Episode 323: Planning for Child Free People: Estate, Legacy, and Financial Strategies with Maddy Roche

Nearly a quarter of Americans have no traditional next of kin, yet the financial planning industry has long operated as if everyone will eventually have children. Melissa Joy, CFP® sits down with Maddy Roche, co-host of the Child Free Life by Design Podcast and Chief Growth Officer of Partnerships for Child Free Trust, to talk about what changes and what becomes possible when you are building a financial life without kids. 

Maddy brings both personal and professional perspective to the conversation. As someone who is child free by choice, she shares how a financial plan created specifically for her shifted her entire mindset around spending, legacy, and the concept of dying with zero. She and Melissa dig into why estate planning has been so hard for this demographic to complete, why that needs to change, and how Child Free Trust is filling a gap that trust companies and traditional advisors have largely left open. 

What You’ll Learn 

• Why child free people represent a distinct and underserved financial planning demographic 
• How planning assumptions tied to children create blind spots for advisors working with this group 
• Why long-term care insurance matters more than life insurance for most child free people 
• What the die with zero philosophy means and how it gives child free people a financial permission slip to spend and experience more 
• Why upwards of 70 percent of child free people do not have a legally binding estate plan in place 
• How to reframe estate planning as contingency planning and why it matters long before death 
• What roles are required in a complete estate plan and why they are especially hard to fill without children 
• How Child Free Trust serves as a professional fiduciary in the roles of medical and financial power of attorney, executor, and trustee 
• Why hourly billing rather than assets under management makes professional fiduciary services more accessible 
• How the Child Free Trust care document captures everything from pet care plans to end of life wishes 

Estate Planning and Membership: ChildFreeTrust.com 

Thought Leadership, Podcast, and Community: ChildFreeInsights.com 

The previous presentation by PEARL PLANNING was intended for general information purposes only.  No portion of the presentation serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from PEARL PLANNING or any other investment professional of your choosing. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy, or any non-investment related or planning services, discussion or content, will be profitable, be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Neither PEARL PLANNING’s investment adviser registration status, nor any amount of prior experience or success, should be construed that a certain level of results or satisfaction will be achieved if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. PEARL PLANNING is neither a law firm nor accounting firm, and no portion of its services should be construed as legal or accounting advice. No portion of the video content should be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. A copy of PEARL PLANNING’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request or at https...

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. I'm Melissa Joy, a certified financial planner and the founder of Pearl Planning. My goal is to help you streamline and organize your finances, navigate big money decisions with confidence, and be strategic in order to grow your wealth. As a woman, you work hard for your money, and I'm here to help you make the most of it. Now let's get into the show.

Defining Child-Free And The Demographic

SPEAKER_02 0:44

This is a very important topic that often gets overlooked. And I have the perfect person to discuss it with. Maddie Roach is the works with Child Free Life by Design podcast. And she's also a passionate voice for navigating life and legacy planning as child-free and permanently childless people. And she's the chief growth officer of partnerships for Child Free Trust. Maddie, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Thank you, Melissa. I so look forward to having a recorded conversation with you. We've had several in the past, and I'm excited to be on your podcast. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Yeah, thanks for joining us. This has been on our list of things to do. And I mean, I think the name speaks for itself. I love the nomenclature of just identifying a cohort of people that need to be served. But let's kick it off by saying, you know, what does it mean to be child-free? And why do we need this segment of people who needed advice to be, you know, kind of separate and identified?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Yeah. So we define child-free trust, child-free being having no living biological or adopted children. Um, we could spend all episode talking about language choices around this demographic. Some people are really turned off by the term child-free. Others are like, oh, that is exactly what I am. Um, but what I want to kind of showcase for your audience is that it's a much bigger demographic than I think any of us really realize. Nearly a quarter of Americans currently don't have traditional next of kin. They're child-free. Um, and if we just take that language and say, okay, we're going with child-free, under that umbrella sits two separate groups, those that are child-free by choice and those that are permanently childless. And as you could imagine, Melissa, and I'm sure you've we've handled this with you with your clients, is that if someone is permanently childless, maybe not by choice, um their planning and how you approach their planning is slightly different because there may be a grieving process for folks that are having to reckon with a future maybe that they weren't anticipating. Whereas those of us who have chosen not to have children by choice, we're really looking for advisors and teammates in our world that really get our choice and can help us embrace the opportunity that lays ahead. Um, but it does require a different financial planning approach. And um that's really where I think some of the most interesting stuff around being child-free can can come up.

Maddie’s Story And Common Assumptions

SPEAKER_02 3:13

Well, you mentioned those of us. So can I get personal? You are child-free yourself.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I am child-free. And you know, it's it's not like I woke up every day and I was like, oh my God, I am child-free. Um, I just found myself child free. I I've never really had, I've watched my girlfriends have babies and um I love children. I nanny my whole life. When I was younger, I think I always imagined being a mom. But as I um I I, you know, had my own personal journey of my own identity. And over the years, I'm in my late 30s. I I really just chose not to have kids and I tried to uh not have children, and that was um that was just part of my life. And now as I'm I'm approaching um 40, I'm thinking a lot about how that impacts my future. And, you know, although I work at a company called Child Free Choice and we're dedicated to helping people without kids have representation at um uh the most crucial times, even my mom asks me, I mean, she just did when I was home last, like, well, who's gonna take care of you when you're older? Um and uh that is a question that most traditionally people think about when you say you don't have kids. Um, and again, we could talk so much about the bias around language when it comes to being child-free. I'm in a um uh a same-sex relationship with my partner, her and I have never wanted to have children. Um, and and I've had people say, Oh, so you don't have a family. And that can actually be like really hard to hear. Yes, of course I have a family. I was gonna say, that's so wrong, too.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

I would assume it is.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

And and so and you are a family. Totally. And we've got fur families and we've got chosen families, and we've got our natural families. We're just choosing not to have children. Um, and and so back to the question of, you know, well, who's gonna take care of you when you're older? The reality is that the future will look different for me and my partner if we don't have kids. Um, it doesn't mean that it's not gonna be a beautiful future, but there are other considerations we have to take into account.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

That's right. And so I um happen to be, I do have kids and I'm married. And um, but many of our friend group, my husband's and mine, um, do not have kids. And so I know it from a personal perspective of, you know, there's different so there's different um, you know, kind of phases of life that you hit, depending on whether you're um you've got um kids you're chasing around or you're child-free in your 30s, 40s, or 50s. Um, and also, though, um, I hope that people who are listening to this podcast are hearing, um, first of all, it may help you if you um do have kids yourself. It may help you to identify um with your friends who do not and be perhaps, you know, kind of sit in their seat. But also in the financial planning realm, I know when I've had conversations, Maddie, with your colleague Jay Zygmunt, who specializes in a financial planning practice for people without um who are child free, that um many people who are child-free feel overlooked in the traditional like kind of pathways with financial planning. Um, and so what are some of those areas where, you know, just going with the template that includes an assumption that you're gonna have kids someday um misses the mark?

Financial Planning Templates That Exclude You

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah. Um, you know, it's it was only a few years ago that one of the most, you know, well-known financial planning softwares, right capital, even allowed for couples to not be married. Chop free people marry at a much lower rate than the average because we don't really need to. Um, it there's kind of this assumption that financial planning, traditional financial planning that talks a lot about legacy and generational wealth transfer and we've got to capture the next generation of clients. Um, it's a male, pale, and stale industry. I've said that on podcasts many times over the years. So it's not an industry that child-free people traditionally have have looked to for advice. And we've done research on it and we've seen that 80% of child-free people have never worked with an advisor. Um, and fundamentally, when you go into an advisor's office, um, there can be language again around bias and choices of, you know, do you have kids? Okay, well, I'm not gonna, you know, there's been anecdotal, you know, examples of like, oh, well, you'll change your mind, or like, we'll leave that door open. And um, well, you're my advisor, you shouldn't be telling me that. And that's not my my life. And so I think it's really important as we think about this demographic to recognize that many of us have really chosen this uh as as a as a path of our future. And we need people to be able to look at that through that lens. And so, to your question, when I think about my tax planning strategies, when I think about my estate planning strategies, when I think about my cash flow strategies, um, things are fundamentally different. My insurance needs are different. I don't need life insurance because I don't have kids, but I do need long-term care insurance. And that's actually really important for me to establish a funding mechanism for that, probably in the next couple years. And that's on my to-do list because uh women tend to spend three point some years in the long-term care facility. Uh, we outlive our partners if we're in a heterosexual relationship. Um, there's reason to have disability insurance, but the traditional life insurance uh doesn't really work with us and we don't really need it.

Die With Zero And New Spending Rules

SPEAKER_01 8:39

One thing that, you know, really rocked my world when I had Jay do my financial plan was that he introduced me to this concept of dying with zero. Melissa, I had never heard of anything like this. And since then, I've read the Bill Perkins book of Die With Zero. But he made a really good point to me that unless you have, and and child-free people give at an astronomically high rate, we're we're we're big into charities and philanthropic uh initiatives. But waiting until we pass away for that to happen actually isn't that beneficial. One, a lot of the charities and uh groups and people that we'd want to give money to should probably want it now versus later. There's actually tax advantage strategies to giving present, you know, while we're alive versus after we pass away. Um, but this idea that if we're just going to crank our whole lives to accumulate, you know, some millions of dollars in our bank account and then we die, we did it wrong. And that permission slip to kind of flip that on its head that I don't have to put kids through college. I don't have to think about making sure that they're taken care of or letting them have a nest egg. And so I have an opportunity to spend more aggressively over my years. I have an opportunity to maybe not earn as much as I thought I would have to earn. I have opportunities to take sabbaticals, I have opportunities to pause on some financial initiatives and tap more into experiences and things like that. And I come from the financial planning industry. I've worked in it for 12 years. I have always had an advisor, but no one has ever given me that permission slip. And that changed my attitude. And I'll just kind of wrap this answer up with that. Most advisors are really uncomfortable with that idea of giving advice, of spending down your wealth because one, it goes against traditional fee structures, but two, um, they're just scared. They're not used to that mentality that uh you don't just have to die with a lot of money. Um, and I I just want to plant that seed into the audience that your financial picture looks different if you're child-free.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

It's so true. I often find myself encouraging people to spend more, not less, money when it comes to the spending phase of retirement or even contemporaneously like FYI to the audience. Um, Maddie and I were talking before we hit record. Um, I'm going to a concert this weekend with friends. Um, Luke Combs, you were talking about your tickets to Backstreet Boys, and we were talking about how worth it it is to invest in experiences. And um, you know, this this concept of like finding a Goldilocks zone, it's it's the difficult part about dying with zero is like, well, tell me when you're gonna die and I can set it up if there's no bumps along the way. So many people end up um, you know, uh having a significant estate. Um, even if they spent, um, even my clients that I've been nervous about spending too much have ended up with significant estates at end of life. Um, that's not to say that you can't mess it up. Um, but having advisors, regardless of your family status, that that have that recognize that tension between not running out of money, but also um not ending up with too much or discouraging people from spending. Um, you know, to me, it's it's good karma and it pays itself back in referrals to not be focused on dying with the biggest pot of money, but living the life um that you wanted to live and using your financial resources to fund that life rather than having the whole point being how what is the size of my accounts is really important.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Totally. Yeah, I've seen the the advisors I hang with, my my my community of advisors are very much on that too. That, you know, the the die with zero. No, we're not saying actually die with zero. Uh guardrails are important, having a long-term care plan is important, insurance and things

Contingency Planning Beyond A Will

SPEAKER_01 12:29

like that. But um, to your original question, some other areas that that are impacted if you're child-free is that um identifying and completing estate documentation is exceptionally hard for the average person. Uh just over 50% of Americans have uh a will in place. Uh, but when it comes to child-free people, um, upwards of high 70s of us don't have percent of us don't have a legally binding estate plan. And that is a big that's a problem. Yes, that's a big problem. And you know what I'm amazed with as I talk to child-free people, they're like kind of flippant about it. Like, well, I don't care what happens to me when I'm dead. Um, that's fine, feel that way. The problem is that estate planning just gives us this idea that it's only about death. My mission in life right now is to redefine estate planning into contingency planning. This is emergency planning. This is not just when you die. What happens if you have dementia? One in ten of us will have dementia. What happens if you have an emergency and you can't act on your own behalf? What happens if um you you uh find yourself with um uh a need to have someone be able to make decisions for you for whatever reason? There's a lot of scenarios that can happen before we pass away that triggers kind of an estate plan uh and some of those core documents. And so part of uh the work that I've been doing with Dr. J over the past year is to build child-free trust, which is really about how do we answer this question for folks that have a hard time identifying who are those agents in those roles? Because for those of you who haven't ever completed a will or a trust or a POA, you actually need to list people in that to say who's gonna take care of this, who's gonna execute your will, who will be your executor, who will be your trustee, who will be your medical and financial power of attorney. And it's not that we don't have people in our lives. I would love my partner, Lauren, to be my medical POA. She is. But the challenge is being someone's medical POA is excruciatingly difficult. Um, you're making life-meaning decisions around someone's medical needs. And in the case of it being an extenuating circumstance where I may be in the hospital for two, three months, that could be extremely arduous on Lauren to have to balance not just the grief and the management of our life, but now having to make in lockstep decisions with medical professionals where I have pretty clear goals on how I want to be treated in the hospital and at end of life. And if I could outs outsource that to a third party that's a fiduciary to me that has to uphold that, um, I'd like to take that burden off of Warren. And so um, you know, one of the challenges and what we've seen with estate planning when it comes to child-free people, one of the biggest reasons they delay on it is because they don't want to burden family or they don't have someone to identify in those roles.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Well, in a transient um culture and society where we often move for jobs or establish, you know, um close relationships with people who may be across the country too, there's some logistical hurdles or can be with naming, you know, the friends who are closest to

The Real Burden Of POA Roles

SPEAKER_02 15:37

you. And you've just described, and I don't want to assume because I haven't met Lauren, but you um, you know, um naming someone who's closest to you and also a contemporary, which works great in your 30s and 40s for the most part, statistically. Um, I'm working with a client who is now in her late 70s and has some significant health challenges. Um, she was in a same-sex partnership but is widowed. And um really there aren't additional family members because she didn't have siblings, and there aren't, you know, the generation um before is gone. And so it's um community members who are friends, but perhaps not as close, and a POA who's across the country. Um, and it's working, but it is it is um oftentimes those people who are her caregiver also are managing their own caregiving circum situations. Um, in this case, multiple family members or multiple caregivers also have elderly relatives who are they are caring for. And so there's just so much to consider of like, what if that power of attorney isn't there? Um, what if Lauren couldn't be the person? Um, who would I name next? Um, and are they experienced because it can be incredibly disruptive when you're both the medical as well as financial power of attorney or trustee named as a successor trustee? Um, this couldn't almost feel like a full-time job because the unfortunately the rest of um uh medical and financial interactions um are heavily regulated and very difficult to maneuver. It is not an easy, like, hey, here's my permission slip. I can just come in and make decisions and you you work with me.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Wow. Yeah, it's it's I think we really underestimate the roles. And, you know, they they do each of those roles require uh or have a fiduciary element to it. And not every American understands what a fiduciary is, but that means that you have a legal and ethical ethical obligation to act in the best interest of the person. Um and and, you know, just assigning, say, I don't know, my younger neighbor who I've made a strategic relationship with down the block to be able to be my you know, POA, they probably don't know what a fiduciary is. And there's then no one kind of regulating it to ensure that they're acting in my best interest. I think the the most recent stuff came out, it takes on average 900 hours to settle in a state. I mean, that is mind-boggling. That is a huge that is a full-time job. And I believe it though. I do too. And that's those of us who kind of know what we're doing, you know, and that's to think if you were to land uh as someone's executor and not even know where to begin with finding what key opens the safe and what accounts are open. So a lot of our work is really helping people remain proactive, both about how do you set up care teams and care plans around aging early, and then how do you get your ducks in a row for whoever may take it over to make the transition seamless and that there be some continuity in your bill pay and your dog walk and all the good stuff.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Yeah, we've got to take care of those pets too in the estate plan.

How Child Free Trust Fills The Gap

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Um, so tell me a little bit more about child free trust. You have created kind of a new concept with some technology aspects as well as a new service offering that is not um in meets a missing need that we're kind of discussing. So tell me what you have um are working on and where it's at today.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Sure. Yeah. Child Free Trust launched earlier this year, early January 2026. The goal uh was to fill that void of who can make decisions for me when I can't for people without kids. So we do exclusively work with the child-free community. Uh, and what we do is have an offer a comprehensive estate planning service for child-free people, meaning we help with everything from creating child-free specific estate documents to actually being able to be named as the medical, the financial POA, the executor, and the trustee. We don't have to be listed as primary in any of those roles, but we're automatic backup in all of those roles.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

And then so you're gonna be the last one on the list listed as you could first name your partner or your sibling or you know, your best friend. But at the bottom of the list, when you've run out of choices, then child free trust would be listed.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Exactly. Exactly. And we see that the members that have signed up and uh the the prospects that we have, uh most of them are looking for primary uh medical POA, just because that is the hardest to identify. Trust companies don't typically offer it, advisors can't offer it. Uh, it is the whole that that's missing. So um, part of our application, though, is that once those documents are signed and notarized and official, you're able to move into the care document section of our application, which is this beautiful comprehensive interview around everything from who your animals are and what their care plan is, to what's deaf with dignity? How would you want your obituary to be written? Who would you want us to contact or not contact if there was an emergency? Full medical history, physicians, prescriptions, um, business entities you are part of, uh, associations you're part of, um, everything so that if there were, God forbid, an accident and we were contacted because we're your emergency contact in your phone, a medical professional needs to verify. We verify you're a member, we fax over your medical documents, and we're able to immediately start making decisions based on your care plan. Um, and we have explicit questions, and this is where, you know, in an ideal world, you don't ever need POA. One third of us will die peacefully in our sleep. Uh, and and then just the executor and trustee roles are triggered at that point. But say if there was that emergency, um, having your plan in place around how you want to be treated is really how we ensure our wishes are followed. Um, we get into some ethical dilemmas, especially in the LGBTQ community, but also with religious communities of, you know, if our family didn't repres, you know, respect our lifestyle while we're alive, how can we trust that they'd respect our choices at end of life? Um, how can we trust that, you know, a very religious mother may want uh different burial wishes for you? You know, you can start seeing some of the complexities of where. Um, your wishes may conflict with those that are actually left to that. So, what we've done is set up a trust company and partnered with that trust company to actually administer third-party regulated fiduciary service to you, which means that the banking authority sits over the trust company. The trust company has a huge amount of net capital requirements to insurance requirements to audit requirements around how they administer this. And you can ensure that it's in their best interest not to start making decisions that aren't in your best interest. And that kind of legal protection and unbiased relationship is actually what we're seeing our members really cherish the most.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

So I want to roll back. That is so much, and it's very thoughtful in terms of there's both I am child-free, I need someone to be named. Um, and basically you're providing a solution. If it's not clear to listeners of a professional organization, that they're one of the core tenets of their business is to be a trustee and make um decisions on behalf of people in a professional capacity. So they're a professional fiduciary. Um, and then also people need documents drafted. Can we start

Membership Pricing And How Billing Works

SPEAKER_02 23:17

there? So you described membership. Um, tell me what a membership would include or just take me through a process if somebody's like, yes, this is what I've been looking for. Um I don't currently have a will or trust um or um additional medical documents such as power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney, medical directive, et cetera. Um, what would um so this is you're in for that part, um you're in a cohort like Trust and Will or Wealth.com or LegalZoom where you're drafting documents. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yeah, that's that's the drafting of the documents. What's different about ours is that you use our templates because they can work across all 50 states and we don't charge if you move states and need a new state document.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Um so some states may be different from others in terms of the best practices and how they should be drafted, or even in some cases, the types of documents that should be drafted based on the state.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Yeah. Is that right? All of that research and due diligence. Um, what's most important is you get your documents done. I mean, whether it's with us or freewill.com, get your documents done. Yeah. The the difference is that at Child Free Trust, we've created child-free specific documents. So we've removed language around generational wealth transfer. We've made them exce you know exceptionally simple. We don't believe child-free people need uh a hundred-page estate plan document. Um, what we've also included is a pet trust. And that is because 70% of child-free people have a fur family or a uh or a pet of some sort. And we actually believe that people will be more motivated to do this for their pet than themselves. Um, but yes, you get those documents done. At that point, once those documents are are near completion, you choose what membership you want. Do you want to pay monthly or annually? Our annual membership is $1,000 a year. Um that includes updates to documents. So remember that if you were revisiting an attorney every three years to get documents done, they'd be charging you every time. Um, we want to include all of that in that membership. What that also includes is that holding us in all four of those positions in whatever order you've listed us in perpetuity. So we're we're on call to be able to be 24-7 an emergency response to you if any of those roles were triggered. And then it also includes the care document section, which is that electronic, beautiful interview that we work you through on kind of capturing your wishes and your ever-evolving wishes. Um, we want this to be accessible. We recognize, of course, $1,000 a year won't be accessible to everyone. But at one point we thought this would be 10 times more expensive than it is. The goal is to keep this as accessible as possible. And for us child-free people, I encourage us to just think of it as a tax that we have to pay uh to make sure that we have the peace of mind that we want. And, you know, I have to walk a fine line in marketing of around not marketing on fear. But the reality is that if you don't have documents in place, the alternative is court guardianship and it's it's a medical facility or the state making decisions for you. Um, I don't know many people that want that. Uh so the alternative is to find something like child free trust or a trusted friend or family member to be able to serve in these roles so you can get your documents completed.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Makes sense. So you're you're initiating with document drafting. If you had existing documents, those would need to be replaced with documents with the child free trust language. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yep. We are working in the next few months to um help folks that already have a trust in place. Uh retitling a trust is not fun, uh, from what I've heard. So we are working on a restatement of trust uh so that you wouldn't have to retitle a bunch of assets and things like that. Um, what I didn't mention is that that's that thousand dollars a year is what we hope is in is in perpetuity as you remain healthy and happy and living your best life. If POA was triggered or executive or trustee was triggered, the estate is billed at $275 an hour. And that's a that's an hourly rate at trust services. There's about a 10-hour minimum on that. Um, but that comes only when the trust company is actually acting in those roles and it's billed to the 15-minute increments.

SPEAKER_02 27:29

So that's an important thing for people to hear. When you so those of you who have been listed as a trustee on someone else, and that $900 that Maddie mentioned is to me a real number. Um, this is often unpaid labor. And when you hire a professional fiduciary, they will need to be compensated. And this is typical. Sometimes it's also a percentage of assets as well, correct? Is there a percentage of assets if they're being managed?

SPEAKER_01 27:59

And that's that's the difference in why we built it this way. One trust companies could do this. The challenge is that they want to charge assets under management for this service. And on the financial POA side and executor and trustee side, that can be an exceptionally lucrative way to bill an estate for work completed. Um, we don't believe child-free people should be paying on an annual basis that kind of money for this kind of coverage. Um, and so what we've set up is and worked ardently with the actual um uh state regulators and banking authority of Alabama, where our trust company is set up, to get them to understand why we wanted to bill hourly for this service. We think it's important for transparency purposes that it's billed hourly versus assets under management. So we don't manage assets, we're not interested in that. Part of our initiative is to partner with fabulous advisors like you, Melissa, who understand this niche, can work with this niche, and can confidently continue to be the fiduciary on the investment side. If anything were to move over into trust, we would handle the administration side of it, but you would be managing the investment uh philosophy and execution of it.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Got it. And that um, too, though, the trust, I always tell people when um the they want to retain an advisory relationship, which I appreciate, and if I'm working with them as their financial advisor, that it's an important role of the fiduciary to monitor how the company is managing the investments as well. So if there were ever an issue where, you know, maybe I wasn't there someday and it just didn't the vibes were off in terms of how the professional engagement was with the advisor, that that would be one of the roles of the fiduciary to determine that um the company was doing a good job on the investment side. If there was, you know, continuity of it's really just like wrapping things up, but you still need somebody to be serving that function.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

Totally, totally. And and I trust your audience is is advanced in understanding kind of some of this, but I I recognize as I've talked to a lot of people about this, it just all feels overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

And a lot of people Absolutely, it's overwhelming to a professional like me. I do it, but it's not the most fun job either.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

I know it's and I don't I don't want anyone on this podcast to think that they have to absolutely understand every single component to what we're talking about. But I think what my call to action is is to really not underestimate the kind of uh work that has to be completed when someone has an emergency or is incapacitated or has passed away. Someone's gotta help finish all of that up. I mean, we're talking about subscriptions, we're talking about uh your your technology and internet um fingerprint. I mean, what happens to your journals, what happens to your dog? Like there's so much we just don't want to think about. Um and so I guess I'm just asking audience members to to not be flippant about not caring about what happens because it it there's a lot of you that needs to to be managed afterwards.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

Well, I I appreciate that you're addressing as a topic um where there's a problem. And I really um in am curious and excited to see where you you take your solutions. But kudos to getting it up and off the ground, Maddie.

Where To Learn More And Support

SPEAKER_02 31:21

Um, tell me for those that are interested where they can learn more about um child free trust and also your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Sure. Yeah. Childfreetrust.com is our website. That is our consumer-facing uh estate planning product. Those of you who are interested, who are child free, who are like, ooh, I'm just never really considered myself this demographic. Um, I've been seen. ChildfreeInsights.com is our um kind of larger uh website that includes a lot of our thought uh leadership, our podcasts, our blogs. Uh, we have Child Free Life by Design Podcasts that I'm a co-host of. Um, and I encourage everyone that whether whether you are child free or you're friends with someone that's child-free, just to recognize that um there are resources that are up and coming and there are uh communities that are up and coming, and quite frankly, they've been established for a while uh that are very inclusive of this demographic. And life is different for all of us, but uh for those of us who are child-free, uh, it can be a really beautiful, uh, incredible thing, but we must remain collective.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Thanks for joining us, Maddie. Um, I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

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