March 27, 2026 • 36 mins
We talk with Maddy Roach of Childfree Trust® about why child-free and permanently childless adults face a different kind of estate planning problem: not paperwork, but finding the right people to legally act when life gets messy. We share how Child Free Trust helps fill the medical POA gap, protects your wishes & reduces the burden that often lands on advisors and friends.
• Why the child-free demographic is growing & what it changes in financial planning
• The fiduciary conflict that prevents advisors from serving as medical POA
• How a missing or unsigned POA can force decisions onto hospitals or courts
• What Child Free Trust does across medical POA, executor, trustee and care planning
• Why elder care oversight matters in rehab & nursing facilities
• Why Maddie restructures estate planning into continuity planning
• Pricing basics, hourly POA support & the Medicaid commitment
• Where to learn more & how to contact Maddie
Get into contact with Maddy here:
Chief Growth Officer of Partnerships
Maddy@childfreetrust.com
Childfree Trust®
Childfree Trust | Connect with me on LinkedIn
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Oh, one other thing, Maddie.
If you uh mess up, um just saypause and then you can go back.
She'll that's kind of her cue.
unknown (00:09):
Perfect.
SPEAKER_00 (00:11):
All right, testing one two, testing one two.
Hello, and welcome back toanother episode of Real Talk
with Life After Grief, Chris.
I'm excited today.
I have one of my favorite peopleon the podcast.
Her name is Maddie Roach, andMaddie was instrumental in
helping my firm get off theground in 2017.
unknown (00:35):
Holy cow.
SPEAKER_00 (00:36):
Maddie probably doesn't remember the I have a
pretty detailed memory.
So I was sitting in a parkinglot, and I called at the time
she was working at XYPN, and Ihad some questions about the
logistics of how I could have afirm and how I can launch a firm
and you know what all that lookslike.
Because I had the nuts and boltsof the financial planning piece,
(00:57):
but I had no idea about thisother aspect.
So Maddie was very patient withme and walked me through the
process as if I were akindergartner.
And so she and I have beenbuddies, and I have a very, very
high opinion of Maddie forvarious reasons, not necessarily
just because of thatinteraction.
I've seen her in action over theyears, and I've witnessed her
(01:20):
professionalism.
I've witnessed her drive to dobetter in her own career.
And I've also witnessed, this isprobably the most important
thing.
It's the way that she handlesherself with people, whether
it's a diverse group or whetherit's a very conservative group,
(01:40):
and she kind of just messages towhomever.
She meets people at face valuewhere they're at.
And I really appreciate that.
So I brought Maddie on thispodcast selfishly.
And so Maddie has jumped to doum some other things outside of
XYPN.
She's followed her heartpassion, and I'm gonna hold back
(02:03):
on that.
And I think it was kind of umironic that I had a client that
passed away, and I've spokenabout this on a previous
podcast.
He passed away in November of2025.
And a year in advance of hispassing, I was basically his
(02:25):
backup plan.
I got him to do an estate plan.
And luckily, the estate plannerbecame his power attorney, the
his executor, his administratorof his estate, all of that.
This this law firm took care ofall that.
But the pressure was on meindividually to make sure all of
that happened.
(02:46):
And as I kind of go throughlife, um doing some research,
but not knowing probably as muchas I probably could, I did not
know that Maddie was gettinginto this realm.
And specifically, I called thisgentleman Hugh Brees.
He had no children and he wasunmarried.
(03:06):
And so what Maddie is about totalk about fits that dynamic to
a T.
And it could have taken a lot ofpressure off of me candidly.
So Maddie's involved with agreat organization.
And Maddie, you want to put theplug in for the name of your
(03:27):
organization?
SPEAKER_01 (03:27):
Sure.
Child Free Trust.
SPEAKER_00 (03:29):
Say it one more time so they can hear your voice.
SPEAKER_01 (03:32):
Yes.
Uh I am with Child Free Trust.
SPEAKER_00 (03:36):
Yes.
So she sounds better saying itthan I do.
So that's why I asked her to puta plug in there.
Um, Maddie, I want you to tellus a little bit about yourself,
other than some of the thingsthat I already said.
And then I wanted you to justkind of take it from there and
tell us about child free trust.
SPEAKER_02 (03:56):
Excellent.
Uh, Chris, that was a beautifulintro.
Uh, and I can't thank you enoughfor your friendship over these
years and the privilege to watchyou grow your firm the way you
have.
Um the feelings that you'veshared are totally mutual, uh,
from me to you.
Um, I'm excited to be on thispodcast.
I'm excited to talk with youabout what we've built at child
(04:17):
free trust.
And I think it's so importantbecause you've lived this
experience.
And as an advisor, not everyonehas experienced this.
Um but it's something that weshould all really be thinking
about.
Uh a quarter of Americans, over25% of Americans are child-free.
And that is a growingdemographic.
When we start looking at theyounger populations, we start
(04:39):
seeing upwards of 35, 40% sayingthat they don't plan on having
kids.
And I'm one of those people.
Uh, early in my uh adult life, Ifelt pretty clearly that being a
role model to young kids wassomething I wanted to do, but I
never had the calling to havechildren myself.
And I never thought that thatmade me different.
(05:00):
I just knew that my life wasgonna look a little different.
And it wasn't until a coupleyears ago that I started really
realizing how my financial planchanges because I'm child-free.
And my choice around not havingchildren fundamentally changes
the kind of future I need toplan for.
And that includes trying toanswer the question of who's
gonna take care of me when I'molder, who's gonna make
(05:23):
decisions on my behalf if Ican't.
And I'm not the only one tryingto answer those questions.
Those are real questions.
I know many advisors have beenasked, but certainly the
child-free demographic has beenasked.
So over the past year or so, um,I've plugged in with uh Jay
Zygmunt, who is a fellow advisorwho is working on solving this
(05:44):
problem at a nationwide level.
Um currently, or up until justlast Monday when we launched,
there was no nationwide solutionfor who child-free people could
nominate as agents andrepresentatives in some of the
most crucial roles.
And we're talking about medicaland financial power of attorney,
executor, and trustee.
(06:04):
There are piecemeal optionshere.
You can find a neighbor, you canfind an advisor, maybe someone
at a trust company to play oneor a few of these roles, but
it's the medical POA that is sodifficult to fill, and that's
what we've solved for.
So after about 11 years ofhelping advisors grow their
businesses, I decided to join upand try to solve a different
(06:25):
industry problem.
And having been at the groundlevel of a startup and having
helped disrupt the financialplanning industry, I'm really
honored and excited to say I'mgonna try to disrupt another
industry.
SPEAKER_00 (06:38):
Well, I think you're probably a good disruptor.
I think you have a track recordof being a good disruptor.
Watch out.
Watch out for real.
Your services, and again, toyour point, I've not met an
advisor that's really walked inmy shoes that has, and I
(06:58):
wouldn't say that I had theluxury of really opting out of
this situation.
Um, this gentleman worked, herelied on me for everything.
And what I knew in my capacityas his financial planner was
that there was a conflict ofinterest um because of my
fiduciary responsibility to hisfinances.
I couldn't be his POA.
(07:19):
Uh I couldn't run his medicaldirective things.
And it was all of that wascomplete conflict.
But what I could do is I couldconfer with someone that was in
that capacity.
And that's what transpired.
The documents, his documentswere written up for, again, his
(07:39):
estate planning attorney or thefirm, I should say, overall, to
you know, manage those roles andthose responsibilities.
And there aren't a lot that dothat.
I think I just got lucky um andyou know, found the right um
estate planner, although I'vebeen working with her for a lot
of years.
But in the documents, it wasvery clear and it said, upon any
(08:03):
decisions, you know, we're gonnaconfer with Chris Dale because I
knew his wishes best, eventhough he had them written down.
Um, but some of those decisionscan get it a little bit dicey.
Um and so she had to enact and,you know, advocate as his
medical proxy.
Um, and if he didn't have thedocuments to do that, that would
(08:26):
have been daunting.
It would have been up to thehospital to try to figure that
out.
SPEAKER_02 (08:30):
And that's what a lot of people are left with is
you know, how many people do weknow who have their will and POA
sitting on their uh on their ontheir counter waiting to get
notarized?
They're only good if they'reofficial and only good if you
have a representative in thoseroles.
And uh your client was so luckyto have you and have a team
around him to help support him.
(08:51):
But you're you're absolutelyright that there can be real
conflicts of interest.
And these are not easy roles tofill.
Being someone's executor, letalone a medical POA, it requires
a huge amount of expertise andtime.
And it is that level offiduciary that you also share as
his advisor.
So one of the things that we sawfor at Child Free Trust is
(09:12):
helping members draft their careplans, which is everything from
if there's an emergency, howyour dog needs to be walked and
what they eat, to who needs tobe notified.
Um and then continuing on theinterview includes things around
you know, planning around agingand whether you have plans
around long-term care ordifferent facilities you want to
(09:34):
be at.
But one of the sections we haveis who's on your team, what
financial advisor are youworking with, who should we
confer with to confirm that uhmanagement of assets happens the
way it should, that oversightand collaboration around best
interests of this client arereally taken into consideration.
Um so with Child Free Trust, weask those questions, and we may
(09:56):
act as your medical POA, but ifyou have a financial advisor
that you've worked with foryears that knows you, that
advisor will be a huge resourceto our company.
SPEAKER_00 (10:07):
What I I do have a question in this question when
you were on um another kind ofwebinar with another group that
I'm associated with.
Why the direction at this point?
Um, just folks that arechild-free?
SPEAKER_02 (10:24):
Really good question.
It comes from a couple differentangles.
Um Dr.
J, who is the founder ofChild-Free Wealth as well as
child free trust, has a realinterest in building out um
solutions and services for thismarket.
It really is an untapped market.
(10:44):
If you put it on really from anybusiness or industry, there
could be an argument for here'sa unique way to serve a market
that is specific and hasbarriers and uh challenges that
are facing them.
So Dr.
J and much of our team ischild-free, and we really
believe that this is a segmentthat deserves to be um uh
(11:07):
provided solutions that areunique to them because so many
systems and structures assumenext to care, many assume
marriage.
And like you said at the startof this podcast, your client was
unmarried.
60% of child-free people willnot get married.
Um that makes a lot of us soloagers.
There's a lot of differentcomplexities, uh, both when
(11:29):
we're young and older, thatwarrant a different approach to
our services.
So um, from a from a nicheperspective, but it's not even a
niche, it's really a largesegment of the population, and
there's some niches within it,but also a business decision.
You know, there's a reallimitation that we can provide.
Um it made creating thedocuments much easier because we
(11:51):
made the documents specific tochild-free people.
So we removed this assumption ofpassing on general generational
wealth, we added things like pettrusts into the trusts because
70% of child-free people havepets and and care more about
them than most things.
Um it's it's a businessdecision, um, but from a
fundamental standpoint, it'svery much a mission decision
(12:14):
that um we believe that thechild-free market deserves
solutions.
SPEAKER_00 (12:19):
So as you're talking, and thank you for
sharing that, as you're talking,I'm thinking of a very distinct
um aspect of with Mr.
I call him Hugh Breeze.
So um I made up his last namebecause he's cool, I could
agree.
So um the aspect was again, herelied heavily on me um for
(12:39):
guidance.
And there was a point where hewas in a rehab facility, skilled
care facility slash nursinghome.
And this is kind of where theline was drawn in the sand.
I know, and many other peopleknow, that once someone enters
in a facility like that, ifthere aren't eyes on them, their
(12:59):
standard of care is going todiminish greatly.
And so one of the things thatwas able to be done in that
situation was to get him acompanion service.
And so the companion service nowcame in four hours a day, seven
days a week.
They have eyes on the ground.
(13:20):
And what I would have liked tohave done is opted out of that
and not have them reporting tome.
And they were reporting to meevery day.
And so now I'm having tointeract with the facility if
its standard of care haddropped, and it did take a
significant drop on the front,and we got that cured.
But it sounds like these aresome of the things that can
(13:44):
definitely be taken care of.
And somebody I'll take it a stepfurther.
When I was talking to some otheradvisors, I found out Hugh Brees
um passed away while I was at aconference, and I was talking to
some advisors, and they said,Hey, Chris, uh we've not heard
of anything like this in regardsto an advisor walking a client
through their complete stage oflife and then on into perpetuity
(14:05):
because there's other thingsthat are going on.
They said, Would you like to umcarve out a niche and um take
care of that?
And I said, Absolutely not,Maddie.
Absolutely not.
But what I would do is I wouldhelp um existing clients.
And then your service cameonline and I said, That's going
to make it a lot easier becausenow I have someone that I can
(14:31):
recommend, an organization thatI can recommend to clients, and
say it doesn't get any betterthan this.
Yeah.
As far as in your day, in yourfinal days and leading up to.
SPEAKER_02 (14:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
And advisors are in a beautifulposition to help clients build
the team around them.
And that can include proactivelyreaching out to companion care
groups, that can includeproactively networking with
senior um, with aging caremanagers and the facilities that
they might drive into if thingsgo astray.
(15:06):
There's so much that we can doahead of time to ensure that our
our clients and our our peopleor our families are taken care
of.
And um, I absolutely agree thatthis is a solution that has been
deeply needed, and it's not foreveryone.
I mean, scaling a professionalfiduciary service like we've
just done took four years tobuild.
(15:27):
I mean, it didn't happenovernight, and there's a reason
it didn't exist before it, andthat's because it was darn hard.
SPEAKER_00 (15:35):
Yeah, I can't I I can't even imagine how much work
it went into it.
I I cannot.
And go ahead.
SPEAKER_02 (15:43):
So we partner with a a trust company out of Alabama.
That's how we're organized, isthat we rest on the back of a
partner trust company namedWellin' Trust.
And we had to, and I say we, uh,it was very much a Jay in the
early stages of this, went tomany different trust companies
and pitched this idea.
And trust companies had nointerest in working with
(16:04):
child-free people.
Many child-free people are dyingwith zero intentionally, which
means at some point we startde-accumulating our assets
because we don't necessarilyneed to pass it on.
So we are not financiallylucrative for trust companies to
serve.
And then we were committed to wewant to bill hourly for any
services rendered.
We want POA to be billed hourlyto the client if it's ever
(16:27):
triggered.
And trust companies were notinterested because trust
companies have been around for170 years being quite profitable
with the service model theyhave.
So a fee model.
Right.
We weren't able to find a trustcompany that would partner until
we found someone that waswilling to start a new trust
company and who had come from afamily and years of running
(16:50):
trust companies that knew andsaw the mission.
And so what we hope is that weprove to the market that
offering medical POAs as anadd-on service can be
exceptionally valuable toclients, it can help protect
long-term care of theseindividuals and allow the estate
process to happen much easier.
(17:10):
So this this was something thatrequired us to actually start an
independent trust company, andthat regulation alone, that
process of getting approved bythe state, took 18 months, and
the banking regulators justcouldn't get their head around
why we would want to chargehourly.
SPEAKER_00 (17:26):
Right.
I can truly attest to all ofthat, specifically honing in on
dwindling assets.
So Hugh Brees, again, that's nothis real name.
So Hugh Breeze, he um he said,frankly, I don't care where my
assets go when I'm gone.
And I said to him, Yeah, it's alittle bit more complicated than
(17:50):
that, because if you get into asituation to where you need
money and you can't tell me youneed money, I can't just readily
give you money without umcomplete authorization.
And when I talked to him aboutthat aspect, it it hit home.
And he said, Yeah, I you knowwhat, you're right.
I've I've spent a lifetime ofaccumulating this money.
(18:13):
And then if something happensand I can't tell the person that
arguably I trust the most that Ineed money, I knew, you know, I
know if he needs money or notbased on his given situation,
but legally I can't make any ofthose decisions.
And so that again, that was theline in the sand where someone
else was acting on his behalf,and we had a good relationship,
(18:38):
and uh it was checks andbalances that were there, and he
did mean he did need money, andno doubt, and so I I was nervous
because his demographic can beconstrued as one that is taken
advantage of because of his age,and so I also said I need
(19:01):
something in the mix thatprotects me, and so that also
protected me.
And again, I was doing this byfire, so um your company has
streamlined that entire processcompletely.
SPEAKER_02 (19:18):
Yeah, yeah, it it it has, and part of my interest in
in being part of this, not justthat I'm part of this
demographic and feel very muchuh for the aging population
generally, but those especiallyaging alone or aging uh without
traditional family is I'd liketo kind of rebrand estate
(19:40):
planning as continuity planning.
You know, so many of us thinkabout it as oh, well, it's you
know, I'm I'm young, I'll I'lldie, and I don't care where my
money goes.
There are a lot of scenariosbetween now and when you die
that could take place where someof these represent, you know,
when some of these roles need tostep in on your behalf.
And I think it's important forus to do some soul searching as
much as it's it's uncomfortableto think about you know,
(20:03):
dementia rates are out of, youknow, uh very high.
You know, there's one in tenpeople will have dementia, which
means there will be cognitivedecline at some point.
Sure.
And if you don't have the teamaround you that are ready to act
on your behalf, elder abuse is areal thing.
And the the kind of uh takingadvantage of it can happen.
(20:26):
And then to recognize if youdon't have people in place, the
government's making decisionsfor you.
And we have an a beautiful,wonderful um advisor on our team
who works in guardianships, andshe has said it loud and clear
the government is not a goodguardian.
And becoming a lord of the stateand and having to have decisions
(20:46):
made on your behalf by peoplethat do not know you is not how
you'll want to be treated.
And so having a third-partyfiduciary-regulated entity like
ours on the other side that isaudited for quality assurance
and other state is a really goodoption if you feel like you need
(21:07):
a backup or a primary in any ofthese roles.
Um and and it's it's a part ofthe reason I'm I'm so passionate
about this is that these thesescenarios play out every day.
I mean, I see the emails ofpeople asking the questions
who's gonna take care of me.
SPEAKER_00 (21:23):
Yeah, and I like to throw in real life situations.
So Hugh Breeze at one point inthe process got a doctor bill
for about$130,000.
And not only as his financialperson, I'm gonna take myself
out of the mix, but if there wasno one there to kind of act on
(21:44):
his behalf, then that$130,000would have been a statement now
in his life.
And he would have had to workand massage around that.
And so I quickly intervened andthat got right.
Sized to about eleven hundreddollars.
SPEAKER_01 (22:02):
Wow, Chris.
SPEAKER_00 (22:04):
Um and again, I I talk about it by fire, but it
would have been nice to havesomeone that this could have
just been delegated to and say,okay, well, here's this
insurance.
Um, we know that it's not right.
They're billing because whateverthe reason that they're billing
him instead of billing theinsurance company.
And it got, like I said, it gotright-sized.
(22:26):
But the right way to do this isnot by fire.
unknown (22:31):
No.
SPEAKER_00 (22:31):
So it is careful planning, um, as you know, child
free trust can do for you.
SPEAKER_02 (22:40):
And it's a testament to Hugh Breeze that he had you
and some others around him thathe he was building that team.
And we see that in thechild-free population.
Many of us are proactive, manyof us are thinking about what
what the future is going tohold.
It's just been a verychallenging question to answer.
And I mean, I'll be the first tosay it that you know, how we
(23:01):
care for our elders is broken.
I mean, it is a it is a veryhard system.
And as I've gotten into thisindustry, my heart's been broken
over and over.
Understanding what the processis, and uh I mean, it we could
have a whole podcast on thehealthcare system and the
insurance industry and thingslike that.
But uh what what I've had towrap my head around is that we
(23:22):
are working within a brokensystem.
And I am working, and Child FreeTrust is working to solve just a
small tiny part of that.
And, you know, I can't guaranteethat the one CNA that you have
working with you is gonna be thebest of the best, although shout
out to all CNAs out there.
Um you know, we can't guaranteethat every line of every piece
(23:44):
of care is gonna be the mostideal, but you can trust that
there will be a fiduciary behinduh contracting these services,
reviewing these services, andand managing your case if God
forbid you need POA servicesthat will be looking and
supporting you and protectingyour wishes, which to me,
(24:04):
anything's better than nothing.
SPEAKER_00 (24:06):
Well, to that point, yes, shout out to CNAs.
And in this particular, and I'mgoing back to a very specific
example, in the situation withHugh Brees, he was in the
nursing home and wasn't gettingthe standard of care.
And so it was now up to me andhis team, basically me, um,
(24:26):
because I was the oneinteracting with the folks on
the ground at the facility, andthen getting the companion
service.
And from that point, he may nothave had got the best care when
he got there, but I canguarantee he got the best care
probably four or five days afterhe was there.
(24:47):
And that was a reflection of thepeople that were involved.
And like you said, you can'tguarantee you know, each and
every one of the CNAs is goingto do a good job.
But what you can do is there'sgoing to be an element of um
streamlined ability of thefacility to do things
consistent.
Um, and I guarantee if that CNAknows that they didn't um they
(25:11):
weren't up to the level of care,the next time they come on
shift, they're gonna get talkedto and they're gonna do a better
job.
SPEAKER_02 (25:17):
For sure.
For sure.
And it's it's often not thepeople at these facilities.
Sure.
I was with my grandma who was ahundred years old the few days
before she passed away.
It wasn't for a lack of thesewomen and men taking care of
her.
Um their their heart went out toevery single one of the
residents.
It's it's the nature of thestaffing and the um the time and
(25:38):
and and the structures that kindof uphold our senior living
environments and our engineerindustry.
SPEAKER_00 (25:44):
Yeah, I I agree with you.
It is more so kind of thesystem.
Um, and then you're having, yep,you're having to work in the
confines of whatever facilitythat you know you're working
with.
They may be part of acorporation that could be big,
large, or small.
Then you're working in theconfines of the staffing.
Maybe somebody calls out, maybesomebody's not trained enough,
(26:09):
maybe they're new.
There's just so many variablesthat I want to be able to
control what I can't control.
And I can't control any of that.
SPEAKER_02 (26:19):
Um it's been fascinating as I've I've talked
to more and more senior umliving executives and teammates
and people kind of who run thosefacilities on whether they
require these kind of documentscoming into their um
communities.
Many of them say yes, but it'snot enforced.
(26:40):
Some of them say yes within thefirst year.
And so when we are able to say,hey, we prevent unwanted
guardianships and we can helpmake this you know a smooth
transition if any sort ofguardianship is needed, because
they can write it down in theircare documents that if a
guardianship is needed, ChildFree Trust can act on that.
Um they they their eyes get widebecause they know this this is a
(27:02):
challenge for folks.
It's a I mean it's a it's a bigrisk in those industries to have
residents that don't haveprofessional contacts for them
to work with.
SPEAKER_00 (27:14):
Yeah, this is a great service that you guys
provide.
I my head is just spinningbecause it would have made it
would have made life so mucheasier on all fronts.
For sure.
SPEAKER_02 (27:26):
And I I can give a little bit more context to to
kind of how we're structured andsure what folks can expect.
So um we charge$999 a year formembership.
Um, we uh at one point thoughtit was gonna be ten thousand
dollars a year.
We were not good with that.
We knew that that would uh limitthe type of people that could
join our platform.
(27:47):
Uh so we've gotten it down toabout$1,000 a year.
SPEAKER_00 (27:50):
And let me just stop you one second there, Maddie.
And I think this is a veryimportant aspect.
Me as the advisor, if I'm comingin to do that work and it is
hourly, it's gonna be a lot moreexpensive for me to do that.
Um, a lot more expensive.
One, because I um I had tofigure out by fire what I'm
doing.
So there's a lot of stumblingblocks, even though we got to
the the end correctly.
(28:13):
But two, you are doing it on alarger scale, and the fees, just
from a business perspective, arecompressed.
And so the fee that you justarticulated, I would have paid
that on behalf of my client if Icould have tenfold to make the
process easier.
And I just want to make it apoint of emphasis with regard to
(28:35):
that fee.
SPEAKER_02 (28:36):
Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (28:37):
I'm sorry for interrupting you.
SPEAKER_02 (28:38):
No, thank you.
That that context is reallyhelpful.
Um, because there there has beensome people that say, oh, I
can't imagine paying$1,000 ayear for a service I may never
use.
Um, again, this is somewhat of atax that we as child-free people
have to pay is to have a teamaround us.
And remember, when you partnerwith a group like ours for any
(28:58):
of those roles, there's ascalability component on RN that
make a lot of this a lot easierto execute than an individual.
And so when we start thinkingabout those hourly time
commitments, um, it's a lotharder for an advisor who's
never done it to piece ittogether than it is for a group
that's done it a thousand times.
Um and we have not done it athousand times, we only launched
it a week and a half ago, but umyou you see what I'm saying.
(29:21):
So I understand.
We've kept the price pointaccessible.
We've also made two promisesthat we know a lot of people
we'll work with are on fixedincomes, and we don't want
people to sign up and then inyear four, all of a sudden it'd
be a$6,000 service.
So we have committed that we'llnever raise our prices on the
membership more than socialsecurity cost of a living with
(29:41):
the adjustments made there.
So every next year or two isabout 3%.
Um we've also made anothercommitment because we we know
that if say you have a trustcompany that you're working
with, uh, a lot of them have networth requirements.
And if you fall below it andyou're no longer eligible for
their services, and and many ofthose services don't include the
medical component to it.
So we've committed if you'vebeen on the platform for 24
(30:04):
months and you end up onMedicaid, we will not stop
recording Medicaid, we will stopbilling you, we cannot pay for
your long-term care, but we willnot stop being your agent in
those capacities.
And that's part of ourmission-driven commitment.
Now, when POA is triggered,it'll be billed, it's billed at
$275 an hour directly to theclient.
(30:27):
Um, again, that's reallyreasonable.
That is an hourly rate that iscompetitive and really not
available in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_00 (30:34):
Yeah, I would agree with you.
SPEAKER_02 (30:35):
And and one thing to recognize is that getting your
state documents done isabsolutely the priority.
Whether you do it with us orfreewill.com is a great
resource.
You can get them done today forfree.
Um you can always update yourdocuments with us for no
additional fee at any time.
So if you have states orsomething material in your life
changes, you just make a newwill and we don't charge you for
(30:58):
it.
So a lot of people postpone, oh,I don't want to go to my
attorney, he's gonna charge me$2,500 for a new set of
documents.
Child-free people have a simpleestate plan.
They should have a simple estateplan.
SPEAKER_00 (31:10):
Sure.
SPEAKER_02 (31:10):
An update should not cost you hundreds and hundreds
of dollars.
So we want to very much continuethe democratization of the
document creation and hang ourdifferentiator hat on the
service we provide when needed,and then the care document
section of our offering.
SPEAKER_00 (31:27):
And now the question that I'd asked you um before in
regards to why the singularfocus on folks that are
child-free.
And I'll just compare mysituation.
So if it's it's difficult to bea jack of all trades, especially
kind of in this business.
(31:49):
And what you described is astrong, narrow focus to be
specialist at creating thisplatform for folks that do not
have children.
Conversely, I have two boys andI'm married, and our state plan
(32:12):
is radically different.
Radically different because notonly am I having to worry about
my wife, she's having to worryabout me, we're having to plan
for that.
But then we're having to plan inthe event that something happens
to both of us.
Now, the most important piece inan estate plan when there's
(32:35):
minor children is who is takingcare of those minor children.
And if child free trust, let'sjust say that it was given a
different name, was focusing onboth areas, it would be
radically different.
And it would be hard to have anarrow focus on either one of
(32:56):
those because the complexitiesof each, I would say, are
equally difficult in their intheir own right.
Um, so I it is it is verycrystal clear as to why you all
have taken this approach.
And it completely makes sense tome.
SPEAKER_02 (33:11):
Yeah, well said.
The documents are different, andand standard documents assume
next of kin, and that's that'sthe challenge.
And a lot of these otherdocument creation systems are
great because we're helpingpeople get their documents done,
but there is no support aroundwhat we call the fiduciary void,
which is hey, I want mydocuments done, but I don't know
who to write.
And I don't know who I whosename to write down.
(33:34):
There's no resources on that.
So um this is an acute problem.
You know, as I mentioned, 15million Americans over 55 don't
have kids.
If we were just to serve acouple hundred thousand of them,
we're helping a huge amount ofpeople.
Um and we wanted to roll thisout as a nationwide solution
versus state specific because weknew child-free people move
often and are often nomadic.
(33:55):
And so um, you know, Californiaand Arizona have great
professional fiduciary programs.
California actually has a uh, Ithink a certification for it.
Um but those are not those arestill resting on individuals and
still kind of up against thatscalability and then the
cross-state issue.
SPEAKER_00 (34:12):
Right.
SPEAKER_02 (34:12):
So we really, you know, we want to bring a state
planning, you know, stateplanning to the masses and also
couples, you know.
This is not just for the solos,as you mentioned, right?
You know, the two the twopartners are hit by the
proverbial bus, you know, yourdog is locked, and your life
still needs to be maintained.
And to know that there's abackup uh 24-7.
(34:36):
We have a 24-7 emergencyresponse number.
Uh, if there was an emergencyissue, we you know we'll be in
your phone as your emergencycontact, you carry a membership
card that would identify us asyour emergency contact.
The hospital presumably wouldcall and we would verify you're
a member, and we'd immediatelyfax over your medical records,
your medical directives, andstart acting as a POA.
(34:58):
And um it's that kind ofcoverage that we know people are
craving.
SPEAKER_00 (35:03):
Well, I am fortunate to know you because one, you're
trailblazing again, and I'm ableto witness it.
And like I said, selfishly atthe beginning of the podcast, I
can really use your services forthe benefit of my clients.
For sure.
(35:23):
So yes.
What have I missed?
What have I not allowed you totalk about?
What have I dominated theconversation with and you wanted
to get out?
SPEAKER_02 (35:32):
You have not.
You can talk for hours and hoursand hours, and it's still not be
enough.
Um, I just encourage anyone whois child-free or permanently
childless.
Those are two different groups.
One's by choice, one's bycircumstance.
And I recognize that there's anemotional difference between the
two of them.
But anyone who's who's an adultthat doesn't have kind of the
(35:54):
traditional next of kin, likewe've discussed, um ask the
professionals around you, youknow, how how is my life gonna
look different if I don't havechildren?
And um start networking andtalking with others.
There's so many groups.
We've got uh all sorts ofresources over at
childfreetrust.com and Dr.
J's done a huge amount um arounduh how finances are different
(36:17):
and things like that, but umrecognize that that you do
deserve to be seen as adifferent type of client to many
professionals, and you deserveservices and support around you
that is helpful.
SPEAKER_00 (36:30):
And Maddie, how can folks find you and your
organization?
SPEAKER_02 (36:33):
Sure.
So I am Maddie Roach, our O C HE.
You can find me on LinkedIn, I'mvery active there.
You can stay up to date withChild Free Insights.
That's our parent company thatuh Child Free Trust is part of.
Um, I'm also host of Child FreeLife by Design, which is a
podcast all about how to designa life if you're child free.
Um and you can always ask Chrisfor my contact if you really
(36:56):
need it.
Uh but you can always reach meat Maddie at Childfreetrust.com
or questions atchildfreetrust.com and check out
our website.
We've got webinars uh and we'llbe continuing to build out
resources for that audience.
SPEAKER_00 (37:10):
Awesome.
So I will put that in the notes.
And Maddie has graciously agreedto join kind of this season as
I'm launching my book, and inthe book specifically, you will
see a contrast of what I wasable to do for Mr.
Hugh Breeze and the benefit ofgrowing older and learning
(37:35):
things is that at the time thatI wrote this book, I didn't have
Maddie's services available tome.
So I'm already one step aheadjust by knowing, simply knowing
Maddie for my next client.
And so um, but it's it'sanecdotes and experiences and
things like that that you'llfind um in the book.
(37:56):
And Maddie's probably heard somestories that I've shared with
her over the years.
So, and please feel free to passthis podcast on to any friends,
family members, or colleagues.
And also in the show notes,there'll be the ability to sign
up for my launch team, which ishelping to launch the book in
(38:16):
April.
So I'm pretty excited.
SPEAKER_02 (38:19):
Count me in, Chris.
I'd love a signed copy too.
SPEAKER_00 (38:21):
All right, I will do that.
Thank you, Maddie.
SPEAKER_02 (38:24):
Thank you.
Oh, one other thing, Maddie.
If you uh mess up, um just saypause and then you can go back.
She'll that's kind of her cue.
unknown (00:09):
Perfect.
SPEAKER_00 (00:11):
All right, testing one two, testing one two.
Hello, and welcome back toanother episode of Real Talk
with Life After Grief, Chris.
I'm excited today.
I have one of my favorite peopleon the podcast.
Her name is Maddie Roach, andMaddie was instrumental in
helping my firm get off theground in 2017.
unknown (00:35):
Holy cow.
SPEAKER_00 (00:36):
Maddie probably doesn't remember the I have a
pretty detailed memory.
So I was sitting in a parkinglot, and I called at the time
she was working at XYPN, and Ihad some questions about the
logistics of how I could have afirm and how I can launch a firm
and you know what all that lookslike.
Because I had the nuts and boltsof the financial planning piece,
(00:57):
but I had no idea about thisother aspect.
So Maddie was very patient withme and walked me through the
process as if I were akindergartner.
And so she and I have beenbuddies, and I have a very, very
high opinion of Maddie forvarious reasons, not necessarily
just because of thatinteraction.
I've seen her in action over theyears, and I've witnessed her
(01:20):
professionalism.
I've witnessed her drive to dobetter in her own career.
And I've also witnessed, this isprobably the most important
thing.
It's the way that she handlesherself with people, whether
it's a diverse group or whetherit's a very conservative group,
(01:40):
and she kind of just messages towhomever.
She meets people at face valuewhere they're at.
And I really appreciate that.
So I brought Maddie on thispodcast selfishly.
And so Maddie has jumped to doum some other things outside of
XYPN.
She's followed her heartpassion, and I'm gonna hold back
(02:03):
on that.
And I think it was kind of umironic that I had a client that
passed away, and I've spokenabout this on a previous
podcast.
He passed away in November of2025.
And a year in advance of hispassing, I was basically his
(02:25):
backup plan.
I got him to do an estate plan.
And luckily, the estate plannerbecame his power attorney, the
his executor, his administratorof his estate, all of that.
This this law firm took care ofall that.
But the pressure was on meindividually to make sure all of
that happened.
(02:46):
And as I kind of go throughlife, um doing some research,
but not knowing probably as muchas I probably could, I did not
know that Maddie was gettinginto this realm.
And specifically, I called thisgentleman Hugh Brees.
He had no children and he wasunmarried.
(03:06):
And so what Maddie is about totalk about fits that dynamic to
a T.
And it could have taken a lot ofpressure off of me candidly.
So Maddie's involved with agreat organization.
And Maddie, you want to put theplug in for the name of your
(03:27):
organization?
SPEAKER_01 (03:27):
Sure.
Child Free Trust.
SPEAKER_00 (03:29):
Say it one more time so they can hear your voice.
SPEAKER_01 (03:32):
Yes.
Uh I am with Child Free Trust.
SPEAKER_00 (03:36):
Yes.
So she sounds better saying itthan I do.
So that's why I asked her to puta plug in there.
Um, Maddie, I want you to tellus a little bit about yourself,
other than some of the thingsthat I already said.
And then I wanted you to justkind of take it from there and
tell us about child free trust.
SPEAKER_02 (03:56):
Excellent.
Uh, Chris, that was a beautifulintro.
Uh, and I can't thank you enoughfor your friendship over these
years and the privilege to watchyou grow your firm the way you
have.
Um the feelings that you'veshared are totally mutual, uh,
from me to you.
Um, I'm excited to be on thispodcast.
I'm excited to talk with youabout what we've built at child
(04:17):
free trust.
And I think it's so importantbecause you've lived this
experience.
And as an advisor, not everyonehas experienced this.
Um but it's something that weshould all really be thinking
about.
Uh a quarter of Americans, over25% of Americans are child-free.
And that is a growingdemographic.
When we start looking at theyounger populations, we start
(04:39):
seeing upwards of 35, 40% sayingthat they don't plan on having
kids.
And I'm one of those people.
Uh, early in my uh adult life, Ifelt pretty clearly that being a
role model to young kids wassomething I wanted to do, but I
never had the calling to havechildren myself.
And I never thought that thatmade me different.
(05:00):
I just knew that my life wasgonna look a little different.
And it wasn't until a coupleyears ago that I started really
realizing how my financial planchanges because I'm child-free.
And my choice around not havingchildren fundamentally changes
the kind of future I need toplan for.
And that includes trying toanswer the question of who's
gonna take care of me when I'molder, who's gonna make
(05:23):
decisions on my behalf if Ican't.
And I'm not the only one tryingto answer those questions.
Those are real questions.
I know many advisors have beenasked, but certainly the
child-free demographic has beenasked.
So over the past year or so, um,I've plugged in with uh Jay
Zygmunt, who is a fellow advisorwho is working on solving this
(05:44):
problem at a nationwide level.
Um currently, or up until justlast Monday when we launched,
there was no nationwide solutionfor who child-free people could
nominate as agents andrepresentatives in some of the
most crucial roles.
And we're talking about medicaland financial power of attorney,
executor, and trustee.
(06:04):
There are piecemeal optionshere.
You can find a neighbor, you canfind an advisor, maybe someone
at a trust company to play oneor a few of these roles, but
it's the medical POA that is sodifficult to fill, and that's
what we've solved for.
So after about 11 years ofhelping advisors grow their
businesses, I decided to join upand try to solve a different
(06:25):
industry problem.
And having been at the groundlevel of a startup and having
helped disrupt the financialplanning industry, I'm really
honored and excited to say I'mgonna try to disrupt another
industry.
SPEAKER_00 (06:38):
Well, I think you're probably a good disruptor.
I think you have a track recordof being a good disruptor.
Watch out.
Watch out for real.
Your services, and again, toyour point, I've not met an
advisor that's really walked inmy shoes that has, and I
(06:58):
wouldn't say that I had theluxury of really opting out of
this situation.
Um, this gentleman worked, herelied on me for everything.
And what I knew in my capacityas his financial planner was
that there was a conflict ofinterest um because of my
fiduciary responsibility to hisfinances.
I couldn't be his POA.
(07:19):
Uh I couldn't run his medicaldirective things.
And it was all of that wascomplete conflict.
But what I could do is I couldconfer with someone that was in
that capacity.
And that's what transpired.
The documents, his documentswere written up for, again, his
(07:39):
estate planning attorney or thefirm, I should say, overall, to
you know, manage those roles andthose responsibilities.
And there aren't a lot that dothat.
I think I just got lucky um andyou know, found the right um
estate planner, although I'vebeen working with her for a lot
of years.
But in the documents, it wasvery clear and it said, upon any
(08:03):
decisions, you know, we're gonnaconfer with Chris Dale because I
knew his wishes best, eventhough he had them written down.
Um, but some of those decisionscan get it a little bit dicey.
Um and so she had to enact and,you know, advocate as his
medical proxy.
Um, and if he didn't have thedocuments to do that, that would
(08:26):
have been daunting.
It would have been up to thehospital to try to figure that
out.
SPEAKER_02 (08:30):
And that's what a lot of people are left with is
you know, how many people do weknow who have their will and POA
sitting on their uh on their ontheir counter waiting to get
notarized?
They're only good if they'reofficial and only good if you
have a representative in thoseroles.
And uh your client was so luckyto have you and have a team
around him to help support him.
(08:51):
But you're you're absolutelyright that there can be real
conflicts of interest.
And these are not easy roles tofill.
Being someone's executor, letalone a medical POA, it requires
a huge amount of expertise andtime.
And it is that level offiduciary that you also share as
his advisor.
So one of the things that we sawfor at Child Free Trust is
(09:12):
helping members draft their careplans, which is everything from
if there's an emergency, howyour dog needs to be walked and
what they eat, to who needs tobe notified.
Um and then continuing on theinterview includes things around
you know, planning around agingand whether you have plans
around long-term care ordifferent facilities you want to
(09:34):
be at.
But one of the sections we haveis who's on your team, what
financial advisor are youworking with, who should we
confer with to confirm that uhmanagement of assets happens the
way it should, that oversightand collaboration around best
interests of this client arereally taken into consideration.
Um so with Child Free Trust, weask those questions, and we may
(09:56):
act as your medical POA, but ifyou have a financial advisor
that you've worked with foryears that knows you, that
advisor will be a huge resourceto our company.
SPEAKER_00 (10:07):
What I I do have a question in this question when
you were on um another kind ofwebinar with another group that
I'm associated with.
Why the direction at this point?
Um, just folks that arechild-free?
SPEAKER_02 (10:24):
Really good question.
It comes from a couple differentangles.
Um Dr.
J, who is the founder ofChild-Free Wealth as well as
child free trust, has a realinterest in building out um
solutions and services for thismarket.
It really is an untapped market.
(10:44):
If you put it on really from anybusiness or industry, there
could be an argument for here'sa unique way to serve a market
that is specific and hasbarriers and uh challenges that
are facing them.
So Dr.
J and much of our team ischild-free, and we really
believe that this is a segmentthat deserves to be um uh
(11:07):
provided solutions that areunique to them because so many
systems and structures assumenext to care, many assume
marriage.
And like you said at the startof this podcast, your client was
unmarried.
60% of child-free people willnot get married.
Um that makes a lot of us soloagers.
There's a lot of differentcomplexities, uh, both when
(11:29):
we're young and older, thatwarrant a different approach to
our services.
So um, from a from a nicheperspective, but it's not even a
niche, it's really a largesegment of the population, and
there's some niches within it,but also a business decision.
You know, there's a reallimitation that we can provide.
Um it made creating thedocuments much easier because we
(11:51):
made the documents specific tochild-free people.
So we removed this assumption ofpassing on general generational
wealth, we added things like pettrusts into the trusts because
70% of child-free people havepets and and care more about
them than most things.
Um it's it's a businessdecision, um, but from a
fundamental standpoint, it'svery much a mission decision
(12:14):
that um we believe that thechild-free market deserves
solutions.
SPEAKER_00 (12:19):
So as you're talking, and thank you for
sharing that, as you're talking,I'm thinking of a very distinct
um aspect of with Mr.
I call him Hugh Breeze.
So um I made up his last namebecause he's cool, I could
agree.
So um the aspect was again, herelied heavily on me um for
(12:39):
guidance.
And there was a point where hewas in a rehab facility, skilled
care facility slash nursinghome.
And this is kind of where theline was drawn in the sand.
I know, and many other peopleknow, that once someone enters
in a facility like that, ifthere aren't eyes on them, their
(12:59):
standard of care is going todiminish greatly.
And so one of the things thatwas able to be done in that
situation was to get him acompanion service.
And so the companion service nowcame in four hours a day, seven
days a week.
They have eyes on the ground.
(13:20):
And what I would have liked tohave done is opted out of that
and not have them reporting tome.
And they were reporting to meevery day.
And so now I'm having tointeract with the facility if
its standard of care haddropped, and it did take a
significant drop on the front,and we got that cured.
But it sounds like these aresome of the things that can
(13:44):
definitely be taken care of.
And somebody I'll take it a stepfurther.
When I was talking to some otheradvisors, I found out Hugh Brees
um passed away while I was at aconference, and I was talking to
some advisors, and they said,Hey, Chris, uh we've not heard
of anything like this in regardsto an advisor walking a client
through their complete stage oflife and then on into perpetuity
(14:05):
because there's other thingsthat are going on.
They said, Would you like to umcarve out a niche and um take
care of that?
And I said, Absolutely not,Maddie.
Absolutely not.
But what I would do is I wouldhelp um existing clients.
And then your service cameonline and I said, That's going
to make it a lot easier becausenow I have someone that I can
(14:31):
recommend, an organization thatI can recommend to clients, and
say it doesn't get any betterthan this.
Yeah.
As far as in your day, in yourfinal days and leading up to.
SPEAKER_02 (14:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
And advisors are in a beautifulposition to help clients build
the team around them.
And that can include proactivelyreaching out to companion care
groups, that can includeproactively networking with
senior um, with aging caremanagers and the facilities that
they might drive into if thingsgo astray.
(15:06):
There's so much that we can doahead of time to ensure that our
our clients and our our peopleor our families are taken care
of.
And um, I absolutely agree thatthis is a solution that has been
deeply needed, and it's not foreveryone.
I mean, scaling a professionalfiduciary service like we've
just done took four years tobuild.
(15:27):
I mean, it didn't happenovernight, and there's a reason
it didn't exist before it, andthat's because it was darn hard.
SPEAKER_00 (15:35):
Yeah, I can't I I can't even imagine how much work
it went into it.
I I cannot.
And go ahead.
SPEAKER_02 (15:43):
So we partner with a a trust company out of Alabama.
That's how we're organized, isthat we rest on the back of a
partner trust company namedWellin' Trust.
And we had to, and I say we, uh,it was very much a Jay in the
early stages of this, went tomany different trust companies
and pitched this idea.
And trust companies had nointerest in working with
(16:04):
child-free people.
Many child-free people are dyingwith zero intentionally, which
means at some point we startde-accumulating our assets
because we don't necessarilyneed to pass it on.
So we are not financiallylucrative for trust companies to
serve.
And then we were committed to wewant to bill hourly for any
services rendered.
We want POA to be billed hourlyto the client if it's ever
(16:27):
triggered.
And trust companies were notinterested because trust
companies have been around for170 years being quite profitable
with the service model theyhave.
So a fee model.
Right.
We weren't able to find a trustcompany that would partner until
we found someone that waswilling to start a new trust
company and who had come from afamily and years of running
(16:50):
trust companies that knew andsaw the mission.
And so what we hope is that weprove to the market that
offering medical POAs as anadd-on service can be
exceptionally valuable toclients, it can help protect
long-term care of theseindividuals and allow the estate
process to happen much easier.
(17:10):
So this this was something thatrequired us to actually start an
independent trust company, andthat regulation alone, that
process of getting approved bythe state, took 18 months, and
the banking regulators justcouldn't get their head around
why we would want to chargehourly.
SPEAKER_00 (17:26):
Right.
I can truly attest to all ofthat, specifically honing in on
dwindling assets.
So Hugh Brees, again, that's nothis real name.
So Hugh Breeze, he um he said,frankly, I don't care where my
assets go when I'm gone.
And I said to him, Yeah, it's alittle bit more complicated than
(17:50):
that, because if you get into asituation to where you need
money and you can't tell me youneed money, I can't just readily
give you money without umcomplete authorization.
And when I talked to him aboutthat aspect, it it hit home.
And he said, Yeah, I you knowwhat, you're right.
I've I've spent a lifetime ofaccumulating this money.
(18:13):
And then if something happensand I can't tell the person that
arguably I trust the most that Ineed money, I knew, you know, I
know if he needs money or notbased on his given situation,
but legally I can't make any ofthose decisions.
And so that again, that was theline in the sand where someone
else was acting on his behalf,and we had a good relationship,
(18:38):
and uh it was checks andbalances that were there, and he
did mean he did need money, andno doubt, and so I I was nervous
because his demographic can beconstrued as one that is taken
advantage of because of his age,and so I also said I need
(19:01):
something in the mix thatprotects me, and so that also
protected me.
And again, I was doing this byfire, so um your company has
streamlined that entire processcompletely.
SPEAKER_02 (19:18):
Yeah, yeah, it it it has, and part of my interest in
in being part of this, not justthat I'm part of this
demographic and feel very muchuh for the aging population
generally, but those especiallyaging alone or aging uh without
traditional family is I'd liketo kind of rebrand estate
(19:40):
planning as continuity planning.
You know, so many of us thinkabout it as oh, well, it's you
know, I'm I'm young, I'll I'lldie, and I don't care where my
money goes.
There are a lot of scenariosbetween now and when you die
that could take place where someof these represent, you know,
when some of these roles need tostep in on your behalf.
And I think it's important forus to do some soul searching as
much as it's it's uncomfortableto think about you know,
(20:03):
dementia rates are out of, youknow, uh very high.
You know, there's one in tenpeople will have dementia, which
means there will be cognitivedecline at some point.
Sure.
And if you don't have the teamaround you that are ready to act
on your behalf, elder abuse is areal thing.
And the the kind of uh takingadvantage of it can happen.
(20:26):
And then to recognize if youdon't have people in place, the
government's making decisionsfor you.
And we have an a beautiful,wonderful um advisor on our team
who works in guardianships, andshe has said it loud and clear
the government is not a goodguardian.
And becoming a lord of the stateand and having to have decisions
(20:46):
made on your behalf by peoplethat do not know you is not how
you'll want to be treated.
And so having a third-partyfiduciary-regulated entity like
ours on the other side that isaudited for quality assurance
and other state is a really goodoption if you feel like you need
(21:07):
a backup or a primary in any ofthese roles.
Um and and it's it's a part ofthe reason I'm I'm so passionate
about this is that these thesescenarios play out every day.
I mean, I see the emails ofpeople asking the questions
who's gonna take care of me.
SPEAKER_00 (21:23):
Yeah, and I like to throw in real life situations.
So Hugh Breeze at one point inthe process got a doctor bill
for about$130,000.
And not only as his financialperson, I'm gonna take myself
out of the mix, but if there wasno one there to kind of act on
(21:44):
his behalf, then that$130,000would have been a statement now
in his life.
And he would have had to workand massage around that.
And so I quickly intervened andthat got right.
Sized to about eleven hundreddollars.
SPEAKER_01 (22:02):
Wow, Chris.
SPEAKER_00 (22:04):
Um and again, I I talk about it by fire, but it
would have been nice to havesomeone that this could have
just been delegated to and say,okay, well, here's this
insurance.
Um, we know that it's not right.
They're billing because whateverthe reason that they're billing
him instead of billing theinsurance company.
And it got, like I said, it gotright-sized.
(22:26):
But the right way to do this isnot by fire.
unknown (22:31):
No.
SPEAKER_00 (22:31):
So it is careful planning, um, as you know, child
free trust can do for you.
SPEAKER_02 (22:40):
And it's a testament to Hugh Breeze that he had you
and some others around him thathe he was building that team.
And we see that in thechild-free population.
Many of us are proactive, manyof us are thinking about what
what the future is going tohold.
It's just been a verychallenging question to answer.
And I mean, I'll be the first tosay it that you know, how we
(23:01):
care for our elders is broken.
I mean, it is a it is a veryhard system.
And as I've gotten into thisindustry, my heart's been broken
over and over.
Understanding what the processis, and uh I mean, it we could
have a whole podcast on thehealthcare system and the
insurance industry and thingslike that.
But uh what what I've had towrap my head around is that we
(23:22):
are working within a brokensystem.
And I am working, and Child FreeTrust is working to solve just a
small tiny part of that.
And, you know, I can't guaranteethat the one CNA that you have
working with you is gonna be thebest of the best, although shout
out to all CNAs out there.
Um you know, we can't guaranteethat every line of every piece
(23:44):
of care is gonna be the mostideal, but you can trust that
there will be a fiduciary behinduh contracting these services,
reviewing these services, andand managing your case if God
forbid you need POA servicesthat will be looking and
supporting you and protectingyour wishes, which to me,
(24:04):
anything's better than nothing.
SPEAKER_00 (24:06):
Well, to that point, yes, shout out to CNAs.
And in this particular, and I'mgoing back to a very specific
example, in the situation withHugh Brees, he was in the
nursing home and wasn't gettingthe standard of care.
And so it was now up to me andhis team, basically me, um,
(24:26):
because I was the oneinteracting with the folks on
the ground at the facility, andthen getting the companion
service.
And from that point, he may nothave had got the best care when
he got there, but I canguarantee he got the best care
probably four or five days afterhe was there.
(24:47):
And that was a reflection of thepeople that were involved.
And like you said, you can'tguarantee you know, each and
every one of the CNAs is goingto do a good job.
But what you can do is there'sgoing to be an element of um
streamlined ability of thefacility to do things
consistent.
Um, and I guarantee if that CNAknows that they didn't um they
(25:11):
weren't up to the level of care,the next time they come on
shift, they're gonna get talkedto and they're gonna do a better
job.
SPEAKER_02 (25:17):
For sure.
For sure.
And it's it's often not thepeople at these facilities.
Sure.
I was with my grandma who was ahundred years old the few days
before she passed away.
It wasn't for a lack of thesewomen and men taking care of
her.
Um their their heart went out toevery single one of the
residents.
It's it's the nature of thestaffing and the um the time and
(25:38):
and and the structures that kindof uphold our senior living
environments and our engineerindustry.
SPEAKER_00 (25:44):
Yeah, I I agree with you.
It is more so kind of thesystem.
Um, and then you're having, yep,you're having to work in the
confines of whatever facilitythat you know you're working
with.
They may be part of acorporation that could be big,
large, or small.
Then you're working in theconfines of the staffing.
Maybe somebody calls out, maybesomebody's not trained enough,
(26:09):
maybe they're new.
There's just so many variablesthat I want to be able to
control what I can't control.
And I can't control any of that.
SPEAKER_02 (26:19):
Um it's been fascinating as I've I've talked
to more and more senior umliving executives and teammates
and people kind of who run thosefacilities on whether they
require these kind of documentscoming into their um
communities.
Many of them say yes, but it'snot enforced.
(26:40):
Some of them say yes within thefirst year.
And so when we are able to say,hey, we prevent unwanted
guardianships and we can helpmake this you know a smooth
transition if any sort ofguardianship is needed, because
they can write it down in theircare documents that if a
guardianship is needed, ChildFree Trust can act on that.
Um they they their eyes get widebecause they know this this is a
(27:02):
challenge for folks.
It's a I mean it's a it's a bigrisk in those industries to have
residents that don't haveprofessional contacts for them
to work with.
SPEAKER_00 (27:14):
Yeah, this is a great service that you guys
provide.
I my head is just spinningbecause it would have made it
would have made life so mucheasier on all fronts.
For sure.
SPEAKER_02 (27:26):
And I I can give a little bit more context to to
kind of how we're structured andsure what folks can expect.
So um we charge$999 a year formembership.
Um, we uh at one point thoughtit was gonna be ten thousand
dollars a year.
We were not good with that.
We knew that that would uh limitthe type of people that could
join our platform.
(27:47):
Uh so we've gotten it down toabout$1,000 a year.
SPEAKER_00 (27:50):
And let me just stop you one second there, Maddie.
And I think this is a veryimportant aspect.
Me as the advisor, if I'm comingin to do that work and it is
hourly, it's gonna be a lot moreexpensive for me to do that.
Um, a lot more expensive.
One, because I um I had tofigure out by fire what I'm
doing.
So there's a lot of stumblingblocks, even though we got to
the the end correctly.
(28:13):
But two, you are doing it on alarger scale, and the fees, just
from a business perspective, arecompressed.
And so the fee that you justarticulated, I would have paid
that on behalf of my client if Icould have tenfold to make the
process easier.
And I just want to make it apoint of emphasis with regard to
(28:35):
that fee.
SPEAKER_02 (28:36):
Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (28:37):
I'm sorry for interrupting you.
SPEAKER_02 (28:38):
No, thank you.
That that context is reallyhelpful.
Um, because there there has beensome people that say, oh, I
can't imagine paying$1,000 ayear for a service I may never
use.
Um, again, this is somewhat of atax that we as child-free people
have to pay is to have a teamaround us.
And remember, when you partnerwith a group like ours for any
(28:58):
of those roles, there's ascalability component on RN that
make a lot of this a lot easierto execute than an individual.
And so when we start thinkingabout those hourly time
commitments, um, it's a lotharder for an advisor who's
never done it to piece ittogether than it is for a group
that's done it a thousand times.
Um and we have not done it athousand times, we only launched
it a week and a half ago, but umyou you see what I'm saying.
(29:21):
So I understand.
We've kept the price pointaccessible.
We've also made two promisesthat we know a lot of people
we'll work with are on fixedincomes, and we don't want
people to sign up and then inyear four, all of a sudden it'd
be a$6,000 service.
So we have committed that we'llnever raise our prices on the
membership more than socialsecurity cost of a living with
(29:41):
the adjustments made there.
So every next year or two isabout 3%.
Um we've also made anothercommitment because we we know
that if say you have a trustcompany that you're working
with, uh, a lot of them have networth requirements.
And if you fall below it andyou're no longer eligible for
their services, and and many ofthose services don't include the
medical component to it.
So we've committed if you'vebeen on the platform for 24
(30:04):
months and you end up onMedicaid, we will not stop
recording Medicaid, we will stopbilling you, we cannot pay for
your long-term care, but we willnot stop being your agent in
those capacities.
And that's part of ourmission-driven commitment.
Now, when POA is triggered,it'll be billed, it's billed at
$275 an hour directly to theclient.
(30:27):
Um, again, that's reallyreasonable.
That is an hourly rate that iscompetitive and really not
available in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_00 (30:34):
Yeah, I would agree with you.
SPEAKER_02 (30:35):
And and one thing to recognize is that getting your
state documents done isabsolutely the priority.
Whether you do it with us orfreewill.com is a great
resource.
You can get them done today forfree.
Um you can always update yourdocuments with us for no
additional fee at any time.
So if you have states orsomething material in your life
changes, you just make a newwill and we don't charge you for
(30:58):
it.
So a lot of people postpone, oh,I don't want to go to my
attorney, he's gonna charge me$2,500 for a new set of
documents.
Child-free people have a simpleestate plan.
They should have a simple estateplan.
SPEAKER_00 (31:10):
Sure.
SPEAKER_02 (31:10):
An update should not cost you hundreds and hundreds
of dollars.
So we want to very much continuethe democratization of the
document creation and hang ourdifferentiator hat on the
service we provide when needed,and then the care document
section of our offering.
SPEAKER_00 (31:27):
And now the question that I'd asked you um before in
regards to why the singularfocus on folks that are
child-free.
And I'll just compare mysituation.
So if it's it's difficult to bea jack of all trades, especially
kind of in this business.
(31:49):
And what you described is astrong, narrow focus to be
specialist at creating thisplatform for folks that do not
have children.
Conversely, I have two boys andI'm married, and our state plan
(32:12):
is radically different.
Radically different because notonly am I having to worry about
my wife, she's having to worryabout me, we're having to plan
for that.
But then we're having to plan inthe event that something happens
to both of us.
Now, the most important piece inan estate plan when there's
(32:35):
minor children is who is takingcare of those minor children.
And if child free trust, let'sjust say that it was given a
different name, was focusing onboth areas, it would be
radically different.
And it would be hard to have anarrow focus on either one of
(32:56):
those because the complexitiesof each, I would say, are
equally difficult in their intheir own right.
Um, so I it is it is verycrystal clear as to why you all
have taken this approach.
And it completely makes sense tome.
SPEAKER_02 (33:11):
Yeah, well said.
The documents are different, andand standard documents assume
next of kin, and that's that'sthe challenge.
And a lot of these otherdocument creation systems are
great because we're helpingpeople get their documents done,
but there is no support aroundwhat we call the fiduciary void,
which is hey, I want mydocuments done, but I don't know
who to write.
And I don't know who I whosename to write down.
(33:34):
There's no resources on that.
So um this is an acute problem.
You know, as I mentioned, 15million Americans over 55 don't
have kids.
If we were just to serve acouple hundred thousand of them,
we're helping a huge amount ofpeople.
Um and we wanted to roll thisout as a nationwide solution
versus state specific because weknew child-free people move
often and are often nomadic.
(33:55):
And so um, you know, Californiaand Arizona have great
professional fiduciary programs.
California actually has a uh, Ithink a certification for it.
Um but those are not those arestill resting on individuals and
still kind of up against thatscalability and then the
cross-state issue.
SPEAKER_00 (34:12):
Right.
SPEAKER_02 (34:12):
So we really, you know, we want to bring a state
planning, you know, stateplanning to the masses and also
couples, you know.
This is not just for the solos,as you mentioned, right?
You know, the two the twopartners are hit by the
proverbial bus, you know, yourdog is locked, and your life
still needs to be maintained.
And to know that there's abackup uh 24-7.
(34:36):
We have a 24-7 emergencyresponse number.
Uh, if there was an emergencyissue, we you know we'll be in
your phone as your emergencycontact, you carry a membership
card that would identify us asyour emergency contact.
The hospital presumably wouldcall and we would verify you're
a member, and we'd immediatelyfax over your medical records,
your medical directives, andstart acting as a POA.
(34:58):
And um it's that kind ofcoverage that we know people are
craving.
SPEAKER_00 (35:03):
Well, I am fortunate to know you because one, you're
trailblazing again, and I'm ableto witness it.
And like I said, selfishly atthe beginning of the podcast, I
can really use your services forthe benefit of my clients.
For sure.
(35:23):
So yes.
What have I missed?
What have I not allowed you totalk about?
What have I dominated theconversation with and you wanted
to get out?
SPEAKER_02 (35:32):
You have not.
You can talk for hours and hoursand hours, and it's still not be
enough.
Um, I just encourage anyone whois child-free or permanently
childless.
Those are two different groups.
One's by choice, one's bycircumstance.
And I recognize that there's anemotional difference between the
two of them.
But anyone who's who's an adultthat doesn't have kind of the
(35:54):
traditional next of kin, likewe've discussed, um ask the
professionals around you, youknow, how how is my life gonna
look different if I don't havechildren?
And um start networking andtalking with others.
There's so many groups.
We've got uh all sorts ofresources over at
childfreetrust.com and Dr.
J's done a huge amount um arounduh how finances are different
(36:17):
and things like that, but umrecognize that that you do
deserve to be seen as adifferent type of client to many
professionals, and you deserveservices and support around you
that is helpful.
SPEAKER_00 (36:30):
And Maddie, how can folks find you and your
organization?
SPEAKER_02 (36:33):
Sure.
So I am Maddie Roach, our O C HE.
You can find me on LinkedIn, I'mvery active there.
You can stay up to date withChild Free Insights.
That's our parent company thatuh Child Free Trust is part of.
Um, I'm also host of Child FreeLife by Design, which is a
podcast all about how to designa life if you're child free.
Um and you can always ask Chrisfor my contact if you really
(36:56):
need it.
Uh but you can always reach meat Maddie at Childfreetrust.com
or questions atchildfreetrust.com and check out
our website.
We've got webinars uh and we'llbe continuing to build out
resources for that audience.
SPEAKER_00 (37:10):
Awesome.
So I will put that in the notes.
And Maddie has graciously agreedto join kind of this season as
I'm launching my book, and inthe book specifically, you will
see a contrast of what I wasable to do for Mr.
Hugh Breeze and the benefit ofgrowing older and learning
(37:35):
things is that at the time thatI wrote this book, I didn't have
Maddie's services available tome.
So I'm already one step aheadjust by knowing, simply knowing
Maddie for my next client.
And so um, but it's it'sanecdotes and experiences and
things like that that you'llfind um in the book.
(37:56):
And Maddie's probably heard somestories that I've shared with
her over the years.
So, and please feel free to passthis podcast on to any friends,
family members, or colleagues.
And also in the show notes,there'll be the ability to sign
up for my launch team, which ishelping to launch the book in
(38:16):
April.
So I'm pretty excited.
SPEAKER_02 (38:19):
Count me in, Chris.
I'd love a signed copy too.
SPEAKER_00 (38:21):
All right, I will do that.
Thank you, Maddie.
SPEAKER_02 (38:24):
Thank you.
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