Who Speaks For You When You Cannot

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, protect your wishes and reduce the burden that often lands on advisors and friends.
• why the child-free demographic is growing and what it changes in financial planning 
• the fiduciary conflict that prevents advisors from serving as medical POA 
• how a missing or unsigned POA can push decisions to hospitals or courts 
• what Child Free Trust does across medical POA, executor, trustee and care planning 
• why elder care oversight matters in rehab and nursing facilities 
• why Maddie reframes estate planning as continuity planning 
• pricing basics, hourly POA support and the Medicaid commitment 
• where to learn more and how to contact Maddie 

Here is how to get in contact with Maddy----

Chief Growth Officer of Partnerships

Maddy@childfreetrust.com

Childfree Trust®
Childfree Trust | Connect with me on LinkedIn

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Maddie Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Oh, one other thing, Maddie. If you uh mess up, um just say pause and then you can go back. She'll that's kind of her cue.

unknown 0:09

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

All right, testing one two, testing one two. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Real Talk with Life After Grief, Chris. I'm excited today. I have one of my favorite people on the podcast. Her name is Maddie Roach, and Maddie was instrumental in helping my firm get off the ground in 2017.

unknown 0:35

Holy cow.

The Rising Child-Free Demographic

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Maddie probably doesn't remember the I have a pretty detailed memory. So I was sitting in a parking lot, and I called at the time she was working at XYPN, and I had some questions about the logistics of how I could have a firm and how I can launch a firm and you know what all that looks like. Because I had the nuts and bolts of the financial planning piece, but I had no idea about this other aspect. So Maddie was very patient with me and walked me through the process as if I were a kindergartner. And so she and I have been buddies, and I have a very, very high opinion of Maddie for various reasons, not necessarily just because of that interaction. I've seen her in action over the years, and I've witnessed her professionalism. I've witnessed her drive to do better in her own career. And I've also witnessed, this is probably the most important thing. It's the way that she handles herself with people, whether it's a diverse group or whether it's a very conservative group, and she kind of just messages to whomever. She meets people at face value where they're at. And I really appreciate that. So I brought Maddie on this podcast selfishly. And so Maddie has jumped to do um some other things outside of XYPN. She's followed her heart passion, and I'm gonna hold back on that. And I think it was kind of um ironic that I had a client that passed away, and I've spoken about this on a previous podcast. He passed away in November of 2025. And a year in advance of his passing, I was basically his backup plan. I got him to do an estate plan. And luckily, the estate planner became his power attorney, the his executor, his administrator of his estate, all of that. This this law firm took care of all that. But the pressure was on me individually to make sure all of that happened. And as I kind of go through life, um doing some research, but not knowing probably as much as I probably could, I did not know that Maddie was getting into this realm. And specifically, I called this gentleman Hugh Brees. He had no children and he was unmarried. And so what Maddie is about to talk about fits that dynamic to a T. And it could have taken a lot of pressure off of me candidly. So Maddie's involved with a great organization. And Maddie, you want to put the plug in for the name of your organization?

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Sure. Child Free Trust.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Say it one more time so they can hear your voice.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Yes. Uh I am with Child Free Trust.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Yes. So she sounds better saying it than I do. So that's why I asked her to put a plug in there. Um, Maddie, I want you to tell us a little bit about yourself, other than some of the things that I already said. And then I wanted you to just kind of take it from there and tell us about child free trust.

The Fiduciary Conflict For Advisors

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Excellent. Uh, Chris, that was a beautiful intro. Uh, and I can't thank you enough for your friendship over these years and the privilege to watch you grow your firm the way you have. Um the feelings that you've shared are totally mutual, uh, from me to you. Um, I'm excited to be on this podcast. I'm excited to talk with you about what we've built at child free trust. And I think it's so important because you've lived this experience. And as an advisor, not everyone has experienced this. Um but it's something that we should all really be thinking about. Uh a quarter of Americans, over 25% of Americans are child-free. And that is a growing demographic. When we start looking at the younger populations, we start seeing upwards of 35, 40% saying that they don't plan on having kids. And I'm one of those people. Uh, early in my uh adult life, I felt pretty clearly that being a role model to young kids was something I wanted to do, but I never had the calling to have children myself. And I never thought that that made me different. I just knew that my life was gonna look a little different. And it wasn't until a couple years ago that I started really realizing how my financial plan changes because I'm child-free. And my choice around not having children fundamentally changes the kind of future I need to plan for. And that includes trying to answer the question of who's gonna take care of me when I'm older, who's gonna make decisions on my behalf if I can't. And I'm not the only one trying to answer those questions. Those are real questions. I know many advisors have been asked, but certainly the child-free demographic has been asked. So over the past year or so, um, I've plugged in with uh Jay Zygmunt, who is a fellow advisor who is working on solving this problem at a nationwide level. Um currently, or up until just last Monday when we launched, there was no nationwide solution for who child-free people could nominate as agents and representatives in some of the most crucial roles. And we're talking about medical and financial power of attorney, executor, and trustee. There are piecemeal options here. You can find a neighbor, you can find an advisor, maybe someone at a trust company to play one or a few of these roles, but it's the medical POA that is so difficult to fill, and that's what we've solved for. So after about 11 years of helping advisors grow their businesses, I decided to join up and try to solve a different industry problem. And having been at the ground level of a startup and having helped disrupt the financial planning industry, I'm really honored and excited to say I'm gonna try to disrupt another industry.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Well, I think you're probably a good disruptor. I think you have a track record of being a good disruptor. Watch out. Watch out for real. Your services, and again, to your point, I've not met an advisor that's really walked in my shoes that has, and I wouldn't say that I had the luxury of really opting out of this situation. Um, this gentleman worked, he relied on me for everything. And what I knew in my capacity as his financial planner was that there was a conflict of interest um because of my fiduciary responsibility to his finances. I couldn't be his POA. Uh I couldn't run his medical directive things. And it was all of that was complete conflict. But what I could do is I could confer with someone that was in that capacity. And that's what transpired. The documents, his documents were written up for, again, his estate planning attorney or the firm, I should say, overall, to you know, manage those roles and those responsibilities. And there aren't a lot that do that. I think I just got lucky um and you know, found the right um estate planner, although I've been working with her for a lot of years. But in the documents, it was very clear and it said, upon any decisions, you know, we're gonna confer with Chris Dale because I knew his wishes best, even though he had them written down. Um, but some of those decisions can 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 the documents to do that, that would have been daunting. It would have been up to the hospital to try to figure that out.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

And that's what a lot of people are left with is you know, how many people do we know who have their will and POA sitting on their uh on their on their counter waiting to get notarized? They're only good if they're official and only good if you have a representative in those roles. And uh your client was so lucky to have you and have a team around him to help support him. But you're you're absolutely right that there can be real conflicts of interest. And these are not easy roles to fill. Being someone's executor, let alone a medical POA, it requires a huge amount of expertise and time. And it is that level of fiduciary that you also share as his advisor. So one of the things that we saw for at Child Free Trust is helping members draft their care plans, which is everything from if there's an emergency, how your dog needs to be walked and what they eat, to who needs to be notified. Um and then continuing on the interview includes things around you know, planning around aging and whether you have plans around long-term care or different facilities you want to be at. But one of the sections we have is who's on your team, what financial advisor are you working with, who should we confer with to confirm that uh management of assets happens the way it should, that oversight and collaboration around best interests of this client are really taken into consideration. Um so with Child Free Trust, we ask those questions, and we may act as your medical POA, but if you have a financial advisor that you've worked with for years that knows you, that advisor will be a huge resource to our company.

What Child Free Trust Solves

SPEAKER_00 10:07

What I I do have a question in this question when you were on um another kind of webinar with another group that I'm associated with. Why the direction at this point? Um, just folks that are child-free?

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Really good question. It comes from a couple different angles. Um Dr. J, who is the founder of Child-Free Wealth as well as child free trust, has a real interest in building out um solutions and services for this market. It really is an untapped market. If you put it on really from any business or industry, there could be an argument for here's a unique way to serve a market that is specific and has barriers and uh challenges that are facing them. So Dr. J and much of our team is child-free, and we really believe that this is a segment that deserves to be um uh provided solutions that are unique to them because so many systems and structures assume next to care, many assume marriage. And like you said at the start of this podcast, your client was unmarried. 60% of child-free people will not get married. Um that makes a lot of us solo agers. There's a lot of different complexities, uh, both when we're young and older, that warrant a different approach to our services. So um, from a from a niche perspective, but it's not even a niche, it's really a large segment of the population, and there's some niches within it, but also a business decision. You know, there's a real limitation that we can provide. Um it made creating the documents much easier because we made the documents specific to child-free people. So we removed this assumption of passing on general generational wealth, we added things like pet trusts into the trusts because 70% of child-free people have pets and and care more about them than most things. Um it's it's a business decision, um, but from a fundamental standpoint, it's very much a mission decision that um we believe that the child-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 name because he's cool, I could agree. So um the aspect was again, he relied heavily on me um for guidance. And there was a point where he was in a rehab facility, skilled care facility slash nursing home. And this is kind of where the line was drawn in the sand. I know, and many other people know, that once someone enters in a facility like that, if there aren't eyes on them, their standard of care is going to diminish greatly. And so one of the things that was able to be done in that situation was to get him a companion service. And so the companion service now came in four hours a day, seven days a week. They have eyes on the ground. And what I would have liked to have done is opted out of that and not have them reporting to me. And they were reporting to me every day. And so now I'm having to interact with the facility if its standard of care had dropped, and it did take a significant drop on the front, and we got that cured. But it sounds like these are some of the things that can definitely be taken care of. And somebody I'll take it a step further. When I was talking to some other advisors, I found out Hugh Brees um passed away while I was at a conference, and I was talking to some advisors, and they said, Hey, Chris, uh we've not heard of anything like this in regards to an advisor walking a client through their complete stage of life and then on into perpetuity because there's other things that are going on. They said, Would you like to um carve out a niche and um take care of that? And I said, Absolutely not, Maddie. Absolutely not. But what I would do is I would help um existing clients. And then your service came online and I said, That's going to make it a lot easier because now I have someone that I can recommend, an organization that I can recommend to clients, and say it doesn't get any better than this. Yeah. As far as in your day, in your final days and leading up to.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Yeah, absolutely. And advisors are in a beautiful position to help clients build the team around them. And that can include proactively reaching out to companion care groups, that can include proactively networking with senior um, with aging care managers and the facilities that they might drive into if things go astray. There's so much that we can do ahead of time to ensure that our our clients and our our people or our families are taken care of. And um, I absolutely agree that this is a solution that has been deeply needed, and it's not for everyone. I mean, scaling a professional fiduciary service like we've just done took four years to build. I mean, it didn't happen overnight, and there's a reason it didn't exist before it, and that'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.

Aging Alone And Care Oversight

SPEAKER_02 15:43

So we partner with a a trust company out of Alabama. That's how we're organized, is that we rest on the back of a partner trust company named Wellin' Trust. And we had to, and I say we, uh, it was very much a Jay in the early stages of this, went to many different trust companies and pitched this idea. And trust companies had no interest in working with child-free people. Many child-free people are dying with zero intentionally, which means at some point we start de-accumulating our assets because we don't necessarily need to pass it on. So we are not financially lucrative for trust companies to serve. And then we were committed to we want to bill hourly for any services rendered. We want POA to be billed hourly to the client if it's ever triggered. And trust companies were not interested because trust companies have been around for 170 years being quite profitable with the service model they have. So a fee model. Right. We weren't able to find a trust company that would partner until we found someone that was willing to start a new trust company and who had come from a family and years of running trust companies that knew and saw the mission. And so what we hope is that we prove to the market that offering medical POAs as an add-on service can be exceptionally valuable to clients, it can help protect long-term care of these individuals and allow the estate process to happen much easier. So this this was something that required us to actually start an independent trust company, and that regulation alone, that process of getting approved by the state, took 18 months, and the banking regulators just couldn't get their head around why we would want to charge hourly.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Right. I can truly attest to all of that, specifically honing in on dwindling assets. So Hugh Brees, again, that's not his 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 a little bit more complicated than that, because if you get into a situation to where you need money and you can't tell me you need money, I can't just readily give you money without um complete authorization. And when I talked to him about that aspect, it it hit home. And he said, Yeah, I you know what, you're right. I've I've spent a lifetime of accumulating this money. And then if something happens and I can't tell the person that arguably I trust the most that I need money, I knew, you know, I know if he needs money or not based on his given situation, but legally I can't make any of those decisions. And so that again, that was the line in the sand where someone else was acting on his behalf, and we had a good relationship, and uh it was checks and balances that were there, and he did mean he did need money, and no doubt, and so I I was nervous because his demographic can be construed as one that is taken advantage of because of his age, and so I also said I need something in the mix that protects me, and so that also protected me. And again, I was doing this by fire, so um your company has streamlined that entire process completely.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

Yeah, yeah, it it it has, and part of my interest in in being part of this, not just that I'm part of this demographic and feel very much uh for the aging population generally, but those especially aging alone or aging uh without traditional family is I'd like to kind of rebrand estate planning as continuity planning. You know, so many of us think about it as oh, well, it's you know, I'm I'm young, I'll I'll die, and I don't care where my money goes. There are a lot of scenarios between now and when you die that could take place where some of these represent, you know, when some of these roles need to step in on your behalf. And I think it's important for us to do some soul searching as much as it's it's uncomfortable to think about you know, dementia rates are out of, you know, uh very high. You know, there's one in ten people will have dementia, which means there will be cognitive decline at some point. Sure. And if you don't have the team around you that are ready to act on your behalf, elder abuse is a real thing. And the the kind of uh taking advantage of it can happen. And then to recognize if you don't have people in place, the government's making decisions for you. And we have an a beautiful, wonderful um advisor on our team who works in guardianships, and she has said it loud and clear the government is not a good guardian. And becoming a lord of the state and and having to have decisions made on your behalf by people that do not know you is not how you'll want to be treated. And so having a third-party fiduciary-regulated entity like ours on the other side that is audited for quality assurance and other state is a really good option if you feel like you need a backup or a primary in any of these roles. Um and and it's it's a part of the reason I'm I'm so passionate about this is that these these scenarios play out every day. I mean, I see the emails of people 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 in the process got a doctor bill for about$130,000. And not only as his financial person, I'm gonna take myself out of the mix, but if there was no one there to kind of act on his behalf, then that$130,000 would have been a statement now in his life. And he would have had to work and massage around that. And so I quickly intervened and that got right. Sized to about eleven hundred dollars.

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 have someone 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 whatever the reason that they're billing him instead of billing the insurance company. And it got, like I said, it got right-sized. But the right way to do this is not 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.

Building A Trust Company Model

SPEAKER_02 22:40

And it's a testament to Hugh Breeze that he had you and some others around him that he he was building that team. And we see that in the child-free population. Many of us are proactive, many of us are thinking about what what the future is going to hold. It's just been a very challenging question to answer. And I mean, I'll be the first to say it that you know, how we care for our elders is broken. I mean, it is a it is a very hard system. And as I've gotten into this industry, my heart's been broken over and over. Understanding what the process is, and uh I mean, it we could have a whole podcast on the healthcare system and the insurance industry and things like that. But uh what what I've had to wrap my head around is that we are working within a broken system. And I am working, and Child Free Trust is working to solve just a small tiny part of that. And, you know, I can't guarantee that the one CNA that you have working with you is gonna be the best of the best, although shout out to all CNAs out there. Um you know, we can't guarantee that every line of every piece of care is gonna be the most ideal, but you can trust that there will be a fiduciary behind uh contracting these services, reviewing these services, and and managing your case if God forbid you need POA services that will be looking and supporting you and protecting your wishes, which to me, anything's better than nothing.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Well, to that point, yes, shout out to CNAs. And in this particular, and I'm going back to a very specific example, in the situation with Hugh Brees, he was in the nursing home and wasn't getting the standard of care. And so it was now up to me and his team, basically me, um, because I was the one interacting with the folks on the ground at the facility, and then getting the companion service. And from that point, he may not have had got the best care when he got there, but I can guarantee he got the best care probably four or five days after he was there. And that was a reflection of the people that were involved. And like you said, you can't guarantee you know, each and every one of the CNAs is going to do a good job. But what you can do is there's going to be an element of um streamlined ability of the facility to do things consistent. Um, and I guarantee if that CNA knows that they didn't um they weren't up to the level of care, the next time they come on shift, they're gonna get talked to and they're gonna do a better job.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

For sure. For sure. And it's it's often not the people at these facilities. Sure. I was with my grandma who was a hundred years old the few days before she passed away. It wasn't for a lack of these women and men taking care of her. Um their their heart went out to every single one of the residents. It's it's the nature of the staffing and the um the time and and and the structures that kind of uphold our senior living environments and our engineer industry.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Yeah, I I agree with you. It is more so kind of the system. Um, and then you're having, yep, you're having to work in the confines of whatever facility that you know you're working with. They may be part of a corporation that could be big, large, or small. Then you're working in the confines of the staffing. Maybe somebody calls out, maybe somebody's not trained enough, maybe they're new. There's just so many variables that 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 um living executives and teammates and people kind of who run those facilities on whether they require these kind of documents coming into their um communities. Many of them say yes, but it's not enforced. Some of them say yes within the first year. And so when we are able to say, hey, we prevent unwanted guardianships and we can help make this you know a smooth transition if any sort of guardianship is needed, because they can write it down in their care documents that if a guardianship is needed, Child Free Trust can act on that. Um they they their eyes get wide because they know this this is a challenge for folks. It's a I mean it's a it's a big risk in those industries to have residents that don't have professional 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 spinning because it would have made it would have made life so much easier 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 and sure what folks can expect. So um we charge$999 a year for membership. Um, we uh at one point thought it was gonna be ten thousand dollars a year. We were not good with that. We knew that that would uh limit the type of people that could join our platform. Uh so we've gotten it down to about$1,000 a year.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

And let me just stop you one second there, Maddie. And I think this is a very important aspect. Me as the advisor, if I'm coming in to do that work and it is hourly, it's gonna be a lot more expensive for me to do that. Um, a lot more expensive. One, because I um I had to figure out by fire what I'm doing. So there's a lot of stumbling blocks, even though we got to the the end correctly. But two, you are doing it on a larger scale, and the fees, just from a business perspective, are compressed. And so the fee that you just articulated, I would have paid that on behalf of my client if I could have tenfold to make the process easier. And I just want to make it a point of emphasis with regard to that fee.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

I'm sorry for interrupting you.

Pricing, Promises, And Medicaid Safety Net

SPEAKER_02 28:38

No, thank you. That that context is really helpful. Um, because there there has been some people that say, oh, I can't imagine paying$1,000 a year for a service I may never use. Um, again, this is somewhat of a tax that we as child-free people have to pay is to have a team around us. And remember, when you partner with a group like ours for any of those roles, there's a scalability component on RN that make a lot of this a lot easier to execute than an individual. And so when we start thinking about those hourly time commitments, um, it's a lot harder for an advisor who's never done it to piece it together than it is for a group that's done it a thousand times. Um and we have not done it a thousand times, we only launched it a week and a half ago, but um you you see what I'm saying. So I understand. We've kept the price point accessible. We've also made two promises that we know a lot of people we'll work with are on fixed incomes, and we don't want people to sign up and then in year four, all of a sudden it'd be a$6,000 service. So we have committed that we'll never raise our prices on the membership more than social security cost of a living with the adjustments made there. So every next year or two is about 3%. Um we've also made another commitment because we we know that if say you have a trust company that you're working with, uh, a lot of them have net worth requirements. And if you fall below it and you're no longer eligible for their services, and and many of those services don't include the medical component to it. So we've committed if you've been on the platform for 24 months and you end up on Medicaid, we will not stop recording Medicaid, we will stop billing you, we cannot pay for your long-term care, but we will not stop being your agent in those capacities. And that's part of our mission-driven commitment. Now, when POA is triggered, it'll be billed, it's billed at$275 an hour directly to the client. Um, again, that's really reasonable. That is an hourly rate that is competitive 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 is absolutely the priority. Whether you do it with us or freewill.com is a great resource. You can get them done today for free. Um you can always update your documents with us for no additional fee at any time. So if you have states or something material in your life changes, you just make a new will and we don't charge you for 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 simple estate plan. They should have a simple estate plan.

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 continue the democratization of the document creation and hang our differentiator 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 singular focus on folks that are child-free. And I'll just compare my situation. So if it's it's difficult to be a jack of all trades, especially kind of in this business. And what you described is a strong, narrow focus to be specialist at creating this platform for folks that do not have children. Conversely, I have two boys and I'm married, and our state plan is radically different. Radically different because not only am I having to worry about my wife, she's having to worry about me, we're having to plan for that. But then we're having to plan in the event that something happens to both of us. Now, the most important piece in an estate plan when there's minor children is who is taking care of those minor children. And if child free trust, let's just say that it was given a different name, was focusing on both areas, it would be radically different. And it would be hard to have a narrow focus on either one of those because the complexities of each, I would say, are equally difficult in their in their own right. Um, so I it is it is very crystal clear as to why you all have taken this approach. And it completely makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Yeah, well said. The documents are different, and and standard documents assume next of kin, and that's that's the challenge. And a lot of these other document creation systems are great because we're helping people get their documents done, but there is no support around what we call the fiduciary void, which is hey, I want my documents done, but I don't know who to write. And I don't know who I whose name to write down. There's no resources on that. So um this is an acute problem. You know, as I mentioned, 15 million Americans over 55 don't have kids. If we were just to serve a couple hundred thousand of them, we're helping a huge amount of people. Um and we wanted to roll this out as a nationwide solution versus state specific because we knew child-free people move often and are often nomadic. And so um, you know, California and Arizona have great professional fiduciary programs. California actually has a uh, I think a certification for it. Um but those are not those are still resting on individuals and still kind of up against that scalability and then the cross-state issue.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Right.

How To Connect And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 34:12

So we really, you know, we want to bring a state planning, you know, state planning to the masses and also couples, you know. This is not just for the solos, as you mentioned, right? You know, the two the two partners are hit by the proverbial bus, you know, your dog is locked, and your life still needs to be maintained. And to know that there's a backup uh 24-7. We have a 24-7 emergency response number. Uh, if there was an emergency issue, we you know we'll be in your phone as your emergency contact, you carry a membership card that would identify us as your emergency contact. The hospital presumably would call and we would verify you're a member, and we'd immediately fax over your medical records, your medical directives, and start acting as a POA. And um it's that kind of coverage 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 able to witness it. And like I said, selfishly at the beginning of the podcast, I can really use your services for the benefit of my clients. For sure. So yes. What have I missed? What have I not allowed you to talk about? What have I dominated the conversation with and you wanted to get out?

SPEAKER_02 35:32

You have not. You can talk for hours and hours and hours, and it's still not be enough. Um, I just encourage anyone who is child-free or permanently childless. Those are two different groups. One's by choice, one's by circumstance. And I recognize that there's an emotional difference between the two of them. But anyone who's who's an adult that doesn't have kind of the traditional next of kin, like we've discussed, um ask the professionals around you, you know, how how is my life gonna look different if I don't have children? And um start networking and talking with others. There's so many groups. We've got uh all sorts of resources over at childfreetrust.com and Dr. J's done a huge amount um around uh how finances are different and things like that, but um recognize that that you do deserve to be seen as a different type of client to many professionals, and you deserve services 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 H E. You can find me on LinkedIn, I'm very active there. You can stay up to date with Child Free Insights. That's our parent company that uh Child Free Trust is part of. Um, I'm also host of Child Free Life by Design, which is a podcast all about how to design a life if you're child free. Um and you can always ask Chris for my contact if you really need it. Uh but you can always reach me at Maddie at Childfreetrust.com or questions at childfreetrust.com and check out our website. We've got webinars uh and we'll be 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 agreed to join kind of this season as I'm launching my book, and in the book specifically, you will see a contrast of what I was able to do for Mr. Hugh Breeze and the benefit of growing older and learning things is that at the time that I wrote this book, I didn't have Maddie's services available to me. So I'm already one step ahead just by knowing, simply knowing Maddie for my next client. And so um, but it's it's anecdotes and experiences and things like that that you'll find um in the book. And Maddie's probably heard some stories that I've shared with her over the years. So, and please feel free to pass this 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 is helping to launch the book in 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.