cover of episode The Nine Documents - Legal Must-Haves for LGBT Couples, ft. Angela Giampolo

The Nine Documents - Legal Must-Haves for LGBT Couples, ft. Angela Giampolo

2025/1/23
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@Angela Giampolo : 我是一名律师,专门为LGBTQ社区提供法律服务。我创建了九份关键文件,以帮助LGBTQ伴侣保护他们的权利和资产,无论他们的婚姻状况如何。这些文件包括医疗委托书、生前遗嘱、医院探视授权书、耐用委托书、遗嘱、信托、宠物信托、遗体处理代理人文件以及有形动产文件。这些文件可以帮助LGBTQ伴侣在医疗保健、遗产规划以及其他方面获得更好的保护,即使在婚姻平等受到挑战的情况下也能保障他们的权益。 我特别强调了医疗委托书的重要性,因为它包含HIPAA豁免,这对于LGBTQ伴侣在医院获得必要的医疗信息和访问权至关重要。我还解释了为什么需要一份耐用委托书,因为它允许你的伴侣在你无法行动时代表你行事。 此外,我还解释了遗嘱和信托之间的区别,以及为什么最好避免财产通过遗嘱进行处理。我建议使用可撤销信托来避免遗产认证过程中的延误和费用。 最后,我还讨论了宠物信托和遗体处理代理人文件的重要性,以及如何使用这些文件来保护你的宠物和你的遗体。 @V Spear : 我与Angela Giampolo律师讨论了LGBTQ伴侣需要准备的九份法律文件,以保护他们的权利和资产,特别是考虑到婚姻平等可能面临的挑战。Angela Giampolo律师详细解释了每份文件的用途和重要性,并强调了这些文件对于LGBTQ伴侣在医疗保健、遗产规划以及其他方面获得更好保护的必要性。 通过这次访谈,我了解到即使同性婚姻合法,LGBTQ伴侣仍然需要这些额外的法律文件来保障他们的权益,因为婚姻本身并不赋予他们全部的权力。这些文件不仅能保护LGBTQ伴侣的权利,也能帮助他们避免潜在的法律纠纷和经济损失。 此外,我还了解到,这些文件对于非LGBTQ伴侣也同样重要,因为它们可以帮助所有伴侣在没有婚姻关系的情况下建立法律上的联系,并保护他们的共同资产和权益。Angela Giampolo律师的建议为所有伴侣提供了宝贵的指导,帮助他们更好地规划未来,并确保他们的权利得到充分的保护。

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Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet. Resolutions.

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Rise and shine, Fever Dreamers. Look alive, friends. I'm Bea Spear. And on this episode of American Fever Dream presented by Betches News, we have a very special friend. It's your gay lawyer, our favorite social media gay lawyer who's here to give us the scoop on how to build marriage rights in America.

in case marriage equality gets overturned. And for those of you who aren't in a gay marriage, don't worry, spoiler, she has information on how to protect your marriage from any type of future attempt to change marriage as we know it in this country. It's a really important listen. Get out your notebooks and be ready to be introduced to your gay lawyer, Angela Jampolo. Angela, thanks for being on the show. Absolutely, V. Thanks for having me.

So tell us a little bit about you and your background. I found you on TikTok one day when I was like panic searching about my gay marriage potentially being overturned. But like start us from the beginning. What made you want to be a lawyer in the first place? The detention lady told me that I should be. You talk too much? Too argumentative? She said one of us would get paid and it wouldn't be her. Yeah.

So, yeah, as a kid, I tended to finish people's fights. Not physically. I'm 4'11", and they call me a pitbull in a chihuahua's body. But I tended to fight. I would overhear bullies over speaking and over talking, and people just weren't fast enough to know what to say or do or...

And I just gravitated towards that. And then I would end up in detention and detention lady knew why I was there. And so one day she said, you should be a lawyer. And I said, what do you mean? I'm 12. There's no lawyers in my family.

my mom went to typewriting school, my dad, second grade, I could have stopped at college and they would have been like, wow. You know, so I figured I couldn't make that my personal statement to law school that the detention lady made me. So I took a couple of years off and paralegaled and I should preface all of this with the fact that I'm Canadian. So all of this happened in Quebec and Montreal. And so I thought I was going to be a human rights, a

attorney and I studied human trafficking and that was very much my passion. And from there, also being French Canadian, we remember the Rwandan genocide, Black Hawk Down in Somalia had happened here at the same time. And Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton, you know, didn't want to lose anyone else to Africa, you know, kind of thing. And so, um,

And so from China, I moved to Tanzania and worked at the War Crimes Tribunal for a little over a year and a half. Wow.

And after two and a half years of doing that, I realized that that's not what I wanted to do. Everybody around me were shells of human beings. And so I moved back to the U.S. I went to law school in the U.S. and I moved back to the U.S. And again, being Canadian, I quickly realized, and this is going back 18 years ago, that amongst other issues, one of the human rights issues right here in this country was the

LGBTQ issues that especially the way the laws were 18 years ago, there was gay law and straight law. And that precipitated everybody's experience, you know, from that point. And I chose, I mean, where we find ourselves going back to right now is that place 18 years ago. I,

I would not have guessed you were Canadian. I was like, she's from New Jersey. She gives New Jersey. She looks like tough, you know, but like the hair, the smile, the everything. I'm like, okay, we're talking to the last name. I was like, we got a Jersey girl, but no, the Quebecois are here with us today.

My dad was Jersey. My mom, Salonche Cassette, very French Canadian. And then my mom sent my brother and I to speech therapy when I was like four. And because they talk like this, you know, because my mother and I would have gotten laid so much more of you to just let me have an accent. Well, the Jersey accent, I'm sure works for you just fine. So the thing that we're here to talk about, though, is you created what are called, I'm calling like the nine documents. In marriage, there are certain rights that are inherent in

to your marriage. And what you were saying on TikTok that I found interesting is that it's not necessarily that they'll overturn Obergefell, although I think that they probably will do that. It's that they could somehow make our marriages, because they are gay marriages, not qualify for inherent rights. Can you talk a little bit about that? Absolutely. So everyone keeps calling me saying, will my marriage be taken away? And

And that's just not the right question. You know, you have a marriage certificate.

If your marriage was valid when you entered into it, the Constitution says it can never be taken away. But again, being Canadian, there are four rights inherent in marriage. In the United States, there are 1,138 state and federal privileges tied to the institution of marriage. Never thought I'd agree with Rand Paul on anything, or he, me, for that matter. Yeah.

But we were on Newsmax once, and we both agreed that if his people wanted marriage equality to remain a religious institution, they just shouldn't have tied...

1,130 state and federal privileges to it. So if you are in a state where Burgerfell gets overturned, it goes back to the states and this is your marriage. So this is like my prop for marriages, right? So the silver are the federal benefits and the state...

The orange are the state benefits. Altogether, these are $1,138. If you live in Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Obergefell gets overturned, you lose those right away.

Right. And then hopefully the Respect for Marriage Act stays. But I paid a lot of money on an AI bot and I uploaded Project 2025 and the Respect for Marriage Act. And I said, this wants to kill that. How could it do it without repealing it? Because they won't have the numbers to repeal it. But just like we have a Voting Rights Act that nobody listens to because it's been gutted. And just like Roe v. Wade, little by little by little was gutted. Right. So the Respect for Marriage Act can't.

can be gutted and nullified. So if they find a way to make our federal rights not available to us, then we don't have any of the 1,138 state and federal rights. Nobody can take away your pen. You have this, but at the end of the day, there are no privileges tied to it. And that's why we get married. And another point that I try to make for folks is that

Privilege and power are two very different things. There is no power, never has been inherent in marriage. I got passionate around this topic with the Terry Shivo case 20 years ago.

straight married cis couple and he was not her healthcare power of attorney. She did not have a living will. And because the mother disagreed with what should happen, they duked it out in litigation. He didn't have the right to pull the plug. Like you are not someone's healthcare power of attorney just because you're their wife. Aren't you don't have these powers. So 20 years ago, I trademarked where there's a will, there's a way. And that's when I got passionate around estate planning for the LGBTQ community.

We've unfortunately just had some complacency issues.

and lack of understanding when marriage came about that somehow we didn't need these documents, but we've always needed them. So they're really two different things. We deserve the privilege inherent in marriage, the 1,138 state and federal privileges. We deserve those. But even if we had them, everyone in this country, gay, straight, whatever, everybody needs... I mean, we need nine. My straight couples get five. So there are reasons for the nine, but...

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Walk me through the nine documents, just basic, because we're doing this with my wife and our lawyer here locally. We've been married for six years, but one of the problems is like when you do a name change, I changed my name. Like what's going to happen with my rights if they say, well, the name on the marriage certificate doesn't match the name you have now because I took my wife's last name. How will that affect other women that commonly do that?

Talk me through the nine documents that people need to have. Well, so real quick, let's talk about what you just said with name changes, because especially trans folks, I have a lot of trans folks contacting me where, let's say they were a lesbian couple when they met, got married, and there's Judy and Joan on the marriage certificate. And then all of a sudden it's John and Joan, right? Seven years later. Mm-hmm.

And they want all their documents to match, but you cannot update a marriage certificate. And so I have a lot of folks asking me, should I get remarried so that I do have a marriage certificate that says John and Joan?

And for that question, I advise folks to look at the timeline associated with, again, the privileges tied to marriage because Social Security survivor benefits 10 years. You're almost there.

If you were to all of a sudden get remarried, you start that clock at zero. So there's a lot of these 1,138. So I could go out right now and remarry my wife with my name now and have a matching document. Is that what you're saying? Yes. I'm doing that, Angela. I love her so much.

Listen, I love her so much. I'd marry her a million times, but we are trying to deal with this because I changed my first and last name when I got married. And so we have this issue of the documents not matching. Also, we got married in Maryland and we now live in New York and we want them to be, you know, state documents. So there might be for folks who are out there listening, maybe you do get remarried in the state. The other con to that, though, is I did have clients who did do that after eight years of marriage, remarried.

a year after the remarriage got divorced, one wanted the one-year marriage, the other wanted the eight-year marriage. Yeah. So make sure you're not breaking up, okay? Because it could affect your property and a whole bunch of other stuff. Exactly. I'm willing to risk it. I'm not here to say marry 19 times. I'm here to say I think we're on solid ground in my world. But yeah, take that into consideration how that would work out for you. So

So first and foremost, what I call the health care trifecta documents. So first and foremost, the health care power of attorney. And the way that I do that differently for LGBTQ folks is your HIPAA waiver is included in the health care power of attorney. So a lot of lawyers will make the HIPAA waiver yet a separate document. But our biggest challenge, our biggest everyday obstacle at a hospital is actually establishing our HIPAA status.

So if there's a man in a hospital bed and a woman comes running and crying, ma'am, let me take you to your husband. Right. Woman in a hospital bed. Woman comes running and crying. What's your relationship to the patient?

And so that there is you need to establish your HIPAA status to one another. I, too, the first three years of my practice made the HIPAA waiver. You had a separate document. I had three couples in three years. If you had nine documents laying out there, wouldn't you grab the power document and run? Right. And then they did. They went to the hospital, left the one page, itty bitty little HIPAA waiver at home. Nobody would talk to them.

At the hospital. So then they had to go back home once I got on my scooter and drove over with the HIPAA waiver. So you need to, you know, they won't tell you if it's cancer or broken leg.

So then I started making it one in the same. So make sure that your healthcare power of attorney has a HIPAA waiver included. That is not the norm, but that is what I do. And then the second document, healthcare doc, is your living will. The Terri Schiavo document that she did not have, which states your end of life wishes. And so if...

And only your name appears on this document. It mentions health care agent, but not by name, allowing your health care agent to go from B to your best friend to whomever. But ultimately, you don't have to update this document unless your end of life wishes change. And then the third document, very LGBTQ specific.

is the hospital visitation authorization form, HVA, one and two. I do two separate forms of this, but this is for one another. So V and their wife would hold on to one another's, not their own. And this allows you in the room to

And I include a HIPAA waiver on there. Just HIPAA, HIPAA, HIPAA. If anyone asks HIPAA. So there's a HIPAA waiver on here. So it gets you in the room. They have to talk to you, but you don't yet have the power. And then I advise all my clients to save the documents in the cloud. So you're pulling the health care power of attorney down from the cloud to be able to make the decisions. But at least you're in the room, your bedside, and they're talking to you.

Now, there's a lot of countries were only considered married. So even if everything were puppies and babies and roses in this country and Hillary Clinton had won in 2016 and we lived in an alternate universe, one that I choose to exist in 80 percent of my day.

Even if that were the case, I've been doing this for the last 10 years for my married folks because we're only considered married in 35 countries out of 195 that fly a flag. So and I lived in China where it's not legal. I lived in Tanzania where it's illegal. So I am familiar with that. And so I do not mention your your marital status on here.

If you're whipping these out, they don't care. A. B, I don't want to out you by virtue of having this card. So but there is a HIPAA waiver. And obviously, that's not the law in a lot of countries. But feedback has been from a lot of my clients that since it's laminated and looks so official that other countries...

They're like, just go in, go in, you know, you must be. Yeah. So and in 17 years, this has gotten two of my clients or final five minutes with one another. So super, super powerful. Should you need it? When I first started watching you, I found you like around Christmas time. And in my mind, I kept thinking of this as like the Scrooge and Marley marriage, you know, like because they were

obviously very deep partners, Scrooge and Marley from Christmas Carol. And I was like, they probably had all this paperwork. I mean, he inherited the business right away and there was no sort of like heirs, you know, all this other stuff. And so that's how I've been like positioning it to people. You know, you got to have a strong partnership. Right.

And I call it like golden girls for me is how I envision my estate planning, you know, is because at the end of the day, will you have kids or do you have kids? Yeah, we're going to work on that. We're working on that. We're going to work on that.

So I will never have kids and a lot of LGBTQ folks won't have kids. And I play this role, especially for all of these roles for a lot of elderly gay men. You know, we're talking 85 and up who lost all of their social network during the AIDS crisis. They were partnered maybe for 47 years, but one dies first. And so, you know, kids are a default net thing.

if you will, of as you age. But for a lot of LGBTQ folks, we don't have that. And so for me, the book I'm writing is LGBTQ estate planning, golden girl style.

You know, that makes sense. So and then this next document, perfect parlay is the HVAC, too. And that is for your chosen family. So a lot of LGBTQ folks have a chosen family. I mean, that's what we say. I think she's family. I think he's family. Right. As you're as you're at the bar. So it's are there people that are related to you or not?

like related to you by blood, but to you, you deem them family. So you're again in ICU, your best friend comes running in. I'm sorry, what's your relationship to the patient? That's my best friend, family only. Who do you want to define as family that is not necessarily by blood? So they all go on the HVAC too. Now what I've been doing differently since the election, first time in 17 years is one another's families.

So you're in-laws. You are related to your wife by law. And so her mother, father, siblings are in-laws and technically legally family.

But if that law piece is challenged, your in-laws are not your in-laws. So where it used to be zero to 15 people on that list, now it's upwards of 30 or 40 people on that list. I want all of your in-laws on that list as well. And for a lot of my folks, they have people that are related to them that would automatically be allowed to visit them. That's not safe.

To visit them. So you're estranged from your family, you know, and all of a sudden your father thinks that's the right time to come in. And for you recovering, it would be traumatic.

And so a do not fly zone who who is allowed automatically in the nurse would absolutely bring your father right to your bedside. But that would not be helpful to you. So do not fly zone who is related to you that you would not want, who is not related to you that you do want. And now one another's in-laws.

Okay, so. Okay, that makes sense. So those are the three healthcare trifecta docs. Then the three legal documents, legal financial documents. So again, most estate planning attorneys only care about, plan for, and concern themselves with death and disability.

spoiler alert, you're going to die. It's going to happen once and hopefully your big long life. And so this first document is one of the, in my opinion, the most powerful of the nine. And most estate planning attorneys give one per person. It's the durable power of attorney. Okay. I do three each for us. It allows your wife to act for you as you

As if you were personally present, there is nothing more powerful than being into being able to step into someone's shoes and act for them, even though they're 3000 miles away.

And so for us, so while most estate planning attorneys are concerned about death and disability, it's easy to die in this country, but it's hard to live as queer people. And so the majority of my documents are all about and why I love documents, not just because I'm a lawyer, but why I love documents is you're not trying to reason with someone, talk them into it, get them to understand you. You have a document and it allows you to do the thing.

And so the durable power of attorney, I give you three because it allows you to do anything that someone is trying to deny you the right to do. Banking, this, that, the other, but without being incapacitated. OK, so you get the one for incapacity, but the other two. So a good example of this, Scott and Patrick, they signed their documents a while ago. And American Airlines, not the big blackout, but like...

about a month ago, all flights, just American Airlines was impacted, went down from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. Eastern. No flights took off across the country. Patrick was supposed to be on a flight to come home and they were closing on a business that afternoon at 2 p.m. He calls me up. It's like 6.45. And I'm like, this isn't good in the morning. I'm like, this can't be good. So I actually picked up. And he's like, what's that document where Scott can be in my shoes? I was like,

It was like the durable power of attorney. He's like, yeah. He's like, could he go to closing for, I'm not getting home.

We close on a $4 million business tonight, this afternoon at 2 p.m. Can he go with one of these shoe documents? And I'm like, yes. Shoe documents. So now Patrick wants 15 of them. I'm like, relax. Yeah, of course. Don't give up that much power. You never know. Right. So you're not limited to three. You take up your three. You sign three more. But-

Super, super helpful in this mobile global world, especially a lot of my clients are life partners and business partners. Super helpful if you are also business partners together. But so the durable power of attorney is effective upon notarization, never expires. It expires at death and then the will and the trust kick in.

Okay. So the will and the trust. Wait, for folks who were just, you know, maybe like wondering, okay, I'm ready to go. How do I do this? This is at prideplans.com. She put this all together in a very neat way so that you could go to prideplans.com. Super simple. And do you work in every state? Like could somebody anywhere use this service or is it sort of like nothing? So prideplans.com is in all 50 states and that is like my gay legal Zoom website.

And I never wanted money and costs to be a barrier to entry for this. So I and Tom, my business partner, Tom, I love you. I would post election met with humans. Tom made sure that pride plans launched in just four weeks. It went live December 7th and the election was November 6th.

So without Tom, that would not have been possible. As far as working with us in the law firm, we can work currently in 16 states. I'm licensed in four, but I have of counsel relationships and others. So in New York, I have enough counsel relationships, which allows me to work. And I have in New York for years.

But there are a lot of folks. So as folks reach out in Nebraska, I can't find a lawyer in Nebraska that can competently serve, you know, folks. So I get enough counsel relationship. They can work with me. That lawyer goes in my engagement letter. So it's a little bit of both, you know, simplicity. If you have multiple properties, if you have children from a previous marriage, um,

If you want to benefit, you know, your nibblings and a nonprofit, like if it's in any way complicated, pride plans won't work for you. But we can work with folks right now in 16 states. And a lot of folks are prompting me like I will wait for you to find enough counsel in Nebraska kind of thing. Okay.

All right, back to the documents. I just want to, I wanted to make sure that I had said pride plans at least once. Cause you know, people are listening in their car to the podcast. They leave, they forget. So pride plans. Yes. So this is your will and your trust. And the, the will you ironically want nothing to flow through your will. The will is like the Titanic. Okay. And your revocable trust is like a speedboat. So you want nothing to flow through your will, but if you have children, you,

A will is the only document that can appoint a guardian for children because they thought 300 years ago we would never not have children. So you can't opt out of a will. I have a lot of folks who call me and say, I just want the trust. And I'm like, you can't. So you have to have both. You have to have both. But, and the reason I like a water glass as a prop is this is called a pour over will. And so when I have couples, we do a joint revocable living trust. So all the documents that we're talking about, the nine documents,

You will have eight for yourself. You have to have your own will. You have to have your own, all of the other documents. But we do a joint revocable living trust. A lot of my clients have prenups or assets prior to marriage. We can do solo revocable living trust, the revocable living trust of V, the revocable living trust of Angela.

But we're still co-trustees of one another's like from an LGBTQ standpoint. It still provides the protection that I want. But from a prenup asset, everyday life perspective, we still protect that. So either a solo or a joint. But at the end of the day, you want your will to do nothing. Anything that flows through your will goes through probate.

Do you know what probate means? Annoying and expensive and time consuming. Yeah. And government oversight, which we do not want at this time. Right.

OK, so I'm already field. I'm already dealing with issues that I know I shouldn't be dealing with. I feel like I'm not being super sensitive. It's just like, would you have asked me that six months ago? If not, I don't think so. Right. Right. So. So, yes, costly, long and expensive. And government oversight is huge. But so probate this three to six months for a trust administration, this two to three years.

especially post-COVID with some of the delays. It used to be a year and a half to two, and now we're at two to three. So you have a pour over will where you pour all of your assets into your joint revocable living trust and the water in the glass are your assets. Now, again, 95% of estate planning attorneys think that they're deliverable to you

is the document, the glass, not the water in it. So whoever you're working with, make sure that they help you put the water in it. Right. The assets need to be lined up right. Getting the stuff in there is the most important piece. I have so many folks come to me about their parents' estate planning. They're like, I think my mom has a water glass with no water in it. And their moms are like, who's your estate planning attorney? And

Look, it's a nightmare for anybody who has had to go through this situation in my own life. We had my dad's brother passed away and then they were dealing with the executor of his will and trust and everything. Then my grandpa passed away and then my other uncle passed away. They couldn't get the executor done before it went, it like compounded on the next one and the next one and the next one before we could ever get it done. And every time somebody died, that

that glass of water, whatever you want to call it, got divided differently. So then it started, you know, big fights in the family because, well, if this person hadn't died, then it would have been like that. But now it's like this and it's just such a mess. So I'm glad we're talking about this. From an LGBTQ perspective on this,

The reason why we started using this to recreate marriage is because it binds us together. So the reason why everybody is getting this right now is because it binds you together as co-trustees of one another's joint revocable living trust. So if marriage goes away, so 50 years ago, we started using this to recreate a marriage long before marriage equality was a thing. And so, um,

This if marriage equality goes away and you are co-CEOs or co-trustees of one another's joint revocable living trust or solos, you are bound together in an inseparable, impenetrable way, 10 times more powerful than marriage because there is no power in marriage. So that is why all whether you're 24 and renting a 300 square foot apartment or

Everybody needs this right now because it is your marriage recreation tool, irrespective of estate planning. Okay. So the last three documents, it's your time to shine, buddy.

So first and foremost, the mean Chihuahua. If you have any fur babies. I wish you could see this dog. People who are listening in the car is the cutest little muffin. So anybody who has a fur baby, I just did a plant trust. If you have anything that is alive that if you got hit by a car, you would like to continue living. You need to have either pet care agent trust or,

Pet trust, you know, plant trust now, whatever it is. And then the second one is the agent for disposition of remains. How this one is very, very important is every funeral director in this country must only speak to your legal next of kin. I had a client call me the other day. They were in Turks and Caicos, five other lesbian couples, and a woman died scuba diving.

Your marriage is not recognized in Turks and Caicos. The funeral director and the morgue would not speak to her.

sister at a fly in from Wyoming. My client called me to say, and the woman was deceit was sick in the hospital for three days. She wasn't allowed to see her wife while she was in the hospital for three days. If she had had the HVA one, she would have been allowed in. And then after she passed away, if she had had this agent for disposition of remains appointing you agent per the statute, not your marriage,

That is the key point. The point of the document is whether you want to be cremated, buried or medical science, but how I tie you together per the statute as legal next of kin, that's what would have allowed this woman to speak to her wife's remains and said she sat there for four days knowing exactly where her wife's body was in the morgue and could not speak to her. So that is the agent for disposition of remains. And then the last document is about tangible personal property, all those fun things behind you.

You only need to call them out if they're going to someone other than your wife. So 90% of my folks don't put anything on that document. But if you, it's the only document that you can write on in the future. And this is how it's not a big deal.

Wow. I mean, you've made it so simple, which I really appreciate because I think so many of us are in shock right now, certainly to hear that gay marriage could be overturned or already starting to see them do things like wanting to define a marriage as only between a man and a woman or wanting to define gender as only male or female, which is going to cause so many medical complications. In my opinion.

It will happen. I agree with you. So getting prepared now, I think is important. And of course, by the time this airs, it is the President Trump 2.0 regime is in full effect.

but it doesn't mean it's too late for your paperwork, but you really shouldn't delay. You really got to get going on this now. Now, what about folks who aren't gay? Let's say they're just in a domestic partnership or they're in a situation where they're too, you know, for all intents and purposes, cis straight folks, they just don't want to get married, but they do want this kind of like bond to each other, this kind of access to each other. Could they do this kind of paperwork? Do you suggest that they do? 100%. Yeah. One of my good friends, and again, in

In Canada, a lot of straight cis folks do that. And but one of my good friends and she called me up and she's like, I feel like maybe I need your estate planning. I'm like, yeah, Lorraine, you might as well be gay. Right. Like estate planning, not just for the gays. Right. And actually, a few years ago, a couple of companies contacted me. I was doing webinars for employees and.

And they're like, they're like a lot of our Gen Zers, a lot of our millennials. We're getting the national legal marrying age, like the national average is 29 for women, 31 for men.

So straight folks are getting married much later in life and they have 401ks. They own homes. So absolutely bringing all of that together, both with a prenup, in my opinion, I feel like that's the 10th estate planning document. Listen, everybody who gets married as a prenup, it's either not you wrote it or the state in which you live in wrote it, but we're going to read something when you get divorced, if you get divorced and it's,

You should be the one to have co-created it. Right. So anyways, these companies have asked me, instead of calling it LGBTQ plus estate planning, can we call it unmarried estate planning? So, yeah. You know, same time. Unmarried.

I believe in a prenup. Even if you really don't feel like you have that much money or that many assets, I think you are the best version of yourself when you're getting married. You are the most willing to compromise and be fair and loving to whoever that partner is. And you might not know what will happen 20, 30, 40 years from now. So it's best to make that agreement when you're at your most happy with each other and most collaborative with each other. 100%. The analogy I use is a board game.

If you're coming over to my house tonight, Friday night for game night, and we've never played the game before, what's the first thing we're going to do before we start playing the game? Read the rules. You get to co-create your own rules. The divorce code is meant for everyone in the state in which you live in. Therefore, it's meant for no one.

And you get to co-create your own rules. There is nothing, in my opinion, more empowering than putting that together. I had a cute gay couple. They go to P-Town every year. And this isn't enforceable, but I allowed it to go in the contract, even though you shouldn't put enforceable provisions in a contract. But I put a little disclaimer underneath and they initialed it.

But it was even if it was February and one of them called it quits through in the white towel that they agreed to go to P-Town, remove no phones, no friends in their ear, all the white noise of leave them, you know, all of that. Put it aside. Go to P-Town and reflect on how you got there. And that I chose that.

will have an impact on them if one of them wants to throw in the white towel now that you know they can't call me up let's pretend it's scott and patrick again they can't call me up and be like patrick won't go you know and i can't call the cops to make patrick go to p town but they did their best to set the intention while they're at their best selves like you said that's what i'm saying and i love that and i think it's beautiful and it's

It's a good thing. These documents are so important to people. And, you know, it just gives peace of mind, safety, especially if you have kids dealing with this stuff. Don't delay. Just do it now. You can use Angela or whoever your local lawyer is. I'm sure if you already have some estate planning or somebody like that, they can swing these documents for you. What I love for you is...

you know, lawyer. Yeah. I differentiate between humans and lawyers. Yep. So folks want a local lawyer. And so even if you don't want to work remotely, but you, you want a local lawyer contact me. I have folks that I know like, and trust and, and I can refer you to somebody. Perfect.

Angela, thank you so much. Tell folks where they can find you. So never thought I'd be a TikTok lawyer, but yes, on TikTok, which hopefully does not get banned. We'll see what happens. On Instagram, you're gay lawyer. My law firm is Jampola Law Group and the website is lawyer.lgbt. So very just gay lawyer.lgbt.

And that's it. Our favorite gay lawyer who also helps the straights because you're just a nice gal here to help us. I always say I serve the LGBTQ community and those who love us. There you go. When we were panicking about what was going on after the election and I saw your TikTok and you were like, it's nine documents.

It just made me immediately feel so peaceful. I was like, oh, somebody knows what to do. And we'll just do the nine documents and then we'll be rocking and rolling and good to go and can feel good about it. So I appreciate you making it easy, making it comfortable and being, you know, the bravest little queer soldier out here helping people who are just really scared right now. And so you are a bright spot in my day and I appreciate you taking the time. Absolutely. Thank you for reaching out. And to that point, we will get through this. We've gotten through a lot.

but we do so in community. So you reaching out and using your platform to get this out to others is exactly how and why we will get through this. Thank you. All right. That was your gay lawyer, our friend, Angela. Until next time, I'm V Spear. Remember to check out prideplans.com and we will catch you next time.

American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candice Monega and Bridget Schwartz. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Betches News and follow me, Sammy Sage at Sammy and V at Under the Desk News. And of course, send us your emails to AmericanFeverDream at Betches.com.