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#152 - The Child-Free Planning Gap with Maddy Roche
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One of the most uncomfortable questions in financial planning is also one of the most important: if you can’t speak for yourself, who will?
We’re joined by Maddy Roche, Chief Growth Officer at Childfree Trust and a long-time leader in the fee-only advisor community, to explore the planning gaps that often arise for clients who are child-free or permanently childless. This isn’t a niche situation—about one in four Americans doesn’t have kids, and that number is even higher among younger generations.
We discuss how a child-free lens can reshape a financial plan, from Monte Carlo projections and decumulation strategies to estate planning priorities and insurance needs. Maddy explains why life insurance may be less relevant for many in this group, while disability insurance, long-term care planning, and a clear medical power of attorney become even more important.
We also touch on the emotional side—the peace of mind that comes from having a professional, unbiased third party in place, rather than leaving difficult decisions to friends or distant relatives.
Maddy outlines what Childfree Trust offers nationwide, including serving as financial POA, medical POA, executor, or trustee, along with building detailed care plans covering everything from key contacts to pet care to end-of-life preferences.
For advisors, this conversation highlights the risks of overlooking these roles and documents—and how making the right referral can add meaningful value across your client base.
Subscribe for more conversations that make fee-only planning more practical. Share this with someone who needs a better backup plan
Maddy's Social and Childfree Trust Website
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maddy-roche-25962032/
https://childfreetrust.com/
Welcome And Guest Introduction
SPEAKER_00How's it going, everyone? Welcome back to the OnlyFe Only Podcast. And as always, thanks for being here. In this episode, we talk to the legend herself, Maddie Roche, who is the chief growth officer at Child Free Trust, which is the first of its kind and a nationwide solution for medical and financial POA, executor, and trustee representation services, exclusively for the child-free and permanently childless community. Maddie is super cool, had the chance to get to know her over the years, and she's such a great person, super high energy, always fun to talk to. And if you've ever been around her, you already know that's the case. So really cool to listen to her talk about her passion for child-free trust and what's going on over there and kind of what her path has looked like. So without further ado, enjoy this episode with Maddie Roche on the OnlyFee Only Podcast. How's it going, everyone? Welcome back to the OnlyFee Only Podcast. I'm Brock Buckles. I'm here with my co-host, Peter Chiravolo. And today we are pumped because we have the privilege of talking to Maddie Roche, who is the Chief Growth Officer at Child Free Trust. Maddie, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Brock and Peter. It's so nice to be here. I've uh seen you guys on my LinkedIn. I've known you guys for a few years. Uh, it is a pleasure to officially be on the podcast.
From Paralegal To XYPN Builder
SPEAKER_01Yes, you bet. So we know each other through X5 Planning Network. But let's go back a little bit for those who don't know who you are. Um, kind of how did you get into the financial services space, right? Was it right out of college? We can kind of start there.
SPEAKER_02Sure. Yeah. Uh I had an interesting route into it. I was a paralegal after college, uh, but I was uh struggling to pay my own student loan uh debt off on a meager little salary. And I really got obsessed with my own personal finance. And it was in that process that I started a blog and I started doing research and I stumbled across the CFP curriculum and I decided uh to enroll in it. And right around the same time, I was introduced to Alan Moore and Michael Kitsis, and they were just building XY Planning Network and they were in need of someone with a lot of energy, and that was me. And so I jumped over and was the XY Planning Network's first employee. I was officially the director of getting shit done. I spent 11 years helping build that organization. I uh wore a lot of different hats over the years. Uh, a few years into it, though, I did decide I didn't want to be an advisor myself. So I actually dropped out of the CFP curriculum and continued to help XYPN grow. Uh, and it was kind of through that experience uh over a decade that I really uh fell in love with the profession, uh the fee-only space, and really felt committed to the movement that was bringing financial planning to uh younger generations.
Public Speaking As A Core Skill
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And let's go into that because I have to tell you, the first time that I ever saw you speak, I don't know, it probably was 20 XYP in 2021 or something like that. I was like, this is somebody that's got a ton of energy, is really good at public speaking on stage. So great job on that. That was really cool to see. But like, did you always kind of know that you were passionate about that or like you like speaking in front of people? Because that's kind of a unique gift for some.
SPEAKER_02Public speaking is one of my passions, yes. And I've I've done a lot of training in public speaking. I was a coach for a very competitive mock trial program uh for a very long time. I competed at the national level as a mock trialer myself, and I've coached public speaking. So um, not just emceeing national conferences, I've been a uh MC of TEDx here in Bozeman before, and I've helped a lot of advisors over the years not just pitch themselves, but really hone a presentation. Um I love thinking about the fact that people are more afraid of speaking than they are of death. Uh it is a it is a skill set and it takes time, it takes practice and it takes some mess ups. And I've had mess ups on stage before, but um when I really think about my true authentic self, it's on stage, it's getting the energy going, it's connecting with audiences and it's it's making everyone feel like they're in a room together, which is one of the, you know, when I have my my public speaking philosophies, that's one of the first things you want to do and achieve is making everyone feel like they're actually together in this experience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. And it's one of those things where it's like it, it's it's unique, but anybody can do it, right? If you if you work enough, like some people are always gonna be, I feel like maybe a little bit more natural or like, but yeah, that's that's really cool. So I had to mention that because I remember being like, this is our first time there, and you come up on stage and you're like, everybody, welcome. Like, I feel great about this already. This is gonna be good.
SPEAKER_02Good, good. And I from an advisor perspective, it's a skill set that I I really encourage advisors to hone. Um, they should be really comfortable speaking on a variety of topics, but public speaking takes place even in this kind of environment. I'm on a podcast right now. Um but I I would argue that one-to-one meetings is public speaking. You have an audience and you deserve uh they deserve respect with how you deliver your message. So uh advisors out there, get on stage, get the mic, take up space, and share your story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Great advice. So, I mean, chief growth officer, right? And you start a XY with that, right? Like, what are just some core beliefs? Like you take that position, you're obviously an early employee. Like, what number employee were you at XY? You said one.
SPEAKER_02I I was the first employee. I was the first person on payroll. Alan and Michael had to set up payroll to pay my paycheck. Um, and I was uh director of getting shit done there. Um and I I stayed in that role. And and at a startup, you know, roles are are nebulous and you own a lot of different things. And so over the course of probably six or seven years, I just continued to build the membership component of XYPN, what the value was, what the delivery was, what the engagement of our members was. Um my my final role at XYPN, uh, I had a brief stint as a vice president, kind of on a leadership executive level, uh, but really found my heart with coaching advisors as uh both um kind of mindset and approach, but just fundamental business practices, how to run a successful RIA is really uh my forte. And despite having never been an advisor, I've coached thousands of them and can really quickly give uh advice and tell an advisor just based on kind of a couple questions where I think uh they can benefit and focusing on, depending on where they are in their practice. But I've moved on from XYPN last year into a chief growth officer position with Child Free Trust, which is another startup. So I'm back at the ground level of building something that I hope uh is as uh momentous and beautiful as XYPN was.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Well, with you doing what you're doing, I'm sure it's it's gonna go really well. So tell us about kind of like that transition, how you decided you wanted to go over there, and then like what you guys are up to, right?
Why Child-Free Trust Needed To Exist
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks. Um, XYPN is I just had lunch with Alan the other day. There's there's a lot of futures of my life, versions of my future where I could see being at XYPN again. Uh, but child free trust really pulled on a lot of my heartstrings. Um, at my tenure, I took a 10-week long sabbatical and I went to a 10-day silent meditation called Vipassana. And I didn't write, I didn't read, I didn't walk, I didn't do anything. For 10 days, I sat and meditated. And it was during that process that I really felt a pull to doing something different and to return back to XYPN and put in my resignation. And at that point, I had the opportunity of joining Child Free Trust, which is a beautiful service that as a child-free woman, I felt really called to help build. And I'll get into the details of that in just a moment. But um I resigned from XYPN and went over to really start building uh this team, this program, and this service. And child free trust fills the void for the 25% of Americans that don't have kids. Uh, the question of who's going to make decisions for you when you're older, who's going to make decisions for you when you can't make decisions for yourself is an existential crisis for a lot of us child-free people. And so what we've rolled out is the first nationwide professional fiduciary solution for child-free people. So we can actually step in as medical and financial power of attorney, executor, and trustee. So we help child-free people create their state documents. They can list us as primary or backup, and then they create their beautiful care plan, which is everything around their wishes and how they want to be treated if there was an emergency, cognitive decline, or death.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. That I mean, that's incredible too. And and 25%, like wow, what a staggering number. I don't think that I knew that. So it seems like it's just not talked about, right? Like it's one of those things to where you just don't see it. And that's why you guys are the first or one of the first people doing it, right? Because um 25%, that's staggering to me. I mean, I didn't even realize that that was actually what the number was. So you find out about this, you realize that it's something that like speaks to you, and you decide you want to go over. So, like, what were some of the first kind of things that you guys worked on together, you and Jay, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So it actually started. I've known Jay. Jay is a member of XY Planning Network. I've known him for a number of years. And, you know, to your point, Brock, I don't wake up every morning and I'm like, I'm a child-free woman. It just isn't an identity that that I just haven't had kids and I haven't wanted to. Um, but he gave me a child-free wealth checkup, which was a checkup just for child-free people. It was a one-off experience, and it blew my mind, guys. I mean, and I've worked with advisors as a client for a decade, and I love my advisors, but I'd never had someone look at my financial plan through the lens of being child-free and kind of being child-free in perpetuity. So all of a sudden, my Monte Carlo gets to look different. My life insurance needs are fundamentally different. My estate planning needs are fundamentally different. Yeah. Child-free women have the highest net worth of any demographic. The gender wage gap goes away when you look at child-free women compared to parents. Um, it's really astounding that I get to start dying with zero. I mean, that that Bill Perkins book really takes life when you're child-free because we de-accumulate at some point. I don't need to die with$2 million, nor do I want to. I've done it wrong if I'm dying with a lot of money.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02So I get to look at my life way differently. And because of that, I was tempted to take a risk when I was 37 years old and leave my big, beautiful job at XYPN and go to another startup. So he needed an energizing personality like myself to start building those relationships. I'm really focused on the B2B side of this. This is how we'll be able to scale this uh service offering as widely as we want it to be. Uh, so we're thinking kind of on along three pillars of, you know, partnering with advisors and big advisory groups and institutions, broker dealers, the aging industry, the insurance industry. And we've got, you know, 2027 and 2028 lined up in terms of where we'll focus. But the goal is to spread this because that 25% is rapidly growing. When we look at Gen Z, the numbers are even more staggering. And it's so fun to now give presentations to advisors and be like, look, you may not be niched in this group, but you need to be because a quarter of your clients are child-free. So whether you've done it or not, you've likely got child-free clients in your book. So um, and how you support them needs to be different because my life is different given that I'm yeah, this is not like a you this is not like a you have equity comp in Silicon Valley.
SPEAKER_00Like that might be a little bit more niche. This is like one in four people that you're talking to.
How Child-Free Planning Changes Everything
SPEAKER_02Literally, yeah. And many of us have chosen to be child-free, which means we're proactively looking to live life differently. And we need advisors to walk alongside us in that. So, you know, we love the the kind-registered life planning designation, things like that. But when we life plan, you've got to be ready for me to live differently and want an advisor to help me picture that. And and that that's really where you see a difference in the kind of support you can get. And I mean, you guys are, you know, all about you know insurance and how to prepare for that sort of stuff. Things change when you're working with someone that doesn't have traditional next of kin or have an interest in passing on legacy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the types of insurance that you need, like you said, change too, right? Because all of a sudden, you know, life insurance might not be the most important thing, but disability insurance becomes really important.
SPEAKER_02Exactly, exactly. And long-term care and making sure I've got a plan for that, whether I'm self-funding or getting a policy around that is is uh the things look different. So um it's been an absolute blast to be back at the ground floor of a startup. It's uh I I joked uh recently that is uh it may not be uh it's probably my last startup, uh that's for sure. Um, but I have uh really, really strong belief that this is the right product, right market fit, right positioning, and it is uh so desperately needed. We're actually the first patent to have the word child-free in it. And we are the first service to offer this in all 50 states. So uh we've gone to competitors, we wanted other people to help us build this, and they just weren't interested in it because they didn't see kind of the market opportunity of carving out the child-free demographic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, it's it's a great name, right? I mean, have your niche in your name, right? Um absolutely love that. So, I mean, what's the product look like? Is it a membership? Like, is it a cost of the client, a cost of the advisor? Kind of what's that look like?
SPEAKER_02Great question. It is a it's a consumer uh service. So you go to our website, it's built for the child-free person, it's a membership,$1,000 a year. Uh, you get all your state documents updated as many times as you need. And then you get to have us in perpetuity on those documents as your primary or backup. Um, we also have uh child-free specific documentation. So we have things like pet trusts built into the documents. So under your trust, you actually have a pet trust that makes it uh legally uh mandated that the money you're setting aside actually goes to your pet. Um, and then you have your care documents, which is that beautiful interview around what your medical wishes are, who you want us to contact, what businesses and partners you have, um, everything from what you're allergic to to what you want your obituary to say. Uh, so that in the case of POA ever being triggered, our partner trust company that acts on your behalf will know what your wishes are. Um membership is is annually, you can pay monthly, but but we imagine most people will pay annually for this and set it and forget it in some ways. Um, but we really want to uh kind of continue to continue to build their plan because as you age, child-free people do need to be proactive about thinking about who the aging care managers are, who what what facilities do they want to go to? If there is an emergency, what what's their contingency plan? So a lot of this is you know, we're we're we're doing the hard fight of getting people to think about um estate planning, which guess what, guys? People don't want to think about estate planning.
SPEAKER_00No, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But we're trying to we're trying to get them to understand it's continuity planning, it's contingency planning because you know, only a third of us are gonna be lucky enough to die in our sleep. The rest of us are gonna have other situations on, you know, whether that be dementia or cognitive decline, that these are these are real realities that we have to think about. That if I'm hit by a bus, someone's got to feed my dogs raw meat every day and they got to make sure that cat has treats and that people are here locking up my house and things like that.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, absolutely. And and a couple of thoughts there that come to mind is one, we totally understand where you're coming from because we're the insurance guys and nobody wants to talk about insurance. Um and then two, it really seems like you guys are coming out with an intentional product that really is a great service and a great product that is able to give people their dignity and their decisions. And uh, you know, for so long, I feel like, especially in the space that you're talking about, um there there are just people aren't sure, right? There might be like, well, this is the way that I do want to live my life, but there's not really something that's for people like me specifically or talks to my situation specifically. Is that fair?
Membership Details And The Care Plan
SPEAKER_02That's so well said, Brock. That that's that hits the nail on the head in many different ways. And that child-free people, a large majority of us have never worked with an advisor before. And so, you know, when we think about being able to feel seen and understood, it's getting a recommendation for a product like this where it's like, oh my gosh, you're right. This this is something that's unique to me. And it's a product that makes me feel like, wow, I'm gonna be really taken care of. And that that peace of mind, you know, so many of us are selling peace of mind, but the reality is that this really is peace of mind for folks. Um when you think about making sure that there's someone there to act on your behalf, and a professional third party is someone that's unbiased and won't have the emotional um uh complications of having to act on your behalf if something were to go wrong. Um, it's it's that kind of support that makes people live more boldly. And that's what we want. Um, and and we do see the data show that younger people are actually much more inclined to have a third party act on their behalf than just like having their parents do it. Um, because when we think about the real hard decisions around respecting death with dignity and and life with dignity, um, those can be really hard positions to put people in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What are some of like the main mistakes that you see people making that are, you know, child-free, right? Um, you know, because I know you're full of statistics. So I'd love just to hear it because we haven't heard some of these before.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So the uh we s we did a big care study around long-term care and estate planning recently for child-free folks. Uh, 80% of child-free people do not have an estate plan in place or an updated will. And that's compared to about um uh 75% of the general public. Uh 75% of us have pets, uh, only 13% of us have uh long-term care plans. This is a real crisis. And if you are an advisor to a child-free person and they do not have their points of contact lined up and their estate planning documents in place, I would argue you're not being a fiduciary. I mean, this this is a for a child-free person not to have these kind of safety nets in place is dangerous. And it's dangerous for advisors because it complicates um their relationship with their client. Um, and and they often are seen as the quarterback in a lot of ways because they're the trusted professional with them. Um, but they may not have the legal authority to act on their behalf.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So child-free people need to begin to build a team around them. And that uh means beginning to do some of those interviews early around who are my tax professionals, who are my insurance people, who are my therapists, who's my doctors, who's my general, you know, geriatric care managers, who are my PCPs. That that is that is all what we're trying to do kind of on the care plan side to get people um prepared for worst-case scenarios. And I argue that advisors should be helping child-free people build those teams. So referrals, networks, making sure they they have uh good people in the back pocket to be able to support these individuals.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And and so when we say child-free, right? Like people might obviously be married and be child-free. So that adds a that adds a layer versus some people might choose to be single uh uh forever, right? So there's there's different dynamics. So how do you kind of, or how does your software or the way that you guys plan, how does that kind of go into it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, great point. Another thing to note about child-free people is that we marry at a much lower rate. Uh, when we don't have traditional families, there's not as high of a need for the traditional marriage structure. So uh we we've been on on stages talking about even um, you know, just alternative living environments and and how do we respect the kind of relationships that all of us may want. 10% of you know, the US community is LGBTQ plus. So we've got to be able to fold that intersectionality into the conversation as well. Um, for child-free people, the only thing that we require is that you do not have any living biological or adopted children. So we argue that the two people in a in a married couple are both child-free and they would both be independent members of child-free trust. Because one of them at one point will need it. Um they both need their individual documents because they may have individual wishes. And we still want to reserve privacy for each of them to dictate how they want that to happen. We do have within the system the ability to duplicate and share information so that you know the husband isn't just like rewriting everything the wife wrote, but uh they need to be standalone independent documents.
Biggest Gaps In Child-Free Estate Plans
SPEAKER_00Okay, that's a really that's a really important point to distinguish, though, right? Is that it's like individually, it's separate because each person kind of has their own opinions and and thoughts about what they want for themselves, even if they do have a spouse, or depending on how they're, you know, all of it. So totally.
SPEAKER_02And and the spouse is usually the first line of defense. I want my partner to be my POA, and and that's absolutely okay. Um, but it's it's the backup that we are able to be.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So let's talk about how you guys are, you know, I know that you guys said you have a consumer-facing part of the business. And then also you're doing a lot of B2B, you're meeting people, you're working on some stuff. So depending on what you're comfortable sharing, I don't want you to give away any spoilers, obviously, but uh, how are you guys talking to advisors, having these conversations? How are advisors tying into this to be able to bring this to their clients? Like, how are you guys going about that as a company and a team?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Great question. Um, I have a nice big network, as you can imagine, of advisors. I've been quite loud on LinkedIn about what we're doing. Jay has done an incredible job over the past four years of being building a really big PR presence. We've gotten some really incredible PR coverage over the past couple of years. And just recently we launched at uh the consumer electronics show and uh TechCrunch ranked us as a sleeper surprise of CES, which is really incredible given that we were up against AI and robots. But uh we continue to get the compliment that we just folks that have been there for 20 years hadn't seen a product like this that actually solves a problem the way that we do. Um so I a number of the different initiatives we've got is that we do a lot of public speaking, we do a lot of things like this in the podcast. I lead with education. I think it's super important that advisors, when I'm thinking about advisors, that they just understand the demographic. So when I'm on stage at NAPFA or XYPN or other industry conferences, talking to other groups, I'm talking about what the demographic is, sharing some of the stats that I've just shared, um, talking about the biases and the barriers that they face, you know, just from um, you know, how how planning softwares may not support it and things like that. Um, and then really just offering a number of different solutions for uh advisors to be able to support their child-free clients. Um we do have uh a letter of intent from one of the biggest broker dealers out there right now to roll it out to their advisors. Uh, we are going to continue to go to some of the larger warehouses, broker dealers, and and have them add this to the platform because when I talk about adding more high-touch value to a quarter of clients, people get interested. And um I've had advisors, I mean, part of the reason I jumped over to Child Free Trust was because I've had advisors in the past ask me this question. Where do I send my widows? Where do I send my single women? Where do I send my uh, you know, child free clients to get the kind of backup that they need? Because advisors are frequently asked to be people's POA, and you can't be your client's POA.
Advisor Partnerships And How To Connect
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. Yeah. So what's the team look like right now and kind of you know, what's the growth and the goal here?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right. Uh small but mighty team, which is how we're all used to working. We've got our founder, we've got a great COO. Uh, she uh is an engineer by trade, and it's incredible to report to an engineer because she really knows her stuff and keeps us all in check. Uh, we've got a number of people on the creative side and the marketing team. Um, and we've got a really incredible tech team, uh, both from a network and security standpoint to the developers. Um, we plan to remain small. Most of the scaling is going to happen with the partner trust companies that we have relationships with. They've got to be able to staff the trust administrators, the nurses, and the um physicians on their teams to be able to make sure that uh as things roll in, that they're able to act on the client's behalf. And um I say this on most with most opportunities I have that spooling up a trust company takes a really long time, folks. Uh Jay sits on the board of the trust company that was spooled up for this. The banking regulators were just there. Uh reporting to the banking regulators is no joke. If people ever are concerned about having a trust company act on their behalf, just understand that there's a lot of layers of protection of being a trust company's client. Um, everything from insurance to net capital requirements to the auditing that they go through. Um, you know, some people are a little wary of like, oh, it's a startup. It's like, yeah, it's a startup, but trust companies are intended to be around for 150 years. So you're a client of the trust company at the at the final end of the day. So um that's that's really how we're building the team and we'll continue to. We hope to serve uh hundreds of thousands of people. There's 15 million Americans over 55 without kids. So if we can just get in front of some of them, we're gonna help them out a lot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The the alternative, unfortunately, is if you don't have this and you don't have someone to list, you're gonna have the estate plan of the state that you're in, and you're gonna have the government being your guardian, and you're gonna have the medical facilities and state making decisions for you. And no one wants that.
SPEAKER_00Nobody knows. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so for people that would do want to learn more, what's the best way? Do they go to their website, your website? Do they come talk to you about how they can play?
SPEAKER_02They can absolutely come talk to me. Um, I uh I help man the inbox for advisors. Uh, that we we do get questions here and there. We host webinars uh on a monthly basis for advisors. We host consistent consumer content. So uh www.childfreetrust.com is our website. You can get almost all the information you need from there. Um, if you do ever have questions, you can always email questions at childfreetrust.com. You can follow us on LinkedIn and social media. Um, but this is really uh a program that's intended to be a resource for folks and advisors out there that are interested in this. I don't expect you to be customer service for us. Send your clients to us and we'll take care of them.
SPEAKER_01I love it. I love it. Um any last little golden nuggets you wanted to share, something else you wanted to get out there to the advisors listening?
SPEAKER_02No, I know many of you I know, and I just uh wanted to let you know that I still support you. And I'm I'm so thankful to still be in this uh uh ecosystem of fee only advisors. And if I can ever be a resource to any of you, please just holler.
SPEAKER_00Well, Matt, you are a legend and a rock star. We appreciate you uh taking some time to spend some time with us today. And uh we'll look forward to catching up in the future.
SPEAKER_02Heck yeah. Thanks, guys, so much for what you do.