Judica County Mystery Question Show with some Halloween thrown in

Coming up today on Judica County Radio, it's always about legalese. We talk the legal topics. We also get into some questions.

It's the Mystery Question Show. It's all coming up next on Judica County. Welcome in to Judica County Radio. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm.

They have offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Each and every week, we always talk legal.

And we're going to get into some mystery questions on today's show. If you have a situation that you're facing and you need answers to questions, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer. 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

You can also email your question to info at judicacounty.com. Josh, take it away. Well, Morgan, I don't know if you noticed, we changed the name of our show. I did notice that. Did you notice you said different words? I noticed that I introduced the show in a different way. Well, me and Joseph, we had a sit down and we were trying to think about taking the show in a different direction. And we decided to change the name.

Judica County is a name that we use at the law firm. We have a video. We always called it a video podcast, but we have like a video library at our website.

wh.lawyer is the firm's website. And so we figured it made more sense to kind of just put our weekly show or our radio show or podcast all together under the same name. And so reluctantly, yeah, we decided to change the name of the show. So same show, me and Joe, you, Judica County. That's what we call ourselves. Legal talk.

Legal talk. I like it. I think it was a great change, man. I like it. It's a cool made up word that you made up. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like a real enough word. Well, you know, I noticed, you know what, I noticed that when you, when they invent a new drug, right, when they come out with a new drug, they want to advertise it.

Like it's hard to trademark anything now because everything is, everything under the sun's been trademarked. So you just make up a word. Yeah. So that's why all these was sky Rizzi.

Like what's sky Rizzi? That's a good drug, man. You haven't taken any yet? No, no, no. It's good for you. But I think it helps your bones.

That's what I read. Sky Rizzi for your bones. You got to, you got to listen to the disclaimer at the end of those, those drug ads. Cause it's kind of scary. One of those, a super long one.

Listen into Judica County. We'll, I don't know what it will do to you. What's the, I'm trying to, I'm trying to do this delicately. One thing I've noticed on those drug commercials is what's the, what's the name of the skin?

I don't know a delicate way to put this. You know what I'm talking about? No. The skin? What are you talking about? Like there's different types of skin?

The skin in the, in the delicate area between your private parts. Okay. Okay. What about it? What are you talking about? What's it called? No. We know what it's called.

Why are we going there? No, let's not Google it. If you, if you, if you watch those. You Google it, you're going to get ugly pictures. Don't do that. Yeah.

Don't worry. I'll Google it for science. Pernesium? Per- Perineum? Yeah.

What's the perineum? I don't know. You just said it. Google it. Google it. All right.

Google it and put it on pictures. No, no, no. It's the area between. Okay. Yeah. All right.

Between the ferns. Yes. Thank you. Yeah.

What about it? What are we talking about right now? You listen to those drug commercials. Where are we going? Look, look. Yeah, we're going somewhere. Look, look at, you listen to those drug commercials and you read the fine print on the screen.

And a lot of them, one of the side effects is a fungal infection of that area. Ah, man. You haven't, am I the only one who's noticed that? No, man.

You are really reading the fine print. Are you just looking for that? Is that your thing?

Is like you go in looking like, I see it. There's the word. Well, you don't see that word a lot.

Yeah, that's true. If that word comes on TV. It's a good word.

It's a pretty cool word. So a lot of those drugs. A fungal infection? Yeah. I don't know which drug it is. All right. All right.

I'm going to look up. Look up fungal infection. Fungal infection.

The images are going to be the image. It's called tinea cruris. It's jock itch.

That's all it is. Jock itch. That's not that uncommon. You make it sound scarier when you call it a fungal infection.

When you just say jock itch, it's like. Yeah. That doesn't sound nearly as concerning.

But you know what'll fix that? Sky Rizzi. No. You need tough actin tenactin. Yeah.

That's the extra tough actin. Sky Rizzi sounds like a ride at Disney. I mean, it sounds like it does. I feel like I just want to make it clear that we have not defamed Sky Rizzi. No. That's a great drug, man.

I think it's one of the best. Because again, I feel like I say this every show, but I don't feel like being sued today. So we have not defamed Sky Rizzi.

Live forever. I've just used that as an example of a name that's completely made up. It's a cool name, though. Because it's easier to trademark. Kind of like the name Judica.

Kind of like the name Judica. That's how we got there. Made up! Yeah. The outlaw lawyer, that was a singular. And we're two people.

And I got tired of filming the show. We'd put on that one shirt and get real close to each other. Are we allowed to say it? We're not allowed to say it anymore, right?

No, I think we do. We need to make a clean break. Yeah, we're going to kill it.

Clean break. We're going to kill it dead. Which it was a shame. It didn't come through on the radio, but we had quite a cool logo for that. It was pretty cool. But the Judica County logo is pretty cool, too.

Ah, my God. That Judica County. I don't know how many people have come up with our loyal Judica County watches.

I'm like, I got your logo tattooed on me. Zero. Yeah, it hasn't happened yet. But somebody's doing it. Somebody can do it. I saw this guy on TikTok.

This is random. This guy on TikTok, he's tatted up everywhere. Like his whole face, his body. And his thing is, is he takes people that comment hateful things and he goes in and he'll find their family members on Facebook and then tat them on himself and send it to him. Like, hey, you didn't like my tattoos? Well, I got this one of your daughter.

It actually made me laugh, man. Shout out to that guy. Well, today, you know, the last time we were together, we're over here. We're at Shady's on Main Street. Me and me and Joe usually will come down here and set up our studio and do some recording here.

It's a little easier to do than at the firm. Well, our last time we sat down together, we did what we call a mystery question day, where we took random questions that we had not seen ahead of time and did our best to answer them or at least dissect them and figure out what the legal issues were. And I liked that. I enjoyed that. I did, too, man.

It brought me a lot of joy. So I think I think we're going to do that again. I know for a fact that's what we're going to do. You don't know, man. We're in trouble, right? Because if we do something different, it's going to be a complete.

It's not on the little script. We're actively doing the show. So if that's not what we're doing. So we've got a bunch of legal questions that real people have asked different websites or different, you know, there's all these, you know, ask a lawyer, get a free answer type of websites. And so we've kind of culled those. We've got some that we get from listeners. And I was going to pick them out ahead of time and have my kids read the questions. I thought, oh, nice. I like that. That's cool. But I forgot your kids are in school. Yeah, we can't pull them out for that. I was going to do that yesterday.

And I was like, well, that means I have to look at the questions ahead of time, which is kind of cheating. But I felt like it'd be cool with the kids. That would be cool, man. Or if we took the old chatbot voice generator and just had famous people do it too. That'd be pretty sweet. Yeah. I'd like to have John Madden asking me all the questions. Yeah. And we can work on that.

I think for now, it's just going to be you asking all the questions. I was going to say with AI, we can get John Madden to do it. So we could do it easily.

I'll talk to him. Yeah, with AI, you could do that. You can create new, never before seen pictures of John Madden, like conquering space. Yeah. That sounds awesome.

Write like warrior poems about John Madden. That's way cooler than answering legal questions. But that's it. That's today.

We got mystery questions and we're going to tackle as many of them as time allows. I think that time will allow. We're getting 22 done. That's what my estimate is. That's a lot.

22 is a lot. I was just going to say before we hit our first break, let's kind of catch up, man. It feels like it's been a little bit. It's been a minute since we've talked, everything going okay with the family and everything.

You still have a family, don't you, Josh? Yeah. Yeah. They're doing good.

Yeah. All my boys are involved in some form of football these days. That's pretty cool, man.

My kids are all involved in charitable endeavors. That's good for them, man. That's good for them.

I'm just kidding, man. How about you, Morgan? My kids are grown, man. They're out of the house. They're doing their thing.

Where are they? My kids are good, too, man. They're good. I know you. One's working for the mouse.

One's working for the mouse down in Florida. Then I've got a son who's local and just doing his thing. It's pretty cool. Sports, man. Kid sports.

It's the best. Yeah. I pretty much go to work. Then I shuffle kids around to different sporting events. That's the phase of life I'm in right now.

Yeah. I've been doing that, too, man. I've been doing a lot of that, driving back and forth. We come all the way from Clayton to almost Raleigh for cheer. That's a lot. We do it a lot. She's there so long. You've got to just drop her. It's tough, man.

A lot of driving. It's good to know that you guys aren't as into soccer as we were because I have soccer withdrawal or soccer. I tend to twitch around soccer season, which is now all year long. If you're a parent of a soccer player, you know what I'm talking about. Club soccer can dominate your life.

I'm glad to hear that, Josh, your group's playing football. Then, of course, Joe, you're totally different and going into cheer. I hear cheer is a lot like soccer.

I was going to say, cheer is a lot like soccer. It just depends. I've gotten to the point now where the out-of-state stuff, I used to go to all of it. I get to stay home with the boys now, man. That's all right.

Okay. Yeah, man. I know a lot of families. You've got the families that are all into travel hockey or all into travel soccer, travel baseball.

You get kind of sucked in. Soccer, man. I never did soccer. The kids, I feel like my kids, they haven't started yet, right?

They're not going to start. I don't feel like that's something you just pick up at a random point and get good enough to do it. I think we're safe from soccer. I was always way too fat a kid to play soccer. That could have helped you, though.

It could have helped you. Who's going to get close enough to you to steal the ball from me if you're that fat? I don't know, man. Goalie. You could be goalie. You could be goalie, man.

You could be. Soccer, man. I never, that's the one, I still probably know the least about soccer of any sport on the planet.

I inherited from a roommate a FIFA game back in the day. No, that's fine. I can get behind that. That's good. Whoa.

Sorry about that. But yeah, doing good, Morgan. To answer your question. Yeah. Doing good. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Listen, Juga County Radio, we are going to come back on the other side again. It is a mystery question show. That's right. It's a mystery question show. So, if you have any questions, you can always contact the law firm, Whitaker & Hamer, 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. You can also email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast, info at judicacounty.com.

We're back right after this. Welcome back in to Judica County Radio. It's always about legal. Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker & Hamer law firm, pricing attorneys here in North Carolina. They have offices almost everywhere, Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Verina, Gastonia, and now in Moorhead City. And if you're facing a legal situation, if you've got 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 is about. And an attorney with Whitaker & Hamer will be in touch. And you can email your questions to the show, info at judicacounty.com.

And we'll answer those on a future broadcast. But it is a mystery question show. So, Josh, take it away. My watch here just beeped. My watch is telling me it's time to get moving.

It's not happy with how much I've been sitting here today. I think you should grab the mic and just run laps while we do the show. I think we just canceled the show. I was like, oh, my watch is telling me it's time to move.

I don't know. Just cancel it but still air it. And it's just dead silence. What about a couple of treadmills? Put the mic boom over the treadmill. You guys could walk and talk. The out-of-breath lawyer. I can't move that fast and talk to people. Weasy lawyer. A bunch of Sky Rizzy.

If I just loaded up on that, I'd be all right to do it. I started out this week. I was down in our Gastonia office. And then I was back in the Garner office. And then I was in the Fuquay-Varina office. And I was supposed to go to Warhead City office today. And I just couldn't do it, man. There was too much moving around. That's like my week, man. I was in the Clayton office.

And then I just stayed there the whole time. That's one of the big things we're proud of at the firm. We started in Raleigh back in 2004. But we do have a lot of clients that operate statewide. And having the offices across the state really helps us help those kind of folks.

But- 04 was a good year, man. Yeah. Ought four.

Ought four. All right. Mystery questions. These are random. Again, these are random.

I'm looking at the first one right now. So I should just put a disclaimer on here that the questions pick us. We don't pick the questions. We're bound. We're bound by all this. We live by the rules of the mystery questions.

That's probably going to be terrible, man. This one, I don't know. The good thing about these is they come from everyday normal people, right?

Just like us. These are real legal questions from real people. So in theory, if they have these questions, then somebody else probably has these questions.

Yeah, you listeners are real people too, right? And this one reminds me of something that I've had to deal with recently. But this is a question.

It's a question, but it's a statement. It's like you just put a question mark on. My girlfriend died. That's sad, right? My girlfriend died and her family wants to claim all of my possessions. Can they do that? That's a question mark.

And there's some facts that go along with that. So my girlfriend died and her family wants to claim all of my possessions. And so our guy's asking this because I guess him and his girlfriend live together in an apartment. It sounds like it was like a lease situation.

It wasn't something that had anybody's name on it. But she had moved in with him. It was his apartment. And she passed away and her family is apparently kind of looking around, seeing what they think might be hers. It doesn't sound like the boyfriend and her family have a good relationship. So there's probably some contempt there.

But this family of a deceased girlfriend is trying to claim personal property out of the apartment. That's the question, Joseph. Well, I mean, the way you framed it, they're trying to take every possession he owns.

I'm like, wow. You know, we're only getting the one side, right? There's two sides to every story.

We're only getting the question asker side. But he is saying that they're basically trying to wipe him out, take everything in the apartment, say it was hers. I'm going to assume they were both on the lease just for the purposes of our question. And they, of course, did not own the apartment.

They were leasing it both on the lease. What do you think about that? Well, you know, I always want to start out with I want to hit this fellow with our thoughts and prayers. That's where I'm going to start. That's my starting place. And yeah, man, that's a tough that's a tough situation, right? Like we're not talking we're taking the real property piece out of the equation because we're talking about we're talking about a lease.

We're not talking about fee simple ownership there. But but I think we're going to I think our starting place for all these dead people questions is generally going to be we're going to be looking at whether this individual died test state or intestate. From our facts, I would assume from our facts, it looks like it was intestate. We we know of no will. And what that means is that if there is no will, there's you know, there's nothing that we don't have the wishes of the deceased girlfriend. And we don't have you know, she's not stated how she wants her things disposed of. So we're looking at the good old law to deal with her estate. Well, you know what you don't do between a boyfriend and a girlfriend. You don't you're not married, so you don't automatically inherit anything.

That's right. You and your girlfriend can live together. And when the girlfriend passes away, if there's no will, then our our boyfriend, our surviving person here has not inherited anything by operation of law.

But it's not. There are you never personal property. There are you never real property.

Nothing with a car title. Right. There are you never like stuff in an apartment knickknacks.

Yeah. Furniture. DVDs. Yeah, probably some DVDs.

Maybe some magazines. But but the proof is going to you know, the way I would answer this question is the proof is going to be on the girlfriend's family that you have something that that you don't have the burden to to prove that these are her things. Most most personal property that doesn't have a title is not valuable enough to spend a lot of time fighting over. Yeah, I would think I would think too. But I guess you know, I guess it depends on what it is. But but you're essentially talking about a couple of levels here, right? But you're talking about a dispute as to the ownership of this property. And then you're talking about beyond that, you know, assuming that you work out ownership of this property, you're talking about the estate piece of the equation as well. But that's an interesting that's an interesting one, man.

That's not one that I've seen. Well, it's just not a legal. Yeah, there's not a legal argument. You know, if you if you if you're in possession, like if this I'm sitting at a table, right, if this table is in my apartment, I think I assume I own this table.

She can prove some compelling evidence otherwise. Yeah, I know you on that table. This is your bar that it's not my table. You know, they're not they have no there's nothing. The cops aren't going to come make you give them that table.

Give me your table. You know, like kick the door down, shoot your dog. I think if this I think if this guy, I would just advise him to change his locks and never talk to these people again and let get a girlfriend.

Let me know if you get something in the mail or something from the court or something like that. But I think you just move on. That's a sad situation. That is upsetting, man.

That is upsetting. Well, the next the next question is, is kind of give us a happy one. It's not happy.

It's not happy at all. But it kind of moves in that same direction and kind of takes the question a step further. And I think we've talked about similar situations, but this one says his mom died. That's even worse. And this is an adult son. Mom, you get a new girlfriend. His mom has died and he feels confident there's a will.

You can't locate it. She was remarried. And his stepdad is on all the deeds to real property or stepdad is the stepdad has been around long enough where he's on bank accounts, survivorship accounts, real property. And he says too bad. He said too bad.

So sad. That's what this is. I don't know that he said that, but I like I like a stepdad that talks and like limericks like that. But he said the stepdad's plan is to sell everything and move away to be closer to his kids. And he may include our question asker in a will at some later stage.

Well, the bad news is, again, these are kind of multifaceted situations, right? Like in the reality is, man, a will is only as good as if you can find it and produce it. But the will's not going to help you in this scenario.

Right. If he's correct, if the stepdad, you know, if they own all this real property as husband and wife, and if they if he's on bank accounts as an owner of a joint account or a beneficiary, the will's not going to help you very much there. Yeah, these are all what we would call non probate assets. So he can even if he finds a will and it's like his mom leaves him everything and he waves it in his stepdad's face and he hits him with the too bad, so sad at him.

It's not going to matter because you're talking about non probate assets which aren't going to be subject to that estate. So stepdad's making out like a bandit here, man. Well, we talk about that we talk about when you know how important it is to do your estate plan is it's even doubly as important when you're kind of in that blended family situation because you do not want to accidentally disinherit your kids, you know. And here if we're to believe that this has happened then there's things the son can do but it's difficult because basically that's what's happened. The mom has accidentally probably definitely not on purpose but has not left anything to go directly to her son. So even like Joe said if they locate a will and that will leave stuff to the son like the will can only control probate assets. And like Joe said most of the stuff that we're talking about is technically non probate. So it doesn't even get to the will.

It's unfortunate, man. And you'd hope your stepdad would be a good stepdad and would be a loving stepdad. You know, we don't pick our stepdads. Well, he's calling him a stepdad which indicates to me like otherwise you just call him your mom's husband. Your mom's husband, yeah. Stepdad indicates some level of. I almost agree with you, man. Like that's my mom's husband.

I can get behind that, you know, I feel like that's like it. It's mom's husband. Yeah, but stepdad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wouldn't call someone your stepdad if there was no sword. I've never called my mom's husband my stepdad ever.

Yeah, I feel weird calling him that. I would never. Right. Anyways. Well, this guy did. Okay. And then that's that's what we got.

That's what we got on that question. My mom's husband would never hit me with a too bad so sad. No, he's a very nice guy, man. He's a super nice guy, man. Yeah, I met that guy. He's very nice. Yeah, if you're ever in court, Josh, do you ever use that as your tagline out?

Too bad, so sad. No. I'm like a judge. I don't think I've ever said that in my life till right now.

I think it's a sweet saying, though. All right, guys. Well, Judica County Radio will continue on the other side. Again, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, Managing Partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, Practicing Attorneys here in North Carolina. Offices located conveniently for you, Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Moorhead City. If you have a legal question that you are facing, you need some answers. You can always call the firm 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. You can also, again, leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. You can always email your questions to the show info at judicacounty.com.

And, of course, we'll use those questions on a future broadcast. We have more at Judica County coming up. Welcome back in to Judica County Radio. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your hosts of the Managing Partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. They're practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina and they have offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Moorhead City. And if you're facing a legal situation, you've got questions, you need answers, you can always call the firm 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. Again, the number 800-659-1186. You can also email your questions to info at judicacounty.com.

I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Each and every week we get into legal topics and then sometimes we go, you know, outside the lines as they like to say. So, Josh, where are we going next? Well, it's more mystery questions.

We have more and more and more mystery questions. We only did two in the last segment, Joseph. I predicted we were going to do 22. I'm going to revise my prediction. I'm going to say we're going to get through three. Going with the under. Going with the under.

I think at this point we're on pace for six. I saw you laughing there, Joseph. Yeah. I was pulling up the old Facebook, man, in the break, in the old break. We've got to take a break, man, because we start heating up, man.

We don't want to catch on fire. That's why. And literally I'm scrolling through, man, and there's an ad for Sky Rizzi right there. And you've never gotten an ad for Sky Rizzi before? No, never in my life, man.

I did say Sky Rizzi like 52 times in the last segment. So my phone's definitely listening to me. Oh, definitely.

And I'm going to buy some. It says you only have to do an intravenous injection of it. That doesn't sound that bad. Is that for psoriasis?

It sounds like for a lot of things. Psoriasis, Crohn's disease, and then burning while you're in it. No, that's a side effect. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it can give you that if you need it.

It boggles my mind. I grew up, I've always had psoriasis, and I grew up with psoriasis, and then there was nothing you could do for it. You're basically like getting the sun, which helps. Well, you know what you can do is you can take a vial full of Sky Rizzi and inject it into your veins. There's like 49 million medicines for it now.

None better than Sky Rizzi. And I don't take any of them because I'm so scared of all these side effects, man. Yeah, this one's got some bad ones, dude. I mean, the burning when I'm urinating is enough, man, for me.

That's enough. I've had some soap incidents coming up in the day, man, and that's a scary one. I'll just have the psoriasis. Yeah, yeah, it's worse to me than the psoriasis.

But yeah, for years, there was nothing they could do, man. They'd give you steroid cream, tell you to get the sun. You ever heard of, what's it called, oil of Olay? Does that help any? I've never used that. Yeah, my mom used that stuff, man, on her skin.

Right. It's good. It's good lotion, man.

That's what I heard. I tell you, don't get in the sun? Get in the sun.

Oh, get in the sun. Okay. Good, good.

I was like, you're a vampire? And that helps, man. That helps a lot. But I don't feel like injecting anything that might give me a fungal infection of the… Perineal. Perineal. Perineal.

Perineal. Yeah. But the sun's good. You can inject that into you. I do, man.

I like spending time with Lake getting in the sun. All right. Question. We got a question.

All right. We're going to take these questions ahead of time. We're stuck with the question that the mystery hat gives us. And the mystery hat gave us a question. It says, my attorney wants to know my true bottom line to convey to the opposing counsel.

Should I give it to him? What kind of question is that, man? So this person who has asked this legal question is represented, it looks like, right? So this person has an attorney and it sounds like they're negotiating a settlement, right? So it sounds like it could be personal injury, it could be breach of contract, but there's an attorney on the other side, we got a plaintiff, we got a defendant, we got two people negotiating a settlement and her attorney has said, you know, give me your bottom line. And he wants, I guess he wants to give that number to the other side. What do you think about that?

Yeah. I mean, this is the thing, man, you got to understand your attorney is your attorney. Your attorney works for you. They have tons of duties and obligations to you as your counsel. And you got to talk to your attorney, man. You got to level your attorney and you guys got to be on the same team together. And your attorney should always level with you too. So I mean, I'm assuming this attorney- That's probably why he's asking the question, right?

Yeah. So I'm assuming this attorney, you know, you can't force another side to settle, right? If you're in a dispute with somebody and they have an attorney and you have an attorney and they're entering protected settlement negotiations, that stuff can't be used against you at trial. This is something that ends up getting litigated, but you can't make anybody settle.

You can give them all the reasons why they should settle and what you're willing to take. And the attorney here probably really just wants to know what you'll be happy with. Like what do you, you know, we always talk to people about their damages, you know, recovery, but you've lost, you know, lost income, like there's all these things that attorneys will take into account to compute what we think your, your damage is worth, right?

Cause that's all people can do. Um, you know, if you get harmed, whether it's breach of contract, personal injury, right? Car accident, someone else's negligence, you get harmed.

The only thing the other side can do is give you money, right? That's how we deal with that in our society. And so we have to put a, we have to put a number on the damage you're suffering. We have to, we have to put a number on that and we'll have the number that we hope to get and we'll have a number that we think is fair. And then you'll, you'll have your bottom, your bottom line, right? Yeah.

You'll have the one, like if you get, what do you have to get to be, to fit, you know, here's what I think you should get, but what do you have to get to feel like you're, you know, bait hole? And so I guess that's what that attorney is asking for, uh, is going to, I don't know about sharing it with the other side, but. But yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, you, if you, your attorney can't just flat out, you know, go against your wishes, you know, that's one of the, that's one of the things we have to, we have to actually, we can't just like do that. So you got to level with your attorney in that situation because you guys are working towards the same end.

Yes. That's one of the things I always tell my clients. I don't want to be surprised. You know, you tell me the good, the bad, the ugly, and we don't need to be surprised in negotiations. I don't want to see some document show up that you signed that I didn't know about.

I don't, I don't want to be surprised. I want to know everything there is to know all the way through so that we can do the best job we can for you. But this person was concerned why her attorney was asking for that information, but that's probably why that was a pretty good question, man. Do you like that question?

No, that was a terrible question. I understand the rules. I get the rules. We have to do it right. Isn't that the rule? Isn't that what the thing is? You kind of stated the rule, Josh, if you pull it, you got to talk.

You got to have integrity, man, but that question doesn't even make sense to me. That's the problem. All right. Well, I'll allow it. There we go. I got one. All right. You ready? Yeah, I'm ready, man.

All right. My deceased, everyone's dying. Yeah, this is a lot. This is a lot of death. It's coming for everybody. You got a lot of death.

You are going to die. The last one, the last one involved bankruptcy and it was a weird bankruptcy question. We didn't want to do that one. Get that one away from me. This is what I got.

This is the, this is what I got. My deceased fiance's daughter. Okay. Okay.

All right. So, so the daughter's alive at least. My deceased fiance's daughter is trying to take my son away.

Why can't she legally do it? Oh man. Oh, there's some follow-up here. I don't want to hear some follow-up.

This is a Jerry Springer episode. My fiance passed away recently while giving birth to our son. Okay. And because she passed away, anyway, okay, this, this is going down a rabbit hole. Yeah, let's go, man.

Let's go with them. Two, two unmarried persons had a baby. All right. Brand new baby.

Not an old nine, not a 14 year old. And unfortunately the, uh, the, the, the woman giving birth passed away shortly after childbirth and now her parents are trying to get custody of the baby. Okay. That makes more sense. You originally said the daughter. I'm pretty sure you said the daughter was trying to, but I think I see what you're saying makes more sense.

I like the other pattern because it was absurd, but this makes more sense. No, that's right. That's right. It's hold on.

Maybe I read this wrong. All right. My deceased fiance's daughter is trying to take my son away. Okay. Yeah. Okay. My fiance passed away recently giving birth to our son, so she must've had an older daughter. Okay. And now I like to think of a two year old daughter trying to take a kid and raise it. All right.

So this, we're going to say this daughter is at least 18. Okay. Obviously.

Uh, brand new, she is trying to get gain custody. There's some other stuff going in here, but it gets way too confusing. Okay. So that's our situation. Yeah.

Well, sorry. You can't have the baby. Right. You know, you know, we, we have that come up, you know, we have a, I've, I've sat down with people who are doing their estate plan and they're, they're a divorced and they don't, they don't hold their ex spouse in very high regard. Maybe the ex spouse has like limited custody for reasons, right?

For valid reasons. And they have full custody and they are concerned if something were to happen to them, you know, where, what happens to their, their kids that they, you know, maybe they have custody of them. They live in a different area.

They go to a different school and when they pass away, if they have to go live with their ex spouse, the father or the mother, the, the surviving parent, things are going to be different for their kids. And they want to quote unquote, leave their guardianship rights to, to someone else. But you can't really do that. Yeah. That was a pretty simple answer, man.

I think you slam dunk that one all over them. Yeah. So I don't know what she's doing to try to take the, the, the new baby away. She could just take the baby. It would be illegal.

Right. And she would go to jail, but she could technically, yeah, if you, if you and your spouse are separated and you're, you're a guardian under most circumstances, and there's always exceptions to the rule, but under most circumstances, you can, you can leave your possessions to someone else. You can, you can do all that stuff, but you're, you can't make someone else kind of step into your guardian rights.

If the kids already have a legal guardian who survives you, that's a, uh, this is a good segue, man. It's, you know, it's Halloween time, right? You know that, right? Yeah. We're approaching Halloween.

We're talking about taking a baby. That's a Halloween. The curse of Michael Myers. You've seen that one. I have not. You see, did you see that when that happened in that? I didn't see it.

You didn't see it. Have you seen any of them? I have not watched very many, you know, like scary movies. I don't like scary movies. I like funny movies.

Yeah. How about a funny, scary movie? How about the movie? Scary movie. I haven't seen it.

Really? I've never seen it. You should go home and watch it. You would get a kick out of it, man.

I mean, I've seen parts of it. I guess I did generally have to just show your children, man. They're old enough now. They'd enjoy it.

Is that your favorite? That's culture. No, but I mean, they enjoy it. They like it. It makes me giggle. Don't you like, think you said you like things that are funny. I do like things that are funny.

Are you? What was your favorite Halloween movie? I don't have a favorite anything. We've talked about this, man. I'll never tell you what my favorite because I don't, because it's what day is it, man?

I might like this thing, this day, this thing, the other day. I like the scary movies, man. I like them all.

I watch them all. I saw Nightmare. What's the one where Freddie lives in your dreams? That's Nightmare on Elm Street.

Yes. He does that in all of them. That's what he does in all of them. He does that in all of them.

I thought that was just one. So I saw that one when I was a young, too young, man, when I was like way young at my grandma's house and like a back room on VHS and that one, that's one of the ones that got me, man. It got me. Cause I'd have nightmares.

And then when the whole idea is that someone's going to kill you in your nightmares and you're like an eight year old boy. What's your, what's your, what's your grandmother doing with, with Nightmare on Elm Street on VHS? I brought it. We had, we had this video store. My mom owned a daycare.

Right. And it was a video store across the street. And the guy there, Gary, nice fellow, he'd let me rent whatever I wanted to. So I'd go rent horror movies. Good old Gary.

Nightmare on Elm Street. You're probably gonna get Gary in trouble. I don't think there's a federal law against letting an eight-year-old rent an R-rated movie. I think there probably is. There probably is. Or was when people did that kind of thing. Good luck finding Gary, FBI. He's off the grid now. I liked, uh, I saw Army of Darkness and Evil Dead.

Those were good. You see the new one, the new one, new one's a little bit, a little bit trickier, man. I think you'd like it though. I don't think so. Is it funny? It's not very funny. No, it's not very funny. I laughed at it. See, but I laugh like when something's so absurd, like if something's so scary, like I'll just lie. It just makes me laugh.

I mean, think about it. Gremlins back in the day, Gremlins was considered a horror flick. No it was not. Yes it was. My kids got a little spooked at the Gremlins, man, a little bit.

The first one or the second one? We talked about Gremlins a lot on the show. Yeah, we did. Yeah. Gremlins and Sky Rizzy, man.

That's what the people come for. The Gremlins wasn't scary. We've been doing, so I've been trying to, I want my kids to not be like you. I want them to like watching scary movies because I enjoy it. So I'm trying to introduce it to them, but I'm doing like the, uh, ones that have aired on cable.

Right? So you'd think that they would be less. What I've come to discover is they don't censor any violence. They're just as violent, like absurdly violent, but there's no language. Or nudity. Or nudity. Yeah. There's no nudity. So at least they're not seeing nudity. Right. I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think of any horror movie that I watched that, cause Evil Dead and Army of Dark.

So your kids don't like them either? What about Sixth Sense? Did you watch that one? Sixth Sense? Yeah.

We showed the kids that one last year. I've seen that one. Is that a horror movie? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a horror movie. You would say that was a horror movie. It's 100% a horror movie. It's a thriller. I mean, it's a horror movie. It's a horror movie. Ghosts.

People hanging in the hospital. They show dead bodies hanging. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember that. You don't have to have blood and guts for it to be a horror movie, man.

That's not what it's about. It's about the spirit. The spirit of Halloween. I remember when I was a kid, man, I saw the Headless Horseman cartoon when I was a kid and that freaked me out. I think that put me off of the Halloween movies.

Yeah. Imagine if you're a four year old boy watching Freddy murder people in their nightmares, man. Do you know how many nightmares I had about it? You went from eight to four. You get real young. You get really young.

Imagine being two years old at daycare. All right, guys. We need to take a break.

We're going to come back on the other side. Juca County Radio. It's Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. They're attorneys right here, practicing attorneys in North Carolina, offices conveniently located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia, and Moorhead City. If you've got a legal situation that 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 info briefly what the call is about, and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. You can always email your questions to the show, that's info at judicacounty.com, and we'll use those questions, we'll answer those questions on a future broadcast.

We'll be right back, right after this. Welcome back in to Judica County Radio, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia, and Moorhead City. And again folks, if you are facing something legal, you've got a question, and you need some answers, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186, leave your contact information, briefly what the call is about, and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch.

That number again, 800-659-1186, and you can always email your questions to the show, info at judicacounty.com, we'll answer those questions on a future broadcast. Josh, take it away. Joe, what's the most recent horror movie you've watched? Oh. Or Halloween movie? Ah, let's see, the most recent one I watched? I watched, we watched Trick or Treat with the kids last night.

I'm not familiar with it. That's a good one, man, that's like an anthology, it's like an anthology, it's actually very Halloween centric, you know, not every horror movie is centered around Halloween, this one's very Halloween centric. So you guys don't live in like a conventional subdivision, where do you take your kids to Trick or Treat?

That's a good question, man, it used to be we would just pick a neighborhood randomly, and then COVID happened, right, so COVID kind of jacked that up. I've never loved Trick or Treat, man, big fan of Halloween, not a huge fan of Trick or Treat. That's weird, yeah.

But we would do, we've got the family all around us, right, so we would usually do like a hayride around the family area, and then my sister used to have big parties and do like Trick or Treat. I mean, they ain't gonna do that this year, though. But I don't know what I'll do, man. I don't know. I don't know.

It's a good question. Watch some movies, though. If you should watch some movies, man. I won't do it.

Okay, fair enough. Well, my wife will watch, what's the one with the witches? Hocus Pocus to watch like 82 times. And I guess there's the Hocus Pocus 2 now, right?

There is Hocus Pocus 2. I don't know if it's any good. It's all right.

It's the first one, really. It's all right if you're a lady. If you're into that kind of thing. You ready for a mystery question? Yeah.

All right. This one's kind of messed up. I was skateboarding in a crosswalk, and I got sideswiped by a car. I don't know why I'm laughing, man.

It's not funny at all. Well, we have clients who were walking. We got a lot of skateboarding clients. We have clients who are walking. We have a lot of clients that walk, too. And you know, who have been hit by a car who didn't yield. We are the walking man's attorney. It's a pedestrian.

And so he's like, well, what should he do? And I'll go and tell you from experience, the first thing he should do, a lot of times when a pedestrian gets hit, they are obviously having a medical emergency. And a lot of times they are on their way to the hospital before they can give a statement. So I will tell you, if you're a pedestrian or a skateboarder or a bicyclist and you get hit, make sure at some point you talk to the officer or the police department that responded to get your statement made, because it's not always obvious. You know, we had one where they thought the police officers didn't get a chance to talk to the pedestrians.

The pedestrian was already on the ambulance on the way to the hospital. And when they drew up the accident report, they drew it up in a fashion where it looked like the person walked into the car. Like it was the person's fault. That was a long time ago. That was a long time ago that happened. But the problem was the police officer had not gotten a statement from our client and had just drawn up the accident report just based on what he observed when he arrived. How do you walk so hard into a car that the police are called?

Dear God, he's coming right for us. Oh, that's incredible, man. So that was kind of bad policing, but we got it amended and he got what he needed. But yeah, if this skateboarder doesn't sound like he's at fault, so he needs to retain an attorney, it sounds like in his question is that his insurance company has paid all of his bills. He's not really adding money, but it looked like a broken leg and that's what personal injury attorneys do. They help you recover because we just talked about in a previous segment, if someone injures you in that fashion, it always sounds kind of callous to reduce this to money, to like a settlement. But that's the only way in our system you can be made whole. You don't get to go break their leg, right? We can't give you another leg. Yeah, it's not eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. I wonder if you could just ask that though, like just let me break his leg, break that guy's leg.

But that's what you get. So that when you come to an attorney, like if you come sit down with me and Joe, because you got hit as a pedestrian by a vehicle, we look at your injuries. We look at how long you missed work. We look at all kinds of things and kind of come up with, you know, well, this is probably what you should be compensated for the injuries that you suffered. And then you negotiate with the other side. Eventually you file suit. Some of these things go to trial, insurance companies get involved, but uh, not good news when that. I'm still so stuck on the police officer writing the report as if the person ran into the car. Like that's, I've seen some bad police reports, man. This is an anecdotal story and it's random, but uh, I interned at a law firm in college and uh, I was a witness to an accident, right? A car accident just happened right in front of me and I stopped cause I'm a good Samaritan, right? So I stopped, knew neither of these people.

I wait forever for the cop to come take my statement. And he's like, what happened? And it was like a guy and a lady, right? Younger guy, older lady, clearly the lady's at fault and not even a question.

Slam dunk. And I tell him, I'm like, yeah, the lady just, she, she ran the stop sign, she smashed the guy. He was obeying all traffic laws, open and shut case. Right. Right. Well, I guess the cop thinks that I know the guy. He thinks we're buddies.

I've never seen this guy in my entire life. Right. And so he writes the report up the opposite way. And uh, so I work at this law firm at the time. Law firm gets a call from the guy to handle his PI case.

And uh, and I guess they, they, he comes in and he consults and uh, they come up to me and they're like, did you, were you here for this? And they had to punt the case cause I worked for him and I was like the only witness in it. So they were conflicted out.

They were really sad about that. So yeah. Attorneys, you know, attorneys take conflicts of interest very seriously at some, that's a big thing for us.

You know, we, we, every, every, every, uh, you know, every client that we, every potential client that we have, we have to search a database to make sure that we haven't represented someone or have some sort of conflict, uh, before we, before we are your attorney. That's exciting stuff, man. That's the thing that happens. It is a thing that happens.

So that's a pretty good question, man. It was something. Yeah. Yeah. You got to tell that story. I'm gonna think about that all day, man.

Just somebody just power walking into a car and just smashing through it completely. Judican County radio, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. They've got offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia, and Morehead city.

If you have a legal situation, you've got some questions and you need some answers. You can always call Whitaker and Hamer 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch and you can always email your questions to the show info at judicacounty.com We'll answer those questions on a future broadcast.

We have a short final segment coming up on the other side. Don't go anywhere. Judica County radio, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, your host, the managing partners and practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, and of course you can find them at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia, and now in Morehead city. If you're going through something and it's a legal question you have, you can always get answers by calling Whitaker and Hamer 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney will be in touch with you. Again, that number 800-659-1186 and you can email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast.

That's info at judicacounty.com. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Josh, take it away. All right. I got another mystery question. Really? Mm-hmm. Okay. Are you ready for it? Yeah.

I'm ready for it. The mystery question that we got is, I don't think we ever really talked about this one. It is, I am about to default on $50,000 of unsecured debt and basically they want to know what to expect, what can happen. They got a $50,000 unsecured loan, so I guess we should tell, there's a difference between a secured loan and unsecured loan. This is unsecured.

So what does that mean? Well, secured would be secured by some collateral, right? That they can come take back.

Real property would be a very common example. Unsecured would just be, there's nothing they can take other than your dignity. It's like, yeah, it's like credit card debt, right? Credit cards are unsecured debt. But what they can do is they can get a judgment against you, right? They can get a judgment, a monetary judgment. They could potentially mess your credit up, they could do that. So it's not like good things happen, but yeah, they're not collateralized would be the term. Right, because if it's a secured loan, they just take whatever they had a security interest in, right? Your car, foreclose on the house, right? If they had collateral, it can be like anything, right?

A restaurant equipment, right? When you open up a restaurant, a lot of times you get a UCC fixture filing, you have a secured lien on certain things, but solar panels, right? Secured lien on solar panels.

I see that a lot. Anyway, unsecured debt, there's not much they can do to you except sue you, but that's a lot, right? So they can sue you for 50 grand.

I don't want to get sued. I'm sure you probably signed a note that allowed them to get attorney's fees and penalties and extra interest once you go into default. So you'll probably end up owing them a good 60, 65,000, all things said and done. You probably don't have a good defense against not paying, right? Just because you don't have the money, that's not a defense. That's not a good defense at all.

No. So they'll sue you and more than likely they'll win and they'll get a judgment against you and that judgment becomes a lien on everything you own. And they can enforce that lien things in the sheriff out of your house to get personal property to sell. They can use it to get cars. They can use it to actually foreclose on a real property that you might own in your sole name.

So that unsecured debt really fast can become super secured debt. Yeah. That's good, man. That's good. I like that. I like that. Yeah. I just made that up.

That's right up there with too bad, so sad for the best things I've heard today. All right. What Halloween movie you got lined up? You got dialed up for today. Tonight, man. Tonight. Oh, let's see. I think tonight, I don't know, man. You've put me on the spot and I like to get just hit in the moment.

You know, actually that's not true, man. The kids want us to do the new Haunted Mansion. I think that's what we're going to do. The new Haunted Mansion. Hand seen it.

Oh, yeah. Hand seen that one. Kids saw it. Said it was pretty good. They said they screamed. They saw it at the theater with my grandma. Was that streaming? I think it might be streaming on Disney Plus.

They told me it was and they keep up with these things better than I do. So I might do that one tonight. You should do one, man. You should do one.

You're depriving your children. Come on, Josh. Dive in. You can do this. Don't go super scary. Yeah. Come on, Josh. You're going to do it.

You're going to do it tonight. Really? Yeah. We're obviously we're in the studio on a Thursday.

We're not on it. Is that a Halloween Loki? Maybe. You should do some Halloween stuff with your kids, man. They seem deprived of Halloween. The joy of Halloween. They like Christmas, though, right? Right around the corner?

Yeah. Well, I think they like Halloween, too. But Halloween. I mean, what's Halloween?

It's a... I don't know, man. When you're really little, it's fun with the candy and the stuff. Well, you got to watch the movies. That's what you do as an adult. You watch the movies, man.

You watch the movies. That's what you do. What else are you going to do? Baseball playoffs. That's the thing that's happening.

There you go. Baseball. Oh, that's something. That's the thing that's happening. Baseball.

That the kids like. Come on. There's football now. Yeah.

Yes. We got football for a while. Basketball's starting.

You still doing state games? Hockey's cranking up. Yeah. Hockey.

You heard of this hockey? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I watched some state games.

Some wrestling. State Duke's coming up soon. Yeah. That's coming up. Yep. Yep.

It's coming up. Your quarterback? How long is your quarterback out? Indefinitely. Oh, really? He'll be back this year, though.

They say they say high ankle sprain. Oh, so it's like three weeks, four weeks? Yeah. He's going to be all right. He's a machine.

He's a true hero. Yeah. All right, guys. Closing thoughts real quickly.

Just hit us with it, and we'll close this shop up. I like these mystery questions, man. I like it a lot. I do. I like this. Well, it takes almost zero planning. That's why I like it. Right?

That's good. That's my favorite thing about it, brother. We can just stroll up in here.

It'll take a lot of planning. Like I said, I think these are real people asking real questions. I like being able to try to address those. I chugged some coffee during the show, too, man. I'm jacked.

I'm ready to just headbutt these brick walls and shadies. I kind of agree with you. I like the idea of just kind of taking a question right off the top without any prep and see how attorneys are going to handle it. The mystery question show is a big hit. It will return in the future, but we want to remind you if you've got a legal question that you're facing and need some answers, you can call Whitaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information, briefly what the call is about, and an attorney will be in touch with you. You can also email your questions to the show info at judicacounty.com. For Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, I'm Morgan Patrick, and you've been listening to Judica County Radio.

We're back next week. Here 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.