Jess Diamond (00:00.664)
Welcome back to another episode of How to 20 something where today’s episode brings on a guest to talk to you about the conversations you are not having with yourself and your family. And that is what happens when you’re unable to make medical decisions for yourself and what happens to your belongings, money, investments, everything if you were to die. I very much realize this is one of those topics where you

don’t really care to think about these things because if you don’t know anyone who has personally experienced this, then you figure who cares? That won’t happen to me. And unfortunately for you, you’re not invincible and shitty things do happen. So Brittany here wants to make sure you’re prepared to have these kinds of conversations, take certain actions and what the bare minimum looks like. So this doesn’t feel like such a daunting, undesirable task to add to your never ending list of to do’s.

which brings me to introduce who Brittany even is. So I’m going to read you her bio. Hello planners. Estate Plan Van is here to make estate planning more approachable and dare we say fun? Let’s face it, unless you’re immortal, this topic applies to you. Flexibility, whimsy, and a gift you provide to your loved one. She’s got you covered. Brittany was always interested in estate planning and pivoted into it following the birth of her daughter.

who she often refers to as her junior associate. She loves the process of working one-on-one with clients, developing a relationship, providing counseling and education, and then tailoring documents to fit their needs. You can get a stack of documents from lots of sources, but you gain a relationship working with Brittany. She was born and mostly raised in North Carolina, moved to Colorado for law school, and after several years of practice in municipal law,

earning a master’s in religious studies and teaching in the business ethics and legal studies department of the Daniels College of Business, she and her husband relocated to North Carolina to be closer to family prior to the birth of their daughter. They now live in Charlotte with their daughter and puppy. And you can find a state plan van out on the streets, in the carpool line, or maybe just stopping off to grab groceries. Hi, Brittany, and welcome to How to 20 something.

Brittany (02:19.066)
Hey Jess, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Jess Diamond (02:22.954)
I’m excited to have you on and to preface to those of you listening, Brittany and I met for coffee not too long ago after she already applied to be on a guest on here because you can always apply in the show notes. And I challenged her immediately with, I know this topic is important, but why would someone in their twenties care?

Death seems so far away. So I told her if she doesn’t mind me poking around and challenging the who cares mindset, then I’d be happy to have her on. And she was all for it. Plus we had such a great coffee chat that I know you guys are gonna love her too and everything she has to say. But Brittany, let’s start off with first having you explain what estate planning even is. And then I’m gonna hit you with the who cares part. So what is estate planning?

Brittany (03:10.913)
Love it.

question.

When I talk about comprehensive estate planning, I am talking about documents that apply when you’ve passed and documents apply when you’re living but incapacitated. So the typical what happens when I passed is always, always, always going to be a will. There might be a trust involved. So will and trust, that’s gonna fall into what happens when I die, part of those documents. Then the what happens if I’m living but incapacitated and I can’t make decisions for myself.

then we need to do powers of attorney. So that’s a financial power of attorney, a health care power of attorney, an advanced directive. In some states, they call it a living will. That’s that document that says, what happens if I’m at the end of life? How do I feel about being kept alive through artificial nutrition and hydration? Light topics like that. And a general hippo form. Who could call the hospital on my behalf and like,

Jess Diamond (04:05.944)
You

Brittany (04:12.138)
here are how I’m doing to get medical information about me. Those documents all bundled together. That is a full estate plan.

Jess Diamond (04:20.118)
OK. And why does that matter for someone listening that’s in their 20s?

Brittany (04:20.792)
Yeah.

Brittany (04:25.858)
Yeah, first, let me say your audience, you clicked on the title of this. You had no idea what you were getting into. If you’ve just let it play, because you just trust Jess and you know she’s going to bring you good content, like two thumbs up, well done, way to go for the ride. You’re already like doing more than most people would probably do. But why does it matter? And you covered it for a lot of reasons. Number one, we’re not immortal.

It’s just true. We don’t have to dwell on it, but it is a fact. Like the sky is blue, the grass is green. Like let’s just accept it. Like we are not immortal. This is part of, is an, death is inevitable, incapacity is possible. So we know it’s happening. Okay, if you can’t look inwardly at yourself, your loved ones are not immortal.

So listen along on this conversation, thinking about loved ones, parents, grandparents, someone else you might need to think about and then could have informed discussions with. And then at the end of the day, I pulled this quote from Brene Brown. This is like the guiding principle of all estate planning.

She didn’t say it for estate planning, but I’m using it for estate planning. Clarity is kindness. Why do we do any of this? Because we’re being clear on our wishes, not only for what happens when we pass, but God forbid what happens if I can’t make the next decision and someone else has to figure out what to do. We’ve simplified this process. And while that would still be horrific and a really hard situation, you’ve eliminated so many

Jess Diamond (05:37.144)
you

Brittany (06:04.59)
questions along the way.

Jess Diamond (06:07.256)
Yeah, and like you get what you want. It’s like, might assume that the people you love know how you want to take care of yourself if you can’t take care of yourself. Like I know I don’t want to be hooked up to machines to live. Like I very much know, and mom, you’re listening, like you know this, I’ve already talked to Ryan about this, so he knows this. If I can’t live my life to where I can take care of myself,

And if I’m fully reliant on someone else to take care of me, whether it’s a person or a machine, I don’t want it. That’s not a life for me.

Brittany (06:38.798)
Yeah.

And I feel like everyone has either heard that story of someone having to make that decision or possibly lived it. And that’s, it’s just awful. Again, it’s not gonna make it okay, but the comfort of no one having to guess, how did they feel? Like you’ve put somewhere in writing how you feel. It just, it’s such a gift to your loved ones. It really is.

Jess Diamond (07:06.84)
Yeah, they don’t have to make that decision while there’s already something really hard going on. So I think people really understand that from a medical standpoint. My thing for my 20 somethings is like, we don’t really have a lot of assets to us. So if someone listening is like, I just have a ton of student loan payments and debt and maybe one bank account and who knows, a Spotify subscription. Why would I need to worry about this? Like I don’t have a lot to my name.

Brittany (07:11.459)
Right.

Jess Diamond (07:36.77)
So who cares about delegating it to someone when I go?

Brittany (07:43.319)
so many answers to that. And you touched on one of them. Once you reach 18 years old, there’s not a default of who makes that decision. And I think it’s interesting for a lot of folks that go through like the college process, you start and you probably do have a default where your parents would be the ones that are contacted if something happened either with a bank or a hospital, et cetera. But then somewhere in that process, you become 18 and that is not the default.

So just, I mean, you want someone to make decisions and you want it to be clear who it is, time to put it in writing. Like that is, that’s what you need to do. So just on a basic level, being clear, why do you care? You care because you want to have a say in who makes decisions for you and helps you. Okay, so if you have debt.

Side note, this is not what this episode is about, but guess what? Debt doesn’t die with you. That’s a fun little thing. Yes, it might be negotiated. Yes, there might be some order to when debts get paid, but just so you know, if you do have that big student loan debt, it’s not just gonna go away if you pass or fill in the blank. Debt does not die with you. But yeah, you have a bank account. Great. If you have a bank account,

You can already do some planning with it right now that maybe you didn’t even know you could do. I don’t know a bank account that you can’t put a pay on death, designee POD, with your bank. So that’s just saying, hi, if I pass and if this account is in my name only, I’m gonna name the person who comes in and says, I’ve passed and I’m the person and they just give the bank account to. That is…

you can already plan for something as simple as a bank account rather than when you don’t plan for it. And if it’s in your name only, it’s going to trickle down through a probate process, an administrative process that’s just going to take a while, might be more cost than it’s worth, no reason to do that. So you already have likely some kind of asset that you can plan with. was either, you said a Spotify account, some sort of online account, right? Yeah.

Jess Diamond (09:56.768)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brittany (09:59.485)
gosh, here’s another little tidbit. The law lags so far behind technology. So just take that and run with it in any part of your life. The law lags really far behind technology. So you have, if you think about it for a minute, you said Spotify, but like think about all the digital things that you have your fingerprints in. Whether it’s your Spotify account, your Netflix account, LinkedIn, a dating app, your Amazon account.

travel points, I mean the list continues to go on, right? Your emails, all the things. Cause the law does kind of lag behind. This is what you need to do. You need to have a plan for those things. Some accounts will let you put a legacy contact in. And that is simply what that sounds like. If something happens to me, here’s the person that can access my stuff and get my stuff. Some accounts don’t allow for that. So the next step is, okay,

let me just kind of like make a loose inventory. I’ve got a Spotify, I’ve got a Netflix, you know, I’ve got a dating app and a LinkedIn, then email, like whatever. I can’t tell you because you’ll know when you set up those accounts, you clicked something at the end and it probably said, I’m not going to share my account information with anyone. So I can’t tell you to go and leave a list of passwords with someone, but I can tell you to have a plan for it.

to say, hey, these are the places that you’ll need to know I am. Some people handle that with a password manager, some people with a spreadsheet, because the sort of last resort is if you get to the point and you’re like, yeah, I’m gonna make a will, there will be a provision in your will that says the executor can handle your electronic communications. But to whatever extent, you don’t have to rely on that because…

It is just a really cumbersome thing. Just have a plan with your online fingerprints, because they’re everywhere. I mean, I love it. Let’s take it out of 20 something. I’ve done some estate planning for some senior citizens who go everywhere from, I don’t care, my daughter already has access to my email, to absolutely no one should be able to see my dating app that I’ve been on for the last 10 years. I love it, but like all…

Brittany (12:18.998)
Electronic communications and electronic footprints aren’t the same, so think through those things.

Jess Diamond (12:25.912)
I never really thought about all the memberships that someone would have. mean, in your 20s, you’re pretty much still on your parents for a lot. Like my mom, I’m on my mom’s Netflix before Netflix went to the whole like single household thing. Disney, HBO, DirecTV, like that’s all my mom’s, that’s not me. My boyfriend has his own accounts. I’m like, I’m pretty set, but then I’m thinking.

Brittany (12:29.134)
Right?

Jess Diamond (12:47.352)
A lot of people have gym memberships or they pay their internet service and utilities, you have your rent. Like you have so many other things that you are paying on a regular basis that someone who isn’t you isn’t going to think of when you go. I mean, they’re probably preoccupied with your death that they’re not like, wait, what is their entire digital footprint looking like? And what do we need to remove or take the account off of or do something with? So that is…

different way to think about it. really mainly thought about estate planning when it comes to your finances, like your bank accounts, your investments, just all of that, and then your health decisions if you’re not in a place to make your own decisions for care. So that was an interesting one for me. I will say, I think it was last week or the week before, I got a notice from my

my Roth IRA that was like, hey, you haven’t assigned anyone to your account. And I was like, well, I know I’m talking to Brittany soon. So I should just go ahead and put my mom’s information on this account right now. So mom, just know if I die, you get my Roth investment. So you’re welcome.

Brittany (13:54.498)
Perfect!

Brittany (13:59.853)
way to model clarity, being kind. You just communicated to your mom right here on the pod. You’re the beneficiary. But to your point, there are a lot of those things. You said a bank account, you said you’re Roth IRA. There are a lot of assets that maybe, okay, maybe you’re in your 20s and you’re not thinking about the whole picture, but realistically, you’re making decisions on, you’re doing some planning on. Like, well, go back to the bank account. How do you hold the bank account?

Jess Diamond (14:04.824)
for everyone else to hear.

Brittany (14:30.06)
If you hold a bank account jointly with rights of survivorship, that’s exactly what it means. You own it with someone and they have rights of survivorship. The planning is done for that. The survivor of the two of you is who’s going to own it. But when you don’t, you can use that pay on death form. That doesn’t involve a lawyer that involves going to like Wells Fargo or going online at Wells Fargo and saying, here is my person. Like your retirement accounts, same thing. Those, your…

you’re kind of doing estate planning on your own a little bit right now. Where are those gonna go? When you don’t have anything in that beneficiary form, it’s gonna trickle down through your estate. And like I said, it’s gonna get tangled in a probate process, an administrative process. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s just not as direct. Like you said, like if you’re like, I know I want it to go to my mom, put your mom on there, cause that’s who we want it to go to. Little warning, don’t put your

Jess Diamond (15:21.378)
Mm-hmm.

Brittany (15:27.192)
sister or brother or niece or nephew that’s under 18 as a beneficiary. We need to do some other planning for that. Don’t name someone under 18 as a beneficiary on those, but that’s different planning we can do. Why? Because, okay, I’m the plan administrator of your IRA and I get that form and I see that Joey is five years old. I’m gonna go to the court and say, I’m not giving this out. The court will just say, okay.

Jess Diamond (15:37.996)
Why? Yeah.

Brittany (15:54.895)
hold onto it until they’re 18, and then Joey will just get whatever is in there at 18. It’s a very blunt process. It involves more people and more administration than you actually need. When what you’re probably thinking in your heart is, well, I would like to leave something for what he needs as he’s growing up or something like that. And that’s where we need, we just can be a little bit more meticulous about how we plan for someone who’s under 18. Yeah.

Jess Diamond (16:21.368)
Okay, my question is, because you said once you turn 18, it’s no longer defaulted to your parents. And that seems kind of backwards of I feel like if you don’t have anyone assigned, it should default to your parents. So why is that not the case?

Brittany (16:40.076)
Yeah, we just, we have just decided that 18 years old, you are an adult and you can make those decisions on your own. Now we’ve opened a bit of a can of worms.

for decision-making during your lifetime, that is the stuff that does absolutely does not automatically default to your parents. Now, if you happen to land in a hospital and you didn’t have anything written and they happen to have a policy that was to find your parents, okay, but then you’re relying sort of on that, kind of in the moment. So there’s that piece of it. Nothing is given for those life decisions when you’re over 18, but…

If you pass without a will or a trust in place, the state does have a default plan for you. And I’m going to speak generally. sorry, Jess, I should have probably said, I am an attorney licensed in North Carolina, active in North Carolina. I’m licensed in Colorado, but inactive there now. So take this with a grain of salt. If your listeners are like, this sounds applicable, but I don’t live in North Carolina. Just bring that to a local person to ask about. Anyway.

Depending on the state you’re in, all states are going to have what’s called an intestate succession statute. And what that is, says, what happens if you die and you haven’t made a will and there are no plans in place, the state will go back through your family tree according to its rules and tell you who’s going to be the next person to receive your assets. That might be who you want. It might not be who you want. And you have a say, so why not exercise it?

But in defense of the intestate statutes, I had a professor in law school who taught us trust in estates. And she proudly was like, I don’t have a will. I trust the state’s plan for me. And I am not going to make one, which was really kind of funny. But at the very least, she knew exactly what the state statute said. So you need to know what it’s going to do. And if you really want to subject your family members to that whole administrative process.

Brittany (18:47.736)
You could just go ahead and be clear about it to start with.

Jess Diamond (18:50.7)
I know it just, it’s something so simple, but it feels like so much extra work of like, I have to go do this. It just, does not seem important enough to go out of my way, to go to the bank, to talk to someone, to put a name on my account for if I go, who it goes to. And just like those, and I have two different bank accounts and I have to go to two different banks. And I’m like, I don’t want to do that. I could think of anything else to do with my time. So why would I go and do this?

in my free time when I feel like I don’t have a ton of free time as it is.

Brittany (19:25.102)
Well, I would say for starters, see if you can do it online. Because most of these things you can do online, which is going to ease the path, like substantially, right? And kind of take out that friction point. And again, just so that it’s clear and the people who you want to get your stuff would get your stuff. And they don’t have to muddle through a court system to actually get it. When your assets trickle through the court system through a probate process,

they become available to creditors who have outstanding claims against you at your passing. And so if you had X amount of debt and you had a bank account that was there and available to be grabbed and pulled in and pay for that, nothing might be going to your parents or whomever you would choose to give it to because it might already be pulled in to pay off your debts. So let’s make a plan and use those forms.

that exist kind of outside of the traditional will process and let’s use them and make it easy. So First Look Online was a short answer to your question.

Jess Diamond (20:28.92)
Yeah, yeah. And I know a lot of this talk is like why it matters is it makes it easy on the people you care about. So can you kind of explain that a little more? I think when you’re in your 20s, you’re very much focused on yourself and you’re not, as we’ve been saying, like you’re not thinking about your death and you’re not thinking about what happens after the fact. It’s just kind of like, yeah, if I go, I go, like who cares? I don’t have much to me. But

I know like a large part of what you’re also saying is that it makes these decisions easier on the people you care about. It brings it directly to them, like all your money, your assets, like anything you do have, it just kind of hands it to them on a silver platter. Can you just kind of explain that even more of as to why someone in their 20s should be having this conversation? And I guess like also who they should be having these conversations with. Is it just their parents?

Is it siblings over the age of 18? Is it any partners even if they’re not married? Like, can you give like that whole overview of who this affects, why it matters, who you should be talking about this with, and like anything else that comes up?

Brittany (21:39.203)
I mean, I would, I’m all for the more communication, the better. There’s definitely a sort of philosophy around planning. I’d say largely in some older generations, it’s just like, we don’t talk about it and you’ll know when you need to know kind of thing. But that is very hard on the people that are here. you know, talk about it with your parents, talk about it with your siblings, talk about it with your partner, talk about it with whomever. So everyone is heard.

I mean, if you take nothing else from this conversation today, talk to people, communicate, say it. And then everyone is like, yeah, I heard her say that. yeah, I know that’s what she wanted. I mean, just talk. I often joke with clients that part of the reason I have a job is because people don’t communicate clearly what they want and then people don’t follow through with it. That’s what I do. I just put your everyday wishes into a legal document.

that someone can then follow as a roadmap on the flip side when they need to. And yeah, and actually you brought up something that made me think of this. Yes, assets are an important thing and something we’re planning for, but sometimes it’s some intangible things that really, really help people. It’s not as much about the big ticket items like I was planning with a gentleman the other evening.

And his concern, his main concern was what’s gonna happen with my dog. Yeah, like this gentleman owns a house that’s fully paid off. He has bank accounts, but his primary concern was I have a dog that I love dearly and I need to know what’s gonna happen with him and I need to make a plan for him. Yeah, I would say, I would guess a lot of your listeners have fur babies of some kind, like plan for them.

Jess Diamond (23:31.351)
Mm-hmm.

Brittany (23:34.561)
Here’s other, without getting too macabre, I know of someone passed, unfortunately way too early from breast cancer and she passed and she had a husband and that was fairly straightforward. It was gonna go to her husband. So the asset piece of it wasn’t really an issue, but she was leaving behind family and a grandchild, et cetera, even parents for her at that point. And…

So this was a sad and a really unfortunately too early passing. She put some instructions and told the family, she was a really big late goer, like Norman up around here. She was a really big late goer. And she said, I don’t know what’s going to happen. So just underneath what you lay me out in, put me in a bathing suit and stick a visor in with me just so I’m prepared for all circumstances. Okay.

That’s McCobb and it was still sad because she passed way too early. But for those of us that went to her funeral, it was kind of like, yeah, Rebecca, I see you. I hope you are at the lake, rock on. It’s like a little thing like that, which had nothing to do with assets, but everything to do with people that were left behind to say goodbye. And when I finish a planning session, one of my forms that I provide, a lot of attorneys do say like,

Jess Diamond (24:28.536)
That’s so funny.

Brittany (24:57.368)
Here’s a place where you can state how you feel about a memorial service and things like that. And inevitably it’s funny when I’m dealing with couples, often one of them will see that for it and be like, I don’t need to think about this any further, I’m done. And then one person will get real excited and be like, I’ve got my death playlist. Like, I’m gonna put this right here. You know where that is, right? You know where that saved. Okay, so that.

And then one person gets like really into it and it’s amazing, but the gift that it leaves for those that survive is really lovely. So it’s not just about the stuff stuff, it’s also about just kind of the directions and what you would like and not leaving people guessing about that. I feel like maybe I didn’t answer the question that you asked.

Jess Diamond (25:51.116)
feel like you did. well, you, like, I like that you, whether you did or didn’t, well, we don’t know. When I go back and edit it, I’ll be like, no, she really didn’t. But I do like that you brought up the things that we aren’t thinking about that our assets, like our pets and any death wishes that we may have. I know in the Jewish religion, it is very customary to have all the expenses of your funeral paid for. Like you already have the coffin, you have…

Brittany (25:52.225)
Okay.

Jess Diamond (26:19.252)
the lot reserve picked out, like you already have all of that because you typically bury the body within 24 hours is that religious aspect of it. And that just kind of made me think of that regard of estate planning of that is taken care of per my religion. I mean, I haven’t, I don’t have that taken care of for myself, but I know my grandparents have that taken care of. I also know my grandparents have an extra third lot for if any of their kids

were unmarried, my mom is unmarried, so that they wouldn’t be laid to rest all alone. They would be with family and with loved ones. So that is just like other pieces to this picture that I didn’t really think about. I do have a question. Do you find people come to you, or I guess I would say younger people come to, so 2030s, the younger side of things, do they come to you when they’ve been given some kind of…

illness as their wake up call or do you get someone that is like me is healthy and nothing is going wrong and just like, I’m going to think ahead and plan for my estate. Like, where does that, who do you mostly see and how can we start to make that shift so that everyone has some kind of plan for their estate?

Brittany (27:34.254)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. Organically, the people I see and I think it reflects also just kind of where we are in life. Are people similarly situated to us? We had a child. All right, then that you fast forward that and you think, my gosh, what if I wasn’t here? This is the most scary thing I’ve ever thought about. And I think I mentioned this to you, Jess, this is what I do. And my husband and I did not set up a will until we realized, gosh, we are…

going out of town and our daughter is staying with my parents. We better have something in place because we played the videotape forward to this totally scary thing that obviously didn’t happen. But that is what prompted us to do it. So I would say a lot of people I see are like, oh gosh, we have children. And I mean, maybe they’re babies or maybe they’re in high school and they’re like, shoot, we need to lock this down.

and be really clear about what we want. So that is a really typical one. A lot of people when they are talking to their financial advisor, which is probably some of your people, maybe not everyone, but usually a financial advisor will say, okay, we’ve done this planning. Do you have your estate plan in place? So I do get a lot of peer pressure from financial advisors, which is great. Sometimes it is a diagnosis that someone has, it kind of scares them.

Not typically what I see, I will put a, I’m glad you said that, because this is what you should keep in mind. It is so much scarier and more stressful to plan with a diagnosis, like right there, riding alongside you. Then when you’re sort of in your best state of mind, which is not being bogged down by that. mean, obviously if you need to plan then plan then, but it’s just such a scarier, just a scarier time. No one wants to.

make decisions in that frame of mind. like, if it happens, it happens, but if you can do it ahead of time, it’s so much easier. And the other way I’d say people come to me is maybe they see a left one pass that hadn’t planned and they saw family discord, they saw question marks, they saw a really long administration of an estate, any of those things. And they’re like, well, we saw what happened with fill in the blank.

Brittany (29:54.936)
We don’t want this happening in our family. So let’s go ahead and plan. Those are kind of the main times that I meet people,

Jess Diamond (30:03.818)
Yeah, kind of the wake up call moment. So as you’re explaining this more and more and as we’re having this conversation, what just came up for me is it’s kind of like a prenup for your life, right? It’s like a prenup, because Ryan and I have had this conversation. when we first met, he was very against prenups, because in his mind, it means you’re getting married with the thought of getting divorced.

For me, I had to explain like, no, it’s to protect my business as a business owner. Like that’s really where it comes down to. And the more I started to learn more about prenuptial importance of it, it really is so that you’re making all of the decisions and the government isn’t because that’s the default is the government will make all these decisions for you. And you have to go based off of the state laws or wherever you live in the world. It’s no longer in your control versus

you make these decisions upfront, you have all of the control about it. And now he’s like, this makes so much sense is yes, obviously if when that day comes for us to get married or whoever I end up marrying, hopefully it is him, but like whoever I end up marrying, it’s that I want that decision. And to your point of what you were saying is making those decisions while you’re happily in love versus while you’re going through the thick of it and on the brink of divorce.

is much easier. You already have it all laid out. So that’s the where I thought of it is it’s a lot scarier to make these decisions when you receive a diagnosis or when you go through something really stressful or really scary. Now you’re having this at the forefront and you are honestly aren’t thinking as clearly through these decisions. You’re thinking more on impulse or more from emotion. And we’re saying make these decisions when you’re feeling more level headed, when you’re feeling really good about your life, kind of like

supposed to get life insurance when you’re young and healthy and we also don’t do that so it is kind of like under but would you agree is that it’s like it’s a prenup for your life?

Brittany (31:56.77)
Exactly. Right?

Brittany (32:03.791)
For sure. Yeah, except this one, you know where it’s going to end. You know where it’s going to end. Not to be dramatic, but we know where it’s going to go. No, and you know what? You’re spot on. feel like prenups, at least in what I hear, estate planning attorneys are often role adjacent to family law attorneys, and that’s where prenups often live. But I feel like prenups are very in vogue right now. I feel like, absolutely. And if not a prenup, then a postnup.

Jess Diamond (32:07.392)
Yeah, yes, it’s a prenup for your death.

Jess Diamond (32:29.005)
Yeah.

Brittany (32:33.207)
tied the knot and you’re like, that made sense, then you would get into a post-up situation, which would basically be the same thing where you make those decisions now.

Jess Diamond (32:42.06)
Yeah, I think a lot of us 20-somethings are children of divorced parents and we’re like, don’t want that to happen to us. But if it does, I don’t like the way, my parents, they divorced when I was very, very young. from, my knowledge, it was pretty civil. But I know of people that had messy, or children of messy divorces. And I was like, I would not want that for my future kids. And…

Brittany (32:48.96)
Exactly.

Jess Diamond (33:08.928)
Obviously I do not want to get divorced. I don’t think anyone ever does, but it is that, it’s that what if. And it’s, this isn’t even a what if, this is a when you die. There is no what if you die, it’s when you die.

Brittany (33:22.753)
Yes, it is… we don’t have to dwell on it, but that is when you die, not what if you die.

Jess Diamond (33:26.391)
you

Jess Diamond (33:30.602)
Yeah. So you mentioned that people typically come to you when they receive a diagnosis or they have someone pass and they didn’t have things in place or they have a kid of their own. And that’s kind of a wake up call. Do you find that there is outside of that a certain age or even asset marker that someone should really get more serious about having a written will versus just having conversations or having a note somewhere is like having that.

actual document of a written will.

Brittany (34:02.531)
Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I’m gonna have to say best practice is when you’re 18. And I mean, I can give you all kinds of advice if you’re not ready to go there just yet, but like really it’s best you’re 18. It’s very interesting this last.

summer going into the fall, I had the largest number of young adults coming and they just said, I just want simple stuff. And everyone that I dealt with was like, I want my parents to make the decisions and I want my parents to just get everything and they’ll share it with my siblings. And I mean, it’s very easy. And that was like, I’m like, great, let’s put it in place. So I actually had a huge number of people do that, which was a really…

interesting thing and it was young adults reaching out and it was parents reaching out on behalf of young adults and then doing that. I mean, anyway, certainly 18 when you need to plan for someone else to make decisions. I don’t think there’s a number, there’s not an asset threshold because of the things we talked about. Sometimes it’s not your million dollars, sometimes it’s your dog. Or you might have seen in a family situation where it wasn’t about

grandma’s most expensive stuff, it was about the tea set that everyone remembered her loving. And suddenly when emotions got involved and there’s there’s a lot charged with who gets that tea set, how, why, what’s behind it. And like, so just that kind of thing.

I was talking with a realtor friend of mine and we were kind of brainstorming along the lines of when people update things. And we kind of were like, everything with like a D. I made a list because I was like, all these things prompt people to update and get serious about estate planning. A death in the family, obviously not your death, that’s a different thing. A death in the family, divorce.

Brittany (35:59.92)
Diagnosis, like we talked about, decline. Diamonds, you get engaged. Time to talk about it, think about it. Diapers, you have babies. Strong disagreement, discord in the family. I mean, you’re like, I don’t know that going back up my family tree and going to default people is necessarily what is great for me. Downsizing, when deeds are involved, so you buy property.

know property is going to be controlled by the deed. It’s going to, the ownership is going to be controlled by the deed, but still it doesn’t mean you can’t plan for it. Deployment. You’ll obviously know if you’re getting deployed and military is pretty good about making sure you have stuff in order. And when in doubt, if it’s been a decade and you haven’t done anything, time to look at it again. But yeah, I just, she, now we’re talking, we’re like, look at all these deeds for updates.

Jess Diamond (36:43.608)
That’s so fun.

Yeah, I like it. So my question is, does someone have to go to an estate planner to have a will written or is this something they can do online in very like basic forms?

Brittany (37:01.903)
Yeah. No, you do not have to go to an attorney, at least in North Carolina. You don’t have to go to an attorney. You can download forms off the internet. You can buy a package or pre-made package and fill in the blanks, all the things. There’s nothing, I don’t have a magic wand with what I do. But of course, the piece I’m going to say is that sometimes people don’t know what they don’t know. So they think they’ve done one thing and they’ve actually done another. And I did talk to someone, this was a couple of years ago.

Jess Diamond (37:24.844)
Yeah.

Brittany (37:32.246)
she came to me and she said, my dad said he had everything in order and he passed really tragically in a motorcycle accident. And I went to look at his documents and she’s like, he named me as an agent for his power of attorney. So.

In other words, she was able to make financial decisions if he was incapacitated, but still living. She was able to help him do that. But he thought, and what he communicated to her is that he had made her an executor of a will. So an executor of a will being the person that’s going to go to the courthouse, say this person has passed, here are the assets and their name and carry out that process. So this daughter then, and it ended up she was an only child, had to just go to the courts and figure it out and say,

My dad passed, I’m not named on anything, I need to administer his estate. And I have no doubt that he thought he was doing the right thing and she had every reason to believe him, but sometimes people just don’t know what they don’t know. So you can absolutely do it and you can make a perfectly valid will that way. The other thing I’ve seen people do.

is have a really detailed will. And then at the end of a will, there are important things about how to sign it. I will speak for North Carolina to for it to be self-proving. So every like a clerk just looks at the signed pages and says, yep, this is what they said. You need to have two disinterested witnesses and a notary.

And ideally that notary is giving everyone an oath that’s affirming that everyone’s of sound mind and under no undue influence and over 18 years of age. I’ve seen people have great wills and then we didn’t have witnesses. And then the court is going to treat that as if they didn’t have a will at all. There’s not a quick run around to that. And my final note, again in North Carolina,

Jess Diamond (39:23.596)
Thank you.

Brittany (39:28.899)
We are still at the place where you need an original will to give to the clerk. So it needs to have like, this is the one that was signed. Not a copy, not a scan, not, I pulled this one from the one I had saved online. No, the original one that was like, this is the one with the ink. If you can’t produce that, I have seen clients have to go through the intestate process.

like treated as if there was no will, when in fact they had written something out and the family members just couldn’t find the original will. I know that’s unnecessary, but it happens. Yeah.

Jess Diamond (40:05.848)
Mm.

Jess Diamond (40:11.288)
Honestly, this just makes it seem like more work. I’d rather just not bother than go through all of it with the potential of it being wrong. But I guess that it would be OK if you want to avoid that, go to an estate planner, go to someone that is that does know what they’re doing so that you can avoid all this. again, that just it seems like something else, something that seems so out of reach, out of touch for me to be like, oh, yeah, I’m going to go.

Brittany (40:15.503)
Right? I know.

Jess Diamond (40:40.44)
call Brittany up and be like, I need to create my will. Let’s sit down. Let’s do this together. Every part of my being is screaming absolutely the fuck not. I do not want to do that at all. And I will say everything that you’re saying, you’re explaining it so well, but it feels like a lot. And this is a heavy topic. And I know we’re saying wills are really the fine detail.

Brittany (40:52.047)
there.

Jess Diamond (41:09.612)
get it on paper, like do that. But can we zoom in and think more, okay, what can someone listening do right now, today, tomorrow, this week so that it doesn’t feel so daunting and so overwhelming and so like, whatever, it’ll just be at the end of my to-do list and I’ll get to it eventually, maybe, who knows?

Brittany (41:33.349)
Yeah, that’s a great question. I would just say start to just kind of make a list of your assets. My guess is your people listening, you have more assets than you think. You really do. I mean, we already talked about you very well likely have a pet that’s pretty important to you. Just a little, just they kind of make a list, your thoughts. Hey, this is what I’m thinking. You know, my sister gets my dog.

Just kind of loose things like that. I have, like you just said, I have two bank accounts. They are at these two banks. You don’t have to put how much money is in them. You don’t have to put the account numbers, but just like, I have two bank accounts. I have like a Roth with blah, blah, just a loose.

list that you can start to put together to add to. We already talked about, I’ve got some online accounts. Okay. So you forget some of them, but let’s do the main ones that like might actually hold money. If you have crypto, that’s a separate, that’s a separate podcast episode, but just have the details about where it is and how you access it. Because that’s one of those things where people literally have accidentally thrown away like a card to it.

or lost the pin number, and that’s just money that disappears. just, just eluse however you keep notes fast. Just start to kind of keep track of them. Fair. If that’s what’s going to do it for you, I mean, then great, start there.

Jess Diamond (42:50.562)
Mm.

Jess Diamond (42:56.384)
Mm-hmm. Like, could I keep it in the Notes app of my phone? OK.

Jess Diamond (43:07.928)
But is that, so it’s a list so that whoever has my phone like knows what to do, but they still don’t have access to like, they don’t have the immediate rights to any of it. They just know.

Brittany (43:16.976)
Yeah. The list, the list is so that you can start to digest what you’re planning for and not be so it’s not just like, my stuff in the void, you know, there’s just too much to figure out. It’s it’s so that you can start to distill it and be like, a, my assets are probably actually worth more than I think they are between my car, maybe a

Jess Diamond (43:26.967)
Okay.

Jess Diamond (43:34.061)
Yeah.

Brittany (43:44.953)
maybe a Roth that I’ve started, maybe I have life insurance through my employer, maybe I’ve got a couple bank accounts, my dog, you probably have more than you think you do. And your stuff stuff, unless it’s super important, you can just say my household items or whatever. So that’s just to kind of center you about it and be like, okay, this is what I’m planning with.

The assets, when I ask people that want to do planning with me and I say, here’s an inventory of assets. Like, could you please roughly tell me where we are on these things? What assets you have? How do you own them? And I don’t need an exact dollar amount, but a rough dollar amount. So the categories I have are real property, bank accounts, retirement accounts, investment accounts, life insurance.

vehicles, pets, and businesses. Those are kind of the big categories. If you just want to put like, just start with that. Like what of those things do I have? Maybe you have three of those things. Awesome. But I will note also on that worksheet that I send out, when it asks for those assets, the intro paragraph says, did you know that there is over one billion, that’s billion with a B.

dollars of unclaimed property just in the state of North Carolina. What’s an unclaimed property? Property that no one knew to look for, to collect, and it’s just now in a fund somewhere. I can’t remember if I told you this. I did one of those, you know, like local news, like call a lawyer, lawyers are on call, like the last answer your questions that ended up. So I did one of those last year and someone called in and I had said like, hey,

They also were having problems with someone’s estate that had passed. I said, well, don’t forget to check the North Carolina Unclaimed Property Fund. And you could just put that, just search that and look up the name of the person that passed and see if there’s anything in there. Look up your name. You might be living and have had a checking account from 10 years ago that you forgot to do anything with, but there’s still a little bit of money in it. And now it’s just been handed over because no one’s touched it in so long. So I gave them that advice.

Brittany (46:04.846)
And then a couple of minutes later, was done on the call and like my volunteer that was like a seat over from me was like, hey, I heard you tell that person about the unclaimed property fund. I searched my name. I got like $37. She was so excited. I’m like, yeah, way to claim that stuff. so just, yeah, I mean, what are we doing?

Jess Diamond (46:22.552)
Yeah, don’t give it to the government. Or just, I don’t even think it goes to the government. It literally just sits in an account.

Brittany (46:29.444)
just sits there, right? It’s just sitting there in the unclaimed property fund. like, sorry, to your point though, let’s just start to make a loose list of those big things. Real property, bank accounts, retirement accounts, investment accounts, life insurance. Let me do the asterisks. Some parents bought life insurance for kiddos, like when they were a baby and they were like, they’re gonna carry this.

Like check with your parents. Like, did you buy like a Gerber policy for me or something? Like you might have something that’s in your name or has some degree of cash value to it or that you would be able to plan for. So check on that. And vehicles. Again, you might already own those jointly with rights of survivorship. Possibly you’re on a title with your parents, somebody else, but like where’s the title? Who has it? Like just kind of loosely start to make that and then just talk to people about it. Like I said, if you can’t do it for yourself, then just

I don’t know. Tell your parents, hey, I jumped on this pod today. I didn’t know what I was getting into. This estate planning attorney said I needed to ask you, do you have estate planning documents? Where are they located? I mean, have that conversation with your parents. I mean, take this for what it is, but there’s one statistic out there that over 50 % of children don’t know where their parents estate planning documents are. True story. Let’s not add that. Right?

Jess Diamond (47:50.392)
I think I think I know where my moms are. Well, that’s a big thing.

Brittany (47:54.619)
But let’s not add that to the list of stressful things. Yeah, let’s not add it to the list of stressful things. And they might be like, well, it’s in the top desk drawer, you know, where everything else is great. Or they might be like, well, we always go to our law firm, da, da, da, da. And it’s there. Great. At least you know where to go or who to call if you needed that stuff. I work completely virtually, except I’m mobile, come for signings and that’s

That’s great. So I don’t keep any original documents, but a lot of traditional brick and mortar law firms will keep a safe deposit box associated with a law firm that will keep a client’s original will in it or original documents until they need it. So that might be the answer that you get as well.

Jess Diamond (48:41.624)
Okay. And if someone, since we’re in our twenties, I’d say like pretty 50-50 here on who’s married and who’s not. If someone’s been in a relationship for several years, living with their partner, like maybe engagement is in the future. Maybe they are just someone who doesn’t care about getting married. So they stay as partners. Would you recommend they add that person to the will or is it if you’re not legally married, maybe don’t? Like where is…

Or is that just a personal preference? Like, depends on your relationship.

Brittany (49:10.384)
That’s a personal preference because there are plenty of people who are deciding, I want to be in this relationship. I don’t need to be married, but I’m still going to engage with you as if like we are each other’s people. So, I mean, you can leave to them. You can not leave to them. I will put a little note in here in North Carolina, and this is in a lot of states. If you are married, the longer you’re married, there is

Jess Diamond (49:24.568)
Mm-hmm.

Brittany (49:40.761)
a share of your assets that your spouse is entitled to claim of your estate if you haven’t left that to them. Probably not in our 20 somethings, but just something to know if you do decide to get married, a conversation to have. I have couples that are getting married that waive those rights and say, I’m never gonna claim the share of my spouse. Like they don’t need to plan for me. We’ve decided that we don’t need to plan for each other in this way. Great, awesome. like we’ve taken that off the table.

Um, but yeah, that’s absolutely a personal preference. I have someone that I’m planning with right now. She’s engaged, but she’s kind of, you know, previously she’s purchased a house on her own. She has her own life and her family, she has some family she’s supporting and they’ve talked. So she has certain things going to her family and she’s chosen. I have a life insurance policy. I’m going to name my fiance to be husband on that. And I’ll probably going to name him on one bank account.

or something like that. So people sort of plan it out that way too. But that’s married, not married, you know, however you want to.

Jess Diamond (50:43.81)
Hmm. Okay.

Jess Diamond (50:50.562)
Yeah, I have one last question for you. And that is, are there any myths that you want to debunk about estate planning or like what’s the biggest myth you hear?

Brittany (51:03.024)
So many myths. I think we’ve crossed one. You are not immortal. We don’t need to dwell on it, but we need to accept it. You are not immortal. Number two, I’d say especially people that are married are like, well, everything goes to my spouse, right? Not necessarily because we’ve got all of these different things that you could have filled in a beneficiary designation. And I’ll say this, this does, I think fall into probably a lot of 20 somethings. You get your first job.

God willing, it has a retirement plan with it. You’re lucky enough to have that, right? And you’re not in a relationship or you are, but it’s just starting out and it’s not long-term. So you name like your parents as beneficiaries, go through several years, you’ve forgotten about that plan and now you’re married and now someone is still on that policy and it’s not updated. So it doesn’t automatically change just cause you get married. Just keep an eye on those sorts of things.

Sort of same thing as we started out talking about. It’s not necessarily my parents just get everything and my parents just get to decide everything. It depends. It depends on your family makeup. It depends on what you have in place where you might have informally planned through beneficiary designations. It might depend on your state’s laws. So yeah, there just isn’t a, this is who gets it all, right? Easy, I don’t have to do anything. After we hit 18,

It’s just not a blanket statement like that.

Jess Diamond (52:34.124)
Yeah, I would even say part of the update is like, a couple of years go by, you get married, like you have an update who’s on is the other end of that is if your beneficiary passes away, update who is the new beneficiary.

Brittany (52:43.908)
Yes!

Brittany (52:47.586)
Absolutely, yeah, your beneficiary passes or has just, you know, maybe you’ve named a good friend or maybe you were really close with a cousin at one point and you’re not a strange, but like life just changes. People come in and out of your life in different ways. And maybe to the population of your 20 something as it applies, when you’ve had children who you name as a…

as a guardian for your children, you name that in a will. Who you name as a guardian for your children might make sense, you know, at one point and then you fast four or five years and that might be a different person, whether because that person sort of floated out of your life, maybe they’ve aged, maybe it doesn’t make sense, maybe you have other needs that you need to plan around your child. So like that kind of stuff, it just changes. Plan early, but just update often. And just when in doubt, if something in your life happens and involves a D,

Be like, okay, I probably need to look at it. Yeah.

Jess Diamond (53:43.072)
Yeah, okay, good rule of thumb. But amazing. Thank you, Brittany, so much for coming on How to 20 something. I definitely know what conversations I need to keep having. And what steps I can take. Right now, that’s not gonna make me feel like I’m hating my life by adding another thing to my to do list. Where can people find you if they have more questions or want you to help them plan out their estate, providing they live in North Carolina?

Brittany (54:09.568)
Yes, providing you live in North Carolina, but I would be happy to chat with anyone. But yes for true legal questions, North Carolina You can find me at estateplanvan.com. Just reach out to me that way And I’m on Instagram at estateplanvan. So either of those I’d be happy to chat with you

Jess Diamond (54:29.096)
and her information will be linked in the show notes. So you don’t have to worry about getting caught with your pants down in case something happens to you. And hopefully that doesn’t happen, but you know, we’re not immortal. So just go ahead and check her links out right now. Poke around. You probably have questions that you can just ask directly to her. And as always, thank you for listening to another episode of How to 20 something. If you liked what you heard, learn something new, know someone.

who needs to have this conversation with a loved one, then please share this episode, send it to that friend, post it on social media, just do something to help me help all of the 20 somethings in this world navigating the most confusing decade of their lives. And again, as always, I can’t wait to be in your headphones again next week with another brand new episode.