Top 10 Estate Planning Mistakes

Coming up next on the Outlaw Lawyer, most common estate planning mistakes.

That's right, the errors, the boo-boos. You don't want to go in this direction. Most common estate planning mistakes coming up next on the Outlaw Lawyer. And now, Outlaw Lawyer. Welcome in to the Outlaw Lawyer, your hosts, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners Whitaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina.

They have offices conveniently located for you, Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia, and in Morehead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Each and every week we go over legal topics that a lot of people have questions about.

And you may have your own set of questions, maybe an issue you're dealing with. You can always contact Whitaker and Hamer law firm and they will get in touch with you and you guys can work it out. The number to call is 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. You can also email your questions to the show, questions at theoutlawlawyer.com.

And again, when you call that 800-659-1186, leave your contact information briefly what that call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. Well, the tease was common estate planning mistakes. We're going to talk about those. Josh, take it away. Yeah, we haven't done one of these in a while, Morgan. We've got a top 10 list here. We didn't want a while back, but this is one somebody sent me.

I thought it had a lot of good talking points in it. So today, once me and Joe get going, we're going to do top 10 to 15. Wait, wait, once you get going, what are you guys stretching in there? What are you doing? You getting ready or loosening up? Yeah, we got to limber up.

You know, I always say we can't get right into discussing the law. You got to have some pleasantries exchanged first. You guys are, we're in main studio, so I get to, I'm in the producer studio. I can see you guys. You guys are dressed up. I like it.

Yes. I worked very hard on this outfit and I did a lot of selfies in the mirror to make sure I passed muster. We shot some video content today. Fantastic content. Where might we see this video content coming up? Oh, it's going to be everywhere, my brother.

Where is it not going to be? So we have a, so at the law firm, we, we do a lot of commercials. We do a lot of, uh, instructional kind of videos. Like if you ever go to our website, we've got a big video section where me and Joe and some of the other attorneys, uh, that sometimes you hear here on the show, all sit down and talk about kind of common, kind of like what we do here.

Talk about common questions, common things that most people might, uh, might have questions about. And so we, today was that day. I grew up a big fat kid, so I did not like to wear suits. I did not like to get dressed for church. My clothes never fit. When I got ready for church, my clothes are always tight. And so deep down, I have this, this resentment for dress clothes. So you had it so easy, man, you got to be born a big fat kid. I had to eat 17 pop tarts a day and drink a bunch of sweet tea to become a big fat kid, man. I had to work at it.

And by the way, can I jump in? Joe's lost weight. Joe looks good. Joe, Joe has been working on it. Thanks, man.

I have been working on it. I cut out those pop tarts. Apparently they're not good for you.

That's what I heard. I read that in a news flash, but yeah, man, I've been, uh, you got to take care of yourself. You only get one life to live brother. And, um, I'm getting up there in the years. So I'm just trying to increase my longevity.

That's it. How about you, Josh? We didn't say that you've lost much weight, but you still do look good, man. I think you're at the optimal size now.

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna try to maintain, you know, I stand against some weight. If you put on 15 more pounds, man, you round that face out.

I have this, I have this theory, you know, some people have like a target weight and I just don't want to have to go to a special store to buy my clothes. That's that's the only thing below that bar, man. As long as I can watch him walk into a department store and buy my clothes, like wait a minute. Wait a minute. You've got a really nice shirt on that. Looks like it's monogrammed on the cuff there. Is that a custom tailored shirt as you went to a special shop shirt?

I did. I came in, I felt great about this outfit. I spent a lot of time on it and I was like, man, I'm gonna, Josh is gonna look like a hobo. I'm gonna look great. And then I come in and he's got a shirt. It's made out of clouds. It's monogrammed.

It looks good. I didn't want to do it with gold inlays. I didn't want to do it, Joseph. But as as a big fat guy, sometimes you are, you are not a big fat guy. When I think big fat guy, I think Tommy boy. I'm not a fat guy. Maybe just a normal fat guy. Not a big fat guy. Maybe it's just a normal fat guy. I've been a fat guy, man. And I'm transitioning out of that. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta call it what your parents always called it.

Your mom always called it. You know, you just carry your weight so well. You do. You do.

Yeah, for sure. Well, when you're growing up, did you have to get the husky pants? No, man, I was skinny. So this is the thing I joke about being a big fat kid. I was skinny, man. I was skinny because I did a lot of running around and things like that. It's a miracle because I eat terribly.

But as I got as my metabolism slowed down and I kept eating like that pig of a child that I was, that's when it caught up to me, man. You know, you can't eat two double sausage and cheese croissant, which is from Burger King every morning and still be healthy. We've talked about how delicious those are. What do they put in that? The, uh, just inject it into who is the, who's the basketball player that plays for the nuggets. There's a whole team of them.

He's like NBC, uh, yokage. Yeah. Did you say a quote from him about being a fat kid? No, but I want to hear it. He had a, I don't remember what it is.

It's not in front of me. Exactly. But he had this quote afterwards. He was like, he was a, he was a fat kid. He was like, you know, one ever believed in the fat kid.

He was like, no one ever believed in me because I was a big fat kid. And I want to get that tattooed on my belly, like Tupac Tupac style. We should get more tattoos, man. I feel like if we all collectively on this show, all of us right now just got tatted up full, fully tatted up.

People would respect us more. I've had a hard time. You know, when I was in college, I got a couple and my plan was always to get more. And then you, I don't know. And then you pop out a couple of kids.

We can get off of the air and go right now. We won't do that. I have zero tattoos, man. My body wasn't made for it.

I feel like it'll hurt more than will help my look. Well, we got a top 10 list today. That's what I was trying to say earlier before we got started. We are dressed up. We are in the main studio. Sometimes we're at Shady. Sometimes we're in one of our offices today.

We're down in Apex with Morgan in the big studio. And we are going to talk about the top 10 estate planning. I'm gonna call it estate planning fails.

That's what my kids would call it. Estate planning fails. As you mentioned, we move around a lot. We have to man, if we don't, the fans catch up to us. We get mobbed in the street. So we just got to keep a low profile and move around locations.

All right. Jokic fat boy quote. They didn't believe in the fat boy. It seems like it worked out.

Don't bet against the fat boy. It should be like some kind of tagline I use. Of course, I'm older now.

It still works. It's a good quote. There you go, folks. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. We are going to take a quick break.

We'll be back on the other side. We'll really get into the most common estate planning mistakes made. Again, our listeners have responded, and we are going to answer those questions when we come back on the outlaw lawyer. Again, just a reminder, Josh and Joe, managing partners. Of the firm, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina and offices located conveniently for you, Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Barina, Gastonia and Morehead City. And if you have a legal situation you're facing, you need some answers to your questions, you can always call the firm, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about, and an attorney will be in touch. And you can always email your questions to the show questions at theoutline.com.

We're back right after this. Welcome back in to the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your host of the managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Barina, Gastonia, and now in Morehead City. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate, and each and every week, back and forth, again, many legal topics. If you have any situation you're facing, you've got legal questions and you need some answers, you can always call the firm, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave the contact information briefly what the call is about, and an attorney will be in touch with you. And you can also email your questions to the show questions at theoutlinelawyer.com. That's questions at theoutlinelawyer.com. And today, of course, most common estate planning mistakes. These are things you need to avoid, Josh.

So these top 10 lists that people put together, they're not always super accurate. They're not always on point, but they bring up usually some good talking points. And me, Joe, on the show, one of the things that we're trying to do is we're trying to talk to folks and answer questions and just warn them about the problems that we see. And we're always, as attorneys, we're always here to help you if you need help. The firm's always here to help you. We're in seven, like Morgan tells you, we're in seven cities across the state of North Carolina, cover most of North Carolina for some issues.

And we try to be there to help. And this is a good way, I think, to kind of talk through some major problems that we see. So we got this top 10 list. It's top 13 list, actually. I was wrong. Yeah, that's mistake number one.

It's actually 14 now. And the first one on this list, I actually like this one because this is what happens, right? Your biggest estate planning mistake is failing to plan. That could be the list, right? Right.

If you fail to make an estate plan, you have failed utterly. But I'd say that's top of the list, obviously, number one, with a bullet. Yeah, yeah. And we talk about this a lot of time. This is something, you know, we try to hit topics that affect a lot of people. And so planning your estate, everybody has something they want to get to the next generation. If you don't have something that you want to get to the next generation, you still need to put people in place to be your, you know, we talked about your agent, right, your attorney.

In fact, we talk about power of attorneys, health care power of attorneys. There's still things that need to be done so that when your time comes, you've taken care of everything that you can take care of. And that's, and that's, and you mentioned, everybody, everybody has something they need to drop off. But more than that, to take a ticket into the level back, there's one thing we all have in common, every single one of us. There's not many things we all have in common, but we all have in common the fact that we're definitely going to die. 100%.

Everybody. I feel like that's a sad, sobering thought. Well, you know, I read, I read an article and it was in a publication. It was in a, it wasn't something I read on the internet.

It was like a real publication. But, you know, they just pointed out that as human beings, we're the only, as far as we know, we're the only life form on the planet that is aware that it will die. Yeah. That's what somebody said.

A scientist, I'm sure. Yeah. I wonder how they know that. I tell my dog all the time, like, you're going to die, buddy. You realize that it's coming for you.

Well, guys, you mentioned the big one is they just failed a plan. And I think about this and it's, it's such a morbid, it's your end game. And a lot of people don't want to think about the end game and they do put it off. And sometimes you wait too late and next thing you know, you're in some big hot water. And if you do pass away, I mean, your estate is just, it's lingering. There it is.

You don't want to jinx it, man. I know some folks like, as soon as I do it, I'm stepping out. The bus is going to smash me. Well, it's just like, it's just like anything else. You know, if you've got your own business, right? You have to do a lot of planning to make your own business work. You, you, you have life insurance in place. You have your investments, you have your, uh, you know, your pension, IRA, like all this stuff is you're planning when you do it. And, and every, you know, I would argue, first of all, you should have an estate plan, right? A step one, who's going to be guardians of your underage children. Are you leaving enough assets where you need to consider putting it in a trust?

So there's a trustee, you know, helping your, your kids, even if they're under 18, a lot of kids wouldn't do well. If you know, you, you drop dead and they get 1 million, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets. So you never seen the movie blank check. I'm assuming I haven't. Oh man. Well, I can't even talk to you about it.

Can you ruin every bit like that, man? It's like you've seen this movie. It's a movie. It's a movie where a kid. Bart Simpson in it? Is Bart in it?

He gets hit. You remember, uh, what's the guy's name, man? God, you're going to be so mad at me.

I got to look this up and keep carry on. We'll come back to this. No, no, but you there's things to plan. There's always things. There's always things to plan. If you don't think you have something to plan for, you're wrong. There's, there's something to plan for. And so, you know, not having an estate plan, you know, I've heard some people say things like, you know, Hey, I'll be dead. I don't, I don't care, you know, but there's always a family member.

There's always somebody who creates, you know, a ruckus if it's not super clear what, what needs to be done. So an estate plan is, is pretty important and failing to plan at all. Well, that's the biggest mistake you're going to make as the biggest mistake on this list.

That's the number one mistake easily. All right. Blank check back to it.

This is just as important as dying. Sure. Tone Loke is in blank check.

Oh, wow. Really? Tone Loke is in blank check. Tone Loke and some other dude, they're criminals. And I can't remember if they rob a bank, they do something, they're committing a crime and they're backing out and they hit this kid on his bike. And the kids is like, Oh, they got to get out of there. Cause they've committed this crime.

I'm probably messing this up. And they give them a check. They're like, Hey, just buy yourself a new bike. And he goes home and he writes a million dollars on the check, which is like a major issue in and of itself.

But you're watching as a kid. You're like, this is awesome. And he creates this fake alias, Macintosh. That's his name. And so he gets, he cashes this million dollar check. He gets all this money.

He buys like a mansion and he lives this like crazy life as a kid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the gist. You should go home and watch it with your, with your kids.

We probably won't do that. All right. Well, anyways, you know, Tone Loke was, you know, he got, he was really successful back there. I was in the sixth grade. Was that like 1989? Yeah.

That's about right. Ninety one was when he had his mainstream success. So he had all that success.

And then after that, he was like the voice of every cartoon dog. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was. I don't remember him in Ace Ventura. I saw that movie.

He was a detective. Yeah. Yeah. Was he the voice of a cartoon dog?

Cause I remember him doing that sometimes. Yeah. Look, man, you should see that movie. You should have seen it before now, but I guess you were a little bit older. I guess it was, I keep forgetting.

Who was the kid in it? Was he like popular at the time? I don't know that he was super popular at the time.

And I don't know that he's, he's popular to this day. I was talking to somebody the other day who listens to the show and I am always thankful that people take the time to listen to us. And I hope they're fans of blank check. I don't think they will be if they're hearing this. Cause their specific thing was to me is like, you guys are good on the radio.

I like to listen to you, but you need to talk more about the law and less about movies. Who said that? It was this guy. This guy. No. No, he's you and him are kindred spirits. I'm sure.

Cause you hate movies and you don't want to see any of them. Who's this kid? Brian Bonsall. That sounds familiar.

No, it doesn't. Was he the guy from, was he the older brother from Alf? No. If he is, then I'm going to give you so many props.

I don't think that's right. No, he, uh, he played Patrick Swayze's son in fatherhood from 1993. I didn't see that one. He was, uh, in a movie with Bob Saget, a TV movie that I guarantee you didn't see. So anyways, yeah, he retired from acting early, man.

Failing to go on a high note though, cause that's a banger of a movie, man. You see that in the theater or did you rent that one from the video store? Oh, I guarantee I saw it on the theater at the time and I've seen it since.

I've seen it since. I've got kids. I care about my kids. I don't have my kids just on the floor scrubbing the bathroom floors like you do, man.

My kids get to enjoy themselves. My youngest one's watching all the transformer movies, which I never really saw. So I'm kind of seeing them for the first time. There's a lot of them.

Yeah. And then, uh, I got one that I've really gotten into guitar heroes. I'm pretty, we're just doing a lot of guitar heroes. That's so sweet, man.

You do have, your kids have a good life. I take it back. I understand. Failing to plan.

That's the biggest mistake you make. Number two, and this is, this is a good one. This is a good one.

I like this one. Some of these I won't like. I can already tell you cause I'm reading ahead. No spoilers.

All right. Number two on this list, not discussing with family and friends. That is a big one.

Yes, that is a big one. So when you come and you do your state of plan, you do your state plan with us. You know, you take your originals cause you need your, you need your originals. The original will is very important. You'll need that or your, your heirs will need that one day when you pass away, your original trust documents.

They're all important. We'll give you a set of copies and we usually email you securely deliver you a set of PDF copies, but we do that. And with instructions like, Hey, everybody you've named in this, in this will, you don't necessarily have to give it to beneficiaries. The people you're leaving stuff to, but your executor, your fiduciary, your executor, your trustees, your guardians, the fiduciary, as you name in your estate plan, they should have a copy of this. They should know it exists. They should know what attorney prepared it and they should know where the originals are.

Yep, exactly. And, and the originals me, especially relevant for the, the will that you prepare. Cause you're going to, you're going to need it. You're going to need to take it down for probate, but that's a great point because you generally speaking, don't want that to be something that's just sprung on somebody. You want to talk to the folks you want to understand. They need to, they need to know that you're entrusting them with this. They need to, you know, a good estate plan is going to spell it out in the instrument itself. What needs to be done, but you want to make sure it's somebody that's on the same page with you.

That's going to be willing to do it. And it's just an important thing to go ahead and hash out ahead of time. Because again, once you're gone, you can't have that conversation with them.

Yeah, I can give you one example. It's not necessarily an estate, but we went out to dinner with some, you know, childhood friend, college roommate. We were well on our way, families, young kids. And at the dinner, the conversation was, we want you to be godparents to our children. If anything happens to us, you are going to take charge of their life.

And you talk about a... That's heavy. I mean, it was a wonderful gesture and we were honored. And obviously we agreed to do it. But I tell you, you start thinking about the importance of that. And again, we can transfer that over to just an estate plan. I mean, it's important to make sure that people have this information.

You know what you want to do if indeed you do pass away and you want it to be carried out. I wonder if somebody's ever done that, taken someone out, taken a couple out to eat to say, hey, we'd like for you to be the guardians of our kids if something happens to us. I wonder if anybody's ever said no. I wonder, yeah.

And what's the play on that? They let you finish eating first? Did you get through the potatoes at least? And it's like... I'm sure that there have been people that aren't comfortable doing it. I mean, we don't have the information in front of us. But I'm sure that, you know, percentages say somebody's going to say nah. Yeah, so that's why you ask at the end.

Because you ask at the beginning. They say no, and then you've got to sit there and you've got to sit there, listen to each other, chew. And that's tough.

The other part, I know we're coming up against a break, but the other part of this is, too, you know, we're getting into this digital age, you know. We had a client, a past client, pass away. They lived alone. They didn't have children.

They had lots of nieces and nephews and things like that. But they lived alone. And they passed away alone, right?

And so it was discovered. They didn't go to work, right? And so it was discovered they weren't, they had passed away. And no one knew anything, no one knew where anything was, right?

So first of all, they were told that there was a will. They didn't know where it was kept. They didn't have copies of it. They didn't know what attorney drafted it.

They had nothing to go on. And then, two, figuring out what your assets are, right? Right now, a lot of people don't get mail. They don't get statements in the mail.

They don't, you know, so a lot of people get stuff digitally. It's very hard to figure out, you know, if you're not talking with anybody, if there's not like a list somewhere, we always advise people to make a list of, you know, at the time you did your will, here's where your investments were, here's where your accounts were, give people a map. You know, that came up another time. We had someone who just passed away recently, and we came in, we're going to handle their estate administration, and there's no will or anything. And we know there's a safety deposit box. We don't know where it is, don't know what bank it's in.

And so what good is it? Well, you're going to have to, you know, we don't have to know it exists, and we got to locate it, and then the heirs are working on that. You know, that's one of those things. But yeah, you got to let your friends and families know that you have one so they know to look for it where it is and who did it, and that'll give them a good start.

But that's a good one, not discussing with family and friends. That is a state planning fail, Morgan. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, where you can find them. They're the managing partners there. And again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

Office is located conveniently in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia, and now in Moorhead City. We are talking about most common estate planning mistakes on today's program. Number one, failing to plan. Number two, not discussing with family members and having people on the same page. Very, very important.

We've got more coming up on the other side. Now, if you are facing a legal situation and you have questions of your own, and it might be an estate planning question, you can always call the firm 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact info briefly what that call is about, and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. You can always email the question to the show, questions at the outlawlawyer.com. We'll answer those on a future broadcast.

We're back right after this. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, the power behind the program. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

Office is conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. Again, I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Josh and Joe go back and forth on the legal topics. And today, most common estate planning mistakes. These are things you need to avoid already covered today. The big one, failing to plan at all.

And also, if you don't discuss it with your family and have written instructions waiting on people in case something does happen to you. But we're going over those most common estate planning mistakes today, Josh. So we've got a list of 13. It's a random list that was sent to me, but I liked it.

And I felt like it'd be good to bring up some talking points. One and two, like Morgan said, have been very good ones. And I like number three. Number three says a big fail is when you name just one beneficiary. And I think what I'm taking that to mean, Joseph, I don't know what you think that means. I was going to listen to you first.

I don't want to say it and be wrong. So you might only have your spouse, or you might only have one person that you want to inherit your estate, and that's fine. But I think what this is, the way I'm going to take this is this is talking about almost like a residuary clause. So, Joseph, what's a residuary clause? So a residuary clause is actually going to be like, that's going to be more in terms of like the residuary, anything that is not specifically bequested out. So any specific bequest you haven't made in the sense of, I'm giving Joshua, I'm giving you this pair of pants, because that's what I'd give you, obviously.

I'm giving my watch to this kid. Anything not specifically bequested would fall into that residuary, right? So it would be like everything else goes to whoever this beneficiary is. And so where the issue with having a single beneficiary potentially, and it's not necessarily an issue, right, because there's always ways to carefully draft and account for situations, but let's just say you have one sole beneficiary. That person predeceases you. There's the issue in a nutshell right there.

I don't like this one as much now as I did when I first talked about it. Because it's true, and it's not at the same time. Because there's a way you can have, some people genuinely will only have a single beneficiary.

That is just the nature of some people's lives. There's one family member or one person they care about, so they may not have anyone but that one beneficiary. But what's important is to have what we call a remote contingent beneficiary, which is basically if all else fails. So say you have ten beneficiaries, every single one of them dies. They leave no descendants. They leave no heirs that you can also leave the assets to. You get to a point where it's like you've run afoul of every other option.

What do you do? And that's where that remote contingent beneficiary comes into place. And a lot of times that may be a charitable organization for folks. It's just someone as opposed to the alternative of potentially, what happens to those funds if there's nobody, Josh?

Well, that's a good question. I've never actually run into that. So I've never run into that where we didn't figure out where it was going to go. We talked about a residuary clause. That's when you have a specific device in your will and it fails for whatever reason.

You fail for a lot of things. I'll tell you where it goes, Josh, and that's the state of North Carolina. It's going to cheat to the state. That's what happens when you run afoul of every other option.

And that's a bummer, man. Because I love this state, right? I love our great state.

But I ain't trying to leave my inheritance to this great state. Yeah, they're getting enough. They're getting enough, man. They're getting enough. The taxes off of my double sausage and cheese croissant, which is, will power the state through.

The sales tax. Anything. You'll help North Carolina become a leader in green energy.

Yeah, for sure, man. Those things, God, there's something about putting a sausage with a croissant. You're just fantasizing now. You've done so well on your diet, you're just putting it out there verbally. I've got this thing. I'll do my diet until one person compliments me. And then I'm like, I've got to get fat again so I can get that feeling back, right? You can go eat after the show.

I complimented you to open the show. Oh, trust me. That's where I'm at, man. I'm ready to go on a downward spiral. I'm ready to get bigger than ever.

You know, back in the day, I used to do like a two for one on one of those. You're going to have to eat, trust me. That's not news to me, brother. You're going to, next time I come in here, I'm calling. You're going to have to, you're going to bring me in.

It's going to be like a What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Mom. You're pulling me in here on a bulldozer, brother. I've never watched that. I've seen. I know you haven't.

That's why I was looking past you to Morgan. As long as you don't have to, as long as, as long as I'm telling you, as long as I don't have to go to a special store to buy my pants, I will consider myself. Fit, physically fit.

Top. I wonder how you're doing the presidential physical fitness test right now. I think that's what we should do. Not eat.

I think we should go and we should put you through that test. What is it, the shuttle run? You got to do like a shuttle run.

You got to do sit ups, push ups, chin ups, and a sprint. That's a full day, man. Yeah. The entire time, Arnold Schwarzenegger barking at you. Yes.

Yeah. I'll do Arnold. You do the exercise. I'll do the Arnold.

All right. That was number three. That was number three. Number four. And this is a good one too. Number four, forgetting about power of attorney or healthcare representatives.

That was a, that's a good one right there. Cause a lot of, a lot of people will, you know, um, you know, there's, there's laws that governed and sometimes you can get away with writing your own will. Uh, you know, there's some witness requirements and things like that, but you know, it's really hard to do your own power of attorney. It's really hard to do your own, uh, healthcare power of attorney. There's forms out there and there's, there's, there's system, you know, what is, I can't, we can't name the websites.

There's some do it yourself websites. Um, but if you compare fees, it's not really having an attorney actually take the time to point out some things and then give you some advice. The, the, the price is not very different. And at our firm, we do a lot of phone and zoom console. So you don't even have to come to the office for, we can do it in your pajamas, man. I tell people all the time, that's the beauty of it. And if you want to come into the office, seven convenient locations, that's right.

Across the state of North across the state of North Carolina. So we're always happy to talk to you. Uh, if you don't want to talk to us in person, that's okay. We won't, we won't have our feelings hurt, but we do a lot of phone consults and a lot of zoom, zoom, zoom's a crazy thing that, that, that took, took over a couple of years ago.

Sure did, man. But, but back, back to the actual fail, like a lot of people conceptually, you know, you'll hear a state plan and folks oftentimes think just will, will, will, you know, trust something, something that doesn't matter unless I'm dead, but there's a whole entire aspect of that estate plan. That's going to matter when you're alive. And, and that's another important thing that we got to just, we got to keep in mind. And that's, again, why you come to an attorney to, to talk through all those things and your needs. Yeah. And a quick reminder, we talk about it a lot.

It comes up a lot. Power of attorneys come up a lot, but you want a power of attorney in place. So if the time comes where you're unconscious, you're unable to handle your day to day affairs, uh, whatever the reason may be that someone can step in and do that once you are unable to do it for yourself.

And it's too late. Once you're unable to do it for yourself, you can't sign a POA, you can't sign anything. And that's when your heirs have to go down to the courthouse and apply to become your guardian and kind of have a hearing on your capacity. And yeah, power of attorney is a very cheap alternative to that and very easy.

And once you've done it, it's there ready for action. If you ever need it, maybe you never need it, but it's there. And the same thing with the healthcare power of attorney. If you can't make your medical decisions, it tells doctors, who's going to make those decisions for you.

Even if you're married, even if your spouse is that person is very handy to have, because you can also put backups and it's got spots for information, phone numbers, things like that. And you even combine that with an advanced directive, which some states, it's a living will in North Carolina, kind of an advanced directive that tells everybody what you want to happen in some end of life situations. I think we got time for one more before the break, man. I think we can do it. All right. So that was number four. Was it number four or five? It was number four. Okay.

All right. It was number four. Number five. We've got to pick up some steam on these.

Forgetting about final arrangements. Yeah, I think the people who made this list are running out of steam. There's some good ones.

The next one was really good, but we're not going to say that real quick on the touch on this one. Like, yeah, I get, I mean, here's the thing was like cremation or burial cremation. Well, there's, it goes beyond that. So what we do, what we do, which is obviously the best way to do it. We we're going to give you a whole portfolio, a state planning portfolio. It's going to have a lot of help for information. It's going to all these things we're talking about. We're going to summarize it for you. We're going to make it easy. We're going to make it where you can walk out of here and know exactly what to do with your estate plan for safekeeping, for, for putting it in the right place for informing people correctly.

And what we always include is it's a memorandum of a remember. It's like basically it's a, it's where you're going to give your instructions for your memorial service. So cremation and burial is important, you know, which way you want to go or if you want to become planted with the trees, whatever you may want to have done. But there's other, as you know, there's a lot of people who want to have even more control over their like funeral arrangements. Like you may want, speaking of tone, low key, you may want funky Cole Medina playing at your funeral. You may want to have somebody up on the casket twerking.

I don't know, Josh, I don't know what you're into, but you may want more control than you're going to get just by having that will. That's going to delegate those assets. It may say nothing about what you actually want for your funeral service. So I can get behind that one, man. It'd be nice to have Tony look, actually do your memorial service, just do the whole thing as a cartoon dog, I was going to say in his, in his dog, they've got the technology now they can make it happen.

They could easily make it happen. There was a comedian out there who wanted to pay. Was it Malini?

Was it Malini? Who has that joke where he talks about paying John Stamos $5,000 and all you gotta do is show up at my funeral and just so people have to wonder like, Oh, that's great. Yeah. I would know John Stamos. I don't know. He could, he's got a better chance of knowing them than you and I do. All right. I feel like we all know John Stamos, Morgan, I got a good one for us after the ball, right?

That's the T is again. We're doing most common estate planning mistakes. We've gone over failing to plan, not discussing with family members. That's two, three, naming just one beneficiary for forgetting power of attorney, both on, you know, your power of attorney and healthcare power of attorney. And of course, forgetting final instructions, how it's going to be handled. If you do pass away again, we've gotten through five. We've got more on the other side and apparently Josh excited about this next one.

So you don't want to miss it. We've got law lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, the power behind this program. They're the managing partners there and hosts of this show. You can find their offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina, Gastonia, and Moorhead city. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you've got questions, maybe it's an estate planning question.

That's what we're talking about today. You can always call the firm and get some answers, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly, what the call's about and an attorney will be in touch with you. And you can always email the show questions at the outlawlawyer.com, we'll answer them on a future broadcast.

We're back right after this. Welcome back into the outlaw lawyers. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, and again, the firm, the power behind this program. Josh and Joe, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, and they have offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina, Gastonia, and again in Moorhead city, their newest office. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. We go back and forth on the legal topics.

And today we're doing most common estate planning mistakes. If you have a legal situation you're facing, listen, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information briefly what that call is about, and an attorney will be in touch with you. And you can email your questions to this very show and we'll answer them on a future broadcast questions at the outlawlawyer.com. So pins and needles, Josh, you're excited about this next one. Most common estate planning mistakes, recap what we've been through before we get to this next one. All right. Number one was failing to plan. Number two, not discussing plans with family and friends. Number three, naming just one beneficiary.

We didn't like that one too much. Number four, forgetting about power of attorney and healthcare representatives. Number five, forgetting about final arrangements. We're on number six.

And Joseph, I'm just going to throw this one at you. It's your first, your first impression, forgetting about your digital assets, man. Now you're talking, now you're talking, I was sleepwalking through this, this whole entire digital assets. Well, it's not defined on this list, Morgan, what I would, what I would say in your opinion, I'm thinking, I'm thinking Bitcoin right here. Yeah. Well, Bitcoin, there's a lot of different of the coins, man. I feel like crypto's cooled off a little, right?

Like it was, it was super hot there for a while during the whole weird COVID lockdown period. And I'm not saying it's still a thing, a hundred percent cryptocurrency still a thing, but yeah, that's, that's of extreme importance, right? Because it's super secure. It's so it's, it's one of those things where you need to put some, that's gotta be on somebody's radar, right? Like you need to, that's something that we will increasingly have to care about dealing with in the modern world. You're going to have to give your heirs, your potential heirs, some instructions on how to handle your digital assets. They won, they need to know they exist.

Right? So if you, if you have an account, it seems like they're all going bankrupt, right? But it was a Coinbase is one, right?

If you have one of those accounts, then you just, they need to be aware of it, how to get into it. And if you're straight, if you're a super duper Bitcoin guy, you just got what the, the blockchain code, what do you call that? The key?

Yeah. See, look, man, you're, you're putting me on the spot here and, uh, I'm still getting my Bitcoin lawyer certification classes taken. Uh, but yeah, you got, you know, if it's, you know, or, or it can be physically low located on, you know, it just depends on how you hold it, right?

However you hold it, whatever, whatever method that you hold it, it is very important that you give detailed instructions, you account for it, you make sure that it's known. And it's just another piece that you include in the pie, as opposed to potentially like you hear all those horror stories, man, about people when Bitcoin was worth nothing and they were just buying pizzas with it. And then they'd have like 10,000 Bitcoin and they threw it in the landfill and they never found it again. You'd be like the richest people on earth today. That's a set.

You don't want to be that person. I got, we got a lot of clients that are, they got paid in Bitcoin, you know, for whatever projects. Uh, we got a lot of clients that are holding a lot of, a lot of value, a lot of, a lot of digital assets. And so your will covers that, right? The standard will in North Carolina, we talk about personal property and real property, real properties, houses, land, things like that. Personal property is basically everything else. And so digital assets, uh, if you don't mention them specifically would, would go along with personal property. So there's no problem there. Your will take care of it. It's just, again, letting people know one and exist and to where to find it, how to, how to get it, how to, how to use it.

And so that's, that's something I've seen come up a time or two. That's super important too. You, you made that point.

And that's the point you can make about not just digital assets, but really any asset, like you can devise it away all you want, but someone's gotta be able to locate it, find it and know that it's a thing or else your, your instructions as to it are irrelevant. I will tell you, I, you know, I, I don't know if I, I don't know if my family knows how to get to the, my, my very small Bitcoin holdings. Yeah, I know, man. We got to fix that right now. I don't know that you know how to get to your very small Bitcoin holdings. Oh yeah.

That's a bigger issue, man. I had to get a new phone and it's fingerprinted. Oh, it sounds secure. I gotta, I gotta get back to it, but I think that's a good one. Forgetting about your digit. And again, a lot of this is going to go back to just making sure that people around you know where things are.

Obviously, you know, if you and your spouse are on everything together and you pass away, your spouse is going to know how to do a lot of this, but especially if you're like the last, you know, you're the surviving spouse and you've got children who are not necessarily involved with your day-to-day finances. They need to know where stuff is and it's, it's not always clear and digital assets are, are not clear on purpose. Right?

And that's part of the advantage of additional, a digital asset is not easy to find necessarily. So that was number six. That was number six. Number seven. You ready for this one?

I can't wait, man. This one's not, this one's not as earth-shattering. Not as sexy. Not as sexy. Oh, please, man.

You got to read it in a very sexy voice to wake up for that. Yeah. All right.

This is a state planning failed number seven on this rando list that we decided to go over today forgetting about charities that are important to you. So yeah. Yeah. If you're one of those people that have, you know, a church or rotary or a charity that you spend a lot of time with, that you support during your life, you don't want to forget about them in your, in your final will or plan.

So it's very easy to do. I know, um, you know, even, you know, five, I see a lot of wheels were like 5%, you know, if something goes somewhere or like a particular rental house goes to some charity or things like that. So I know the charities need that, you know, they need you to think about them. If you, if they're important to you, everybody's got at least one, right. That's important to you.

Everybody's got at least one, man. I think you, I think you knocked that one out of the park. I think we're ready for the next one already. All right. Number eight. I don't know where you're going to have to tell me what you think this means.

There's no explanation here. This is just the list. So we're meeting. We didn't, we didn't write this list.

If we did, it would be much better. Every one would be a banger, obviously. Number eight, not thinking about your children's futures. I feel like we've covered this one with a previous one.

I'm telling you this, whoever wrote this list is kind of, they're the ones. So I'm going to, I'm going to go back to one thing here. Not thinking about your, so you could drop dead. This is, well, we talked about this, Joe, you're going to die.

Everybody who's listening to this will, got some bad news for you, will die. It's coming. In some fashion. And you don't know when it's going to be. That's the other thing. Yeah. Well, me, Morgan and Joseph could all die today.

Right now. Yeah. Hopefully we don't, but we could. That'd be terrible. That'd be bad. That'd be such a terrible episode.

That'd be really bad radio. Just ends right here when people are wanting to know the last five answers to this list. But you're, you know, you could pass away before your children are 18. You could pass away when your children are 21 and, and again, we talked about your movie there. What was that movie? Which one blank check? Yeah.

Yeah. We don't, it might not be, if you have a lot of assets, you don't want those dumped on maybe an 18 year old. I know 18 year old Josh Whitaker wouldn't have made a lot of smart decisions if a million dollars in assets had just been dumped on. If you're like Preston from blank check, what you're going to do is you're going to buy a mansion. You're going to eat a lot of pizza. You're going to buy a really cool virtual reality game set. And you're going to have a, I'm pretty sure he had a slide that went from like in his room and he could slide out of his room into the pool.

Who doesn't have that though? Oh man. Honestly, that last part sounds cool. What year was this movie? What year was this movie? Uh, blank check. I want to say 95. This sounds like silver spoons to me.

And it just sounds like silver spoons. Uh, the blank check is 94. Okay. 90s. Yeah. 94. Yup.

Yup. I was like, I think if I had a million dollars in 94, I'd have bought that robot for like a million dollars. I think I would have bought that robot from Rambo. When was that?

When was that? Which Rambo was the one with the Rambo with robot? Oh, that's the one where he went to LA and trained. Is that three?

No. There's a robot in a Rambo? That's four. That's Drago. That's where he comes back and he beats the rest. I'm looking at Rambo with robot.

I'm getting nothing. Oh, not Rambo. Rocky. Rocky with robot. Oh, okay. Sorry about that.

I can see how you did it. It's Rocky four. Rocky four. That's the one. Rambo with robot though.

I don't think John. Can I put that in my will? I want that movie made. We got to get back on the artificial intelligence train and make that movie. Yeah, man. Have a little Rambo intro.

I like that. Rambo beats Terminator. A blank check has an A minus out of the A to F scale on the CinemaScore audience polling. What about Rotten Tomatoes? What's it got on Rotten Tomatoes?

My kids only want to know. It's only got 11 reviews, man, so it's at a 9%. So it's a movie about a kid, right? It's supposed to be 12. And Joe, you're four of the 11, and this is how dated it is, man. There's a, there's a scene where the 12 year old boy gets a kiss from the 31 year old woman who's like the investigator in the movie. You can't do that, man.

So I forgot about that until I read this Wikipedia already. So I want to rescind my recommendation of the movie. Are we talking about a kiss on the cheek or are we talking about a kiss kiss? I think she kissed kisses.

Well, I mean, I don't think it's like a long drawn out kiss, but I think she kisses a man. I don't want you to get the firm canceled. That's great. I didn't direct blank check, bro.

That's Rupert Rainwright. All right. Not thinking about your children's future. That means getting them stuff, making sure if they need guidance, maybe there's a trustee of a trust that helps them get things along and they don't get a million or two poured on them at the young, tender age of 18.

So that would be taken care of for not forgetting about your children's future. That takes us to number nine, Nueve on this list, getting too specific, so getting too specific. And so what I'm gonna do, we're up against a break. You guys marinate on getting too specific. We'll talk about it when we get back.

All right. The ally lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, where you can find a managing partners, they're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina offices, conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and now in Moorhead City. And we're gonna come back right after the break. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you've got some questions you need answers to, you can always call the firm 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And as always, you can email your questions to the show, questions at theoutlawlawyer.com. We're back right after this. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina and offices are almost everywhere, folks.

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 legal topics, a few movie discussions.

We have some fun with that. But if you have a legal situation you're facing, a question you need answers to, you can always call the firm, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information and briefly what your call's about and an attorney will be in touch with you. And you can always email your questions right here to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast, questions at theoutlawlawyer.com. And again, most common estate planning mistakes we're going over there is today, and we have gotten through quite a few of them, eight, and we continue now. Number nine, so this list is estate planning fails, right? So that's what we've been talking about.

Estate planning fails. You ever, you get that TV network where it's just people falling down all the time, and that called something fails. It's just people like- Oh, it's like on the Chive TV, playing in like bars and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen it. That's what this makes me think of. I've seen it. I've seen it and getting hurt, it's just people like- I've seen it before.

You've what? I've seen it, yeah. I've seen it.

I've seen it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry.

All right. Number nine, getting too specific. What do you think that means, Joseph? Getting too specific.

Well- I'll tell you what I think it means after you tell me what you think it means. Well, you've thought about it. Be specific now. Be specific. It's unfair that you've thought about it and I didn't think about it.

I don't know, man. I think there's something to be said about if you are too overly specific and you... To me, that would be like, again, failing to consider that a residuary, right? Like it'd be failing to consider everything else, the everything else piece of the puzzle. I sat down with some folks who... What I think it means is like, especially in regards to personal property, if you have a lot of jewelry or like, you run into a lot of people who have gun collections or like I ran into somebody that had a big baseball card collection or had a lot of gold, silver, things like that, you leaving specific coins, specific things to specific people and having your will ultra specific in regards to personal property. And even if that has value, like leaving a certain piece of furniture to a certain niece, that's what I was thinking about. Making your will too lengthy, that can cause problems, right? Because if you don't own a piece of this property anymore, you don't want to update your will every time you sell something or you lose something. I usually tell people in that situation, this personal property, these smaller things, even if they have a large value, you can instruct your executor. You can kind of keep a notebook, you can keep a list of where you want certain things to go and just ask your executor to abide by your wishes and distribute that or give that away while you're alive or let people know what you intend for them to take. Putting all that in your will is a little tiresome and estate planning is not meant to be overly expensive.

But if you have an attorney sitting there typing out where you want to leave every piece of furniture and every piece of jewelry, you're going to rack up some pretty big estate planning fees because that takes time. But that's what I thought about when I said getting too specific. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

All right. Number 10. Number 10 is not a bad one, but it's called improperly funding your trust. And so I would take that to mean you have a trust for maybe your underage kids or your adult children, and then you don't fund it because that happens, right? You create this trust, you want maybe your will to fund the trust, or if you don't set up a mechanism, if things aren't in the trust, the trust doesn't have anything to give, right? So things have to get into a trust. The trust is, I think of it like a bucket, right? It's like you're creating this, this container and you have to put things in it.

And then if your death is, is when the trust kicks into gear, the trust has to have things to distribute and things don't get in there automatically usually. Yeah. You said it, man. I'm speeding up a little bit because we're, I was going to say, I don't know how much time. I don't want to cut you off because I want to make sure we get through all these.

I'm hanging on every one. Number 11 is not super important right now, unless you're really, really wealthy, which if you are good for you, but number 11 is forgetting about taxes. So sometimes you do have to do some tax planning, uh, you know, the inheritance tax and things like that.

It comes up, but usually your assets have to be pretty super wealthy. Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully some of you have that problem.

Every one of you listening right now is, is super wealthy. I wish that for all of you. Uh, and then number 12, we've got two left here.

We've got two left. Number 12, not securing your estate plan. Yeah. I think that that refers back to safekeeping. So you have a nice, nicely drafted will, but you let it get burned up in that boat fire that happens. That's what I think it's referring to. You know? Yeah.

That's what it is. So in North Carolina, back in the day, back in the sixties, seventies, you would have your will done. Your attorney would take it downtown. You would register the will and the clerk's office. And when you died, we all would go down there and check to see if your will was there. And I guess that was a pretty good system, but as we got more and more folks didn't make a lot of sense. And now the law says, you got to keep your estate plan, keep your will in a safe place with your other important papers.

I think that's almost literally what the statute says. So, uh, again, letting people know where that is, you know, letting it, you know, firebox, right? Safe safety deposit box somewhere where it's not going to get milk spilled on it, burned up.

So you got a lot of milk spills. It's your house, man. Your boat is probably not the best place to store your estate plan with a bunch of erasers around and in public where people could change it, you know, number 13 is the last item on this list, which I got to tell you this list, as far as list go, hasn't been that bad. Yeah. It's top five of the top 13 lists that we've done easily updating your plan to infrequently. And that goes with anything. And I'm guilty of this too.

This is, this is an easy one. You know, not to revisit your estate plan, your assets change, you buy and sell real property. Kids get older, new kids pop out all the time. New kids pop out all the time. They just pop out. You've been doing, but gremlin, gremlin style. Yeah. Yep.

My kids don't look like gremlins. Josh, you can say that for, you know, you know, what was a good movie gremlins. Yeah. Yeah.

I can agree with that one. Gremlins two was good too. Yeah.

Not, we thought it was better than gremlins one. What's the, what's the evil gremlin with the mohawk. He's in two, right? He's not in one.

Is he? God, man. You're putting my gremlins knowledge to the test. Spider. And what was the spider gremlin to evil gremlin with mohawk? Was that stripe? I think his name was stripe evil gremlin with mohawk.

So stripe was reborn as a mohawk. Hmm. Doesn't make sense. I don't know. Man.

That's what I just read. What's the spider gremlins name. Stripe is gremlins one mohawk is gremlins two. Okay. Yeah. Right.

Before midnight. And then I guess mohawk after he consumed what water gremlins to spider gremlin. Then he turned into that. Just that spider gremlins, something I don't even hear his brother. Spider gremlin was scared. Yeah.

You don't want that thing crawling on your face. I don't think there was, but while we're on this topic, we got to get going third. Was there a third gremlins? There wasn't a gremlins three gremlins gremlins. I didn't see it.

Nope. There was just the new batch. There was gremlins.

How did we go through all these remakes and no one remade? You got a secret, you got a animated series out there. Yeah. I didn't watch that. Gremlins three, baby. All right. Well, we're out of time. We made it through the whole list.

I'm very proud of us. There is a gremlins three. Sorry. What was it called? Gremlins three. It didn't have like a subtitle. It's literally just called gremlins three, but this may not, this is, this may just be the development of it. Cause I just Googled gremlins three and it popped up gremlins three, but I think this could just be, I think this could be a full Gazi man.

The gremlins two have like a subtitle. There's an expected cast for it. Excuse me.

I've been duped. It's in the works. All right. It's in the works. The outlaw liars, not in the works.

We are complete for this week. Again, most common estate planning mistakes. If you've got a situation that you're facing, maybe it's estate planning.

You need some questions answered. You can always call Whitaker and Hamer. The number is 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And of course you can always email your questions to the show questions at the outlaw lawyer.com and again, Whitaker and Hamer, the power behind this program offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, goals, borough, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and Morehead city for Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are managing partners and hosts of this show.

And you can find them at Whitaker and Hamer. I'm Morgan Patrick. We will see you on the radio next week. Outlaw 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.