Reclaiming Your Power | Your Vote. Your Legacy. Your Responsibility.

Reclaiming Your Power | Your Vote. Your Legacy. Your Responsibility.

What does it truly mean to reclaim your power?

In this compelling episode of Rethinking Freedom, Aya Fubara Eneli challenges you to take control in two of the most overlooked—but life-defining—areas:

🗳️ Your Vote
📜 Your Legacy

As local elections approach in Killeen and Harker Heights, Aya breaks down:

✔️ What’s on the ballot (city council, mayoral races, school boards)
✔️ Why local elections shape your daily life more than national politics
✔️ Key dates you need to act on (Election Day: May 2, 2026)
✔️ The powerful and painful history of Black voting rights in America
✔️ How access to the ballot is still being challenged today

Then she turns to a question most people avoid:

What happens to your family if something happens to you tomorrow?

As an estate planning attorney, Aya reveals:

🔥 5 powerful estate planning takeaways
💰 The real cost of probate (time, money, and stress)
⚠️ Why having a will is NOT enough
👨‍👩‍👧 How to protect your children and preserve generational wealth

This episode is a wake-up call.

Because reclaiming your power means:

👉 Showing up where decisions are made
👉 Protecting what you’ve built
👉 Refusing to leave your future in someone else’s hands

🎯 TAKE ACTION TODAY:
✔️ Register and prepare to vote
✔️ Research your local candidates
✔️ Put your estate plan in place


What does “reclaiming your power” look like in your life?

📌 Subscribe to Rethinking Freedom for bold conversations on power, legacy, and liberation.

#ReclaimingYourPower #RethinkingFreedom #VoteLocal #EstatePlanning #GenerationalWealth #BlackPower #KilleenTX #HarkerHeights #LegacyBuilding

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Good morning and welcome to another edition of Rethinking Freedom. I am your host, Aya Fubara and Nelly, and today I want you to sit with something for a moment. What if I told you that the most thoughtful decisions shaping your life right now are being made by people who you did not vote for, you do not know, and you have never bothered to research? What if I told you that your child school environment and the school environment of the youth in your community, whether you have children or not, your property taxes, your policing, how safe you feel, your emergency structure? Should you have an emergency and you need to call for help, assistance, your infrastructure for your entire city and the community in which you live in? What if I told you that all of these are being shaped by elections that most people ignore and that perhaps you are ignoring as well? And let me go even deeper. What if I told you that there were people, people of African descent, African Americans, black men, black women who were beaten, jailed, killed just for the right that so many of us casually skip? Just two days ago, we commemorated the anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Did you pause to think about that? As you perhaps celebrated Easter and the crucifixion of another man who was innocent, and what that man supposedly died for? So today we are going to talk about power, not theoretical power, not social media power. You know, everybody's a social media warrior. We're going to talk about real power, the power of your vote, and the power of your legacy. Because here at Rethinking Freedom, freedom is not just something we talk about or we bandy about. Freedom is something that we practice. So let's start with the first segment of this show, which is going to focus on the upcoming local elections for city council, for school board. If you are here in Central Texas, in the Killeen area, um Harker Heights area, and so forth. We know that election day is May 2nd, 2026. In Killeen, what's on the ballot? The mayor, three at-large city council members, and up and down my social media, and certainly in the newspapers, you see these candidates vying for our attention, and many of them not really getting it because I've seen their meet and greets and they're not really packed out. These positions help shape policy, policing priorities, development. They decide where your money goes, they decide what resources go to what part of the community. They figure out and try to attract in businesses and to help the economy grow. They decide the direction of your city. In Harker Heights as well, there's a mayoral race, there's also a city council position that is open. And of course, we have the school board race going on as well. Now, unfortunately, there might appear that some of them are running on a post that's not quite true. Go and do your research. We actually have someone running for school board who does not even live in our community. What do the school board members decide? Curriculum direction, school leadership, resource allocation, disciplinary measures, and so much more. Voter registration deadline was April 2nd. So if you haven't voted, if you hadn't registered by then, it's kind of too late if you're listening to us today. However, for those of you who are already registered, early voting starts on April 20th, goes through April 28th. Please put it on your calendar. Don't wait till the actual election day because anything can happen. You can trip and fall, a child can suddenly end up in the emergency room, your car could get a flat tire and you couldn't make it to the polling station on time. So put it in your plan to vote early. But do your research so that you are an informed voter. Let me tell you something that a lot of people misunderstand. Here in our community, you can become a school board member with 2,500 votes or less. Why? Because even though we have a school district serving over 45,000 students, so many parents, and the rest of the community that should be concerned about what's happening with that school district, I simply checked out. We typically have less than 3% of those who are eligible to vote show up to vote in local elections. How ridiculous is it to complain about the port the potholes on your street or to complain about certain um laws and policies that come down the pipeline or what you think city council is and isn't doing, but never bothering to do your research and actually going to cast the vote and then, after you cast your vote, never trying to responsibly hold our elected officials accountable. Now, more people show up for the presidential election, still not nearly as many. We know in the state of Texas, we have most of the repress the most repressive election laws in the entire country. But even then, we still have a significantly higher turnout for presidential elections. But guess what? The president, although this one is certainly making a stab at it in terms of making policies that are affecting every aspect of our lives, just look at our gas prices and how that's also impacting food, and now wanting to cut all of our social programs at the federal level. But really, the president does not decide your daily life. Your city council does. Your city council decides where money is spent, which neighborhoods are developed, what policing looks like, whether your community thrives or your community stagnates. In Killeen, the city operates under a council manager system where the council sets policy that directly impacts residents' lives. So when you skip a local election, you are not being neutral, you are not being smart, you are not being progressive. You are surrounded, you are surrendering your power. You are giving up your power. And just to put this in historical context, because voting for black people in this country was never freely given. Now I know that I have people who watch this show from all over the country and the world, as a matter of fact. In fact, if you are watching or listening to this show right now on YouTube, please leave a comment as to where you're listening or watching from. And I know many of you also listen on the radio stations here, and we really appreciate your support. And so, although I have a lot of people who may not be of African descent who listen to this show, you know that I center the voices and the concerns of African people, black people, African Americans on this show, and that is always what I'm going to do. So I'm going to talk specifically about voting and black people in this country, this United States of America. And for those of us who know our history, we know that voting was never freely given to us. We know that after the Civil War, black men were technically granted the right to vote through the 15th Amendment. Technically. And now I know though there are some of you who will say, Well, has voting ever changed anything? Or well, help me understand, has voluntarily giving up your power ever changed anything for you? Because most of the rights that we enjoy today came because we fought and we got into positions where we could change policies. I see it every day as an attorney in the courtrooms. But besides all of these attempts to prevent us from voting, we organized. We marched. And when I say we, not my generation really, the generation before me and then before and before that. We resisted. Think about Selma to Montgomery marches. If we were told today that we had to walk to work, oh my God. Well, I'm not doing that. But they did. People were beaten on that bridge for their right to vote. Think about the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law came from blood. And that blood is crying out from the grounds today. We just had a primary election where millions of African Americans who were registered to vote chose to not come out and cast their vote. And we could have had Jasmine Crockett, who is a proven fighter. We could have had her on the ballot in November to fight against a regime that seems intent on taking us back to the days of slavery, the days of Jim Crow. And we were too absent-minded, too lazy, too apathetic, too ignorant about our history to make it a priority to go out and vote. That voting rights act of 1965, which is being gutted by the Supreme Court, that rights you and I have to vote today was paid for in blood. And yet today we see modern restrictions on voting, strict voter ID laws. No matter what laws they pass, they want to increase the laws. Now they want to make it tougher women or anyone who's ever had a name change. Even after you've registered to vote, now they want to create more hoops that you have to jump through. And essentially a poll tax because, oh, now you've got to go and pay again for your birth certificate, improve. Oh, wait a second. Are you married? Did you change your name? When did this occur? Or get um a passport? Have you ever gone through the hoops to get a passport? And I believe everybody should have a passport, but there's money required there. And so when you put these kinds of things in effect, you essentially close out a group of people because what happens if you don't have the resources? Of course, they're closing down polling places in communities that are considered non-Republican communities, non-white communities. We see the long wait times, we see the limited early voting access. We now see um this president, the 34-time convicted felon-in-chief, the sexual assaulter who's been adjudicated for sexual assault. We now see him trying to figure out yet another way to prevent people from being able to vote with a Save Vote Act or whatever it's called. We see the voter roll purges. Some of these actions now to restrict our access to the to voting may look different than the past, but the impact can be the same. Reduce participation. When you choose not to vote, when you choose not to get informed and choose not to be engaged and choose not to cast your vote, systems don't change. And you need to be an informed voter, and then you need to hold your elected officials accountable. Now I want to shift to another topic, still another version of reclaiming your power, reclaiming your power so that you are actually practicing the act of being free, if you will. And so I'm shifting from the focus on voting and exercising that power in that sense to talking about who makes the decisions for you about your life, about your family, if you do not have an estate plan in place, because this is yet another area where people avoid practicing being free, and that is estate planning. And I want to start with the truth and educate you all because every day, as I have conversations, I'm an estate planning attorney, I'm amazed at how many people, even within my inner circle, still have no clue what I do or are still so misguided in terms of what it means to have an estate plan. But this is when I get their calls. I get their calls when it's too late. I get their calls when you are part of a blended family, and then the patriarch or the matriarch has died, and then family members are feuding, and it's like, oh Aya, how do we handle so and so and so? Do they have a will? Do they have a trust? And it's so much more expensive then. Or something happened, and my sister is dead, and she has young children. What can we do? Did your sister have a will, any kind of um guardianship for her children? No. Now we're trying to solve issues after the fact. When it when I talk about estate planning, this is what I hear from most families. Oh, I have time, I'll get to it later. Oh, I love this one. I don't have enough assets, I just have my house and my bank account. Oh, and then my retirement account. Oh, and then okay. Or no, this is the this is the one that I get all the time. My family will work it out, and then I'm in court seeing families going at it at loggerheads because someone who claimed to love their family members never took the time to put a plan in place to exercise their power to put a plan in place so that the family knew exactly what to do, and they didn't end up spending thousands of dollars that they didn't have to in court. And spending the money is the least of it. There's so much else that can happen, and I'm gonna get into that just a little bit, but I'm not gonna have enough time to do a whole workshop on estate planning. But here's the reality: without a plan, the court makes the decision, just like when you choose not to vote, those who voted and voted in their candidates, they make all the decisions and you deal with the consequences. So without a plan, the court makes the decisions about, listen to this, makes the decisions about your medical care if you're incapacitated and you do not already have a medical power of attorney in place. Yeah, an absolute stranger reads a few documents and says, I pick you. And the person they pick might be the person who will smother you in your sleep. They don't know that on paper, it looks good, or they're the ones who could afford an attorney or whatever the case may be. A judge who has never met you will decide who makes the decisions about your medical care if you're if you're incapacitated. If you're incapacitated, who makes the decisions about your finances? When you die, who gets your assets? Who raises your children if you have minor children? Who controls your money? And particularly for those of you who are like, Well, I have a will, but you have minor children. Do you understand how long the probate process can last because your will must go through probate? And do you ever ask yourself in the interim, what happens to my children? How do they access resources? Of course not, because we all think we're gonna live forever, or that we're going to get a memo that says you have six weeks in two minutes. So now you can make a plan. Well, life comes at us when we're busy doing other things. How do I know this? Happened to my own brother who made his transition from this earth at just 46 years old. So here's the deal: if you don't plan the court will, estate planning is never optional, it is a decision between you deciding or the court deciding. Many people also think this I have a will, I'm good. I don't have to pay attention to anything else because I'm doing okay, and so hey, it's alright. No, a will still goes through probate, and probate is public, it's expensive, and it's time consuming. I'm gonna get into that a little bit more. Probate can cost your family thousands of dollars, typically five thousand to twenty thousand dollars plus, and I say plus because if your will is challenged, if you have multiple family members, that's a problem. Before you even get to you transitioning, if you happen to get incapacitated and your family has to file for a guardianship because you do not have a medical power of attorney in place, you do not have a financial power of attorney in place, that process will cost you thousands of dollars. Versus the cost of getting a proper will in place, not just one you downloaded from the internet, or getting a proper trust in place. That's money your family could have kept, and that is aggravation that. Your family didn't have to go through. And for those of you who have minor children, this is urgent. If you die without naming guardians for your child, for your children, a judge decides who raises your children. For those of you in blended families, or it's, you know, kind of complicated, you want to put something in writing so that your children don't end up bearing the brunt of your lack of decision making. Because when you don't decide, a judge decides. And that judge doesn't know you, doesn't know your children. If your children are under 12 years old, they don't really have a voice. And even at 12, you get there's a whole process before the courts will even let them have a voice. Now, sometimes they will, you know, get a guardian at lightum for the children, and that guardian at lightum supposedly speaks for the child, but I'm telling you, why let all of that happen when you can take control of your own power and make that decision for yourself? So estate planning is about taking your power back, it's about controlling your life and controlling what happens in terms of the kind of parent, the kind of legacy you want to leave, or grandparent, or just philanthropist. Do you want your money to go to a nonprofit or to something that is meaningful to you? And ultimately, estate planning is about love. Because if you love the people in your life, why wouldn't you try to ensure that after your time here on earth is done, that the people who love you can greet you in peace and not be back and forth in courtrooms? This is not about death, it's about love and it's about responsibility. So let me go a little bit deeper into this notion of what happens in terms of estate planning and why that is something that you definitely should be thinking about and working towards right now. This is something that I get to work on on a daily basis. So some questions you want to ask yourself and answer them right now. And if this is resonating with you, please like, please subscribe, please leave a comment, and please share this. Because we share a lot of information, you know, cats dancing and all kinds of other things that are not really relevant to people's lives. But this right here is absolutely life-changing. So, some questions I want you to ponder for a second. What happens today if you are in a car accident and you are in a coma? Who knows where your documents are if you have any? Do you have a medical power of attorney? Do you have a medical directive in place? Do people know whether you want to be kept on life support or whether you want everything unplugged and to just go in peace if it's your time? Does anyone know where your assets are? What assets you have? There's a reason why there are billions of dollars in unclaimed funds across the United States, certainly here in the state of Texas, but across the United States. Abandoned bank accounts, all kinds of estates. Yes, properties, people end up, you know, losing families lose properties because they didn't even know they owned them, like their family member owned them, and then you don't pay the taxes, and then there's a tax lien, and then someone comes and buys it for pennies on the dollar. If you were hit today on your way to work as you're listening to this show, God forbid, not wishing any ill will on anybody, will your have you left instructions for what happens next? If that happens to you today and you have minor children, who raises your children? Even if you have children who are not minor children, but like mine, I have three children who are in college. What's the next step? Are they suddenly homeless? And hey, I hope you can figure it out, child. Do they have any safety net? Who controls your money? Let's say you have children who are in college and you are helping to pay their their fees or you're paying their rent or whatever for school, and you get hit today, you're in this coma. What do you have in place that will allow anyone to access your bank account? Can they still make your mortgage payment? Can they still make your car payment? If it takes you more than three months to recover, will you then find out that you're homeless because your things have been repossessed and you've been foreclosed on? If you die, will your family have to wait the six to eighteen months plus it takes to go through the probate process before they have access to your resources? And what happens to your children in the interim? Who raises your children? Who decides your medical care? These are all questions that you need to ask yourself. You don't have as much time as you think you do. And then the spouse, ex-spouse died, pretty young man, and he only has one child who is the child of the woman who called me, but the ex-spouse's family is locking her and the child out of the father's home and resources and all of that. And now, in addition to the grief of losing the father of her son, she's got to pay an attorney to even get letters of administration from the court to figure out what's left of her ex-spouse's estate, which should go to her son. If he already had a will in place, that would make life easier. He doesn't. He died in testate. If he had a trust in place, it would have been that easy. And the amount of money she's going to spend now, especially with the hostile family on the ex-spouse's side, is gonna be triple whatever it would have cost for that man to have put a will or a trust in place. What happens if you die without a plan in Texas? Texas intestacy laws determine who inherits your assets, who manages your estate, and as I said, who raises your children. This is what you need to know about the probate timeline. Even with a will, you have to go through the probate process. Can you do it as an individual? Yes. Takes some maneuvering to do, and you're still going to pay. You're gonna pay publication costs, you're gonna pay for an ad lightum attorney, you're still called, you're gonna pay for filing costs. And in the meantime, all the resources, bank accounts, all of that are frozen. You can't touch them. Typical Texas probate timeline, six months to 18 months. In some places, even longer, just depends on the volume for that particular court, that county. Certainly longer if there are any disputes. Then you're going back and back and back to court. And let me tell you, if you have an attorney that is charging$300,000,$350,000,$400,000,$500 an hour, and you have to go for multiple hearings, and they have to prep you before each hearing, and they have to prepare themselves before each hearing, it is nothing to have blown through five, six, seven, eight thousand dollars. And like I said, your assets may be frozen throughout that probate period, and families often struggle financially. So the probate process, you're looking at attorney fees, you're looking at court fees, you're looking at possibly executor costs, you're looking at appraisal and administrative expenses.$5,000 to$20,000 in counting. And yet you can avoid all of that if you so choose. I'm not going to go into any more detail on horror stories that I could tell you about the probate process, but trust me when I say that there are indeed many. Because again, if you do not have a power of attorney, medical and financial in place, and you are deemed incapacitated by a medical professional, someone else is making the decisions for your finances, or someone else is stealing from you. Someone else, you've heard about elder abuse, someone else is siphoning your resources and maybe not even taking proper care of you. That's before you even die. And just think about how many years we spend working hard for all of these things that we accumulate, and to then just let them vanish because your family couldn't access the funds to pay your taxes or to continue on the mortgage payment. So it got foreclosed on, and so on and so forth. Um, all totally avoidable if we take back our power and we stop procrastinating and we actually put a plan in place. So let me quickly talk about the difference between a will and a trust because people are really confused about this. A will allows you to name your beneficiaries, a will allows us allows you to choose an executor, and a will allows you to name guardians for your children. But a will will still go through probate, which means you're still going to pay money and your assets could still be frozen while you're going through the probate process. Of course, you want to make sure you know where that will is, um, and that you've told the people that matter where that will is. And that you, yeah, that you you've been transparent with your family, is what I'm going to advise. It just helps to stave off issues later. All of the secrecy that we sometimes do creates issues. And if you're going to disown a child, make sure it's clearly written in your will so that when they decide to challenge it, it's clear and clear, and as they say, black and white, that this was your intent, right? But a will will still go through probate. Now, some of you really need to be considering a trust. I would say most of you need to be considering a trust. A revocable living trust can avoid probate, it will allow faster asset distribution, it will provide control over inheritance, it keeps your assets private. The whole world doesn't need to know what you have, which when you go through probate with a will, it really is accessible to whomever wants to in the public access that information. And it protects your children and your heirs. A trust does. And when it's done properly, a trust will also include your um, it will include a will, it will also include your power of attorney, your medical power of attorney, your um financial power of attorney. It would include your medical directives, you will have your HIPAA waiver also so that those you've designated can actually access information about your medical care. And it will allow you to name the guardians for your children. In my practice, we go a little further and we make sure that you have both a short-term and a long-term guardian named, particularly if you don't have family members who live within the same community in which you live. So, for instance, again, you get into a car accident today after you've dropped your kid off at school. There should be a short, and you don't have family members who live in your same community. You want to have a short-term guardian who can pick that child up from school, and the child can stay with that person until your long-term guardian, who may have to buy a plane ticket or make some other arrangements, can come and then take your child because otherwise, your child might end up in foster care. And although I appreciate that at least our children have foster care to go to, we also know that there are quite a few horror stories that come out of foster care. And so, if you can avoid traumatizing your child further, in addition to them having lost the parent, why wouldn't you seize your power to do so? So, again, will versus trust, probate required for a will. It's public record, it's a slower process, usually imposes some financial um hardships on the family while they're waiting to have access to resources. I have a client right now who lost, you know, close family member, won't go into any great details, but cannot even sell the home until they get their letter of administration, and we're still going through that probate process. And so they're just kind of in limbo because they can't move forward on anything until the court says, now we give you permission to be able to decide what happens to your loved one's assets. A trust, on the other hand, avoids probate, it's private, there is faster distribution. And should you decide to meet with an estate planning attorney, they can give you even more details about the different kinds of trusts that are available and the ways that you can even set up a trust so that the beneficiaries are shielded from any lawsuits and even from divorces in the future, right? So these are things that you want to talk to your estate planning attorney. You want to talk to talk to um your estate planning attorney about. Again, cost comparison, probate versus planning. The average probate cost is going to be 5,000 and above. And if it's contested, you're definitely looking in the you're looking not at five figures, you're looking at six figures and above in terms of how much you're going to um it's going to cost you. On the other hand, a typical estate plan, even if you do a trust, a typical estate plan, even a trust is cheaper than going through the probate process. Did you hear me? Even the cost of a trust is cheaper than going through the probate process. It's like a no-brainer. And again, remember if your family has to go through the probate process and your assets are frozen, that means they have to figure out where to get the money to even begin the probate process. Because most attorneys are not going to take on your family member, your grieving wife, or your grieving children for nothing. You're going to have to pay a retainer up front and you're going to have to pay filing fees with a cost with a court and so on and so forth. Very quickly, I use some other terms that I want to explain to you. Again, talking about freedom and talking about taking back your power. A financial power of attorney allows someone you trust to pay your bills, to manage your bank accounts, to handle financial matters if you become incapacitated. Without a financial power of attorney, families may need court permission. Without a financial power of attorney, you see family members fighting. And you often see, unfortunately, where one family member gets a hold of that credit card or gets a hold access to the account, and before you know it, the rest of the family members realize oh, wait a second, there's money missing. And then the family, there's distrust, and you see your family disintegrate. So you want to have a power of attorney, right? Now, a medical power of attorney allows someone to speak to your doctors, to make medical decisions, to access medical records. Again, without it, families may need court permission. So imagine your mother whom you love so much, and then she falls and hits her head and is disoriented and is finally determined to be incapacitated. She can't make decisions, can't think clearly, or whatever. And the doctor and you're trying to make decisions about your mother's care, and they're like, Well, actually, you can't. You got to go to court to get that permission. Yeah, happens every day. So, whoever you talk to in terms of estate planning, make sure that you at you have a medical power of attorney in place. By the way, I'm gonna give this little tidbit. For any of you who have adult children who aren't married, you want to make sure that you have a medical power of attorney for each of that, each of your children, your adult children have a has a medical power of attorney. Because guess what happens? If something happens to them, they are in a car accident. I don't care if they're in college and you're still paying all their bills, you go to the hospital, and the doctors are going to say to you, the medical professional are going to say to you, this is an adult. They are not your minor child. We don't have to talk to you or tell you anything going on with their care. And then now you're trying to get to court and trying to do maneuver and all of that. Yes. So get medical power of returning for even your adult children until they're married, and maybe there's a spouse who can, you know, carry on that role. Um, just things that we should all be considering, right? Because once your child turns 18, parents lose automatic legal authority, hospitals cannot share medical information, and parents cannot make medical decisions. And some of us simply don't think about that. What happens to minor children if both parents die without naming guardians? A judge decides who raises your children. Family members may disagree, and the process can take months. Again, if you love your children, make the decision and don't leave it in the hands of someone who doesn't know you, doesn't know your children, right? So estate planning gives you back your power. It helps you to protect your children, it helps you to avoid court delays, it helps you to preserve the wealth, the financial legacy that I hope you want to leave for whomever it is that you care about. Not everybody has biological children, but there may be other family members or other causes that you are interested in. And then, of course, if you don't care at all, then let the courts make the decision that I'm not talking to you. But for those who care, estate planning provides clear instructions for your family. It should provide peace of mind for you while you're living, it should provide peace of mind for your family members when your time comes. Because here's the thing I always tell my clients, and initially their eyes kind of like bug out when I say it. I start off really dramatically. I'm dying, and their eyes like open, like it's an uncomfortable silence, like what? And then I'll say, and you're dying too. Because here's the God awesome, this is the truth. Nobody gets out of life alive, nobody. Why not make that plan so that when that time comes, it's a little easier for your family to handle. You know what? I'm gonna tell this story really quickly. Um, there was, there is, because he's always living in my mind. There is a mentor that I have. Um, he has now made his transition. I will. Not will not name his name just to keep his privacy. But he was a mentor that I meant when I was in college. And um after I graduated and started my career, I would he he was just a guru, okay, just brilliant administrator, college administrator. And I would always invite him to whatever college I was working at. I would invite him to come and speak and share his knowledge with the students within with our faculty and um and our staff. And let me do the math. Like 15 years before he actually transitioned, before he actually died, I got a call from him and he said, Aya, will you speak at my funeral?

SPEAKER_01 44:52

I'm like, what?

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Are you sick? What's going on? Like, who does that? Who calls and says, Will you speak at my funeral to anybody? I'd never heard anything like that. And so um, he said no, because I had just seen him like a couple of weeks before that. And he said, No, I'm I'm in great health. There's no problem. In fact, I'm he was about to go out of the country. And I said, Well, why would you ask me such a question? And he said, Oh, I'm getting all my, I'm getting everything in order for when I make my transition. And I was like, What? Now, mind you, I was in my 20s at that time. I just never conceived of that. I said, What does that even look like? So he's telling me he was doing his estate planning, and in addition to that, he had written out his obituary because you know, often your children don't know that's you know the expanse of your life. Okay. He'd written out his obituary, he had also written out specific instructions for his homegoing service, he had paid for his plot where he was going to be buried, he had paid for his caskets, he had determined which pastor he wanted to um officiate at his homegoing services. He had the Bible verses that he wanted read, what music who he wanted to perform. He had quite a few celebrities on that list and civil rights um uh icons who were going to speak. This guy was someone who had really done a lot in his lifetime. And he was asking if I would be available to speak. So after I like picked my lower lip off the ground and got over the shock, I said, Well, yeah, I'll I'll I guess so. I'll I'll be honored. And he actually didn't make his transition until 15 years later. Now, let me tell you what I found out that this mentor of mine had done. Not only had he done his estate plan, um, his first wife had died like 20-some years earlier, and then he had married, remarried many, many, many, many, many years later. Um, his children were all grown, he had grandchildren, all of that. But he called a family meeting, and he shared with his family exactly what his estate plan was, what books he was donating to this institution, what items, you know, even art pieces, what was going to every this person. If you picked up a lamp in his home and looked underneath it, you will see a sticker that would say who gets it. He had painstakingly inventoried everything, all of his assets, his stocks, his every asset he had. And he had written down a plan and he called a family meeting and laid it all out for them. And he said, if you have any questions or issues, bring it up now. What I do not want to, I guess, see from the other side is anybody going at each other about any decision I've made. Talk to me now. He also wanted to protect his new wife, right? And um I wasn't part of that meeting, I was not a member of his family. He just told me about it afterwards, and you know, some people had some concerns about some things, and he addressed all of their concerns and everything. And I'm telling you, that funeral went off without a hitch. Family members didn't have to bicker about well, what was dad's favorite hymn? And no, I think he would have preferred this verse, or I think he would want to be dressed in so-and-so. And I think no, he had instructions down to what food would be served at his repast. Now, I know some of you may think that's controlling. No, for me, I'm thinking that would be absolute peace of mind because I'm one of seven children when my brother's transitioned now, so one of six. And I would hate for when I am grieving either one of my parents making having made their transition to not be at loggerheads with my family, with my brothers and sisters because this person sees things this way and the other person sees it, and we can't quite agree. I would love that we just have a sheet of paper and we can say, This is what mama said she wants. That's what we're doing. This is what dad, this is what pop said he wants, that's what we're doing. And here's even where it gets even better. And they provided the resources for it. Because I talk to people all the time about estates planning. And by the way, when you do your estate planning, you start to figure out oh, wait a second, maybe I need to have a life insurance plan. Oh, wait a second, maybe I need to have a burial insurance plan. It helps you to really pull things together to understand exactly what your financial situation is so that you don't die and your family is now, in addition to grieving you, we gotta do a GoFundMe. We gotta sell some fish dinners. We gotta hope that somebody will donate the potato salad, and somebody's gonna donate the lemonade, and someone is gonna donate the iced tea, and who's bringing the rolls and so on and so forth. I mean, what peace of mind if you can just focus on let us celebrate a life well lived, and we're not going back and forth about finances, and we're not going back and forth. Well, well, where did mama keep this? And where did mama keep that? And we've searched the whole house, we've torn up everything, every drawer, whatever, and we can't find the password to her bank. Oh, she's got cryptocurrency, but nobody knows how to access the account. Do y'all get y'all understanding the importance of embracing your power in this area of estate planning? And then finally, I just want to leave you with this. If you're still someone who is saying, not my problem, I'm gonna be a little harsh here, and I'm going to say how very incredibly selfish of you. See, because then you leave that mess that you didn't take care of for other people, because somebody has to decide what happens with your things or whether it's just thrown out on the streets. Someone has to decide how to get you buried, whether you want to be cremated, whether you want to be buried, whether you want, you know, whatever honors you want for your um home going. Someone has to decide, hey, you still have a car payment. What do we do with this? And let's say you had dependents, minor children, or maybe even adult parents that you were helping to care for. Because those of us who are in the sandwich generation, we have both, right? You have your children and you have your parents, and let's say you die, or you're incapacitated. Now it's two generations suffering. If you were helping to assist your parents and you're also raising your children, and you didn't put any plan in place, and then the stress that puts on your loved ones. Consider if you're leaving behind a spouse who all of a sudden, true story, young man in his early 30s had a great job making over$200,000 a year, five children. His wife was a stay-at-home mom with five young children, makes absolute sense, and he was making good money. No life insurance policy. He gets hit. Typically, a drunk driver who survives, but you die overnight. The only policy the wife had access to was the one and a half times the husband's um annual salary, the policy that came with his job. Five children living on the East Coast, you know how expensive homes are, mortgages, all of that. She went from a certain amount of income each month to zero. Meanwhile, he wasn't just taking care of his nuclear family, he was also the oldest child who was assisting his elderly parents and helping to put some of his siblings through school. His family is thinking, oh, she's getting a life insurance policy. She needs to split that with the family. But think about it. If you have five children, you have a mortgage to pay each month, no additional money is coming in. The life insurance policy is not enough to pay off the house. And even if you did, now you're going to have to figure out okay, child care while you go get a job, and who knows what level of education she had, and so on and so forth. But at the same time, the family saying you don't even get to keep that whole life insurance policy. We want some of it. So instead of burying him here in the United States, they bullied her into using some of that life insurance policy money to fly his body to his family's country of origin to bury him there, further eating into the resources that it had available. And now this woman can't even grieve the loss of her spouse, the loss of the father of her children. She's immediately torn, you know, thrown into, I gotta figure things out. But he had no will.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

So now she can't even sell the house quickly and downsize because she has to go through the probate process to get the letter of administration that gives her permission to sell the house because his name is also on the house. Can you imagine the level of stress?

SPEAKER_00 56:28

Yeah, estate planning is for your peace of mind. You're taking back the power for your peace of mind, but you're also taking back the power to really show love and care and concern to those you leave behind, and if it's important to you to secure your legacy to the best of your ability beyond your time physically here on earth. So if you got nothing else from everything that I've had to share with you today, let me say this to you. We talked about two major things today who controls your community and who controls your legacy, and both come down to one word decision. So vote locally, learn the candidates, create your estate plan now, not next week, not in two months, not next year, now because freedom is not just a concept, it is a responsibility, and I leave you with this will you leave behind clarity or chaos? The choice is yours. This is Rethinking Freedom, and I'm Aya Fubara and Ellie. Please like, please share, please subscribe if you're on our YouTube channel. And if you've never visited our YouTube channel, we have a goal. Our goal is to be at 20,000 subscribers by the end of April, and we need your help, and we're doing great work here. So go like, subscribe, and share at Rethinking Freedom on YouTube. And we look forward to seeing you back here same time next week. The decision is yours. Take the power back, get informed, vote, vote locally, but also make the time and invest in creating an estate plan for yourself and for those who live who live on past you. Thank you.