Alabama Embryo Case & Former President Trump is on the Ballot in Colorado Plus Q & A

Coming up on Judica County Radio, your host, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, are going to get into everything legalese, but we're going to focus in on Alabama, the embryo case, and also former president, Donald Trump, Supreme Court case in Colorado says he can stay on the ballot. That's all coming up on this edition of Judica County Radio. Joshua Whitaker and Joseph Hamer. Welcome into Judica County Radio, your host, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, and the power behind this program, yes, Whitaker and Hamer, your law firm for life.

Office is located at Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate, and each and every week we hit the topics. Each and every week we also have some Q&A for you when it comes to legalese.

And we also offer up a helping hand. If you've got a question, a legal question that you're facing, and you need some answers to that question, you can always get in touch with Whitaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. You can also email your questions to info at judicacounty.com.

That's info at judicacounty.com. Josh and Joe, welcome back in. Good to see you, because we can see each other while we're doing the radio show, which I love. And we can kind of sense the urgency, and these guys are really intense today. Well, we're all, I think we've all had afternoon coffee, right? So we're all jacked up on coffee.

I'm ready to go. We're buzzing. We're buzzing.

I was born for this. Well, we've got some interesting things to talk about this week. You know, here on the show, we try to talk about topical things, right? Things that are in the local news or the national news that have to do with the law, Supreme Court cases, statutes.

So we do that, and then we answer some listener questions, and so we got a little bit of both. But guys, I just wanted to jump right in today, because there was a case out of Alabama that got a lot of news, got a lot of, people were talking about it, but it was an Alabama Supreme Court case about the frozen embryos. Did you guys see that one? Yeah, I saw that one, man. Yeah, you sent it to me before the show.

You sent it to me before the show, and you said, we're going to talk about this on the show. So you saw that then? I saw it, yeah.

Yeah. So that was interesting. And this one's interesting for a lot of reasons. You know, it's election time, you know, abortion is fertility rights, you know, that always comes up. Come election time, and I think for a lot of Republican candidates, you know, we talked about the Supreme Court case, Dobbs, right? Dobbs is the one that said abortion wasn't, you know, protected under the Constitution. We've talked about that case. And so a lot of Republicans run on, you know, protecting life in that situation, right? They're against abortion and all but certain exceptions, and a lot of Democrats will run on, hey, this needs to be reversed.

We need to protect fertility rights, right? And so this case kind of brings those things together in kind of a weird way. So the Alabama Supreme Court, Joseph, did you see those facts? You know about those facts? Yeah, I saw those facts, man.

Pretty, pretty interesting set of facts, if you tell me. So they had a clinic that does IVF, you know, in vitro treatments for folks and helps folks create viable embryos that are then later implanted so that, you know, the female can then proceed through pregnancy and deliver healthy kids. So for people who are having trouble conceiving, these embryos are created in the lab, in vitro, and then they're frozen. And so in this case, there was a clinic. It was kind of odd. The facts were kind of odd. Somebody got in there, right?

Somebody came into the clinic, opened up one of these vats or whatever where these embryos are stored at sub-freezing temperatures, right? You know, yep. And screwed with it, like touched it and fiddled with it. Yeah, dropped a couple like those.

I couldn't tell if it was an employee or somebody just wandered in off the street. Like I don't have all the facts there, but that's what happened. These embryos were destroyed. And Alabama has a law, the wrongful death of a minor act, which was created back in the 1800s so that if you were convicted of killing or somehow contributing to the death of a minor, you could receive a more severe punishment than if you just murdered Morgan, right? Morgan, who's of age. Thanks. Yeah. There's a law against murdering you too, Morgan.

I promise. That's right. It's just a lesser penalty. And so the court got the owners, right? The parents, I'm doing air quotes, right? The parents of these embryos, the owners of these embryos brought an action for wrongful death because these embryos in theory could have been implanted. In theory, they were viable and could have become a child and no more, right?

And so they brought an action. And so the court was faced where they're deciding, were these embryos children under the wrongful death of a minor act? And could these people get compensation for the termination of these embryos, right? And so that's how the question came to the court and the court decided, and they kind of got ridiculed for this decision.

Like if you watch the national news and you read national newspapers, the state of Alabama is often, you know, it seems like the further south you get Northern media makes you the butt of jokes, right? So the state of Alabama was kind of ridiculed for this decision in the, in the national media, but they decided for these purposes, this embryo was a child. They could proceed under the wrongful death of a minor act for compensation for the destruction of these embryos. And people have kind of run wild. This is a very narrow ruling in a very specific situation. But everything that I read, people were running wild like now, you know, embryos are, are children, right? And so it has had a chilling effect. A lot of the clinics down in Alabama have stopped performing in vitro fertilization because they could damage an embryo just in the, you know, the process of implanting it.

And if they accidentally destroy an embryo, are they going to be liable for the wrongful death of a minor, you know? But I thought that was an interesting, you know, there's a lot of different areas of law kind of converging there. What do you think about that? Man, you really just jumped right into it. We came out of the gate.

We usually like warm up, man. And this is like right into the deep end. Well, that, and I think, I think that's, you know, the, you go ahead. What do you think?

What do you think about it? Cause that's, it's kind of a, it's, it's, it's, it's a thing. It's a little bit, yeah.

Like it's, it's, I don't know, man. Because if you're going to make the, like, if you're making it pro-life argument and you're talking of like you, you know, when does life begin? If you say life begins at conception. Logic, like it, it's all, you can't really take that position and then not take this same position, you know, in a sense, but at the same time, it seems nuts, right? Because we're talking about frozen embryos.

They're not in a body, you know, it's just like, it's a, it's a crazy concept to think about. And the ramifications are the one thing that jumps out to me right out of the gate. Just like you said, man, a lot of IVF procedures were canceled because you got folks worrying about potential liability. Um, and, and this isn't, another thing I'll touch on is the fact that this isn't necessarily something that's going to make it to the Supreme Court necessarily. But you know, I think this is going to, you're talking about a state statute, the Alabama state constitution. And, um, it sounds like something that's going to be, you know, the dissenting, the dissenting judges in this case essentially said this is something that needs to be legislated. And the legislature needs to make this decision, not the court.

Um, but, but yeah, man, it's, it's on its face, it's kind of nutty. So this, this came out, the national media covered this, like the state of Alabama says their embryos are, are, are people, right? And then it just kind of ran wild and no one really stopped to kind of look at the facts and what the court was trying to do. The court wanted, it sounded like the court wanted, uh, the, the, again, air quotes, the, the parents to be able to recover damages. Um, but, but they are also constrained by a statute that the state of Alabama had passed, had been on the books for a hundred years before in vitro fertilization was a thing, but you've got a statute here and the court has to interpret it based on what they have. You know, the court can declare things unconstitutional, but the court doesn't make laws. It just, it can strike down an unconstitutional law, but it interprets. And so the state court, the Supreme court of Alabama interpreted, uh, based on what they had in front of them. Honestly, I don't see how you get, if you're constrained to what they were constrained to, I don't see how you get to a different, really fair resolution on this fact pattern, but it's also, you'll hear attorneys say narrowly construed. I think this is a decision really only applies, you know, to, to this and you know, the, the in vitro clinics, they can probably come up with a waiver that saves them from some liability and they, and they can proceed. But, uh, I think that's why the Supreme court said that and the descent, like, Hey, the legislature, the state of Alabama legislature needs to take a look at the statute.

Cause what, you know, what are we supposed to do here? But yeah, and you make a good point in terms of looking at the actual fight. I agree with you, the national media kind of tried to make it seem like these folks were just idiots, you know, and, and really if you boil it down and you look at the, the, what they were stuck with and what they had to interpret.

And I think we would all agree that, you know, negligent mishandling of, of these embryos is something that if some way, if there's a clinic that's mishandling those, there should be liability for that. Right? Like it's just a matter of what, what does that look like and what they got. Yeah, exactly. So, well, and you guys bring up a really good point. I mean, this is, this is such a hot button issue. Uh, w when you talk about life, uh, and you're going to have both sides of, of the aisle, uh, arguing one way or the other, and it gets a lot of clicks.

It gets a lot of attention. You're going to have a lot of people, um, you know, putting this out there as far as something that they're concerned about. So as far as next steps, Josh, Joe, I mean, what, what happens now? I mean, obviously they're, they're suggesting that the state legislature handle this.

Yeah. You know, either, either party could, could apply to, to have this go to the Supreme court, the U S Supreme court and the U S Supreme court can take a look at it or not take a look at it. I don't think this goes that, that far. I think the statute probably gets changed. And in light of these facts that were hard to, to construe, I think that's probably all we get here. But today, you know, me and Joe do this show one so that the folks who listen know who we are and who Whitaker and Hamer is know that we can help them with their everyday legal problems. Uh, we answer listener questions, but we also talk about new stories that involve the law and how maybe media on both sides kind of ran with, with a story the wrong way.

And this is the first of two that we're going to talk about. Cause the next one we're going to talk about is the U S Supreme court decision. Uh, you guys know Colorado decided their Supreme court removed Donald Trump from their ballot under the reservoir.

Um, what's the word I'm looking for? Anyway, they pulled Donald Trump off the ballot. Of course that went straight to the U S Supreme court, U S Supreme court ruled that that was unconstitutional.

You can't, you can't do that. And the media, depending on what media you read, kind of ran with it a different way. And so we're going to talk about that one too today. Oregon, Judah county radio.

We have been talking obviously about Alabama, the embryo case. We're going to switch gears when we come insurrection insurrection insurrection. There it is about 15 seconds behind, but it was good.

I liked it. When we come back on Judah county radio, we will talk about former president Donald Trump. He is back on the ballot in Colorado. We'll discuss that. We want to remind you too, as Josh mentioned, uh, they're here to help you. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you got questions, you can always get in touch with Whitaker and Hamer 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. And again, we're here to help. We're here to inform, and you can also email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast info at judica county.com. It's info at judica county.com.

We're back right after this. Welcome back into Judica county radio, your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They are the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm offices located Raleigh Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and in Morehead city. They are practicing attorneys here in our great state of North Carolina. Remember Whitaker and Hamer, your law firm for life.

I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate each and every week. It is always legalese, the hot topics of Q and a, uh, we mix it all together and of course we get Judica county radio. So we talked about Bama and the embryo case. Now we're going to switch gears and former president Donald Trump, Colorado, the location, uh, making all the headlines.

Josh lead us off. You know, I mentioned it from time to time on the show, but one of the, you know, my undergrad, when you go to a lot of lawyers or undergrad is not, is not pre law. It could be biology. It could be chemistry. It could be history.

It could be English. What was your undergrad major, Joseph? I went to clown college and then after college, no, man, I did, uh, I did political science is what I did. That's a popular one with attorneys. I was, I was on the track. I just, I wanted to go to law school, man, from early.

I went in undecided, had decent enough grades and I was like, I'll just go to law school. What else? Yeah. Decent enough. Yeah.

Decent enough, man. So I was, uh, I was a English major. I was a journalism major editing, you know, that's kind of what I was. I was trained to do and did it for a while before I went to law school. Uh, but the way things get covered is always been, uh, interesting to me. And, and the way legal stuff now as an attorney, having gone through law school and done this for, for 20 plus years, um, the way legal news gets covered in the national media is just very fascinating to me, whether it's good or bad. I enjoy taking a look at it. And so in that vein, I follow Donald Trump and his legal, what he's got going on legally pretty closely because the way it's covered is, is, is, uh, is fascinating.

Um, depending on, go ahead. I was just going to jump in and say I was mass communications journalism as well. And the way things have changed from when we were in school to where they are now and the immediacy of just how you get your news, how you get it on your phone, X, uh, Instagram, I mean, it's everywhere. Uh, and it comes out so quickly and people are so, I mean, their job is to get it out first. And I think that really, sometimes that hurts, that hurts us as a media consuming society, because I mean, we're just, we're thirsty for it and they're just feeding us and they're trying to do it as quickly as possible.

And sometimes they don't get it right. Well, back in the, back in the, in the nineties, when me and Morgan were in college, like I was trained to be an editor. I was trained to edit copy in a, in a news for, for print and a newspaper. And I actually had a class and did this in practice where we, you know, put a newspaper page together. Right.

And that's, that's kind of what I, I did. Um, but you know, we talk about this too. We all, there was a time where we all agreed what the news was, right? You know, maybe the wall street journal covers this new story different to than the New York times and the New York times different than the news and observer, but we all agreed. This was a story worthy of news, you know, and now anyway, it's, it's, it's just in what, 20 years, 25 years, this has all changed.

You know, don't be humble. I remember back, I remember back when you were working for the Clayton news star, man, and that was one of the top publications in the country and you won that award. What was that award? That little award you won the Pulitzer? Was that it?

Yeah. People don't talk about that. A lot of people don't talk about that, but, but regardless the, you know, Donald Trump, we talk about him, he's a lightning rod. You know, uh, you either really liked him or you really don't like him. Your news organization either covers him positively or covers him negatively, depending on your, the way you view him.

There's very little in between, man. But no matter, and he's got a lot of legal things going on and we're not here to talk about all of them. The only one we're going to talk about today is, uh, the state of Colorado, their Supreme court. There's a clause in the constitution as we, as we determined, uh, in an earlier segment, the insurrection clause, like if you've, if you're, if you've committed or contributed to a, to an insurrection, there's a clause in the constitution that some people interpret as a way where states could keep you off a ballot for public office. And so the state of Colorado took this up and their Supreme court decided that Trump had violated that clause. And as a result, they were going to pull him from the state's ballot, uh, as a candidate for, for president. And that really hadn't happened in a hundred plus years.

No one's really tried to use this. There's not a lot of case law. So this was kind of a new, new ground. Of course that was appealed to the Supreme court, Supreme court heard it and all nine. And we've talked about our divided Supreme court right now. The Supreme court's always divided, uh, along certain lines. And it's been very politically divided, but they decided nine O that, that Colorado couldn't do that. They kind of got different reasons how they got there, but it was a unified. I can't remember last time we had a nine O decision that we, that we talked about on the show, right?

But the, the liberal justices, the conservative justices, the Republican justices, the democratic justice all came together. Nine O state of Colorado. Can't do that.

Cause there's too many bad things that can happen, right? If we set this president precedent that the state of Colorado can do this, then Rhode Island could keep a democratic, you know, or the state of Alabama could keep a democratic nominee, you know, for, for similar reasons. And we just don't want the States being able to do that.

Decide federal elections. Right. And so they had this rationale. They did it. I think that was the right decision personally, just as a lawyer who kind of looks at that kind of thing.

I think that was the right decision. I think that's why you got a nine O it was very important that this be done, but the meat, the media covered it. I just read like the Atlantic, the Atlantic monthly had an article. Uh, can't remember. Maybe it was the New York times, but there was the, all these opinion pieces on how we've lost the Supreme court.

They won't help us stop, you know, this insurrection. And this is going to be the end of our democracy. And I thought that was all a little overboard. Right. Uh, and some people covered it differently, but I thought a lot of national media covered this. Like this was a bad decision.

I think this is the only decision you can make. So I was puzzled. That was just me.

Yeah. It's crazy to me, man, how people will seize on anything or anything, especially when you're talking about Trump and there's, there's very few things that are as polarizing and, and it's both sides, man. We talk about it all the time, but you're going to get overwhelmingly positive coverage with very few realistic negatives. And you're going to get overwhelmingly negative coverage. And I miss the days of the in-between man of the just straight hard facts, getting shot into your veins.

You know, that's what I miss, man. I don't really want to hear if you're, if you're reporting news to me, if you're the New York times, you have an opinion page and that's fine. Do whatever you want to in your opinion page. But if you're reporting the news to me, I don't need to know what your opinion of Trump is or your opinion of Biden or your opinion of McConnell or anybody else. Tell me, tell me what happened.

You can even reduce it down to an outline for me. And if I want your magazine or your newspaper or your, you know, whatever's opinion, I'll go to the opinion section. I'll click on an opinion article.

But if you're just telling me what happened, just tell me what happened. And, and man, I used to think there were more attorneys out there in the media that they would go to like, Hey, this is something that happened that, you know, cause if you know, you know, back when, back during COVID. I was talking to some people who own some salons. We have some clients who own barbershops and salons, and they were talking to me about COVID like we're in 2024.

I feel like that was so long ago when governor Cooper, if you lived in a democratic state, your governor shut you down. If you were a bar, if you were a restaurant, right? If you were a salon, if you were a barbershop and they were telling me, you know, four, three, four years later, how their businesses are still negatively affected.

Right. So if you talk to somebody who owns a salon or a barbershop, a lot of them still aren't a hundred percent back, uh, from being closed, uh, for those, for that time period during COVID. But, um, you know, back then I feel like there was a lot of doctors, a lot of people with medical qualifications that were brought on to all these news outlets to tell us the hows and whys of COVID and what was going on and why these decisions were made. But anytime anybody reports on anything legal, I don't see the lawyers coming out, you know, see the, the legal scholars, you know, making comments, commentary and things like that. You're volunteering, man, to be the one you're going to be, you're going to be the one. We'll do it here. We'll do it here on our radio show where we, where we can talk about it. And, um, but anyway, just another example of how an attorney with some experience might be able to lend, you know, some, some extra knowledge to, to something that's being reported on pretty trivial, trivial, uh, I can't think of the word.

No, I, I get where you're going, Josh. I mean, when you think about it, uh, these media outlets, again, you know, there are, I think there are a handful that are right down the middle, uh, that will report the story. Uh, but there are a lot of them that are a little to the left or a little to the right. And if you bring it, if you bring an attorney on and they do their job, uh, they might not, uh, sing to the, I guess the, the direction of the story that that particular network wants. And so I think they kind of steer away from it, uh, because that would kind of pour water on whatever fire they had when it comes to that particular story. That's just my opinion, but I mean, I, I get what you're saying. I mean, we don't really see, uh, you know, like when we, and again, I'll go back and Joe, this is probably a little bit before you, but when, when OJ Simpson's trial was on TV, I mean, every network had an attorney, uh, sitting on their set, uh, talking about the latest proceedings.

Uh, we just don't see that anymore. Now I remember OJ Simpson, he's a, he's a famous football player, right? You know, the remaking, uh, for right. You know, naked gun, the remake of Neeson. Yeah.

Yeah. It's going to be, I think it's going to be good, but, uh, they were like, uh, well, who do we get to play in it? I think we should, I think that would be, uh, he'll kill it. He'll kill that role. It's he, he's in jail, right? He's not free. He's not a free man. Is he, or is he a free man? I think he's out. He, he got out then he got in trouble because he stole back some memorabilia that he had sold or something, or he thought, yeah, check. I think he's, I know he got out 2017 and uh, he's good man.

He's doing just fine. He's ready to shoot. What was his name? What was the name of the character on naked gun? I can't remember.

I just saw the original naked gun like three weeks ago. It's Frank Drebin and he was, um, he's uh, he's uh, looking it up. He's looking it up. Cause the other guy's dead. The other, the other, the other cop, well Frank, of course.

Nordberg. He's good in that movie, man. We talked, we talked before about separating the, the person from their art and obviously killing people bad, but he's pretty good in that movie. Well, I'll quick story before we hit the break. Um, it was probably right after all of this stuff happened and he left California and he went to Florida to kind of escape the media's eye.

I was at a wedding in South Florida and the wedding party went to a Key Biscayne to play golf at the turn. I'm in the grill and I turn and OJ Simpson is standing next to me, getting a beer, playing golf with some people. And I was kind of like, I couldn't speak as, Hey man, what's up? How you playing? I was like, I'm playing well.

I'm playing well. The one thing that stood out to me, he's such a large person. I mean, you think, you think of him as an agile, uh, running back from his NFL days, but that dude is a big dude. Yeah. And, um, but yeah, it kind of creeped me out, creeped me out just a little bit.

And, um, obviously he's no longer in that area, but I was not expecting to see OJ Simpson at the time. All right. Judica County radio. We are going to take a short break.

We'll be back on the other side. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your hosts, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. If you've got a legal situation, you need 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's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch and you can email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast info at judicacounty.com. That's info at judicacounty.com. Welcome back into Judica County radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Again, offices conveniently located for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead city. Again, Whitaker and Hamer, your law firm for life.

I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. If you have a legal situation you're facing, you got questions you need answers to, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer. The number's 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact info briefly what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And again, we always say this and we mean it. We want your emails.

You can email your questions to the show info at judicacounty.com and we are focusing in on family law questions this show. So Josh, Joe, take it away. During the break, I did some thinking. Some soul searching. I did. I was in deep thought. I was thinking about our... I could see it in your face.

I didn't want to interrupt you. The Christmas special, you know, I went with Christmas vacation. We were talking about favorite Christmas movie slash special slash anything on video.

And I went Christmas vacation, but I regret that because I don't think... I think far and away the best Christmas movie slash special slash cartoon is The Muppet. It's Christmas Carol. The Muppets, man. The Muppets are good.

I like Charlie Brown's Christmas. I like that. The Peanuts. Yeah.

Peanuts are good. You get Michael. Michael Caine's performance. He gave us like a grade A performance with The Muppets. Yeah. Yeah. I ain't got a problem with The Muppets, man. I'm not going to sit here and tell you I've got an issue with The Muppets.

That's good. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you that's the best thing I've ever seen Christmas related. But you've seen it.

Yeah. But again, it's not my thing. I've seen it, but it's not like it stuck with me, man.

Like I saw it and then I kept on living my life. I felt like Michael Caine gave like an Oscar worthy Scrooge performance. Michael Caine's Michael Caine. Like it's Michael Caine. And Scrooge is good, too.

Scrooge is way up there. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Especially for the... The adults out there, they love that movie.

I love that movie. And it usually comes like later for some reason. That's not like, you know, you think an elf running like nine times a day.

Scrooge usually shows up like 10 days till Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on that, man.

So as attorneys, where do you where do you fall on Die Hard? A lot of people feel like Die Hard is a Christmas movie. It's not a Christmas movie, man. Not really. I've never seen it.

But what? You haven't seen Die Hard? No, we'll come back to that. You never seen any Die Hards?

No. You ever seen Under Siege? I've seen the Under Siege. Yeah, I've seen Under Siege. You're a Steven Seagal guy.

I see it. Die Hard to me, I've tried to watch it at Christmas time and like make it a Christmas movie. And it just doesn't do it for me. And it's because I think you can enjoy that movie at any time, man. Any time of the year, it's going to be just as enjoyable to you as opposed to like if to me, if I watch a Christmas movie like at the wrong time of the year, man, it's like it's weird. Yeah, it gives me the but Die Hard I could watch in like March and it's fine, man. Yeah.

You can say Yippie-ki-yay and feel good about it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

For sure. It's well, anyway, family law. That's what we've been talking about.

We've been talking about family law. You haven't seen Die Hard, man. I've never seen Die Hard. I've seen a lot of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and that's yeah. They reference it a lot. And I don't like Bruce Willis. And I saw that Bob's Burgers where they reenact it and do like a kid's play.

So I feel like I got the gist of it. You don't like you don't like Bruce Willis that much? Not a Bruce Willis guy?

Well, I'm trying to think. I don't think I've just seen a lot of I don't think I've seen a lot of Bruce Willis movies, really. I'm trying to think of something else that I could ask you about Bruce Willis-wise because obviously he's been in a ton of movies. He's been in the Dead People one. I saw that one. That was a good movie. The Dead People one. Very different than his role in Die Hard, obviously.

A lot different. Fifth Element, you've seen that one? No. Never mind, man. Never mind.

No Die Hard? That's nuts. Family Law. Last segment, we had Taylor, one of the attorneys at our firm, join us to talk about child custody in North Carolina in general and just how that kind of works kind of give us an overarching answer to a lot of questions that we get. And we get a ton of questions on post separation support, alimony and child support. Those are all three different different things that happen at three different times that for for three different reasons. So, you know, it's it causes a lot of questions. I think there's some confusion out there in the general public about when, you know, when child support's awarded, what they look at versus what they look at for post separation support, which is the time you're separated before you can get a divorce in North Carolina. And obviously after divorce, there's alimony conversations.

So three different things. We get a lot of questions. And again, we we went back to Taylor to ask her about this and then get some explanation on how those are calculated.

Just again, a good general knowledge base to start maybe asking more complex questions. But here's what Taylor told us. All right, Taylor had another one for you. All right.

All right. Another listener question based in family law. And again, I'm taking a listener question.

I'm kind of boiling it down to a general question that might be more helpful for for folks who might be listening. But the general question I have for you, we all have heard that in the movies, you hear alimony, right? You hear you hear about alimony after a divorce in North Carolina. Of course, you have to be separated for a year and a day to to to get a divorce. And during that time, you're separated. In theory, you're living apart from your spouse. You've made a decision to separate.

You guys are living separate and you have a year and a day of that separation period. And so North Carolina, we have something called post separation support. As our question today is, what is post separation support? How does that work? That's the gist of the question.

All right. Well, post separation support is essentially money given by a supporting spouse to a dependent spouse during that year long separation. It's money that's kind of given for immediate access, immediate resources to make sure somebody is not left destitute during the separation period. And post separation support terminates once alimony is decided. So whether it's alimony is denied or alimony is granted, either way, once alimony is decided, post separation support ends.

Follow up question then, how is post separation support determined? So post separation support is determined kind of similar to alimony. You have to have one spouse that is the supporting spouse, which typically is the one that was the primary breadwinner during the marriage. You have the other spouse who was dependent upon them, which means they relied on that person's income for their livelihood and the supporting spouse has to have the ability to pay. So that's the one you see attack the most is whether or not the supporting spouse actually has the ability to pay. But that's kind of the framework of how post separation support is determined and how you can even make a claim.

You've got to have at least those three things. And then it's a matter of how much you're actually entitled to based off of how much the supporting spouse makes. How is that, without going into a lot of detail, but how is that, let's assume the judge is able to determine the breadwinning spouse, the dependent spouse.

Let's say it's determined that the breadwinning spouse has the ability to pay. Is there like a spreadsheet or an equation? How do you figure out what that amount of money will be?

So there's not an exact equation. There is an exact calculator for child support, but not for post separation support and alimony. So what the court has everybody do is what's called a financial affidavit. And it kind of is a breakdown of what the expenses were during the marriage and what your expenses are now. And it's a way for the court to figure out, OK, if you need this money, how much in the red are you? Like, how much are you behind every month and how much of a surplus does the supporting spouse have that can help contribute to you being in the red? So it's not an exact calculation, but that's essentially how we try to figure it out is based off of your financial affidavits and how much the bills are. And I think this is important, too, because you were telling me this earlier, but we're talking about a lot of different things. So it's important to remember that poster post separation support any money for child support and then alimony once divorced, those are all three separate things that get determined at separate times.

Correct. So post separation support alimony, you kind of see go hand in hand because once alimony is decided, post separation support ends, it kind of merges into alimony. But child support is completely separate and usually child support is deducted first. You want to make sure the kids get the money they need first. So if child supports decided to be a certain amount and after that amount, you have no money left for alimony.

Well, then you might not be required to pay alimony anymore. But those are three separate claims. And I think for our listeners, we just want to make sure that's clear, because sometimes they do merge, merge in your mind because it's money coming out of your paycheck.

But there are three separate claims. Well, Taylor, I think that's a good answer. I appreciate it. No problem. All right.

So Taylor did a good job laying that down for us. The difference between child support, post separation support and alimony, all three different things. It's just like anything else to, you know, you and your spouse or your soon to be ex spouse can can agree, just like like me and Joseph, we can agree on on anything we want to agree on. And that's always the best. You're not always getting along. Obviously, you're in the middle of separating or divorce, so you're not always getting along. You're maybe not always dealing with the most, you know, people at their their most reasonable. But you leave it to a judge.

You're going to get what the judge wants you to get, according to guidelines in North Carolina. Or, you know, you can negotiate and try to try to come to some separation agreement. All these things can be agreed to when you say, Joseph, it's one of the we always talk about trying to keep the way I always look at it is trying to keep the government out of my personal affairs to the extent that you're able to. Sometimes it's not your call. Yeah.

Keep them off your lawn, man, if you can. We talk about that in state. We talk we talk about that in a state planning, right?

Every aspect of life, like the less governmental interference you have is generally going to be better, right? You know, as an yeah, yeah. As an attorney, you know, when we represent anybody in any area, we're trying to make everything easy for you, especially for doing planning. We're trying to to get you out of having you anytime you have to go in front of a judge, even though there's guidelines, you don't know exactly what that judge is going to do. You know, if you agree to things ahead of time, you'll you'll know what to expect. You know what you're working with. And like I said, going to court's no fun, right?

Family court is just like any other type of court. It's not it's it's it's a last resort. In my opinion, it's there and it's it's necessary. Sometimes there's nothing you can do if the other side is unreasonable. But, you know, we we try to hit knowing it's a necessary evil is the thing that has to happen.

But trying to plan around it and avoid it is always going to be, you know, a good attorney's part of a good attorney's advice. I think it's a tough subject. And, you know, they I remember back when we were engaged before we got married, we had meetings with Catholic priests.

We talked about percentages of divorce, how many marriages ended up in divorce, having those types of conversations. And, you know, you hear it all the time. I mean, it's a fifty five.

I mean, I don't know what the exact number is right now. You guys probably might know the number, but it's over 50 percent of marriages end in divorce at some point. So it's a family law is a big, big deal. I know that, you know, listeners out there like, wow, wow, family law, really?

I go, yeah, yeah, it's very, very important. If you've got questions in and around family law and you've got you need some answers, 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. Again, any legalese and they'll have an attorney return that call and give you some answers to those questions. You can also email your questions to the show info at Judica County dot com and we'll answer them on a future broadcast.

All right. So Judica County radio will take a short break. We're back on the other side. Welcome back into Judica County radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. Managing partners Whitaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina and offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay Varina, Gastonia and down at the coast, Morehead City. If you've got a legal situation you're facing and you need answers to those 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 again, an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch and you can email your questions to the show info at Judica County dot com. That's info at Judica County dot com and we will answer those questions on a future program.

It will be anonymous, but you will get your information that way. All right. Our hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer.

I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. I chuckle because we are now, you know, in the course of our recording, we're doing video, too. You're not seeing that on the radio, but I am seeing what looks like Gandalf with a red toboggan on. Nice, nice, nice look. Young Santa Claus.

So that is. Yeah, Joseph has taken a I don't know what you call him, but they go on the back of seats. They give the seat like a Christmassy look, but he is taking that and converted it to a large hat.

Yeah, you got to have a big head to pull this off, man. Very luckily, I've got a jacket. It looks good. It's almost like a Jawa from Star Wars. It's warm to me and it's very warm.

Like I feel like my brain, you know, and I've got so much power to answer these these listener questions. Very, very, very festive. Yes, I'm only one festive.

You guys have nothing Christmas on, man. You know, you strike me. Joshua is the type of person whose favorite holiday is like St. Patrick's Day or something like that. Man, you know, I do like St. Patrick's Day. It is quite a fun.

You mentioned it. I think I think I have to revert back to Thanksgiving. I think Thanksgiving is probably my favorite because it leads because because it lets you know Christmas is right around the corner. Well, I don't mind. I don't mind helping. I'm not going to say I do all the cooking by any means or even like a half the cooking, but I enjoy cooking. Right. And then family gets together. It's one day. No one's really usually at least around my my way traveling too much. And I like getting right back to work, man.

I don't like a lot of work. What about number two then? Number two Christmas? No. Yes.

It would have to be like what's left? Halloween. You got Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day. St. Patty's Day. New Year's Eve. You know, New Year's Eve.

New Year's Eve. Christmas is definitely a close second to Thanksgiving, I would think. So Thanksgiving, huh? Thanksgiving is good, man. It's like one it's like one era for me, man. I can't even say they're inseparable. It's like starts with Thanksgiving and it ends with Christmas.

And then there's a dark period of depression. I do think Thanksgiving and Christmas should be spread out. So like Thanksgiving is like maybe like right before the summertime. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They are too close.

Way too close. It's too much time off. Too many people completely like I don't have that ability. There's no I can't just check out like that or you know, things would go to go to go to crap.

But but some people really do manage to save up their vacation. Yeah. Completely check out. We should do man. Just check out.

Let the robots run the show. And we just go off somewhere. But it's you know, I just saw it behind you. So the way we're set up, I can see out of I can see in the downtown Garner and there's train tracks right there. And a train just went by.

But it didn't have Polar Express. No, I wish I wish. Another good movie. Another good movie, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It creeped me out.

Tom Hanks playing like every role, basically. They were curious, carrying tanks. Oh, so instead of cars, it was carrying tanks, which I'm assuming is a normal thing. Christmas tanks on their way to Fort Liberty, no doubt. Santa, I would like an actual tank for real legitimate.

Please give me a tank. That's what I'm going to pull up to the studio in next week. All right.

Well, we've been we've been focusing on family law listener questions today and our next listener question. I got to pull it up. Hey, what did you cook for Thanksgiving? I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to derail you. We did. You know, I don't want we I want what did you specifically cook? Brisket. Yes, that's nice.

Brisket. Yeah. The good thing about smoking stuff the day before is you can wrap it up. Yep. And you let it rest. And then if something like I like we had we had an oven mishap like 15 years ago.

Right. And our oven filament burned out and you couldn't replace it. We're like halfway through a turkey.

And what do you do, man? You lose a turkey. Yeah, it's tough. Like we it's like you can go get another turkey at that point. Right.

And you're not going to you're not going to fix your fix your oven. So so I get real paranoid now if we're going to host an event, we usually smoke something the day before. Good idea. And if we're doing turkey or ham the day of, you know, if something goes wrong.

Hey, man, I'm still sitting on this brisket. Yeah. Yeah. That's a veteran move, man.

We've given a lot of like we don't give a veteran move. After a catastrophe, we got to have a backup plan. That's a great plan. Like you had to go through some hard times to learn that. And you're giving us that knowledge now.

So we don't have to have the same suffering. And you don't. Great. And if you have too much food, like, you know, you get just you just got brisket and turkey. Yeah. Oh, God, I've got all this brisket.

What am I going to do? Yeah. The how about you guys? I could do a lot of stuff, man. I cook some some some mac and cheese, some cookies, some delicious. I made iced oatmeal cookies like the kind you would buy from the store where they're homemade. Unbelievable, man.

It's the best thing. Maybe the best thing I've ever made. And what else did I make, man?

I made more than that. Sweet potato casserole. Smoked a turkey. Just a lot of stuff, man. And, you know, you know, I'm I'm eating a lot.

I'm trying to get my mass up. You've told me that. Yeah, you've told me that. Man, I jump started it on Thanksgiving.

Like, I easily took six to seven years off of my life. I was I was down. Was I in Clayton? I can't remember where I was, but I ran into somebody and I guess they had like, have you seen how gigantic Joe is?

We need to do an intervention. He asked me how he asked me if you were still doing ice baths. I guess he I guess he had heard that. Yeah. And I guess I was like, you know, I don't I don't think Joseph's on the ice bath.

No, man. This body's not fit in an ice bath. He's on the ice cream bath. Yeah. Ice cream and ice cream.

So good. Look, man, I'm telling you, I don't use I don't use a scale. I don't I don't ever weigh myself. You just go by feel. I feel you put on your you put on your party dress and it fits great. Right.

That's awesome. And my clothes are getting pretty, pretty snug. It was about to be a problem. I don't know, man. People may like that.

People may enjoy seeing more of you busted out of the scene. And I cut out I was doing too much lunch, man. It was lunch that was getting me.

So I cut out lunch and I've been doing that for a couple of weeks and that seems to be I got these things, man. I don't know if you've heard of them. They're called cinnamon rolls. Have you heard of those? Yeah. Is that your thing?

I've been trying those. Everything's my thing, man. It's a slippery slope for me.

I have like one bite of a cinnamon roll and then it's like, well, might as well dye them on the whole tray. I'll eat everything. Anything and everything, man.

How about you, Morgan? You do a lot of cooking Thanksgiving. Well, your role or do you get to step by? No, it's a little bit of a different setup because, you know, my better half is vegetarian. And I also spend Thanksgiving with my folks. They're up in the mountains. So I run up the hill and spend the day with my parents. And usually that that includes stopping off at the Daniel Boone Inn in Boone and they do Thanksgiving to go.

So there's less hassle. My folks, you know, just let them relax and enjoy some good old country cooking for Thanksgiving. And, you know, hats off to the Daniel Boone Inn, man. They're open all the time.

They do a ton of business. Isn't that place haunted? Yeah, it's one of the haunted places in Boone. There's several, but I shouldn't say several. There are probably hundreds of Daniel Boone Inn, man.

It's just good food. Have you seen have you guys seen any more of the the child goes? Yeah. And the Clayton office.

Oh, man, I thought I heard him this morning. I walked in pretty early, but it was just somebody like dumping trash outside. I can't remember. It's our Clayton offices. I always called it the yellow house in Clayton, but that's our Clayton office.

That's where we it is yellow. Was it a document? Is it a documented ghost or you guys? Is it a documented ghost in this office? Yeah, we've talked about it on the radio show.

That's documented, right? So we didn't bring the ghost hunters or anything out to do like a EKG or whatever they do to figure out if there's a ghost there. But yeah, it's it's definitely haunted.

You seem like you got lost and thought about it. It's because you're jealous your office doesn't have a ghost. No, no. Our offices.

Let's see. The Garner office was built in what? Oh, one. And the Raleigh office was built in the 90s. You got to have some kind of tragedy. Now we're you know, we're in Shady's today and Shady's was built like nineteen oh eight. This place is definitely and it was a prison, too. It was it was a courthouse.

And I had two of the bathrooms where the holding cells. Right. Yes.

This place is. Yeah. Some nights here in the dark and it's going to get it's going to be a little iffy.

A little bit iffy. So Judica County radio question. Yeah, we were just saying, Morgan, we didn't make it to our question, so I'll have to do it next. We'll do that.

All right. Judica County radio. We'll take a short break and we'll wrap up the show on the other side. Listen, if you have a legal situation that you are facing and you need answers to those questions, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Leave your contact info briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can email your questions to the show info at Judica County dot com and we will answer those questions on a future broadcast.

All right. We're going to take that short break here and we'll be back on the other side with more Judica County. Welcome back into Judica County radio. Your host, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, your law firm for life.

Whitaker and Hamer offices located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Marina, Gastonia and in Morehead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Josh, we've got a short period of time.

We're going to wrap this baby up, but a nice Q&A session. I think you guys should know we were talking about Naked Gun earlier segment. And that is my all time favorite movie.

Number one, cross the board, Naked Gun, all time, all genres, all genres far and away. And all my kids have seen it. My youngest hasn't seen it. The older two have seen it and appreciate it for what it is, you know, but the remake very excited about it. And and they 100 percent should put O.J.

Simpson, even if it's a cameo, even if he's like just sitting at a table. Yeah, I agree, man. They won't. They won't. They won't do it. You don't think?

No, they won't. They're not ballsy enough to do it, but they should 100 percent do it because he was never he was never convicted of any of murdering people. That's right. And he was convicted of some things, some things. But plenty of people have been convicted of things.

Sure. They can still participate in, you know, the Naked Gun, but it won't happen, I suppose. But yeah, you know, we did I think we did good work talking about the two national stories that got the I think that unfair coverage. And if you really look at it from a legal perspective, you know what, what Trump, the Colorado, Colorado ballot and Trump, you know, we kind of talked about that. Thought that was the right legal decision, as did all nine justices. So for that to get negative treatment in the media seems to be a little bit unfair. We talked about, you know, the state of Alabama, the Supreme Court there and their tough decision they had to make under those narrow facts, those narrow circumstances.

You know, treating embryos as children for that particular purpose kind of got blown out of the water and kind of blown up and talked about the wrong way. I feel like. And of course, we had our listener questions that we that we tackled. And, you know, we do that because that's what me and Joe do every day as managing partners of the law firm of Whitaker and Hamer.

Like Morgan always tells you, we have seven offices across the state. We do phone consults, Zoom consults, in-person consults. Our attorneys all have different areas of practice so we can usually help you with most anything that you run into in your day to day life.

And we're always happy to do that. Like Morgan says, you can call us, email us. We'll be glad to talk to you and help you try to figure out where to go. So important if you have any questions.

And again, it can be a minefield and you want to be able to avoid any kind of, you know, things that are going to hurt your situation. But you really need to have professional consultation and you can do that with Whitaker and Hamer. And all you've got to do is call the number 800-659-1186. You can contact information briefly what the call's about and an attorney will be in touch. Again, that number 800-659-1186. That's, again, 800-659-1186. You can also email your questions to the show.

We'll answer them on a future broadcast. That's info at judicacounty.com. That's info at judicacounty.com. Well, another edition of Judica County Radio is in the books.

Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. I'm Morgan Patrick. We'll see on the radio next week. Judica County is hosted by attorneys licensed to practice law in North Carolina. Some of the guests appearing on this podcast may be licensed North Carolina attorneys. Discussion on this podcast is meant to be general in nature and in no way should the discussion be interpreted as legal advice. Legal advice can only be rendered once an attorney licensed in the state in which you live has the opportunity to discuss the facts of your case with you. The attorneys appearing on this podcast are speaking in generalities about the law in North Carolina and how these laws affect the average North Carolinian. If you have any questions about the content of the show, you can direct such inquiry to Joshua Whitaker at JMW at mwhlaw.lawyer.