Brock, Payne & Meece

As I write this, I’m sitting on the beach at Emerald Isle watching my children play in the sand. I love going on vacation, it gives me time to think about things like whether the sunburned guy sleeping under the umbrella next to me has a will. What? You say you don’t have those kinds of thoughts? Well you’re in good company. According to a survey by a leading internet search engine, 64% of Americans do not have a will, power of attorney or other basic estate planning documents. Chances are, most of you reading this don’t either.

There are a lot of common misconceptions which keep people from getting their affairs in order. For instance, many married couples believe that if their spouse dies, they automatically get everything they owned. Unfortunately, North Carolina law doesn’t even make it legal to sign documents for the other spouse while alive, much less automatically inherit. This can cause big problems for couples with small children or even couples with adult children by prior marriages who wind up sharing those assets.

Young people often believe there’s no need for them to do estate planning because they don’t have much of an estate to plan. However, I often tell my clients that the most important “possession” they can have is their children. Without proper planning, you will have no say over who raises your children, where, or how.

Unfortunately, I also often have to work with the estates of people who decide to write something down on their own. As District Court Judge Jim Hill is fond of telling me, “a lawyer can make a good living from folks like that”. When you aren’t familiar with the requirements of a valid will, it’s easy to forget something, sign something wrong, or fail to take advantage of important tax provisions that can cost your heirs in unnecessary estate taxes.

The most common misconception I hear is the time, hassle and expense of estate planning. In two sessions, usually lasting less than 2 hours, we can discuss wills, powers of attorney, living wills and your disability and life insurance as well as go over your retirement and even touch on issues like Medicaid and financial planning. Often this can be done for less than $1,000.00.

If you hear yourself in any of this, call our office and either myself or one of our other attorneys would be glad to meet with you. That way, next time you’re on vacation you don’t have to worry about depressing things like me and you can spend more time worrying about the guy next to you.

Article: Thoughts on Restorative Justice - by C. Scott Holmes

“Restorative justice” is a movement to integrate communities into the criminal justice system and facilitate moments of reconciliation between victims and offenders within the system. I believe communities can play a larger role before, during and after the criminal justice system runs its course. We should be working toward ways to provided assistance to communities, victims, offenders, and their families in connection with violence, crime and addiction.

A. Victim Services
Victims of crime, and their families, need support and assistance. They need emotional and psychological support and counseling for both survivors of crime and “secondary survivors” who provide emotional support to survivors and suffer many of the same feelings of fear, depression, lack of control, shame, and frustration. These people need legal advice and guidance to navigate the labyrinth of the criminal justice system. They also need a safe, measured, and clear process to articulate their own voice within the criminal justice system. Some may need a safe way to interact with the offender and/or the family of the offender to find healing in some kind of reconciliation.

B. Offender Services
Offenders, Defendants, and their families, need support and assistant. Offenders often need counseling and support to handle incarceration and all of the tragic circumstances which led to their incarceration. Families of offenders need support to handle the loss of their family member, and struggle with the conflicting emotions of loving the offender and hating the crime. They need legal advice and guidance to navigate the labyrinth of the criminal justice system. They need a safe, measured, and clear process to articulate their own voice in the criminal justice system. They may also seek a safe way to interact with the victim, or family of the victim, to find some healing form of reconciliation. Methods of documentary video making, or other media and technology may provide great assistance in create a form of safe and healing interaction leading toward reconciliation.
Offenders often have special needs involving medical treatment for addiction, psychological counseling for past trauma, vocational training for viable employment, and training in anger management and non-violent resolution of conflicts. Offenders often need a broader understanding of the legal process than their attorneys are able (or willing) to provide, and could benefit from an understanding of mandatory minimum sentences in federal court – to understand the consequences of additional offenses. If rehabilitation is a true goal of the criminal justice system, then these special needs should be recognized and met.
Offenders also need care and support when they complete their sentence and re-enter their communities. The same old habits, associates, and problems that contributed to the offender’s commission of a crime are often waiting for the offender upon their release. Offenders need help reintegrating into their community in a healthy and sustainable manner.

C. Community Services
Communities need help organizing around strategies that facilitate: (1) prevention of crime by addressing the underlying social, economic, and medical causes of crime, (2) greater participation in the criminal justice process by articulating to courts, victims, and offenders the harm caused by the crime and the appropriate resolution of the case from a community point of view, and (3) the reintegration of offenders back into the community once they have completed their sentence.

(1) Prevention
Communities could be more empowered to address the issues of race and poverty which significantly contribute to a great deal of crime. Community committees could have a role in local agencies and organizations dealing with mental health treatment, housing, education, law enforcement practices, racial relations, development of a local economy. A holistic treatment for crime and violence in communities must consider how the health of the community relies on the interdependency and interaction of these various aspects of our community. For example, decisions and policies in one area, like low-income housing, are often made without consideration of how those polices might affect other areas, like education services, law enforcement practices, or the local economy. Communities can be organized and trained to understand and require the mindful coordination of these parts of the community body, to promote the overall health the community and reduce violence, crime and addiction within communities.

Above and beyond the traditional “community watch” programs, there are particular programs and direct actions that communities can conduct that would help prevent crime.

There are a wide variety of other ways communities could become more involved with preventing crime. These might include (1) promoting local businesses and programs that hire, mentor, and monitor troubled youth, (2) developing meaningful and accessible medical treatment for addiction and depression within low income communities, (3) training and coordinating with law enforcement officers to promote nonviolent interactions and non-adversarial relationships between police and members of the low income community, (4) coordinating housing for offenders who re-enter communities in a way the provides necessary vocational training, medical counseling, and addiction treatment to help these persons from committing new crimes.

(2) Participation
Communities can and should have a greater role in the criminal justice process. Local neighborhood committees on crime could meet with victims and their families, and offenders and their families, and assess how the crime has affected their community. The community crime committee could articulate its own view of the crime to the Courts at sentencing with the hope that the Court could craft a sentence that takes the community into account. Community participation in the actual criminal justice system itself would lessen the adversarial nature of the system, and shift the emphasis from retribution to reconciliation and rehabilitation for the offender, the victim, and the community.

(3) Rehabilitation and Reintegration
The criminal justice system has often been described as a “revolving door,” or a cycle of crime perpetuating crime. One way to help break the cycle is to help offenders get the treatment and training necessary to have stable mental health and secure a stable living wage once they are released from their sentence. Given these tools, an offender re-entering a community also needs the care and support of that community in order to avoid the problems, practices, and habits which led to criminal behavior in the first place. Community mentors and liaisons could help offenders re-entering the community to find a healthy place in the community, and provide assurance to the community that there is less risk of additional crime from that former offender.