You called it. Best song, best song that played in Arby's in the nineties.

I'll go toe to toe with anybody. I'd be interested to know how many people could even name one single Arby's song. That's the kind of information that's just lost the time, man. Yeah.

You're right. And we need to chronicle that. We're learning some things today. So Josh, you were Hudson Belk and you were Arby's.

That's two. Joe, you got any interesting work-related ventures when you were younger? Yeah, man. My first job, I had a, I had an uncle, God rest his soul, man. He passed away recently.

It's a great man. And, uh, he, he was a part owner of a car quest. That was my first job when I was turned 16, worked at a car quest. And all I can tell you is that everyone who came in there was depressed, every single person. Yeah. It was, it was the weirdest thing, man.

I don't know. You just like you walk in there and this was back when you could smoke in a building. And so everybody, every employee smoked constantly all day chain smoke. Uh, and it was just a, I don't know, man. I learned a lot about life.

Well, you did, you don't strike me as a 16 year old who would have known a lot about cars. I knew nothing, nothing at all. And people would come in, they'd ask me and I just blank. I just have to blank stare them, but they had a computer. I knew a lot about computers, right? I was a nerd, so I could at least do that. And, uh, so I could, I got to the point where I could look stuff up, but they'd, if they'd asked me like a nuanced question, I had nothing for them, man.

I disappoint them every single time, but, uh, I knew how to recycle batteries. I tell you that much. Oh yeah. I bet you did a lot of that. Yeah.

Yeah. And I delivered to places. Everybody was real grumpy in the, uh, in the industry, man. You know, when I first, uh, when I first got my, when I first got licensed to be an attorney, I joined the bar, you know, Johnston County still, when you went to courtrooms, they still had ashtrays. You could still smoke and people smoke. We didn't bring ashtrays back, but just in case.

And in the Wake County courthouse, you weren't supposed to smoke, but there was like a back room that all the attorneys went in. There's always like 29 guys, like packed in there smoking. Man. You, I don't know if you have any like smoking nostalgia, like where you miss it.

I don't really miss it, but it's, it's weird because it long ago was a thing. Yeah. Everybody's smoking section, man.

You remember the McDonald's ashtrays, like little flimsy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Of course. And there used to be, my dad had a big Bonneville and I had ashtrays for every seat. My mom was a smoker. Um, she quit. Thank goodness. She was a smoker for a long time and she in her car, I don't know if she didn't have an ashtray.

I don't know why, but she would, uh, ash into a Sunkist can. I think you've told the story on that. And I, and I, and I took a, I took a, took a drink out of that and that's why I've hated cigarettes ever since then, man hated them. But, uh, we have not heard that story on the show. I think I might have Joseph has told that story.

I don't have a lot of traumatic memories. That's one of them. There's that one. And there's the getting lost at Carolina pottery store. That's another one.

That's the one for another day, brother. There is no worse store to be in. It was the whole complex, man.

It wasn't, it was the outlets. It wasn't just Carolina pottery. This is the one down in South Carolina, down in South Carolina. This is the one down in Smithfield, man. This place is a death trap for a child who can't find their mother. If you're, if you're a kid going to Carolina pottery is about, it's like mind numbingly boring. The only. Oh yeah.

There's nothing there for you. What are the, there used to be a store in your honor where they sold, uh, like sewing supplies and that's the only store that's more boring. You sure you didn't conjure that up in a nightmare? Linens and things, maybe linens and things now. No, I think, I think at least linens and things has the end things.

He's talking about pure. Down here. Down here my way. It was right beside Kmart. If you went to Kmart, they had He-Man, they had Transformed. Oh yeah, they had cool stuff.

But we wouldn't go there. Kmart was sweet. So before the end of the show, I'm going to remember what that store is called. It is the most boring store. Is it like a national chain or was it just like the sewing room? No, that's not it.

So delicious. That's the name of the spot. So I don't want to go there. I wouldn't remember the name of the store. Terrible, terrible.

So boring. Are they still around? I don't think so.

I hope not, man, because you're going to hurt their feelings. But anyway, it wasn't for you, right? Well, we didn't disappoint. We usually come out of the box with some usually pretty interesting or unusual stuff. And we did it today.

So that's always good stuff. I mean, we found out where you guys worked when you were kids. And we're going to get into some business law coming up on the other side. The Outlaw Liars, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Managing Partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. They're your hosts. They're practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina.

They have offices conveniently located for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. And again, we'll hit the legalese on the other side. We got listener questions and it's going to be business related to start. That's all coming up next. Now, if you have a legal situation you are facing, you can always call the firm.

Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. If you got any questions, call the firm eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six and leave your contact information briefly. What the calls about an attorney will be in touch. You can always email your questions to this show and we'll answer them on a future broadcast. Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com.

We're back right after this. Welcome back into the outlaw lawyers, your hosts. Well, the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. Offices popping up all over the place.

Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. And each and every week, it's always legal topics. And this week we're getting into listener questions.

It's going to be business related. So excited about that. We are out of the gates. We're off and running. Josh, where are we going first?

We're going to actually talk about the law and do a listener question. But before we do that, I remember the name of the store. I tried to Google it.

It didn't come up. And then it came to me. Peace goods, peace goods. That was the name. That's all they had was so and stuff. So one stuff. Fabric reams of fabric and it was just and your mom would make you go there. Yeah.

And yeah. Scarred for life. Scarred for life. I Googled it and then it didn't come up. I Googled something real specific thing and I get lucky. I Googled that sewing store that was beside Kmart. Raleigh took one of my kids there, man.

They like bite me or something. But, you know, the website I hate more than any other website. I hate Yelp. But yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's bad.

Yelp came up and it's the best 10 fabric stores in Raleigh. And it's one of them? No, no. I just think that's a terrible list. Like if I was a kid, that's like the it's like a horror movie.

There's a lady sitting in her rocking chair at home right now. And that's like that lady's gift. I'm just talking about from like a kid's perspective.

Her heart's pumping, man. Here in that list. If I was like 10 year old Josh and I came through and we didn't have the Internet back then. Well, I'd be miserable.

Yeah. You didn't have the Internet. You couldn't look at a phone or a device. You couldn't. You had to. You'd have to sit through and suffer through the sewing goods.

But if I was your mom, so I'm back in the day. I don't know, man. She won't even make you like a hat or anything cool. I don't know. A toboggan? Stuff, man. Stuff.

All right. Listener question. Listener question. The first listener question I have kind of revolves around taxes. And so you should know that me and Joseph, while we're attorneys, we are not CPAs. We're not licensed to give any kind of tax advice.

That's not what we do. But in our role, when we're we're talking to somebody about business law, how you're going to be taxed comes up. So general taxation topics will come up, even though we're not talking to you about deductions or what you're going to owe or what you have to file. We do have to talk about tax structure. You know how you know.

And so Joe just came just came to my mind. There's a there's a case that's being heard before the U.S. Supreme Court. And I'll have to pull up the name, but it's basically talking about taxing unrealized gains of U.S. corporations that are holding the money overseas. And so that's the basis of the lawsuit, which is not like I just walked so in store. So I'm not I'm not going into details.

The case is very interesting because it's it talks about how corporations get taxed. But what I want to talk about is when you form. Right. So when you decide you want to form a corporation or an LLC, it's usually because you're starting a business. Right. You have something that you're you're getting started. I always tell people, you know, creating an LLC, creating a corporations like creating a person.

Right. You're creating a thing. They're bringing a thing into an existence that's going to have a purpose. A stated purpose is going to have a goal that can have money.

It can have assets. And so I always treat like I treat these like a fully separate person that you're creating to undertake this business opportunity or business venture. But one of the things we have to talk about, Joe, is is how are you going to be taxed? Yeah.

Yeah. I can say two things about taxes, man. OK, we don't make a lot of definitive statements, but I'll tell you two things.

One, I hate them. I understand them, but I don't like paying them. And two, I don't think that there should be any taxation without representation.

I can say that I can say that with full confidence. So when you when you're going to organize, when you organize an entity, you have to decide how you want to be taxed. And most people, small to medium sized businesses, I would say.

And then, Joe, this might be what you see, too. They like to be taxed. It's called flow through taxation.

Right. So you're so your business comes out, does really good, makes a million dollars. You gross, you gross a million dollars. You got half a million in expenses. You got payroll. You got rent. You got all kinds of expenses. So you got your half a million in expenses. So then you got a half million net gain. And so Josh and Joe LLC is a great company. It's not going to pay any taxes at the corporate level, at the entity level, at the at the company level, even though the company has netted five hundred, half a million dollars, that gets split between me and Joe. Right. So I get 250 that I have to pay taxes on on my personal tax return.

And Joe does the same. So we pay taxes on it, but you don't pay taxes on it at the corporate level. You can elect to do that, which sounds kind of crazy in this current example.

But there are reasons as you become larger and larger where you might want to be taxed at the corporate level. But I bring this up because I had someone talking to me the other day and they were mad. Somebody didn't pay to I don't know if it was Amazon or Apple, but they were mad. Like, you know, this company, this corporation made billions.

They didn't pay any taxes. And I was like, well, they're not supposed to write. That's how they're that's how they're set up. So if you ever hear somebody on the media and this is kind of this the Supreme Court case that I mentioned, it's kind of bringing this back up. I hear folks in the media talk about it, report on it who aren't very knowledgeable.

And they bring that point up again. You know, so-and-so made 30 billion dollars and they didn't pay anything in tax. Well, they're not. That's how the tax code works.

That's okay. Be mad at the tax code, man. Right.

You know, it's designed that way. Somebody's paying tax. Somebody's getting taxed. Exactly.

That's the point I was going to make. Somebody is paying the tax. It just may not be the entity. Or it may be like you said, you've got the pass through. You've got, you know, partnerships, sole proprietorships, an S Corp, LLC.

Generally, those are all going to be passed through, like you said. But somebody, be it the ultimate owner who's who's taking the profit or the company itself, somebody's paying that tax. Yeah. And, you know, I feel like when people say these things, they say it to get people fired up. Yeah.

Or they don't understand. And but be a shareholders, you know, that the income is going back as a dividend to shareholders or an LLC. The owners are called members.

You know, so in Josh and Joe LLC, me and Joe would be the two owners, the two members. And we're going to be paying taxes on anything that was a profit. And we'll try to deduct whatever business expenses are legal to deduct.

You take advantage of anything in the tax code that you can do. But in the end of the day, whatever your net is, whatever your profit is, somebody's paying taxes on it. But by design, a lot of times it's not the entity. And that blows people's minds sometimes.

If you're not a lawyer, you're not dealing with business formation or you don't have to deal with it in your day to day life. It does get the people fired up, man. There's the there's people out there getting fired up. I kind of like that, though, man.

I like people getting fired up. Something, something entertaining about it. But but I see that a lot. That's one thing, you know, if you if you see someone talking about there's always questions you should ask or at least things that you think about.

It's it's it's I don't know. It's just something that bothers me. Yeah. Yeah. It grinds my gears.

Yeah. Taxes grind my gears. And again, I get it. I get it. I pay my taxes. You made that point. I promise we pay our taxes.

We are paying taxes. But it hurts, man. Joseph, you. So you grew up and you grew up in Clayton. You're from Clayton. You grew up in Clayton.

Yes. Did you ever have a Kmart? Not in Clayton. No, no, we never had a Kmart. It was a long time before we got to Wal-Mart.

We had a I tell you, we did have we had a video express, but you didn't have one of those. Now, see my T-shirt. This is a video express T-shirt, actually. Where'd you get that from?

I don't know. Some guy. But shout out to Dan Barber. Barber Shop Creative Services. They made these shirts. They made a bunch of vintage business shirts. Oh, that's a cool idea.

He's a good dude, man. This is a really cool shirt. So. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at it. I thought it was a Miami Vice shirt.

I doubt he's listening, but if he is. I thought it was a Miami Vice shirt. No, I mean, it's video express. Video express had this dude, Gary.

Shout out to Gary. My my mom had my mom ran a daycare and owned it. It was right beside video express. I'd walk over there, get to rent videos, got to watch a lot of videos, man. A whole lot of videos.

And that was my childhood watching a lot of movies. So. So I never said what the question was. The question that we answered was, you know, I want to start I want to start a business entity. I'm confused about taxes.

Should I should I elect to have flow through taxes? And so that's that's where the question. I'm not I'm not on my A game today. It depends. That's the answer.

The answer is it depends. We're not CPAs. You said that as well, right?

You did tell the people. I told them not to ask us for tax advice, but you should be working with a CPA. And we work a lot with CPAs when we're doing business formation, when we're doing estate planning. We talked about trust a lot a week or two ago. And anytime we're doing any of that, we're usually if you've got a you've got a CPA, you've got a tax person that you work with, you know, we work with them.

But but anyway, taxes you can pay in two different ways when you have an entity formed. Yeah, I think you're on your A game, man. I think you're killing it. I think you're killing it. The person who asked this question is probably sitting at home listening to this and like, my God, I got it. I got it.

I never thought that that question would be answered in such a thorough way. And I'm going to take my tax savings and I'm going to what's the name of Peace? Peace Goods. Peace Goods fabric nails.

So clothing for the homeless. Good stuff. Good stuff. The allies, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They are your hosts of this show, the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm.

The power behind this program. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina offices located right here in Raleigh. Also in Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Morehead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate.

We're going to take a short break when we come back on the other side. We have more listener questions. You're listening to the Outlaw lawyers. The Outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, they're your hosts. They're also the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. And Whitaker and Hamer, they're everywhere.

Offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Morehead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate and sometimes referee between Josh and Joe. We have listener questions going on today and it's all about business. So, Josh, take it away. Yeah, we started out, our first listener question was on taxation.

You know, when you're starting a business, you get to make certain elections, you get to make certain choices about how you get taxed. And so that was our first listener question. And our next listener question is going to be a little different topic, right, Joe? Yeah, way better than one. No, I'm just kidding. Yours was great.

We've already gotten 17 emails from fans from the future saying how good it was. Yeah, so this isn't really so much of a question as it is. It is a question, but we're going to have to present it as a fact pattern, right? So, say we've got a client who is a seller and they wouldn't be our client in this case because, of course, we represent the buyer, but we've got a seller and a transaction. What kind of transaction? This is a closing or real estate purchase transaction. So, this person is selling their home and they bought their home unmarried. They were not married. They were living a peaceful single life, living their dreams and they purchased this home. Then they meet someone, they fall in love and they get married after the fact.

So, they take title in their sole name. They get married, they never put their spouse on title. They fell in love and then they got married, right? Yeah, they fell in love first and then dated for 18 months and then they got married.

They were very much in love, very much in love. Anyways, not in love enough to put the spouse, the husband on title. So, husband never goes on title, always owned in the sole name and then they fall out of love. It's like so many couples tragically do, Josh. They fall out of love.

They don't like the same TV shows. The man watches the Netflix show without his wife and it all falls apart and they hate each other. They start screaming and they decide that they're going to get separated, not divorced. Eventually, they'll get divorced, but they're going to get separated. So, they get separated. However, they don't sign any formal separation agreement.

They haven't gotten to that point yet and they kind of fall out of touch with one another. This lady who owns this house in her sole name lists her house for sale, get to the point where closing is upon us or prior to closing because this is an issue you discover when the title search is done. This lady is very shocked to find out that her husband has a marital interest in this property, even though he was never on title and that we will have to have him sign something at closing to be recorded to take care of that marital interest. The question would be, if I bought a house while unmarried, then got married and then got separated, does my spouse have to sign the deed? And the answer to that question is yes.

It's yes in the absence of something else. Yeah, that shocks people a lot of times, especially if they're not from here. It's different in different states. But in North Carolina, when me and Joe start talking about real property law, which we do often it seems. It's such a banger of a topic, man. Everybody's dealing with real property.

Everybody. We're standing on a real property. Look at the bottom of your feet. You're standing on real property. As you speak. It's everywhere.

Yeah. So in North Carolina, there's two things. You're single or you're married. Separated is not a legal status in North Carolina.

It doesn't mean anything. If you're separated, you're married to us for the purposes of a title search. And we talk about the fact that you need something else to keep your estranged spouse in this scenario from having to sign.

And that something else is you need something that is going to memorialize the fact that you are what we call a free trader, meaning that you have the ability to separately own property. And this, it needs to be something that is on record formally. That's the sticking point. Because in this theoretical scenario, we're dealing with a person, this person actually presented a separation agreement to us. And it was, they had lost the signature pages. So they didn't have the signature pages. They got the whole agreement. They got a notary page, no signature pages.

And so that's worth it. We can't do anything with it because you have to be in this scenario, you've got to be able to put something on record. And that is not something that you can record. So we are in a situation where you're going to have to reach out to somebody that you've had a screaming match with over a Netflix show, apparently. And you have to get that person to come in and sign a deed so you can sell your home and get paid for it. And I can tell you from experience, anytime an estranged spouse who you've probably said goodness knows what to at this point, because you thought you were never going to have to deal with this person again. Anytime they find out you're selling a house and there's money coming and that they've got a sign, that is never a good combination. And they always, they're usually not going to do you a solid and sign it, right?

No, it's not their thing to do you a solid and sign it. But we had one one time where someone had been separated for like, it was 20 plus years, like they had been separated. They even know that that person was alive or dead. And they just know what neither one of them had ever gotten divorced. So you know, in North Carolina right now, the way it is, you got to be separate for a year. But once you are, then any person can file for a divorce. You don't have to, or you got to get people served.

You got, you do have to kind of locate people. But she was able to, she just, this person just got divorced. I was like, you could just get divorced. And she's like, I'll get divorced. Man, I had a girlfriend in 10th grade, and I just stopped talking to her.

I think we're still dating technically, right along those same lines. But it happens, man. I've seen it more than once where you have someone, and I've seen it. I've seen it in the situation where you have two people on title, you know, so both parties are on title, and then they separate, they divorce, but they never take care of that. And then one of them vanishes off the face of the earth. They're not dead. You know, they're still alive, but you can't find them. And that's a nightmare, man.

It's not a fun scenario to deal with. I think we understand, you know, there was a time where you just, you know, you may, you know, if you're lucky, right? You married your high school sweetheart. You just started a life.

I think as, as we get further away from like the fifties and the sixties and people are getting married later in life when they already have assets, I got married. I didn't know nothing. I had nothing to protect. There was no reason to get a prenup.

I didn't own anything. Uh, but a lot of people are getting rich, man, but, but you got those yachts people, people have assets now and, and getting married, you know, it's the biggest legal decision most people ever make with maybe the least amount of consideration. You know, if you were going to do anything else, if you're going to take on them, like me and Joe are law partners, and I thought long and hard, right. Me and Joe thought long and hard about being law partners is not something we entered into haphazardly. It worked out. We had a lot of chemistry. But, but you go into business with somebody, you buy a house with somebody, you buy a, I don't know, car with somebody, you know, any, any guys that you would really think it over, uh, buy a PlayStation together, right?

You think you put a lot of thought into it because there's money on the line. And, uh, a lot of people maybe get married. I would say, get married on a whim. Man, I hope, I hope that you can afford to buy your own PlayStation.

If you've got, if you've got a form of conglomerate to buy a PlayStation. I was trying to think about situations before I got married. So like me and a roommate, we went in on a PlayStation. But what your, I understand what your, your point is like, yeah, man, there's people that get married on a whim, but you're signing up for a lot, you know, especially in the state of North Carolina. You are, uh, you're locked in and that spouse is locked in.

And if you come into a lot of things, if you're like you and you come into 18 yachts, um, six mansions. Yeah, it's going to be, you know, your, your spouse is gonna, you're gonna have some division to do in the, in the event it goes wrong. So the marital interest in real property, and again, we're talking about real property, you know where that comes from, Joseph, have you ever had to look at it?

What the, the marital interest? Yeah. You know where it comes from?

Yeah, I do. But why don't you tell the people? I don't want to do a spoiler. In North Carolina, your spouse, if you were to, if you were to pass away and you were married and your spouse wanted to object to your will, they didn't like what they were left.

They could take a, um, a life estate in all your real property. Uh huh. Yeah. Right.

And so that doesn't. And again, that's if they're not on title, right? Like that's a situation where they are not already on title and they don't already, you know, have their own interests.

Yeah. And so that marital interest has to be conveyed away. And so if, when your spouse signs, like if I own something in my name and I, and I want to sell it, my wife is going to join me in that conveyance to our buyer. Cause she has to, cause she has a marital interest that she may not be, my wife would be, but sometimes your wife may not, your spouse may not be entitled to any money. That doesn't mean they're entitled to money necessarily, but they do have that interest. They have to release with their signature.

Yeah. You're, you're getting into a little bit more of a complex discussion when you talk about, are they entitled to money? And, uh, and, and, and the interest of time and efficiency, you know, that marital interest, if you're not on title, you marry into someone who owns property. The value of that interest is basically going to be calculated on how much that property appreciate from the time that you guys got married.

That's how it's usually going to be factored, but, um, so you could be entitled to some money. That's not what we're talking about here. Maybe she'll have to reach out to this guy to come sign this deed and it'll rekindle their love. In my theoretical, they get back together.

They fall in love. This is like a movie. Yeah. It's a, it's a movie.

It's uh, you've got mail. It's that one. I never saw that.

I didn't either, but it's the first one that came to my mind. It doesn't sound like one I'm going to, I'm going to make the time to see. That's one of those movies, you know, like I've never, I think I've said this before on there. I've never seen the Titanic and I'm confident I will go to my grave. Never having watched Titanic.

You do know how it ends. So what's the point? Yes. Yeah. Same thing with Avatar.

I'm gonna go to my grave. Haven't never seen Avatar. Hey man, that says you just hate James Cameron. You've seen aliens.

Haven't you? Have you seen Terminator 2? These are all James Cameron films. So I never watched aliens. I have seen Terminator 2.

Aliens is fantastic, man. You should watch that. Make your kids watch it. Well, I've just never, it's just never happened.

Maybe one day it'll happen. You didn't live, you didn't go to daycare by video express, clearly. I did not. I had to wait for HBO free cable weekend. My dad would take us to movies all the time too, man. I think he just didn't want to have to hear us.

So he'd take us to the movies all the time. And anyways. The Outlaw Liars, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They are the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm.

Again, the power behind this program. They have offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia and Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Today we're doing listener questions all in the business realm when it comes to the legalese.

We'll talk more about it when we come back. The Outlaw Liars, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. Managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

They have offices located conveniently in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia and Moorhead City. If you are facing a legal situation, if you've got questions, you can always find the answers by calling Whitaker and Hamer. 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information briefly what that call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can always email your questions to the show. Questions at theoutlawlawyer.com.

We're talking all kinds of business legal. Josh, take it away. You know, before the break, we're talking about how I want to go to my grave. I've never seen the Titanic.

You remember that when we were talking about that, Joseph? Yeah. The movie, the Titanic.

Let's clarify, because if someone just jumped on the show, they'd be like, of course, this guy's not going to go on a submarine to the Titanic. Not now. Not now.

Yeah. By my grace, I really wanted to say like, you know, Josh Whitaker, husband, father, you know, friend. And then just my hand. I never watched it. Well, you missed a classic, beautiful love story about the love of Jack and Rose. You said you didn't watch it. Oh, I've seen it, brother. I saw it in theaters.

On purpose. I saw it at the Howard. I mean, when I was young, it came out. When it came out, I looked and see when it came out. I'll tell you how old. I was not super old.

And Joe, correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't they have like, that was such a long movie. They actually had an intermission.

Ninety-seven. I mean, they had an intermission. I don't remember it.

I think they did some places. I don't remember that. It was long. This was back in the day. This was 97. So, I was an 11-year-old boy at this time. And you saw Titanic? But listen, man, I had a sister and like, I couldn't just be left at home. So, I had to go to, and I wasn't excited about it.

I wasn't pumped. But it's not, I mean, it's a quick watch, man. It's a history lesson with, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio thrown in there.

Yeah. It was the only PG-13 movie that I've ever, that I can recall still to this day that had nudity in it. And as an 11-year-old, my mind was, you want to talk about a mind blowing thing? And it was just a drawing. It was just a drawing. No, no, no, no, no. This was, this was, this was legitimate, full full.

This was, it wasn't just the drawing, Morgan. You should, you should Google that. PG-13, historically PG-13 movies that had nudity. Don't you worry my brother, I'm going to do that. During the break, during the break while I was doing my research prep, I was, came upon this video of a guy stealing a bike and there's just, just golden retriever in the garage. That's supposed to like be protected. And he just makes friends with him.

So, it's like a, it's like a ring camera video of this guy playing with a dog, having the time of his life before he steals the bike. All right, hold please. Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? Well, I'm doing this. You do that research. You do that very important sixth grade style research. Yeah, I got it.

And then, I got it. So we, we, we get, we, we get a lot of contract law questions. So we've talked about kind of business formation taxation.

We talked about how a marital interest can kind of ruin a real estate transaction. And then our contract question basically comes down to what are some things that you want to see in a contract between you and a general contractor or a contractor, right? So that's, that's the hope is that if you're engaging someone in your spending, everybody's got kind of a different level of money that they can part with, right? So, you know, a lot of times people come to do work at your house.

They have like a little, they'll give you an estimate, you know, to repair a toilet or work on your septic or put in the gas line, right? You'll have like a little estimate and they'll have some like random general legal, legal language on there and you'll sign off on it. But once you start showing out a lot of money, maybe someone's building in the house for you, building an addition for you, you know, a big job, hundreds of thousands of dollars, you're going to have a contract. You're going to have, hopefully you're going to have a contract, a written contract, not a verbal contract or a, you know, handshake doesn't really do it anymore once you get up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I mean, in theory, it's, you know, it's not that it's not legally binding, but it's just not advisable.

I would not, I would not advise. I want you to build my half million dollar house on a handshake. Hey, if you've got a firm enough handshake, brother, if I reach out and shake your hand and you just crush all of the bones in my hand, I'm like, this guy can build a house.

I feel like that would have worked in like 1958. I just give you a hard handshake and a good nod. You're like, yeah, that's a good guy. Yep. And that's it.

That's what you're supposed to do. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, so we review a lot of these things and there's a couple of things that come up a lot, you know, even a, even a good general contractor, you know, I take a different approach depending on who I'm drafting a contract for. Right. So in this scenario, I'm drafting a contract for someone who wants to, to use the surfaces services of a general contractor. I would probably take a different tact if I was representing a general contractor, but, um, you know, one thing that I think you always want in there, you know, we're, we're, again, we're talking about building an addition, building a house. You're going to want a completion date.

Yeah. I've seen some where they just don't even give you a completion date. They don't give you an estimate.

They just, you know, offer to purchase contracts like that too, that people draft themselves. And if you've got no, if you've not established any date and you know, time is not of the essence, then you're in trouble, man. It's very hard for someone to breach a contract that has no time window has no time constraints. How do you prove someone? If someone's got a contract to build you a house and there's not a date in there, at least a target, they didn't have to be firm.

It can be, but it doesn't have to be. How are you going to sue them for breach three years down the road? You're gonna have to take what a reason, you know, a judge is going to have to come in here and say, well, what would a reasonable person expect?

But you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to convince a judge that breach has taken place. If you've got this house should be done January one on January two, in theory, if the contract is drafted right, you had an argument that your contractor or builder, whoever it is, has breached a contract. So the first thing you're always going to want to contract is time of performance is what I call that. You just slam dunk that answer, man, because you said it, if you don't have a date, you know, you're getting into a situation where you're going to have to ask the court to read, you know, to come in and read those terms in and there's going to be a strong argument, especially if it's a situation that you drafted the contract. Of course, don't give you a lot of sympathy, man, if you drafted your own contract and you're an idiot, you don't include things that are needed there. You know, deposit schedule, how you're going to pay, how, you know, when final payments due, warranties, there's all kinds of things that go into a contract where there's not necessarily a default. You know, sometimes you get lucky and the law kind of reads some certain things and provide some warranties. But, you know, I read one of these the other day where the contractor didn't give a finish date. And then basically had all these reasons basically could not be held liable for any kind of delay.

It's pretty sweet. The contract's just like, yeah, I can't do it. I can't do anything wrong. And it went further and so they can't be liable for certain kinds of damages, punitive damages, things like that, things that you would want available to you. Because if you're going after punitive damages, something bad has happened, something has gone terribly wrong to the tune of fraud.

And you can't get out of that kind of thing, you know. So if they present you with a contract, it's going to be worded in their favor. And so you need to take a look at it. You need to have someone look at it. You need to mark it up.

Yeah, you're going to have to make some changes. And so that's what we've done. That's been a couple of questions that I've had in the office this week were just contract questions, you know, and we help folks. We had a couple of folks who are purchasing commercial property and you get up into the millions and millions of dollars. And what a contract allows and doesn't allow becomes very, very important. Yes.

Well, Joe, how did your research go? Man, you'd be surprised. There's a there's not only PG-13 movies with full frontal nudity. There's PG movies with full frontal nudity.

There's rated G movies with full frontal nudity. That's not baloney. It's just one. But it's out there.

It's called the Andromeda Strain. I never watched it. Me either, obviously. It was rated G?

Rated G for. That can't be right. That's it's a list, man.

There's not a ton. The rest of them. I think a lot of these are for backside.

That's what it says. And so you expect that, right? Like I expect to see a backside and a G movie. No, no, no, no. There's only the one.

And you got a bunch of you got a bunch of PG backside. I can tell Joe had a lot of fun doing the research on this. He's really, you know, I'm not I'm. Listen, listen, fellas. Listen, I was given a task. And the whole reason we got to this point was thorough.

You're very thorough. And yeah. And it blew my mind. I was sitting in the Howell theater in Smithfield and the screen flashes. And I was just like, what is that?

What is what's happening right now? But anyways, it's a good memory, man. It's good. It's good.

Solid research. You'll never experience that because you're never going to see the movie. No, never going to happen. You'll never see the true love story of a man.

I don't want any part of a poor man. I can I can give you a synopsis of the movie one day. That can be the whole show. Just me retelling the story of Titanic. Billy Zane in it, man. You love Billy Zane from Tombstone.

Was Billy Zane in Tombstone? I don't know. You got to do some research. All right. I'll do that research. Well, we'll figure that out.

All right. The outlaw liars, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. Again, Whitaker and Hamer law firm where you can find them offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Moorhead City. They're the managing partners of the firm. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, maybe you've got a business question.

We're talking about business law today. If you've got one of those questions, you can always call the firm. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And as always, you can email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast. That's questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com.

We're back right after this. Welcome back into the final segment of the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're your hosts. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina offices popping up all over the place.

Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and now in Morehead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate each and every week. Back and forth legalese. This week we've been focusing on business law, but I believe we're about to go off the rails. Josh, a little bit off topic, but not for us, really.

It's perfectly on topic. I thought Billy Zane might be in tombstone. He was. So he was in tombstone, but he's got like a bit part. It's not he's like a they're like watching a show and he pops up on stage and he's the guy on stage. Ah, but he's barely in it and you clearly have no idea who he actually is.

So I don't understand how you possibly did this. I got no clue. What else has he been in? He's been in a lot of things, man. He's been in Back to the Future, part one and two. He's probably in three, honestly. What did he do in one?

I'm looking at that now trying to see. Couldn't have been a huge role. It had to be something small. He was a man wearing shades. He was a match in Back to the Future. Was he one of the like bully guys? He had to be.

He was a match. Better known roles. Titanic.

Seen that one. He was in he was in he was in I'm trying to find something you would know. He was in Zoolander. I've seen Zoolander. Yeah, he was himself, I'm pretty sure, in Zoolander. Oh, I don't remember. He was in the new Avatar. We've already established. You didn't see that one.

I know who he is. The Mummy. He's in the Mummy. I didn't watch the Mummy. You didn't see the Mummy? No, I didn't see the Mummy.

You sure? Yeah, I haven't seen the Mummy. He was in Back to the Future three as well. I've seen that.

All three Back to the Future. So you know who he is? I guess. He was in the Silence of the Hams. That's literally the name of the movie. I bet that was good. I haven't seen that one.

Oink oink. He was in MacGruber. I've seen MacGruber.

It's very good. I don't know. He's Billy Zane, dude.

What did he play in MacGruber? Let's see. Let's pull it up. Do a quick search and turn the computer around so Josh can see it. He'll probably recognize it. Well, I mean, I got a computer. You know what he looks like, right? Like, look at what he looks like. I'm going to do it right now.

I got a computer in front of me. I know this is action-packed radio, us Googling things. Yeah. Yeah.

Our viewership, our listenership is going to improve. Oh, yeah. I know that guy. That's Billy Zane. How could you not know Billy Zane? Well, this one picture doesn't have any hair. Yeah. In a lot of films, he doesn't have any hair.

He doesn't have to have hair, man. I ain't got a bunch of it, but I'm doing just fine. I'm carrying on, man. Sensitive topic. Let's move on. Yeah, Josh. All right. Yeah, I know that guy.

All right. Yeah, it's Billy Zane. Anyways, I bet your wife's seen Titanic, man. I bet you if you went home and you were like, honey, we're going to watch Titanic tonight, I bet you'd cry happy tears. Josh, I thought you'd never ask. I'm trying to think. I don't know that we're watching much of anything right now.

I was trying to think. Tombstone is a good one, man. We talked about that, right? Billy Zane? Look, man, every time Tombstone comes on. You watch the whole thing?

No, no, no, no, no. I do not watch the whole thing. The movie ends when they beat the Cowboys. I turn it off. Yeah. Okay. I can see that. Yeah. I don't need to see Val Kilmer slowly die every time I watch it. It's tough, man.

It's tough. Do you see what they did with his voice in the second Top Gun? Yep. I saw that. I saw that. It was a good film. I enjoyed that film. You saw that one? I did.

I saw that in the movie. We're going to get you going to see more movies, man. You got to. I think we should do a field trip. I think the show should go to a movie. I think you're uncultured, Josh. Well, you know, I've gotten to a point.

I'm like one of those people where, like, I really only watch superhero movies at this point. So let me ask you a question. And sorry to interrupt, Josh, but of your children, the breakdown, how many boys, how many girls? Who's got what? I got two and two. Josh has all stallions.

Three boys. So I can say this comfortably. Josh is not going to see Barbie. Joe, have you been to Barbie yet? No, my my girl, older girl, my other girl's young, young, young. But my other daughter has seen the Barbie. She seemed to approve of the Barbie. OK, just double check.

She gave it a thumb up, a single thumb up. Killing at the box office, that's for sure. Yeah, it's doing very well. Yeah, we saw I think the last thing we saw was Guardians of the Galaxy three, which is already streaming. So it's been a while.

Yeah, no, it's not true. I saw the Flash. I like the Flash.

Yeah, Flash was Flash was pretty good, man. You're a Michael Keaton guy. Yeah, I've talked about my sucker for Michael Keaton. I love Michael Keaton. The way I don't understand why it's such a bomb, though.

That's what I don't get. Like I enjoy because the lead, he like kidnapped someone or he did a lot of bad things. I don't even know what all it was, but he got a ton of negative press, so they couldn't really use him in the press lead up. And then they tried to they tried to put out a ton of like positive word of mouth, which was, I thought, fairly legit. I thought it was pretty decent, but that was a very good movie. It was also the dying gasp of, you know, they're redoing the whole universe now. So and people knew that like it's kind of irrelevant in that sense.

Well, that all makes me sad. Yeah, but I like Michael Keaton a lot and he's pretty good. Right. Good actor. Yeah, I like him a lot.

He did really good. I won't spoil the Flash for anybody, but it's worth seeing. Yeah, I don't think it's a spoiler to say my I mean, I was in the trailers.

If you didn't know Michael Keaton was in the Flash, then you probably aren't going to see the Flash. Do we do we have any more listener questions? No, I don't think we do. I think we ran out. I think we tapped out. We need we need all of our loyal listeners to call into the hotline. We we really appreciate it.

The folks that have done it, you know, keeps us from having to do actual work and prepare, man. We can just pull up the Rolodex. I can answer listener questions all all day long. And I get my practice areas here at the firm.

I do a lot of business law, do a lot of real estate law, do a lot of estate planning, estate administration. And so those are the listener questions I kind of gravitate to. You know, we need to have some other attorneys from the firm on and tackle the you know, we get some traffic. We always get a lot of questions about speeding tickets and things like that.

And I don't deal with those every day. We have other attorneys at the firm who who really want to bring them in from the mines. We keep them down.

They're working. We got you know, we've got our family law. They're all in court today. I think every family law attorney we got in court today. But we handle a lot of divorces and, you know, child custody and the things that come with separations and folks, you know, trying to have a fresh start, things like that. And, you know, we're kind of all over the map.

But usually, you know, we can handle almost almost any question that you can that you can throw at us. The lucky thing, the big thing about our firm is, you know, a lot of firms are dedicated to one thing like the old stumble across a firm that maybe advertises on TV and they do personal injury, car accident, all that kind of thing. You stumble on a firm, all they do is, you know, real estate closings or all they do is environmental law or all they do is family law. But our firm from day one, we wanted a what would you call it? Well, we wanted a bunch of we wanted a lot of attorneys who could practice different areas. We wanted to be more of a community based firm, right? Like you walk into the what do I need? It doesn't matter what I need because I can go to these guys. That's right.

And girls, these men and ladies. We tried to create a law firm where we had attorneys because they're one attorney can't do everything. There's no way one attorney can handle everything. We used to have that attorney when I was growing up back in the 70s and 80s.

Right. We would we had this one attorney and you went to him for everything. You get a divorce. You went to this guy. You charged a murder. You know, this guy, you know, traffic ticket.

You know, this guy, you know, will you went to that? And you can't do that anymore. Everything has gotten so specialized. One attorney can't handle all those practice areas, but we like for our clients to be able to come to us with a multitude of issues. And we definitely do our best to help them.

And there are things that we don't handle. So you might come to us like I think we've said this before, but like we do not handle immigration law. So if you have an immigration concern, we know a lot of good immigration attorneys that we can refer you out to or help you get with to get started.

Our firm does not handle bankruptcy. There's a lot of good bankruptcy attorneys in the area. Medical malpractice. Yeah, medical malpractice is another one that takes it takes an attorney.

That's pretty much all they do. But for the most part, for your for your average person, the problems that you're going to the legal problems that you're going to encounter or want to prevent are ones that our firm can help you with. And and, you know, we got offices in a lot of different places. I was talking to somebody the other day down in our Moorhead City office. And so we do a lot of a lot of stuff in Moorhead City, man.

That is a busy, busy place. It's a good spot, too, man. It's a really nice spot. Moorhead City. I like the beach.

Big fan of it. And then we do a lot of stuff down in Charlotte and down in Raleigh. And we've got a lot of clients who are statewide and and really just trying to be as helpful as we as we can try to be an asset to our clients. We've tried to do that from day one. And it's been 20, 20 plus years for the firm and still chugging along, trying to trying to help where we can.

Stronger than ever, brother. Quite quite the legal toolbox. They can cover almost everything. And if they can't cover it, they'll point you in the right direction. The outlaw liars, Josh Whittaker and Joe Hamer, the managing partners, Whittaker and Hamer law firm. Again, as they mentioned, offices everywhere. Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia.

And now in Moorhead City, they're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. If you're facing something, you need some questions answered. You can always call the firm eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Leave your contact information briefly what that calls about and an attorney will be in touch with you. You can always email your questions to the show. We'll use them on future broadcast questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com for Josh Whittaker and Joe Hamer. Again, the managing partners at Whittaker and Hamer law firm and your hosts. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate.

We'll see on the radio next week. Lawyer is hosted by an attorney licensed to practice law in North Carolina. Some of the guests appearing on the show may be licensed North Carolina attorneys. Discussion of the show 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 had the opportunity to discuss the facts of your case with you. The attorneys appearing on the show 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, contact us directly.