Government Confiscation of Estates
A little-noticed provision of North Carolina law gives the state sweeping power to confiscate a person’s entire estate when they die. Under NCGS 116B-2.2, the government is authorized to step in after death, take control of homes, bank accounts, investments, and personal property, and absorb that wealth into state coffers. The statute lays out a clear legal pathway for the State of North Carolina to claim ownership of a deceased person’s assets, effectively overriding family expectations and private intent. For anyone who assumes their property automatically stays within the family, this law paints a far more troubling picture of what can happen once the state gets involved.
Actually, none of that is true—but you’d never know it if you stopped reading after the headline and the first paragraph. NCGS 116B-2.2 does not let North Carolina swoop in and take estates away from families. It applies only in the rarest of situations, where a person dies without a will and without any legally recognized heirs under North Carolina’s intestate succession laws—meaning no spouse, no children, no parents, no siblings, and no extended relatives, even out to very remote family lines. Only when there is literally no one left to inherit does the estate go to the state. This statute has been on the books for decades, quietly addressing a true edge case rather than some sudden policy shift. The first paragraph works precisely because it triggers an emotional reaction, not because it’s accurate—and that’s the problem. If you react to headlines instead of reading, you’ll walk away angry, misinformed, and completely wrong.
The Courts
Recently, a widow and her adult daughter contacted my office with what they believed was a very simple request. They asked if we could “just type up” Letters Testamentary so they could take control of the bank account of the deceased husband/father. In their minds, probate was a formality—a piece of paper standing between them and access to money that was already theirs. I sent them a three-part video series I created explaining how probate actually works in North Carolina, why courts—not attorneys—issue Letters Testamentary, and why the process can be far more involved than people expect, along with the few exception processes that are easier. I explained that asking me to “type up” Letters Testamentary is a bit like asking a lawyer to type up a court judgment awarding millions of dollars—those documents don’t exist until a judge says they do after a lengthy lawsuit.
What happened next was depressingly predictable. The videos went unwatched. Instead, they came back to my staff with a new instruction: if Letters Testamentary weren’t possible, then I should “just do” Letters of Administration or an Affidavit for Collection instead, because that’s what the bank told them to ask for. In other words, they skimmed the situation, latched onto a different phrase that sounded easier, and assumed the outcome would change if they just used the right words, all without bothering to watch the videos. The problem wasn’t a lack of information—it was a refusal to engage with it. They didn’t want the process to be more complicated than a headline or a checklist, so they rejected anything that suggested otherwise. And just like with misleading news stories and misunderstood laws, wanting something to be simple doesn’t make it simple—especially when the law is involved.
The Media
Unfortunately, this happens far too often and not just when it comes to estate planning and administration. News media make money from advertising, and even online, generating clicks, likes, and shares. And the whole truth doesn’t really matter nearly as much as the “clickbait” headlines. One of the things I discovered during my recent Social Media Detox (https://youtu.be/RaXErdCnOwg?si=srtOweUL-QU6BzX7) is that people are spending far more time engaging with content based on their preconceived opinions without actually reading or viewing things all the way through to actually understand it.
One of the first videos I viewed after the detox was about a municipality in Chicagoland, Illinois, that was installing two EV Charging Stations at its town hall. Apparently, the Facebook post from the municipality was flooded with comments about 1) how wasteful the municipality was being spending taxpayer money on the chargers, 2) how there weren’t many electric vehicles in the area to justify the taxpayer money being spent on
the charging stations, and 3) that the municipality would have to maintain the charging stations at the taxpayers’ cost without any compensation. “A total waste of taxpayer money!”
The problem was that all of that was false. The company creating the charging stations was incurring the cost for the unit and installation. There is a growing number of people purchasing electric vehicles in the municipality and the surrounding communities, and it could bring more shoppers to their town. And the municipality was getting a percentage of the charging fees that the consumer paid that would be used to help
maintain the stations. All of this would have been obvious to anyone who actually read the post instead of just reacting emotionally to the headline based on their preconceived notions.
The Truth
When it comes to estate planning and media in general, it helps to get at least a basic understanding before reacting. I was recently told of someone a colleague spoke with about estate planning, and the possible client was proudly, loudly, and wrongly saying they didn’t need a revocable living trust because they had the “better” plan of using beneficiary designations on accounts to leave everything to their children and grandchildren. On top of that, their Will placed proper age limits on the inheritance for the grandchildren. Apparently, the bank (or someone) told her she didn’t need a trust because pay-on-death designations on accounts avoid probate, and she just ran with it.
Spoiler alert: the Will and its age limits are completely ineffective for accounts that avoid probate since the Will only covers assets in probate.
Unfortunately for her, she will never realize how wrong she is, because she was reacting to the “headline” she liked, which was the bank telling her that beneficiary designations are the way to go without needing a trust. She’ll never do the reading to realize how wrong she is. Just like the people who called my office about creating “Letters Testamentary” will not understand that things are not that simple until they call multiple law firms and keep getting told they are wrong.
Sometimes, you have to do the reading to understand without just relying on the headline. If you actually want to understand more about probate and the best ways to avoid it, please check out the information at www.FreeTrustCourse.com.