Judica County Radio: Top Stories Grabbing Our Attorney's Attention

Coming up on this edition of Judica County Radio, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, along with Cassandra Nicholas, fellow attorney at Whitaker and Hamer, will get into all the hot topics. Plus we have a top 10 annoying things that lawyers do and why they do them.

It's all coming up next on Judica County Radio. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. They're also practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina. And also joining us on the show, Cassandra Nicholas, fellow attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Just a reminder, Whitaker and Hamer, your law firm for life.

Offices located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina, Gastonia, and in Morehead City. Josh, got a lot to talk about. Take it away. We have national news. We have everything that's kind of transpired with President Biden pulling his name from the ticket, from reelection.

And that kind of brings up a lot of issues of constitutional law and things like that. And I figured we'd talk about that. And I also I'm a big fan of these top 10 list people send us. Right. So I got this top 10 list.

What was it called? Top 10 annoying things that lawyers do, which sounds kind of like a trivial list. But the more I read it, the more I felt like I'd like to be able to tell all potential clients these things that we do that might seem annoying. There's a reason there's a reason why we're doing them. And so we've got our Q&A today.

We've got our top 10 list that we're going to work on. But guys, it was kind of a crazy week. You think? A lot of stuff happening. Every week lately.

What happened? I don't follow. I don't follow the news. So I'm not sure. What are you talking about?

Well, you know, I'm not very I'm not I would definitely not describe it. I mean, Joe, I've talked about it before, but not not a very political guy. I do like the news. I like to keep up with with current events.

But my life is not I don't live or die by by the news or what's going on. But yes, a lot of big news. You know, this past Sunday, as of Sunday morning, the news outlets were saying that Biden, President Biden was going to stay, you know, in the election, still running for to be our president for the next term. But then we hadn't seen President Biden for a while. Then there was a letter, kind of a funky letter that showed up on Twitter saying he was going to pull out of the the election.

And I think within like 24 hours, Vice President Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee without ever winning a primary. Yeah. You know, it's kind of it's kind of a weird news cycle. And as of, you know, we're in the studio the middle of the week.

So you might be listening to this on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We haven't heard from from President Biden since all this happened. And so it's kind of kind of odd.

It hasn't happened a lot in history. So kind of kind of kind of just an odd situation, I guess. And simultaneously, he's sick with COVID. So I think it's being represented that that's some of the reason that he's staying away from cameras at the moment is that he's still sick. But it is such a strange situation to receive just a letter from the president of the United States without an accompanying speech, without seeing the president talk about such a big decision for the future of his party and the country. So hopefully he gets out in front of cameras soon. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I think they said Thursday, Thursday. Yeah, I've heard I've heard he's on his way back to the White House from where I don't know if he's in Delaware.

I don't know where he's at, but he was. It's bizarre, man. I mean, I don't think anyone on either side of the political spectrum and like you said, Cassandra, there's you know, there's there are reported explanations for it right that you can offer. So it's just this has been a ridiculously eventful like stream of political events over the last two weeks. Semi unprecedented, you know, just in terms of it's like bang, bang, bang, man. It's like a crazy movie for watching. Yeah, we had a great tweet from a Canadian that said that they were enthralled with this season of America. Well, you know, you have the attempted assassination on former President Trump and we've had all that fallout this week. And I like to watch congressional hearings and things like that.

I have them always have them on the on in the background. And so the is it Cheadle? So the head of the head of the Secret Service had had to go sit for there. That's a tough day for her, man. Oh, man, for both sides.

What day? I was trying to remember the last time I saw someone sit before Congress. And it's so partisan now, which I can't stand. I was like united front, man. It was it was. Oh, man, it did not matter.

It did not matter what your affiliation was. You were mad at her. And I was happy to see that because it was egregious. You know, whatever the reason you can maybe maybe some of this stuff was just purely an accident.

Maybe there's something more sinister going on, but it wasn't good. Right. And virtually not everybody. Some people didn't. But most everybody who was asking her questions were like, you know, you're used to it. I can't imagine just sitting through that. You're used to it. It was tough, man.

But I can. That's all I thought about the whole time was like being her and not having anything to say, just having to sit there and like. Oh, man, it hurt that job. I might have been sick that day. I would have resigned. Yeah, I would have resigned.

I got COVID. Peace out before that. And they said they'll still probably subpoena her, bring her back.

Yeah. So they're not done yet to her. Former President Trump, no matter what your feelings are about him.

The facts are that there are strong feelings about him in the U.S. so that there has not been a credible attempt in the last eight plus years. Like the Secret Service was doing something. But it only takes one mistake to be a big mistake. Well, and think about this, too, guys. I mean, I was just going to say everything has changed.

I mean, everybody's got phones. Everybody's you know, they're watching everything and they saw this unfold and they informed police, you know, well before the shooting attempt. And it just it was like it was in slow motion. And the fact that that shooter was so close on a on top of a building, it just it didn't all add up.

And I knew I knew from, you know, as that coverage started to unfold, somebody was going to lose their job, if not many people because of how they did not pre-plan or at least go a little bit further out with their security. Do you see the thing that blows my mind is is the thing that blows my mind is is we don't do this. We don't do that for a living.

Right. Like we're not security professionals or experts. But the fact that they're so little known and that they're given a 60 day turnaround time for like any kind of appreciable report, like how long does it take, man?

Like realistically, that's what that's what I just don't fully understand. You know, you think you could fast track one of these things? You think you could get some answers if you were going to go before Congress? I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Right. You watch these congressional hearings. No one's ever seemingly prepared for it, like on purpose. Right.

Because you don't you don't want to unless you know the better for yourself. Yeah, but it was but it was it was crazy. Republicans and Democrats, these these Congress people just to see them break her down and she just all she do is sit there. But why go through that and then resign, you know, resign the day it happened, just like I'm out of town, somebody else's problem, you know. But yeah, I think the plan, though, was knowing that she was going to resign.

So she was able to go in with like a stronger like resolve. If you want your severance package, if you want your severance package, you got to sit there and you got to take it. That's a tough job. That's one of those jobs, you know, we sit around and wonder, you know, again, I'm not very political. I'm glad we have folks who do want to do on a run for Senate and Congress. But I just think about how much I would hate to do that, you know, like if I like that was the last thing like I would possibly want to do. Like if you ever see me out there running for office, like something's happened, like I have something that's happened that has moved me to my core family.

The government has kidnapped Mikey. And that's what I like. I like my I like my opponent's going to play this clip on their commercial. That's right.

They're going to look they're going to look it up. I just want to be at my office on the weekends. I like to I like to fish in the lake. I like to sit in the lake and smoke cigars while I'm in the lake. I was going to say I was going to say, Josh, if they came up with any kind of legislation that would prevent you from smoking your cigar while you're floating in the lake, then you would run for office.

That's right. Or or we say that if you're voted into office, that can just be your office in the lake. People have to come see you there on a floaty with your cigar. I like to I like to take a pool noodle, like one of the big pool noodles.

My oldest son figured this out. I didn't know this pool noodles I usually just put under my arms or like you leaned on them. But he goes the thong route, man. He goes noodle. He wears it like a thong with most of it up your back. I mean, he's got pants on.

Yeah, sure. We're not naked in the lake. But you lean back. You can lean back like an easy chair.

And he gets he's got a short pole and he fishes. Well, you know, the reverse life jacket. Right. You know, the reverse life jacket, you put your feet through the armholes and you buckle it up and you basically sit in a floating diaper, man. Yeah, I've done that. I've done that.

It's not it's not as good as the Da Vinci Code. Wouldn't it? What a genius. But he's got a short little fishing rod.

He just fishes. I did it with him the other day, but I added the cigar to it. And it's I think it's the I think it's the way to go, man. That's not really legal news or anything, but that's just, you know, you're out there thinking about doing something like that. You got to you got to go for this stuff, man, while you're alive. You can't just sit around and watch the news, man. You got to get out there and fish and smoke and float in the lake. You feel a lot better about the current state of America if you do that. That's that's for sure. So if we want to get Josh to run for office, we're going to have to somehow try to ban cigar smoking while floating in a lake in the great state of North Carolina.

And then we might we might actually see him run for office. You are locked in to Judica County Radio. Your hosts are Josh Whittaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whittaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. Also joining us on the program, fellow attorney with Whittaker and Hamer, Cassandra Nicholas. Office is located convenient for you.

Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Morehead City. Five consults are available. These are cost free. All you've got to do is call 800-659-1186. Josh, real quickly, what's going to be involved with the consult if they can grab one? Yeah, we just it's very it's very informal, right? You just give us a call, leave us a message, give us some good contact information so we can get a hold of you and we'll reach back out. We'll just set up a time to talk and try to give you some direction. And if it's something we can help you with, we'll be glad to talk to you about that and cost involved and be glad to help you. And if it's something we can't, hopefully we can at least get you in the right direction and get you to someone who can or at least, like I said, give you some direction.

But these have been working out well, so I enjoy doing these. All right. We have five complimentary consults with Whittaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186.

Grab them now. 800-659-1186. We've got more at Judica County Radio when we return. Welcome back into Judica County Radio, your host, Josh Whittaker and Joe Hamer. They're the managing partners, Whittaker and Hamer law firm offices located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Barina, Gastonia and in Morehead City.

And Morehead City is where Cassandra Nicholas, fellow attorney at Whittaker and Hamer, joins us again. We have a three headed monster today as we talk legalese. Again, we talked about current events, but now we're going to have some fun. Josh, you've got a got a list in front of you.

We'll be doing all right. Yeah, I like these top 10 list. I've got the top 10 most annoying things that lawyers do and why we do them. This was written by an attorney out of Indiana. It's posted on the website for a law firm.

I can't read their name, but they're out of Indiana. But so I wanted to go through this because attorneys, we get we get bad, bad reps for doing certain things. And usually there's a rhyme or reason when we do these annoying things. I thought that'd be fun to go through. But before we get there, are they do you guys know are they still trying to ban menthol cigarettes? Is that still a thing that's happening?

Wait, what's that? Remember they came out with that ban for flavored tobacco and menthol cigarettes? I don't man. I don't because that's not. I remember we talked about it, but I don't have an upstate on the legislation for you. Well, because I could you could still buy that stuff. I just thought about that. We're talking about smoking in the last segment.

And I just I was like, oh, I think you still buy menthol, which you should be able to. You were talking about smoking. We were here for it. But I think you were driving that that train, man. But I tell you, I'm a non-smoker. But the more you talk about floating in the water with the cigar, like I'm thinking about I'm just thinking about becoming addicted to it myself.

I'm just doing that every day. So I think you got me. You are coming. It says NPR. I got to I got to. It says it's coming. This was March twenty, twenty four.

I don't know if anything came from it. But have you seen that guy? I see him on Instagram. He's probably on TikTok or whatever, but he's that guy. He's like an older white guy. He's got like a Cajun accent. He wears a hat and he's always in water talking about how good life is.

Have you seen that guy? No, he sounds great. Our algorithms are different.

I got a heavy acid in water algorithms. That sounds wrong with that. That sounds like all of us should have that guy just in the water talking about how good life is. I'm going to I'm going to look him up. I'm going to look him up in a minute.

By the end of the show, I'll tell you it is business. This is this older guy. He's always outside. He's always in water and he's just always talking to you about how you have to live your life and you got to take chances.

And but he's always in like the ocean or like a pond. Anyway, I'll get you the information so you can you can look. Looks like looks like President Biden delayed that ban, Joshua. This is an article from April that talks about how the ban was delayed. That's just menthol, right? You can go buy. The flavors were already gone. You can still go buy a bunch of menthol cigarettes right now. Stock up.

Get you a stockpile. You never know what's going to happen. All right. All right. Top 10 most annoying things that lawyers do get off track.

It's probably one of these. I haven't I haven't looked at all of them yet. But number 10 is is they've got brevity or lack thereof. And so this this talks about how much school we went through to be attorneys and how much we have to to read and how much we have to write. And sometimes lawyers are good or are good at explaining things in like layman's terms. And some lawyers aren't kind of like doctors.

Some doctors really good at kind of breaking it down for you. And some some doctors use all the medical lingo, which, you know, isn't isn't isn't good. So brevity or lack thereof.

I like to think in my old age, I've gotten to where I'm I'm very what would the word be to the concise. Right. But some attorneys very concise.

Some sometimes very verbose. Right. Would be would be the opposite of that. But anyway, I thought that was I thought that was a good one. You know, and it kind of goes in like this list overall.

I'm I'm going to start attaching this to my intake forms. I think you and I fall kind of on opposite ends of the brevity spectrum. My emails are a little bit more verbose. I believe they convey things clearly enough. But I do use a lot of words. Some of the things are just complicated. It takes more words.

Well, I think that's why we work so well together, because I you know, the older you get, the less patience you have. And and yeah, my emails, if I can, if I can consolidate my emails to like one sentence, I'll do it. If I could get it down to one word, you know, that would be that would be my goal. JMW. You can say anything you want in email, as long as you end it with a thanks with a exclamation point.

That's it. You say literally anything you could hear someone. You hit him, you hit him with a thanks exclamation point.

They're like, oh, this is a nice this person. All are like, thanks for your assistance. Yeah.

With the exclamation point. You're good. That's my tip to you. So add that in the next one. This list kind of plays into that, but but bedside manner and, you know, I like how this starts out. So sometimes lawyers have to be callous, uncaring, unsympathetic. Well, we've talked about this before on the show when something comes into our office, almost like a doctor. I mean, we're dissecting it. You know, we're trying to see what the problems are.

You know, we don't we don't care how you got into this situation. A lot of times people have passed away. Mistakes have been made. Sometimes there's fraud involved.

There's all these bad things. And doctors, too. It's kind of like a doctor. Some some attorneys are better, you know, at hearing your story and kind of sympathizing, you know.

And I've never been that that way, although I may be sympathetic. I'm trying to figure out, OK, you've come to me with these. However we got here, we're not going to spend a lot of time. I need to know how we got here, but we're not going to shut up, lady. You stop crying in my office. We're not going to we're not going to if we can help it. You know, we're not going to cry about it.

This is where we're at. We're going to deal with it the best way we can. It's like it's like when I'm talking to the kids, man, like and that's how I want a professional to talk to me.

And some people don't like that. That's fine, because every attorney has a bedside manner. But I'm going to we're going to analyze your problem. We're going to figure out how to get you forward. We're going to put the steps together. We're going to figure it out.

We're going to work it out. But I think it's a balance, man. I think it's a I get what you're saying. I think we as attorneys are naturally inclined to be more analytical when we look at a situation. Because the reality is, we can't get lost in the weeds, man. If we get down in the emotional in the in the emotions of it and we get lost, we're we're we can't do our job effectively. You know, so I think I think you're not giving yourself enough credit for your bedside, man. I think you I think you've got I don't think you're just some you make it sound like people come in and you just hard with compassion. But I think it's a balance.

It's a balance. We need we need a tag team, folks, man. We'll just pair up like we'll take our most compassionate attorneys and put them with our most. Just slam on the table. Tell them to shut up.

Cassandra comes in, starts hugging, hugging them. It's going to be. But no, but but and then you'll have people that will meet with one attorney and not like that attorney because they're too matter of fact, or you'll have someone come in and not like an attorney because they were, you know, overly sympathetic, you know. So it cuts both ways. But every lawyer has their own bedside manner. And and that's important to know.

Number eight, I like because I kind of do this, you know, was number eight. They just say worst case scenario. Right. So you after you meet with your attorney, you might feel like the sky is falling. But I think a good attorney does that. Like you come in with a problem. A good attorney should be able to give you your worst case scenario or your or your best case scenario.

And maybe it's somewhere in between. But a good attorney is going to prepare you. You're going to come and give them the facts, tell them what's going on. And they were like, all right, well, this is what could happen. This is your best case.

This is probably what will happen. But but yeah. As attorneys, we have that. We owe it to you to prepare you for the worst, because realistically, anytime you're litigating, you're dealing with human beings and the law can be on your side. But you always got to give people that this is this is what could happen to you.

You know, it's and again, that's the risk. I was just going to say being the non attorney on the show and kind of being just, you know, able to comment from, I guess, the average Joe's viewpoint. It's almost like when you go to the dentist and they come to you and they go, look, your teeth are great. You don't have any cavities, but there are seven indentions in your teeth.

And we're going to go ahead and fill those now if you want us to. If you care about your teeth, if you care about your teeth. And I'm just like, that's the worst case scenario or the mechanic.

And again, I love my mechanic. But they'll come in and they'll tell you, well, it's OK, but they've got these eight things they'd really like you to do and pay for it now. And so anyway, worst case scenarios, I get it. I want to know what could possibly happen to me in a legal standpoint.

I want to know what that is. Worst case. Well, we're going to tell you, gruesome, gruesome detail. The number seven on this list kind of builds into that. Lawyers as a whole are overly cautious, right? We're we're not we're not a risky bunch.

You know, we're going to, again, kind of survey the scene for you and kind of lay out a path. But we're going to be worried about a lot of different things you may not be overly worried about as a non attorney. But we're going to see some pitfalls that maybe you don't see. So attorneys sometimes have a reputation of being overly cautious.

That's what this one says. Here's what we're going to do, guys. And Cassandra, we're going to take a short break, come back with some question and answer, and then we will continue and wrap up the program with the last part of this list.

Again, there are a number of things that are considered to be annoying when it comes to lawyers and why they do the things that they do. We'll finish up that list as we wrap up the show. But first, enjoy some Q&A. We want to remind you, too, there are five complimentary consults available.

That means you leave the checkbook at home. All you've got to do is call the number to grab one. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. You've got a question about something you're going through. Maybe you don't know the direction to go.

Use one of these consults. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six five of them. They'll go fast. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. We're back with Q&A right here on Judica County radio. Welcome back into Judica County radio.

Your host, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm offices located conveniently for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina, Gastonia and in Moorhead City, Whitaker and Hamer, your law firm for life. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Josh, we are again having some of your all star attorneys joining us on the program.

Who's up next? Up next, we have attorney Ashley Penner. She is with our firm, has been with our firm for a long time, handles estate planning and trust. Today, our theme has kind of been talking about how you can use your attorney to kind of do some planning. We talked about business planning. We talked about family law planning with Ashley. We're going to talk about estate planning and and later on in the show to talk about what happens if you don't do estate planning. What's what becomes purview of the court?

Public information? What do you have to deal with? If you if you don't do your your planning. And so, Ashley, in that vein, I know one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today, one thing I want to ask you about is this planning process, you know, and what you can do to keep your information private, to keep your stuff out of the purview of the court. None of us ever want to have to rely on a clerk's order or a judge's order or get our assets caught up in a state probate or a state contest or or something like that. And people in that vein, you know, we're going to talk about, you know, your estate planning a will, which I think everybody's pretty familiar with what a will is and what a will can do that doesn't get you out of probate versus a trust, which I carefully crafted and managed and monicured trust would keep you out of possibly probate.

So that's where I'll start it with you. Kind of the advantages of what is a trust and kind of the advantages of trust. Yeah, the trust is a legal document that, of course, you would create as a part of the estate planning process. It can hold assets during your lifetime and then speak to or control what happens to those assets, how they're distributed or how they're held in trust, who they can benefit after your death. And it's the ability of the trust to hold those assets while you're still living. That gives you that probate avoidance. They've already been transferred into this this legal entity, so to speak, that you've created. You've already designated someone who we call the trustee that's going to be in control of the assets after your death.

And it streamlines that process so that you do avoid the probate process or administration process where a clerk is involved in making sure that what you've said in your will is honored in the in the administration. So when I was when I was growing up, I think the first I was trying to think about earlier today, the first time that I ever heard anybody talk about a trust. And I think the first two times that I can remember hearing anybody talk about a trust was, oh, man, who was the rich guy on Gilligan's Island?

Oh, it was his name, Mr. Howell. And or Beverly Hillbillies, Beverly Hillbillies a couple of times. But but and maybe that's why I think about trust. I think about they're just for the rich people. They're just for people with like tons of assets. And and and that's really not the case. No.

Yeah, I definitely grew up thinking the same thing any time I heard them. Of course, no one no one in my family ever had a trust or nor have I ever been the beneficiary of a trust. So most of my my actual knowledge of it comes from law school, like like most of us, probably. But it is certainly not reserved for folks that have massive amounts of wealth. I tell a lot of my clients, you know, if if the only thing you end up using your your trust for is to hold your real estate, you have done yourself and your family a significant service. Because, again, it's going to really trim up what they have to do and how quickly they can do what they need to do, depending on what that is. So, yeah, I've always heard this rule of thumb of, you know, five million dollars should have roughly five million dollars in assets before you should even think about or worry with or bother with a trust.

And yeah, not the case. It has so much benefit to so many different folks. You know, and it's it's kind of one of your biggest estate planning tools. And, you know, a trust is basically I think of it as, you know, it's kind of like starting a business.

Right. You start an LLC, you start a corporation, you're starting the law sees that as its own entity, its own its own thing. And so I'll talk to people a lot about probate assets and non probate assets. But the trust is like a magic bucket. You can put things in and trust will not trust is going to die. It may terminate on its own. It can only go on for so many years. But in theory, it's going to outlive you. And that's the convenience of it. It's like this is kind of oversimplifying and maybe kind of dumb, but I like it as a metaphor. But it's like you put stuff in this bucket and this bucket automatically goes to your heirs.

Yeah. No one looks in the bucket. No one's going to ask you questions about the bucket. You've got some basic asset protection. If someone was going to sue or challenge the way you're distributing your things. It's like this magic vehicle and there's tax advantages and there's other advantages to this magic vehicle to get stuff to your heirs easily.

And, you know, you think about it. If you if you've got a house with equity and you've got vehicles and you've got your 401K and you've got your investment accounts. We may not think of ourselves as as having a lot of assets. The average American who might be looking at this, but you've got a lot of assets to protect. Certainly, if you you might have a different stance on that, if you're being sued and you start looking at what could become subject to a judgment in the you know, in the event that one is in place.

Yes, then you absolutely have a lot of assets. And then, you know, something you mentioned, I think that is also good to point out with the trust is it has so much flexibility because it is that, you know, that existing entity. It can undergo changes, you know, a little bit more easily than if you're changing how your will distributes your property. There is a lot more rigor involved in the signing of a will than in signing of a trust. But also the privacy that it brings with it, the fact that, yeah, no one's going to be delving around into that document. And no clerk is going to be looking over the shoulder of the trustee to make sure that, you know, they've they've adhered to adhered to the rules in the trust.

It has the privacy that a lot of folks want in keeping all of their business out of court filings. I guess there's certain things we're talking about trust and I've talked to them as magical about being magical and things like that. There's things trust don't do that you need your other estate planning documents to do. So one of the things that you pointed out to me before is, well, you know, if you have a good trust, your will is what we call a pour over will. Right. Where the will is just saying, hey, anything that I haven't managed to get into my trust, please give it to my trust. And so that's a pour over will.

But there's there's other things that will can do for you. And and actually, you always point out to me, I always overlook guardianship, you know, and that's an important one to your minor children. Right.

Yeah. Making sure that anyone who's under the age of 18 has that you've been in control of saying who they should be with, who should be caring for them. If you don't have a will.

Right. You're leaving it up to the courts to determine with whom they should be placed. And also, you know, sometimes, unfortunately, there might be people who you as much as you want other folks to be the guardian of your children. There are folks you don't want to be guardian of your children. And the will is a place where we can make that known as well. If you don't leave a document behind that addresses that at all, it could be the person that you ultimately did not want to be guardian of your children who goes and applies for that guardianship.

And now they are being raised by someone that, you know, in your mind would have never your children would never live with. So a trust is certainly a very important estate planning and can be kind of the primary estate planning vehicle, but it can't do everything that we need. So I tell a lot of my clients, you might have a will and not have a trust. But if you have a trust, you should still absolutely have a will.

Because aside from addressing guardianship, let's say you don't have minor children anymore. You go out and you acquire assets. Let's say you've you've gotten this trust prepared and you're working on getting everything transferred into it. And then something happens, sudden death and you don't get a chance to continue in your your funding of this trust mission. You've still got a valid will that's going to get everything there. Yeah, I talk to a lot of clients who who who definitely think it's an either or situation like, well, I've already got my trust or I've already got my will.

But you really need both of them. And the will handle some things you can't handle with the trust. And there's also kind of a fail safe there so that that does come up. I know there's other ways we're talking about the trust being this magic bucket, which can make otherwise a probate asset, an asset that would have to go through probate, non-probate, private. There's other ways to make probate assets non-probate. Yeah.

Yes. So, you know, you might have things like bank accounts, life insurance, retirement plans. And on all of these assets, you know, we counsel our clients. You want to make sure you have beneficiaries designated a primary beneficiary and a contingent. And maybe, you know, if you're a married couple with children and you have this trust, you're going to name your spouse as the primary beneficiary. But then you name the trust as the contingent beneficiary. But even on things like bank accounts, you can name a payable on death or transferable on death beneficiary. And these are ways that you can ensure that those assets avoid that probate process.

There's not going to be a significant delay in being able to access those funds. Of course, you'd have to have a death certificate. We don't want people are designated beneficiaries being able to show up at the bank and say, hey, she died.

Can I have her money? Right. We want them to show that proof through death certificate. But that's going to be a much shorter process than going to the clerk's office and setting up that estate, that probate estate, and then transferring the account into an estate account and then documenting for the clerk what funds were in that account. That's going to hold up things. And particularly if we have a situation where, you know, parents are lost and there are children that, you know, will have needs that need to be tended to.

It'll allow for much less disruption in the basic maintenance and care for those those minor children. Well, actually, I think that's I think that's a good discussion today, kind of on this, this using your attorney to plan things out for you to make your life easier, to keep you out of litigation, to keep you out of the court, keep you out of the clerk's office. So I appreciate that. You know, the first step in estate planning is to is to give us a call. If you call Whitaker and Hamer, if you call our law firm and you want to talk about estate planning, you're going to end up talking to Ashley.

And that's for good reason. She handles many, many, many of these every month. And she's she's a good place to start. And we'd be happy to help you with that. But, Ashley, I know we'll talk about this again. So we'll we'll see you before too long. Absolutely.

Looking forward to it. That's Ashley Penner again. Estate planning with Whitaker and Hamer. We are again visiting with the all star team of attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer hosted by Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer.

Again, hitting a lot of different questions that the firm gets quite a bit of. And folks, if you've got any situation you're facing and you need answers to those questions, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. 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 Judica County dot com. When we return on Judica County radio. Yes, we have another attorney and she's very familiar. Cassandra Nicholas joins us. It's about estate planning. We're looking forward to this discussion.

Again, that's coming up on the other side. Welcome back in to Judica County radio, hosted by Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer and the power behind this program where you can find Josh and Joe that the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina.

They have offices located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Morehead City. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you've got questions, you need some answers, 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 information briefly what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And as always, you can email your questions to the show info at judicacounty.com will answer them on a future program. So we have another attorney joining us on the program. Josh, who we got.

All right. So if you're if you've been a regular listener of our show, you know, and already familiar with Cassandra Nicholas, but she is our attorney stationed out of the Morehead City office who deals with estate administration and probate across the state of North Carolina. We bring Cassandra on to talk to us about a lot of different things today. Cassandra is here to talk about state administration, probate.

You know, those those words kind of go together. But basically, you're dead and someone hopefully someone you've named and planned is taking care of your affairs, taking care of your estate, taking care of your assets because you're no longer here. And me and Joseph, we spend a lot of time talking about planning ahead of time using, you know, using your attorney to plan ahead of time to avoid probate. Right. We're going to try to avoid the whole process to the extent that we can to try to keep your information private. Keep your heirs or your fiduciaries from having to go downtown and deal with a clerk, deal with a deal with a judge, keep things moving along. And Cassandra, in that in that vein, I was going to talk to you kind of about what a state administration looks like when you when you can't avoid it.

Right. So you're you're usually only involved if we can't avoid. And we just spent some time talking with Ashley about trust and and planning to kind of keep things out of a probate. Well, let's just say you don't do anything. You never plan and you die.

What's that going to look like? So I absolutely want to funnel people to Ashley. If you're not already in a situation where you need a state administration, please do your estate planning. Trusts are an excellent tool to be able to avoid a state administration entirely. If you're not using a trust or not, causing assets to be automatically transferred to your intended recipients by some other means, either as naming them as beneficial beneficiaries on specific assets, pay on death beneficiaries on bank accounts, putting folks on vehicles with you as joint with right of survivorship so that those automatically transfer just as a function of generally a contract.

If that's not the case, then there are two camps. When you get to me for a state administration, there are folks who did estate planning and have a will and everything, but still need a state administration because there are assets that did not automatically transfer by some other means. So you can die test date with a will with assets that the clerk needs to assign award to your intended recipients, or you get stuck with the state's default rules and that's dying intestate without a will.

And there's there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The lawmakers did think, you know, long and hard about how to come up with the schemes of intestacy and how heirs would inherit. But those default rules aren't necessarily what everyone wants and understanding what those default rules are is important in your estate planning or in in considering what happens. A lot of folks don't realize they think if if they are married to someone that the default rule must be that their spouse gets everything when they pass. But that's not the case. The intestacy statute, if you have a spouse and children, your your assets are split between your spouse and children.

So if you want your spouse to have everything and you don't want it to be split with your children automatically, you want your spouse to have, you know, the authority to do what they want with those assets that needs to be done through estate planning rather than allowing just the default rules to exist. Yes, it's one of those nightmare situations that we we unfortunately see. You know, everybody everybody thinks depends on how old you are, how you know, I'm in my late 40s now. So surely I'll make it from my 70s. Right.

And people in their 60s. Surely I'll make it. I hope you do. I mean, thank you.

Me, too. But but you always think you've got more time and maybe hopefully you do. But we were in that situation where someone dies way too early. You know, so we we've got the situations where the 40 year old father of three has a heart attack and passes away.

You know, it hasn't done any estate planning. That's that's young estate planning is hard to think about. And yeah, like you said, like, you know, if the house isn't owned correctly, you know, we've had a situation where a spouse is inherited with underage kids. And trying to get that house sold or dealt with when one of the owners is your four year old son is challenging, to say the least. Right.

Oh, absolutely. Because then we're also dealing with not just the the intestacy, not just the estate administration. You also then need to deal with a guardianship in order to the the courts are interested in protecting the assets of minors. So a parent can't just automatically make decisions about real estate that a minor inherited for them.

You need to have permission from the courts to do so. And, you know, that that is a lot of work time. Attorney expense, court fee expenses, mandatory hearings for guardianships to get a guardian assigned. So especially when there are minor children involved, it's it's important to do the estate planning on the front end because we are here and we're happy to help with all of those.

But we want people to be aware that it's definitely going to be added time and expense when you haven't avoided those on the front end. But I was going to ask you, Cassandra, in this public versus private discussion that we're having. If you have to if you're passed away and your heirs have to go open an estate for you, whether there's a will or not. So they have to just do some estate administration. What kind of information is public at that point? So estate administration files, the entire file is public. So some of the counties have e-filing now. So a lot of this is also available.

Just click the button on anyone's browser. So your heirs, whoever, whoever your heirs are through intestacy, their ages, their addresses, what your assets are and the exact value of each asset. What your debts are, the claims against the estate. So it's it's a lot of information that's public, even down to the bank account statements. The the account numbers are redacted and on the online filings, you can't pull those bank statements.

But in the physical file, which is public, those are accessible as well. So, yes. So, yeah, there's a lot out there. I saw I'm a big, big wrestling fan. You know, but somebody wrote somebody wrote a book about Ric Flair.

It was like it was supposed to be like a biography of Ric Flair. And they did it just everything was just based on files that could pull in the Mecklenburg County courthouse. So he stated he was a beneficiary of divorces, guardianships, any kind of civil lawsuit. It's all public record. And the guy wrote an entire book just based on what he could get off the public record. So it's.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And then so I'm happy to keep talking about what's public or not public. But I'd also like to jump back to your example of a 42 year old man who's passed unexpectedly with some debts. There are some tools at our disposal as or at anyone's disposal in filing a state administration's. If the person has a spouse or children under 18, there are ways to protect a spouse or minor children from creditors up to a certain extent. So it depends on what assets exist, what debts exist. But through a spousal allowance, a spouse can be assigned the first sixty thousand currently at sixty thousand of personal property. And that's able to be protected from most types of creditors. There are certain types of creditors, such as medical creditors that can get at a spouse regardless of a spousal allowance being filed. So there are certain types of debts that a spouse takes on no matter what, essentially. No, it's you know, and again, if all this property was in trust, if all this property was positioned in such a way where it did not become an asset of an estate, you know, that that really helps.

It really helps in everything that we've been talking about. It really helps keep it, you know, your heirs are going to move easy. Your family is going to just move. Yeah, it's a tough situation, but they'll be able to continue on without the angst of having to deal with what you deal with every day. We're here to deal with that angst for you. But that that is something even for my clients that they they know their state administration is happening. It's not completely out of their minds, unfortunately, until it's closed and some of the clerks and courts run a ways behind.

Some of this can can take a while, even with, you know, good attorneys in your corner helping you through the process. So we're here to help, but to be possible. Well, Cassandra, it's good to talk to you today. I always appreciate you joining us.

And thank you, Cassandra. Nicholas, fellow attorney at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, joining us on the program of state administration. Again, talking about the different levels of law there. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. And of course, they are the hosts of this show. And the power behind the program is Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm.

We are going to take a short break, come back on the other side and wrap this up. Now, if you've got a legal situation that you're facing, remember, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer. They've got offices conveniently located for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia and in Morehead City, where you can find Cassandra Nicholas. The number to call is 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information and briefly what the call is about. And an attorney will return that call from Whitaker and Hamer. And you can always email your questions to the show. Info at judicacounty.com. That's info at judicacounty.com.

And we will answer those questions on a future broadcast. We'll wrap up more Judica County, coming up. Welcome back into Judica County Radio. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your hosts, managing partners. Whitaker and Hamer law firm right here in the great state of North Carolina. They're practicing attorneys here. Also joining us this week, Cassandra Nicholas, fellow attorney at Whitaker and Hamer out of the Morehead City office.

I mention that because they have offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina and Gastonia, as well as Morehead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Big, big reaction to the Q&A.

Obviously, legal. We're going to talk more now about the list that we started off segment two with earlier in the show. The top ten annoying things that lawyers do and why they do them.

Just to recap very quickly before I hand it back to Josh. Number ten was brevity or lack thereof. Number nine was bedside manner. Number eight, worst case scenario.

And then working into that, number seven, overly cautious. We are down to number six, Josh. We are.

We're going to get there. Joseph, I was going to tell you some of the... We talked about all the big news over the past week and a half with politics and what's going on in the presidential race. We didn't talk about the biggest news of last week. Oh. Do you know what it was? Is it cartoon related? Video game related? What was it?

It was video game related, but the NCAA football came out. Do you play that yet? Yeah. Oh yeah. What do I look like to you?

You doing the dynasty mode? I've been doing it with the kids, man. I've been having a good time.

It's a real blast from the past. You don't know what you've got until it's gone. We lost college football games a long time ago. Because I was real burned out on the mat.

I wasn't doing it. I hadn't played a mat in ages, but college football has gotten me back. Part of NCAA football, if you don't play it every day, is you have to recruit so the computer will generate, if you want it to, random incoming freshmen and JUCO transfers. So you've got to go recruit and all this stuff.

And they kind of give them the name generators. Kind of funny, right? But I'm recruiting this kid out of Clake, North Carolina.

They gave him Clake, North Carolina. His name's Major McDoom. Aw, man.

That's fantastic, man. My digital guys, they know what kind of program they're signing up for. And they know the way we like to play, man. They know the type of kids, the type of digital kids we like to bring into the club. Hard workers. Yeah, hard workers, man.

Hard working kids, exactly. Alright, back to our top ten list. So we're at number six. Top ten annoying traits, annoying things attorneys may do.

And number six is being unavailable. And it just says one of the greatest challenges practicing law is keeping up with client contact. While you're spending an overwhelming amount of time returning phone calls, letters, emails, and text messages, I always tell my clients, I spend most of my time during the day in with clients, right? Other clients.

And so I usually am answering email early in the morning, late at night. We have all kinds of paralegals and secretaries that try to do a good job keeping people updated. But that is always a challenge of every law firm is keeping your clients up to date on what's going on. But that's your client. You're not being available to clients when they call. And so that's always a challenge of every practice. That's number six.

One of the most annoying things lawyers do is not being available. Cutting conversation short is the next one. What? Yeah.

Yeah. So listening for certain words, stopping you. I do that a lot in consults if someone's kind of, you know, they may be telling me about what's going on and what's important to them, but they may wander down a road that's not important to me, legally speaking. And so a lot of times I'll say, OK, well, we'll come back to that. But right now I want to focus on on this, you know, or we'll try to work people back to the facts that we need. And so cutting conversation short kind of goes back to brevity.

Some of that other some of that other stuff. But I think we all do that. And so I try to come into a consultation with a warning that I'll be interrupting them to ask questions. You know, that's nice.

Less annoying when I do it constantly. Yeah. Part of our intake process is we we use our intake software to get a lot of information out of you. So when I when I sit down with you, I've already read what you've given us.

If you've given me documents to review, I've usually had a chance to look at those. So with all the knowledge that I can have about something so that when we talk, we're not starting from square one again. Time is money, you know. So so that's cutting conversation short. Sometimes that happens. And then we bill hourly.

Right. So if I'm giving you a call, you're on the clock. I'm billing you. I'm not going to let you keep on keep on going. But real quick, I want to get to the end of this list.

I know we're we're coming to the end of our time together. But number four was turnaround time. You know, we have a lot of clients. We're not always going to do stuff right away. We're going to do it by the time it needs to be done. Turnaround times on here.

And then number one, I'm a skip to number one. I like this. No promises. Right.

No. I'm allowed to make promises. That's that's an ethical issue, truly, to promise any sort of outcome for a legal matter. So you're not going to get them from us.

Yeah. See, if you ever meet with an attorney and they tell you it's a slam dunk or you're 100 percent going to win, that's actually a violation. That's like an ethical violation, like Cassandra said. So attorneys shouldn't be doing that. I mean, the attorneys can say, hey, I think you have a good argument here. I think you've got a good chance to to prevail.

But like no attorney should be giving you percentages or promises or guarantees. That's really how we how we roll. We we we we give you the best guess that we can give you based on our experience and knowledge. But that's that's the best we can do, Morgan. Yeah.

I think a lot of shows, sorry, give percentage outcomes. And a lot of folks ask me for those, but they're really not available. So real quickly, Josh, the consults, we've got five of them.

They're absolutely free, complimentary. Walk us through real quickly what's going to happen if they can grab one. Yeah. Give us a call. Let us know what's going on when you call the number Morgan's going to give you.

It's going to be a message. Make sure you leave good contact information and you know, we'll get back to you. We'll we'll set up a time to talk to you. If it's something we can help you out with.

We'll let you know what that looks like. If it's something we can't help you out. Hopefully we get you in a good direction. Again, not trying to hard sell you anything, but I've enjoyed talking to some listeners and I've been able to help quite a few of them out with things that have been bothering them for a while. I mean, this is an opportunity for you. And again, if you've got any questions about something you're going through, maybe a direction you need to go get one of these consults, 800-659-1186. They're complimentary.

You leave the checkbook at home. That's 800-659-1186. Call now.

800-659-1186. Well, another edition of Judica County Radio in the books for Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, along with the Sander Nicklaus. I'm Morgan Patrick. We will 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 MWH Law Lawyer.