Today I'm joined by Lutheran probate attorney Jen Gumble of Organized Afterlife!

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Remy: This episode of Lutheran Answers is brought to you by our sponsor, Dial A Podcast. Dial A Podcast, proud sponsor of Lutheran Answers, provides a simple yet powerful solution to bring your church's sermons and Bible studies closer to those who might be a step away from the digital world. Getting started with a local telephone number is easy, allowing anyone to listen to your content with just a phone call at their convenience. It's an excellent way for congregations of all size to extend their reach. Get started with a 30 day risk free trial at dialapodcast.com and ensure no one misses out out on your church's messages.

Not the best show in the world, but I just keep it light.

Jen, thanks for conversational. So, yeah, thanks for coming on.

Let's see. I do have show notes here that. See, if I were better at this, I would have the show notes up already.

But we are going to discuss a couple of things. Memento Mori, Vacation as Vocation as a legacy, and anything that we can fit within those topics, including why you're a Lutheran, how these things are distinct in Lutheran theology and practice.

But to get us started off, your thing is organized afterlife. You are a probate attorney, huh?

[00:01:32] Jen: Yep. Probate and estate planning attorney.

And the.

There, there's a couple parts of that where you, I get to kind of see the results of people's lives, you know, on a daily basis.

And then kind of the importance of education, having an estate plan that works.

[00:01:55] Remy: Okay.

[00:01:56] Jen: So that's where the online stuff comes into it. Um, almost. I, I joke with people. There needs to be a Dave Ramsey of death.

[00:02:03] Remy: So that's nice. Oh my gosh. Can you please. That is so great. A Dave Ramsey of death. Can you please? That should be like your whole brand. That's amazing.

[00:02:18] Jen: It's like, it's like I say, I say in three words and everyone gets it. It's so funny.

[00:02:23] Remy: Yeah.

A Dave Ramsey of death. I'm writing that down. There's no particular reason I'm writing that down. I just think that is so great. Oh my gosh. It does, it does encapsulate everything you do. Huh? Because like now I totally get it.

[00:02:40] Jen: Yep.

[00:02:41] Remy: I totally get it. Wow.

Even though you're a probate attorney, how often do your friends and family ask you to go to traffic court for them?

[00:02:50] Jen: I've, I've done it a couple times.

Just probably more recently in my career I've been able to, to really niche down. But for a long time I was a, I was a small town attorney.

[00:03:01] Remy: Oh.

[00:03:01] Jen: And so like, like, I loved estate planning. And probate, but every once in a while, you know, like, I've been a city attorney for some small cities and, you know, traffic court for family, and I was successful.

[00:03:16] Remy: I.

I'm. I'm always amazed. I. It's going to sound like I get tickets all the time. I don't. I've used this guy twice in, like, the last 10 years. But there's this guy in our town, and I don't know. I mean, I assume it's legal because he's an attorney, but he. He'll just be like, he called me because I submitted her. I. So look, I rolled a stop sign on Thanksgiving, and there was no one on the road, no one anywhere except the cop literally hiding in the bushes watching the stop sign because it's the most run stop sign in our town. And it was Thanksgiving Day, and he.

[00:03:55] Jen: I know those type of intersections.

[00:03:56] Remy: Yeah, yeah. He had to work Thanksgiving Day and hated it.

[00:04:00] Jen: Yeah, yeah.

[00:04:01] Remy: And my registration was expired, and I hadn't gotten that taken care of.

[00:04:08] Jen: Right.

[00:04:08] Remy: Because I had a check engine light. And in North Carolina, you're not going to pass an inspection with a check engine light. And so I had to get my car inspections. I had to get my car fixed before I could get my inspection. And then in North Carolina, it's tax and tags together.

[00:04:23] Jen: Oh, my God.

[00:04:24] Remy: So when this guy pulls me over, it's Thanksgiving Day, and he's got to work. He writes me a ticket for rolling the stop sign for out of date registration, and then he writes me a third ticket for having failed a previous inspection because of the check engine light, which I didn't even know you could get a ticket for.

[00:04:43] Jen: Right.

[00:04:43] Remy: And so I called this little. This little local attorney in town, and.

And he was like, yeah, send me 200 bucks. It's done.

And I was like, okay. So I literally just sent me a link online. I paid him 200 bucks. A week later, he sent me an email and was like, hey, it all got dismissed. I was like, do I have to go get my car inspected or show proof? He was like, no.

I was like, okay. I don't know what he does, but it's. I assume it's legal and right, you know, I guess I don't want to know what he does anyway. Attorneys, y'all are like magic to me, the way y'all make things happen.

[00:05:19] Jen: That's why I went to. That was part of the reason why I went to law school. It's like, I want to know the magic.

[00:05:24] Remy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the magic exactly Is it just knowing the law? You just know the law really well.

[00:05:31] Jen: Right. Well. And especially, especially being a probate attorney. It's, it's like you just, you just understand the bureaucracy of it really well.

And then, you know, like, there's all sorts of different kinds of law that are just like different types of people gravitate towards. You know, like there's kind of your standard. Like I, you know, like some people will be like, I watched lawyer shows growing up and I just always like to argue and blah, blah, Bl. And I was never that person. I, you know, I was like, I like teaching, but. But I don't have the energy for teaching kids in a classroom.

[00:06:05] Remy: Right.

[00:06:06] Jen: Thank God. I figured that out pretty quick.

And so I just like, kept on like, okay, like, older, older, older. And then I shadowed an attorney in my hometown that did estate planning and probate and all that, you know, kind of all that stuff. And I realized he was teaching. He was teaching adults that would come in, like, really interested in the answer. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's. Yeah, let's do that.

[00:06:29] Remy: So, yeah, that's neat. It's funny you say that, like different types of bureaucracy and knowing it. You know, I had a buddy who, another lawyer, tangent, who had, he went on a mission, trip to Africa, met a woman, fell in love. They got married.

[00:06:49] Jen: Oh my God.

[00:06:50] Remy: They had kids. Yep, yep. And then he, they tried to come over here. She cannot get a visa. They go, they do all the paperwork. They do every kind of paperwork and they get turned down. And so then they, they try it again and it's always the interview where they were failing it. No.

[00:07:08] Jen: And they were already married.

[00:07:09] Remy: Yeah, yeah.

[00:07:10] Jen: With kids. Oh my God. Cuz my, yeah, my husband, My husband has a green card. And we did the interview and that was. And, and it was like the easiest. And I kind of had a theory of, you know, because my husband's from Germany and I kind of had a theory. I kind of had a theory that there's. I think there's, there's some maybe systemic justice, you know, like, certain countries are easy time of it and some countries don't.

[00:07:33] Remy: Absolutely. Some countries have an easy time of it and some don't. I'm. I'm 100% certain of that.

But yeah, he, they struggled. They failed the interview three times, and on the third time they were told, she's never, she's never getting a visa now. Like three strikes and you're out. It's not happening.

[00:07:52] Jen: Yeah. I mean, it is. Yeah.

[00:07:54] Remy: Yeah. So they they contacted an immigration attorney and he had her a visa inside of like, two, three weeks.

[00:08:03] Jen: Yep.

[00:08:04] Remy: Boom. Done.

[00:08:04] Jen: Yeah, it's. And you know, the bureaucracy, you know, the ways to, like, appeal stuff, you know, that. You know, the. You just know how to get around the system.

[00:08:12] Remy: Yeah.

[00:08:12] Jen: And. Yeah. And then you just help people through the system.

[00:08:16] Remy: Yeah.

[00:08:17] Jen: I watched minimize.

[00:08:18] Remy: I've watched a number. A number of my friends in immigration, specifically. A lot of guys I went to high school with ended up marrying women from China, which is like a weird statistical anomaly.

[00:08:31] Jen: Yeah.

[00:08:32] Remy: But I've watched quite a few of them struggle through that. That process on their own. And then my. My closest friend, he's also watched it, and I told him about our mutual friend Paul with his wife from Africa. And so my closest friend, he just got an immigration attorney up front, and she was o...

The Dave Ramsey of Death