Coming up on this edition of Judica County Radio, hypothetical estate planning candidate. Let's see, three kids self-employed and an uncomfortable attraction to the Simpsons. Hmm.
I wonder who. It's all when we come back on Judica County Radio. Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina and also joining us from the Moorhead City office, Cassandra Nicholas, fellow attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. And I mentioned the office in Moorhead City.
They are also located in Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina and Gastonia. And here to help. And here on the program, we do offer up five complimentary consults. You can call at any time and grab one.
That's 800-659-1186. I'm Morgan Patrick, and we are getting into estate planning. We have a hypothetical candidate, three kids self-employed. And I was joking when I said uncomfortable attraction to the Simpsons. Of course, we can all guess who that is.
But Josh, take it away. You know, I'm in all these these forums on different things and especially in the in the Facebook, you know, you can join all these groups. And so I'm in all these Simpsons. Fan groups. Right. You know, but I'm also in these other kind of TV groups and there was this big poll.
Now, wait, wait, wait, wait. You got to shed some light. What other TV groups are you in? Because this this will tell our listeners exactly who we're dealing with. You know, the night courts, the cheers, you know, TV from like 87 to 91.
That's kind of my sweet spot. But there was some kind of poll in one of these groups that was like thousands of people. But what season of any show was the best season of TV ever?
Right. And people were throwing out shows like I Never Watch, you know, but they had all these different seasons. And so season four of The Simpsons won that that poll. So season four of The Simpsons in this random poll, that doesn't mean anything to anybody. Best season of TV ever.
And I agree with that. That was very good. I was gonna say how do you feel about season four?
Or is there another season you drank above it? No, no, no. Season four is pretty solid. If you go back and look show for show, you're getting like three jokes, three jokes a minute. You know, they're just like zinging you constantly because, you know, there's been a lot. You know, we're coming off like a terrible week of news.
You know, like we've had the flooding in western North Carolina. It's never fun. You know, we're I'm very anti political. You know, we talk on the show here. We we all have our political leanings.
We really don't try to bring them to the show. But election season is just the worst. So you get the flooding middle of election season and you got, you know, the stuff happening in Ukraine and the stuff happening in Middle East. I felt like the news over like the past five to seven days has just been the worst. I don't know if you guys get that feeling.
Absolutely. And we're not getting political here. But the North Carolina election cycle in particular is, I think, next level compared to a lot of most of the other states this go around. It's it's been wild.
The the level of the ads I'm getting on every platform is just relentless and ridiculous too. There's like some of it I suspect is even like AI images and voices like they're just like a little bit off. And then I have to Google whether a person actually said that or not. It's so hard to know what's real this time around. Yeah, you know, I was, you know, a couple years back, you know, we always talk about this on the program. I went to college to become an editor of a newspaper, which sounds like such an old timey job. But that's what interests me is where you get your news from.
What do you take? You know, I get so tired of like, like we're recording after the vice presidential debate was was last night. We always record during the week. And I didn't really watch a lot of it. I watched the best of Dana Carvey SNL. That's what I watched.
Good choice. It was because there was a lot of there's a lot of Dana Carvey skits that you forget about over time. But I was watching highlights. But you know, I go back to my my Twitter feed and you know, the same people that always think the Democrats are the best and the same people that always think the Republicans are the best. Their candidate always wins the debate. You know, I got all these people who are like, oh, J.D., he he killed it. And then I got all these people who are like, no, Waltz clearly won this debate.
And I was like, well, clearly somebody lost the debate. You know, I just it's like as a society, like when I find somebody who really is kind of in the middle and kind of looks at everything, like Cassandra says, tried to try to figure out what's real, what's not. You know, it's always so it's very pleasurable to find those people like your side's not always right. It's like being a fan of the wolf pack and thinking they can do no wrong.
NC State's always the best when clearly they're not, unfortunately. But or if you're a Tar Heel fan, you watched it. Yeah. And I will say that it it was a breath of fresh air.
It was an elevated conversation about issues, about actual policy. It was nice. It was pleasant. Yeah. Yeah, I liked it. Well, that's what I read.
I read it was, you know, I read it was, you know, to two people who really did at least try to talk about policy, you know, and then I saw I've seen a couple of highlights, but that probably was nice. And maybe we get back there. Maybe people get so sick of the way it is.
Oh, don't get your hopes up. The I don't know, I guess it's neither here nor there, but I feel like, you know, and, you know, everybody's thoughts go out to the folks in western North Carolina, you know, who have been going through that. I know you got a family there, Morgan. So you guys have kind of been seeing that firsthand. But man, just a lot to. Yeah, it's been a heavy week.
I agree. You know, from the politics side, I mean, we're going to be one of those states that both parties, they have to win. And so there's going to be a lot of money spent.
We're going to see a lot of these ads that Cassandra's talking about. There's going to be a lot of presence. So the candidates will be in this state quite a bit. So there's a lot of focus on North Carolina. And then on top of what what you just mentioned, just world events that are going on, it's it's a heavy week. And of course, everything that's going on in the mountains. And that's just kind of a continuing and we're getting more and more information. I'm going to try to head up when this show airs. Hopefully I'm going to be in that area.
But early on, you couldn't even get to where my parents were. But they have fantastic neighbors. There's a real sense of community kind of all over that part of the state. But the loss of life, just the tremendous destruction to the infrastructure, it's it's going to be rebuild for months, if not years in that area, because when you see 18 to 28 inches of water in a short period of time, it is very destructive. Yeah, big time loss of life, loss of property. So it can be it can be overwhelming.
So I get it. I mean, this week has been hard. I remember I remember when Fran came through, I was in college and where I live, we didn't have power for 14 days. And people had power around us so we could easily go somewhere else to get showers and things. So it's not like we were stranded somewhere without power for 14 days. But yeah, not having power for more than like we have the backup generator and things like that. But even after a couple of days, that's rough, especially when you can't drive down the mountain and get supplies and do other things. I can't imagine. And those roads are just going to take a long time.
Like you said, it's just going to take a long time to come back from that. But anyway, today, what I thought we'd do is talk about estate planning. A lot of our practice, you know, the law firm of Whitaker and Hamer, we practice in a lot of areas across the state. One of our biggest practice areas is estate planning and estate administration.
Right. So we help people plan for their death and then we help after their death. We help their heirs put that plan into place.
And and so that's we spent a lot of time talking about that on the radio. It seems like when we get questions from from callers and folks, a lot of them are estate planning based. So what I thought I would do is kind of take people through a consult.
And maybe I was secretly describing me, but I thought today I know I sit down with a lot. I'm self-employed and I sit down with a lot of, you know, people who are self-employed and have have kids under the age of 18 and have have some investments. You know, kids are going to go to college and trying to think about what their estate plan needs to be. I know, you know, recently in our community, we've we've lost lost someone, a father who, you know, was was, you know, young, older than me, but young. And, you know, you think about their family, you think and I can always think about their estate plan. And I think about if something were to happen to me, like what we talked about this a little bit a week or two ago.
What what the what a spouse needs to know what the kids need to know about your estate plan, how you craft this estate plan so that they can keep going. Right. And so that's what we're going to do today. I was going to I was going to just name a guy. What do you guys want to name our guy?
Can't be Josh. What about Bart? Bart. OK, well, we just do Homer then.
OK, Homer sounds good. What I was going to say is set it up. We'll take a break. We'll come back and we'll break it down. But go ahead and set it up for us. All right. So we'll do this. We got Homer and Marge.
All right. They're married and they got three. They got three kids and they're all under 18. We're going to change it a little bit, though, because Homer needs to be self-employed. So he's not working at the nuclear plant. He's got he's got to be self-employed. So we're going to we're going to call him. Maybe he'll be an independent contractor or something. You know, we'll change that a little bit.
But he's coming to us and he's saying, hey, Whitaker and Hamer, I listen to you on the radio. This is what we got. We own our house. We have we kept the townhouse Marge used to live in. And so we rent that out now.
And we got the college funds for the kids and 401K. And so I would call this a pretty something we see a lot. Right.
So this isn't going to be like a universal consult. But this is a situation we see a lot. And we'll change some of the fact pattern. We'll change. You know, we'll tell you what we're thinking about.
We're looking for. But I think that will be a constructive use of our time. We can do that or I can take you through season four of The Simpsons.
I like I like the hypothetical. A lot of people have questions about estate planning. We're going to give you an opportunity to grab a free consult. If you have any questions about your situation, you're going to hear stuff coming up on the other side of the break about just this hypothetical situation for a self-employed person that is looking into getting that estate plan in order. And if you've got questions, you can grab one of these consults with Whitaker and Hamer. And all you've got to do is call 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Again, we have five complementary consults and you can use that to get started with your estate planning.
And again, you're leaving the checkbook at home. All right. So Josh Whitaker, Cassandra Nicholas. And we will be joined by Joe Hamer at some point in the show, we think. I'm Morgan Patrick. We're back on the other side again.
We've got that hypothetical estate planning candidate and his name is Homer, wife Marge and kids under the age of 18. That's when we come back on Judica County Radio. We are back on Judica County Radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, the practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina. Also joining us as our third host, Cassandra Nicholas, fellow attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. She's out of the Moorhead City office. And again, Whitaker and Hamer, they're all over the state.
Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia, the other offices. I'm Morgan Patrick. It's always legalese. And today we are talking about a hypothetical estate planning candidate. Again, independent, I should say self-employed, has three kids and we're calling him Homer.
Married to Marge. Josh, take it away. Right. So so we've got our we've got our fake client that we've set up here just for the purposes so that that we can kind of discuss some of the things that that an attorney would look at. And in our situation, you know, the first. So how how we work, you know, we've kind of tried to take over the past 20 years the estate planning consult process and kind of simplify it.
Right. Make it make it easier. And so the first thing that we're going to do, you're going to call or email us and say, hey, I want to sit down with Cassandra. I want to sit down with Josh. I want to sit down with Joe.
Do some estate planning. And we don't want you making one hundred trips to the office just just for your convenience. We assume you're we're busy. You're busy. We don't want to waste anybody's time. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to send you out. I call it an estate planning questionnaire. But via email, you're going to log into our portal and you're going to be able to give us a lot of information. And Cassandra, you've you've seen that. And it's just basic information we're asking for to get started.
Yeah. So that we have an idea when we're going into your consultation of your basic information. So we're already going to know about Homer and Marge and their three minor children that he's self-employed and some of his wishes for what he's actually looking for in an estate plan. Because not everyone needs every estate planning service we offer. And not everyone knows what they're looking for when they're filling out the intake forms either.
But Homer might know he does or does not want to trust. So that section is filled out on the intake form. So we're getting that kind of basic information about your your family, your assets, your wishes. So that we're starting on a strong foundation for our conversation with you.
Yeah, I like to I like. And so after you do that, we'll get it back. We have to do a conflict check to make sure we don't have any conflicts and and then you'll get to schedule a time where you can sit down with us. You can talk to us on the phone.
We can do a zoom, whatever is the easiest for you. And we'll talk about it. And so, you know, of course, like we already know, like we'll say Homer Marge have already filled out their questionnaire. So we know, like Sandra said, what we're what we're looking at. You know, we're going to have a couple of things that we look at right away.
First of all, do you have anything in place at all? Right. And that's always the first question I ask.
And a lot of times that's no. And that's fine. It's you know, I always tell people I graduated from law school and took me seven years to do my own estate plan because I had things I couldn't figure out.
I didn't know I didn't have kids in the very beginning. But you're going to come in. And for for that family, we're going to have we're going to have a couple of things we talk to them about. And one is, you know, what what do you want to happen if both of you die?
Right. You got two spouses. If Homer Marge both pass away in a car accident, airplane, whatever it is, right.
They pass away at the same time. You got minor children. How do you want to take care of those children?
Cassandra, that's that's the first thing we always talk about that kind of hangs up. Families the most right. Who's going to take care of your kids? Is the trustee going to be the same as the guardian? What how do you want the trustee to manage your assets?
What are your assets going to be? You know, how how are you going to take care of the kids? Right.
And I know you see that a lot, too, Cassandra. Yeah. So in your estate planning, you can decide who you suggest you would like to be the guardian of your minor children. And that would be included in your estate planning.
That is one area. So a lot of my goal in doing estate planning is to make the administration after you pass away as easy for your heirs as possible. Ideally, if everything, all of your assets automatically transfer to your heirs or someone, you don't have to go through the estate administration process with the courts. However, when there are minors, if both of their parents were to pass at the same time or within a certain number of hours of each other, then a guardianship procedure does still have to happen with the courts. But if you have a guardian named in your estate planning, the court takes that into consideration and is generally very happy to approve whoever was named as the guardian. So that's the guardianship piece. Yeah.
And we talk about this a lot on we talk about this a lot here. The North Carolina statutes allow you and statutes in other states, too, they allow you to plan your life out quite a bit. Right. You know, if I die, here's who I want to take care of my kids. This is who I want managing my funds.
This is how I want my things distributed. But if you fail to do that, if you fail to plan, then you're left with you're just at the mercy of North Carolina statutes, clerks decisions, things like that. And you can completely take that out of their their ballpark. They don't want to do it.
They're only doing it because you did not plan. Right. And so that's the first thing we would do in this situation. You know, Homer and Marge are doing their estate plan. They're going to decide who they want the guardian to be if both of them are gone. Right. If just one of them are gone, you don't appoint it. There's no guardian to appoint.
Right. If Homer survives Marge, maybe the kids need more help than Homer can can give them. But Homer is the only guardian, you know, but if both of them are gone, you need to appoint a guardian to take care of them. That guardian can also be the trustee of the trust that is created with your assets to take care of the kids. And then the trust. We talk about trust all the time on the show. The trust can do a lot of things.
So you can name. They're incredibly useful, especially for for folks with minor children, assets, especially someone self-employed who owns a business. A trust is a great way to handle those assets, put those assets in the name of the trust. Yeah. And the big thing about the big thing about a trust is a trust. A trust just keeps moving.
Right. You know, trust don't die. They can terminate at some point in the future. But I always say trust don't die. So you will die. Cassandra will die.
Homer Marge will die. But the trust will keep going and the trust will provide for the kids as long as it's funded. You know, it's got to have assets. You got to tell your trustee, you know, is the house is my house going to be sold because we want to put the house in the trust. Is my house going to be sold to make assets to the kids in the guardian live in the house? You know, life insurance investments that all goes into the trust once you're gone and creates money to take care of the kids for the self-employed folks. The reason I made Homer self-employed is because if you own a company, right, if you own 100 shares in Homer and Marge Inc. Or, you know, I think in our scenario, Marge had her townhouse from college that they were renting out that should go into an LLC for asset protection. The ownership of the LLC can go in the trust. So it just automatically goes. You don't have to go probate it.
You don't have a lapse in the ownership. You know, it's this I feel like I rambled. But the point being, this is a kind of a normal family unit that we see all the time. But if they don't do any planning, they have a lot of complex issues that will arise when Homer passes away.
And definitely when both of them pass away. But the planning to avoid that. You know, it's you got to call an attorney, right? You got to you got to it costs some type of money, right? There's fees involved.
And so it's it's painful anytime you have to do that. But we make it as painless as we can. And really, a little bit of planning saves everybody a lot of trouble.
Oh, absolutely. If Homer and Marge are to pass at the same time and they didn't do this planning, it's very difficult for someone to deal with that with minor children. And they don't have access to any of the assets if this planning wasn't done. Those assets are frozen until someone goes through the state administration process and the guardianship process to be able to legally have the children and provide for them from Homer and Marge's assets. So save Homer and Marge's kids the pain. Let's get the trust set up.
Make it easy. And I would I would tell people, too, while we're talking about this, don't let small things hold you up. I know for a lot of families with small children deciding who the guardians going to be, if something happens to you both. That decision holds up so many people because they don't agree necessarily on who the guardian should be or they don't have anybody to name guardian.
You know, they don't have family that they can trust. And and that holds people up a lot. And that's that's an important decision. But that's the kind of thing that that can make it go seven years before you get it done because you can't agree on that.
And the most couples don't die at the same time very often. That is a very remote possibility. So I would just tell people if something like that's holding you up from getting it done, it ain't that important. I mean, it may be the most important thing ever, but more than likely it's not going to be that important.
It's never going to come into play. We are talking about a hypothetical estate planning candidate. Again, three kids, self-employed, uncomfortable attraction to The Simpsons.
We have named him actually Homer and Marge. And again, three kids that aren't 18 yet. And going over that scenario. Also on the show each and every week we have the five complimentary consults. And if you've got estate planning questions, this is an excellent opportunity to come in to Whitaker and Hamer. And take care of that. You can call 800-659-1186.
That's 800-659-1186 and grab one of those consults. We are going to take a short break. We'll be back on the other side. Encore edition of Question and Answer with our attorneys here on Judica County Radio and Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm.
And then we'll be back to wrap it up after that. You're listening to an Encore presentation of Q&A Question and Answer right here on Judica County Radio. Welcome back in to Judica County Radio.
Your hosts, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They're attorneys. They're the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. And again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.
Offices located conveniently for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Each and every week the attorneys go back and forth on legal topics.
We are hitting Question and Answer on real estate today. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer. 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what the call's about. An attorney will be in touch with you. 800-659-1186. Or email your question to the show. We'll answer it on a future broadcast. It's info at judicacounty.com.
That's info at judicacounty.com. Again, Q&A, real estate, the focus. Josh?
Yeah, yeah. We had a real estate question before the break, but we're going to move into something else. We might come back to real estate, but this next one, this guy, this guy asking this question, I'm trying to boil it down because it's like a paragraph, but basically this guy was in a car accident, right? He was in a car accident. The parties couldn't settle. He was not at fault. He was injured significantly or severely, and they ended up going to trial, right? Because that's what happens.
You're in an accident. Sometimes you try to meet, you know, there's a mediation and there's a whole process to try to settle a personal injury claim. A lot of times they won't settle until you have to prepare for it and go to trial. So this one went to trial. I got one, a judgment. It doesn't have an amount here. I'm going to say it was a million bucks.
And he's basically asking now what? So he won the trial. The insurance company was on the hook for a small amount.
Let's say really small. Let's say $30,000. So he gets a judgment against the driver that hit him for a million dollars. That driver has insurance, but not enough to cover it. So that insurance company just turns over what they owe and his question is now what? And so basically this could be any situation where you have a judgment against somebody. It's nice when there's insurance there to cover it. A lot of times that's what personal injury attorneys are looking for. They're looking for insurance coverage. So sometimes you sue people and they're what we call judgment proof, meaning you can get a $50 million judgment against a defendant, but that defendant may be judgment proof.
What does that mean, Joe? What does it mean when somebody is judgment proof? So, yeah, basically if you're judgment proof, it just means that there's nothing for, you own nothing that a judgment could attach to, right? So you don't have real property that a lien could be placed on.
You don't have, there's just no way for you to realize any value from this judgment. So you could have an infinite, a $10 billion judgment against somebody, but it's only as good and as valuable as the person that the judgment is against. Yeah, this, you know, when we have folks who move, you know, me and Joe, it's a good time to remind you that we're only licensed to practice in North Carolina. So we're always talking about North Carolina law. But when people move here from other states like Florida and Texas and New York, they ask me questions at closing about what do they need to do to set this up as a homestead. They ask about homestead exceptions, and in some states you can exempt your residence from a judgment. That's what a homestead exception here.
In North Carolina, you don't really have a homestead exception. You have statutes that reserve a certain amount of equity in your home, a certain amount of equity in a vehicle, certain personal effects. So the statutes automatically protect some of your more basic property from the execution of a judgment, protect it in a bankruptcy, that kind of thing. And so when we go out to serve our million dollar judgment on this defendant, he's got to have something in, he's got to own something in excess of what's protected by statute. And a lot of people don't own anything in excess of what's protected by statute. If you have an extra, if you have a super fancy car, a lot of that equity in that car, if you have any is not going to be protected. If you have a big house, only a certain amount of equity is protected. And so this lien, this judgment lien can attach to everything you own that's not protected by the North Carolina exemptions statute. So that's what judgment proof means.
Like I can try to collect on this judgment and the sheriff will go out there, not be able to find anything to sell, not, you know, you can use a judgment to foreclose on real property, but there has to be real property that's not exempt for you to be able to do that. And so there's a lot of protections against a debtor to a certain extent. And so a lot of times personal injury attorneys will look at that.
They'll say, okay, this is all the insurance that's available, but we know these folks own this or they own that. But that is that's what's next. And then the other thing that could be next is it could be appealed.
Right. You know, if you if you go to Superior Court in Wake County and you lose, you might have an appealable issue and you can go to the North Carolina Court of Appeals if you have an appealable issue. So that's the other thing that could happen.
You either have to go and start collecting this judgment or in a certain amount of time, the defendant can appeal it to the Court of Appeals. I think that answers this guy's question. What happens now? Yeah, you're welcome, guy. That's a good answer, man. Well, I got to I got to I lost my line in my next question.
But you were in the zone on that one, man. Like if you never answered another question like that's your I feel like a slam dunk. I feel like I walk off for a walk off question.
Yeah, it's a walk off we should do. I mean, we should do that more, man. Get better and better at answering the same question every week, man. All right. About I'm about to my next question here. All right.
Well, I'll do this. You're listening to Judica County Radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They're the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer. And again, offices conveniently located for you.
Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Moorhead City and their their motto. Your law firm for life, Whitaker and Hamer. If you've got a legal situation that you're facing. Look, we get it.
It can be frustrating. You can get answers to your questions by calling Whitaker and Hamer. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.
That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact info briefly what the call's about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. We are in the middle of question and answer doing some real estate, doing a car accident question there. What's up next, Josh? I got the next question I have. I'm going to bounce back to real estate because the next question is a private road question. And we just talked about an easement. Usually easements. Another word for those in the in the vernacular is a private road. Right. An access easement. And so here we've got someone who who has access. That's not the issue.
So they've gotten over that issue. They have access to a main road versus a private road, but their question is maintenance. And so they're basically asking, hey, we purchased a home, several homes in the cul-de-sac share a private road.
There is no maintenance agreement. How do we go about maintaining the private road? And so that actually comes up quite a bit. Joe, you probably see that a lot. Yeah, I see it a good amount, man.
A good amount. And it's it's one of those things. And, you know, kind of to piggyback on that private road maintenance agreement issue. You've also got a lot of people don't understand that when when a new subdivision is developed around these parts, the roads aren't automatically made public.
Right. Like you're going to the plat of the subdivision is going to be the dedication of those roads to become public. But for them to be accepted, there's various things that have to happen. And there are standards that must be met for the NC DOT or whatever municipality is going to be maintaining these roads to accept them. So there's also going to be a component in those situations where a road is going to ultimately be public.
But it's the same concept. You need an agreement in place dictating how the maintenance of that that road is going to take place. So you're going to set forth who's responsible for it, whether it's an individual, whether it's a developer, whether it's a group of people and the more firmly and the more, you know, the more well spelled out. You can talk about the obligations of each person and what they're going to do and what they're going to owe and what the maintenance obligation is going to be the better.
Yeah, a lot of these. When I think about private maintenance, a private road, in my mind, I'm thinking about a country road that comes off like, you know, a highway, like off Highway 401 and not a not a planned subdivision, kind of like family land that's been sold over the years. And so it wasn't created with a purpose of other people coming in. And so you end up with a situation where you might have access, which is what a closing attorney is concerned about. They want to make sure you have access if you go buy this property.
But the closing attorney is not very concerned about maintenance. But when that comes up, you know, everybody does have an obligation for for maintenance. But how are you going to enforce it?
How are you going to get everybody to chip in? And this is a big problem. You know, we have some clients up in the mountains and this is always a big problem in the mountains, because a lot of those mountain roads see some pretty bad weather and they have to be some of those mountain roads are scary. Those gravel mountain roads. Yeah, man, they're scary, dude.
They're scary to drive on. There's bears and they have to be maintained and they have to be maintained that that can be kind of costly. And so most most homeowners get together and figure it out.
There's always one homeowner who doesn't want to doesn't want to or isn't able to contribute. And you kind of have to figure that out. But but hopefully there's a recorded maintenance agreement, you know, and that's something you can ask about.
If you're buying a home on a private road, your closing attorney is going to make sure you have good access. That's something you watch out for bears. Watch out for bears, bears, man, you know. But but maintenance is sometimes a good question to ask, because that's yeah, that's that's that's that's a question that can kind of dangle. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to have those questions dangling.
All right. Judica County Radio, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, they're your host. They're also the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They have offices almost on every corner. They're kind of like Starbucks or McDonald's.
Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Moorhead City. Again, Whitaker and Hamer, the motto, your law firm for life. If you've got a legal question you're facing, you need some answers.
You can always call the firm. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact info briefly what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch.
Again, the number eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. And you can always email your questions to the radio show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast. Info at Judica County dot com. When we return, we've got more question and answer with Josh and Joe. You're listening to an encore presentation of Q&A question and answer right here on Judica County Radio.
Welcome back in to Judica County Radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. Managing partners Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. Of course, Whitaker and Hamer, the power behind this program. They have offices located conveniently for you.
Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you can always call the firm and get some answers to those questions.
Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast.
Info at Judica County dot com. Josh, take it away. You know, when we do this, when we sit around and answer these questions, we hope it's useful. I think the hope is it's entertaining and useful, but at least at the very least useful. And we take these questions as they come.
And some of them are more interesting than others. Anyway, with that said, here's the first question I got out of our pile here is how do you get your court case continued? All right. That's the question. How do you get your court case continued? And they're not telling us what kind of case it is. So we're going to have to go through a couple of cases here. But how do you get your court case continued? You walk in. Front kick to the door, bam, smack it open, storm in. No, it's a you know, you're you go and you ask for a continuous man.
That's really it. And like you said there, the court is going to have leniency in some situations. And they're going to be less lenient than others.
And they're going to look at a variety of factors. And, you know, if this is your if this is the first time you've come to court, it's a minor infraction or offense. Assuming this is some kind of a criminal matter, you're likely to get a continuance fairly easily, right? Yeah, I think in traffic, I think in traffic court, you know, small claims court, maybe some district court, you know, it's it's it's easier to get a continuance. And like you said, at least once, at least when maybe several times, right? Like there's traffic tickets that you may be able to get several continuances on.
Now, you might have to be you might have to give a reason, you know, and an attorney would you know, if you're if you've got an attorney and you're going to let the attorney know ahead of time, the attorney can probably do more than you can walking in the day. But there's the court understands and there's some things built in. Now, it's hard to do without actually being there. Yeah, right.
So you've already made the trip down and but that being said. But once you move up to like Superior Court, Court of Appeals, continuances aren't doled out easily. No, you're going to you're going to need a fairly compelling reason, especially after that initial continuance, if you get that.
Yeah. So, you know, when you're when they're setting stuff, Superior Court is very regimented. Things get set for mediation. They get set for trial. And, you know, the courts just aren't going to move that. Because that inconveniences, you know, once you get to the Superior Court level, you've got witnesses, you've got jurors, you've got, you know, attorneys, you've got parties and usually a lot's riding on it.
And it's not as as easy to move. And so you should always be ready to deal with a case when it's scheduled, because it's, you know, things happen. People go, you know, have to go to the hospital. You have health. You have you have things.
But, you know, the dog eating your homework kind of stuff is not going to go over very well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That's true. And has it ever worked for anything in the history of things? I think I knew somebody.
I think I knew somebody whose dog actually did chew up their homework. Yeah. I don't know if it worked, even if they did. Like, did it work? Like, I mean, I feel like that's the most tragic thing that can happen to you.
Like, if that genuinely happens to you and you have to give that as a legitimate reason, you're gonna have a tough time. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Anyways.
All right. So that question was easy enough. That's a good question. But I remember, you know, I've seen people in traffic court, you know, which is designed, you know, for folks without attorneys and you get to talk to the judge, get to talk to the ADA. But I've seen people, you know, yeah, like on their eighth continuance, you know, or whatever.
And sometimes you're waiting for something else to happen. But that's that's definitely not the rule. That's the that's the exception, I would think. Yeah.
Anything over those very like the super lowly infractions in traffic court. And yeah, you're gonna need a fairly compelling reason, most likely. All right. Next question I got here is, can you sue a veterinarian for malpractice? That's the next question I got.
Yeah, brother. You can you can sue a veterinarian for negligence. You can technically sue anyone for anything.
I mean, you may not win, but that didn't stop you from suing them, man. So you can you can sue a veterinarian or a lot of different people for for negligence, right? That's not performing their duties up to the normal standard of care. And so if they do something wrong, you know, I've seen where some veterinarians have you sign some waivers, right?
Where, you know, kind of like a kind of like a doctor, you go in for surgery, you're going to sign a waiver where there's risk attendant with any creature surgery, just like there are for any human surgery. And, you know, the the law looks at dogs and cats. I mean, their personal property, right? They're the same as a car. Are they the same as the car? Yeah, I guess they would be the same as any personal property. So it's it's not a it's not a human. So it's not like a medical malpractice, but it's you know, they screw up your dog.
Now, what's the value of a dog? I feel like we've talked about that before, too. Yeah, we talked.
Yes. Have we? Are you doing the radio show? Did we get into the conversation about if another person's dog bites you like they're like it's. Yeah, we talked about dog bites for sure.
We talked. Yeah, we talked about dog bites and the statute. Speaking of which, man, as an aside, yeah, there's apparently a wild, wild pack of dogs terrorizing Barbour Mill Road area of Clayton. That's always crazy to hear that.
No, I haven't heard that. I heard that they're attacking. They're killing like other people's pets and stuff.
They're at large to this day. Now, are we are we sure they're dogs or could they be coyotes? No, it's a ragtag group of dogs.
Like whoever seen them has described them. It's like six dogs and they're all different breeds. And they're like, it's not like just all of one aggressive dog. It's like six random dogs that have just formed a gang. And they're terrorizing the community. It seems like that would be an easy enough thing to stop after the first.
You would think so. Tell it to these dogs that are still at large, though. So he might have been hurt, I guess, or they just I think they're getting animals to this point. But you don't want to get rolled up on by the the gang, the sixth street posse of dogs. You know, that's kind of crazy. That's like that should be like a anti Disney movie. These dogs.
Yeah. It's like what was the what was the movie where the dog and the cat and they're all friends. The Incredible Journey or something. Homeward Bound.
Is that what it is? Well, there's two Homeward Bounds. And you've got I could actually tell you a lot about these movies, but they run away from home. They actually know they don't run away from home. They get taken like anyways, they form a group. They don't form or they are in a group. They're a part of a family from the jump, Josh. And so they they.
OK, well, I was thinking about that. That may be except they're not good. They're not good dogs. It's the opposite of Homeward Bound. They run into some rough characters in Homeward Bound. The dogs do you never seen Homeward Bound, man? I think I had to read the book. I'm pretty sure you've got I know the dog.
I know the animals names, but the actors. I think you got Michael J. Fox. That's just the first one at both of them. There's two. And maybe there's more.
I know of two. You got Michael J. Fox. And you got I'm pretty sure you have Sally Field as the cat sassy. The flying. I don't know who plays Shadow. Shadow is the old wise golden retriever. Does he die? I think he's almost I think he's going to die. And then I think he just doesn't.
Anyways, I want to look at who that actor. They usually kill. That's very important. They usually kill off an animal in one of those movies. Yeah. They pretend like they're going to. And then they. Yeah. Disney is usually the mother. The mother usually passes away in some form or fashion. Homeward Bound.
The Incredible Journey is the I didn't know that had a subtitle, but it does. Let's see. Judica County radio. Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, managing partners at the firm Whitaker and Hamer. The power behind this program, your law firm for life offices conveniently located for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Morehead City. Couple of ways you can get in touch with the firm. If you've got any legal questions, you can certainly email the show. Info at judicacounty.com will answer the question on the future broadcast. Info at judicacounty.com. If you need something a little bit quicker, you can always call the firm. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.
That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. We've got more questions and of course, some antics between Josh and Joe. That's all coming up in our final segment of Judica County radio.
We're back right after this. We are back on Judica County radio. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. That's the power behind this show. Also, fellow attorney with Whitaker and Hamer, Cassandra Nicholas, joining us as the third host. I'm Morgan Patrick. Want to remind you, Whitaker and Hamer has offices almost everywhere.
Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia and in Morehead City. We have been, you know, experiencing an encore edition of our question and answer, but also the overall theme of talking about estate planning, what candidates need to do. And Josh, I'll throw it back to you and mainly just kind of go over how the consults are going to go, because we do have five complimentary consults. Yeah, for the estate planning consults, we're going to get you set up in our system and ask you some questions like Cassandra was saying earlier. Try to figure out what's going on. What do we have? Are you single with adult children?
Or do you have minor children as everybody passed away and you're the last one? Like what's going on? Ask you a little bit about your assets. We don't get too personal.
And then we talk to you and then we make our recommendations. And we don't try to put you in a Cadillac estate plan if all you need is the Vega. Well, who made Vegas back in the day? Do you remember that car, the Vega? Isn't it a Chevy? Was it a Chevy? Yeah, we had one of those and it had the material in the seats where like we used to take, it used to be the car we took to the pool because we didn't care about it. It was old. I'm not sure if we're giving anyone the Vega just to be.
And your legs would stick to it and you'd have to rip your leg off like the hot vinyl of the. I thought you were talking about the Street Fighter character, Vega. Oh no, he was the worst.
He was the worst one. You think so? Yeah, man. Yeah, just to confirm Chevrolet Vega back in the 70s. I wonder when they stopped making those, like 81?
Yeah, it's not 80s. It's very important. I think we need to dedicate the rest of the show.
No one talks about the Vegas anymore. But we're not trying to oversell you on something. We're going to give you what, in our professional opinion, what we think you need and go from there. One thing we haven't talked about is, you know, you got to get the POAs done. You got to get your power of attorneys in place because once you need them, we've talked about this before. Once you need them, it's too late to get them. And I see that once a week where someone, if they had had a POA in place, they could have saved their heirs a lot of trouble.
And Cassandra spoke to the guardianship process and how that works. And we've talked about that. But when you're doing your state plan, we're going to do those automatically. We're going to do your POAs. You're going to have your healthcare POA. You're going to have your general business POA. You're going to have your living will and your HIPAA releases. And you're going to get all that done too. So you're going to knock out a huge task just getting your state planning done.
And I promise you, we will make it as easy and painless as possible. But you got to get those POAs. Chevy Vega produced between 1970 and 1977.
So in the 80s, obviously you saw a lot of the Vegas, but again, produced from 70 to 1977. It got so hot. I'd like to announce we're doing a free promotion, lifetime free consult with you on the Chevy Vega. And you drive it to the office for your consult. I need to personally inspect it to make sure it's original.
All original parts. Drive it as a loner for a week. And you can stay at the office.
You can live with it. Just to the pool though. Just to the pool. You're only taking it to the pool, right?
I'm telling you, man. I don't know what that was. Pleather or vinyl. It was vinyl.
It was definitely vinyl. Oh my God. It would get so hot. And it would just attach itself to your skin.
It was the most painful. Because we put our pool towels, you know, our peach towels over it. You're riding that thing naked all the time, man?
What's going on? Fresh out of the pool. That's back when swimsuits just covered the important parts. They didn't have a lot of extra material. I realize as a society we've come a long way in the materials that are available to put in a car. But why even put that vinyl in the... It seems like metal would have been better, you know? It was luxurious at the time, man. Maybe it was. My grandma drove an old Bonneville.
You guys are probably too young for this. No, no, no. I know the Bonneville name, yes. We had this Bonneville and it had ashtrays, right? It had electric windows, which was crazy back then. But then it had an ashtray on each door. And it was full. The ashtrays weren't empty for show.
They were heavily, heavily used. That's back when smoking was good for you. That's back when smoking was good for you. Everybody in the car is just having a cigarette smoking contest. Yeah, just having a smoke. You bet your kid there. It wasn't a big deal.
We're not going to play I Spy. We're going to play how many cigarettes can you smoke before we get to the beach. I remember being a kid and we were in a bowling league. And I remember going into the bowling alley and you opened the door and the wave of smoke that would just hit you in the face. And it was like a kids league. It was all kids bowling. That's how a lot of places used to be, man.
I feel like Pizza Hut used to be like that. When I first started practicing in Johnston County, they had the ashtrays on the defendant plaintiff tables. Well, you got smoke when you're in court, man.
You could just light up. But how cool was that? I'm not saying smoking is cool. We know smoking is bad for you, but a lot of people still do it.
Smoking while you bowl is pretty cool. I think everything I do... You know, because we talk about I smoke cigars at the lake. I smoke cigars at the lake like I got... In the lake. In the lake.
In, at, and around the lake. Lake is a smoking zone. You can't light up right now. You can't smoke anywhere anymore. You can. Where was I at?
You are self-employed. That's your idea. You literally... There's no one even around you. I'm up on the third floor, and I've tried this before. It was like at the weekend. I was just here doing work. I was like, I'm going to have a... And we've got the old fans from Blinko's, if you remember that bar. We bought the old cigar fans.
I got spinning around up here. I was like, this sucks the smoke in. I was like, I'll have a cigar. And I came in Monday morning, the whole building, all 6,000 square feet reeked of a cigar. And your first client comes in and is like, this reminds me of that bowling alley.
You know, we used to have a Bonneville. All right. Another edition of Judica County Radio in the books. Your hosts, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. Again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina and our third host this week. And she is a regular. Cassandra Nicholas, also a fellow attorney with Whitaker and Hamer offices located.
Raleigh, Garner, Cleveland, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick. Just a quick reminder, five complimentary consults are available for our listeners. If you've got questions about estate planning, something legalese, you can always call and get that consult. 800-659-1186.
That's 800-659-1186. Another edition of Judica County Radio is in the books for Josh, Joe, and Cassandra. I'm Morgan.
We'll see you 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 this show, you can direct such inquiry to Joshua Whitaker at JMW at mwhlaw.lawyer.
