By Associate Attorney Ashley N. Bonomini

Marriage is one of life's most important commitments, but it is also a legal and financial partnership. When most people think of prenuptial agreements, they think of divorce planning, but it is so much more than that.  A prenuptial agreement can be a foundational component of a sound estate and business plan.

While discussing a prenuptial agreement may not seem romantic, it provides couples with an opportunity to establish clear expectations regarding financial matters and protect their interests before entering into marriage. One of the primary benefits of a prenuptial agreement is the protection of premarital assets. Individuals entering a marriage often have property they wish to keep separate, such as real estate, investment accounts, retirement savings, family inheritances, or ownership interests in a business.

Many people are shocked to learn that, immediately upon marriage, your spouse has automatic rights as it relates to inheritance!  You cannot legally disinherit your spouse in North Carolina or leave them less than the statutory “elective share,” which is a percentage of your estate based on the number of years you are married, unless you have a prenuptial agreement.

Therefore, individuals who expect to receive an inheritance or who wish to preserve family assets for children from a prior relationship often use prenuptial agreements as part of their estate planning strategy.  A prenup can help ensure that inherited assets remain separate property and can clarify how assets will be distributed in conjunction with a comprehensive estate plan. This is significant for individuals entering a second (or third) marriage or those with children from prior relationships who want to preserve assets intended for their children or other beneficiaries while balancing the financial needs of a new spouse.

Likewise, prenuptial agreements are particularly valuable for business owners. A business may represent years of hard work and substantial financial investment. Without a prenup, questions may arise regarding the appreciation in value of the business during the marriage or whether marital efforts contributed to its growth. A carefully drafted agreement can help protect the business and minimize the risk of costly litigation. This is vital for business owners looking to protect their business and livelihood from distribution to a spouse as part of a divorce or at death.

To be enforceable in North Carolina, a prenuptial agreement must be in writing and signed by both parties before the marriage. The agreement should be entered into voluntarily, and both parties should have adequate time to review the terms and seek independent legal counsel. Waiting until just days before a wedding can create unnecessary pressure and may increase the likelihood of future challenges to the validity of the agreement.

Ultimately, a prenuptial agreement is not just about planning for divorce. Instead, it is a proactive planning tool that allows couples to make informed decisions about their financial future.

Jesson & Rains, PLLC, has recently added the preparation of prenuptial agreements to our service offerings.  We understand that discussing a prenuptial agreement can be a sensitive topic. Our attorneys work closely with clients to create customized agreements that protect their interests while promoting fairness, transparency, and peace of mind. Whether you are entering your first marriage, a second marriage, own a business, have significant assets, or simply want to establish clear financial expectations, our team can guide you through the process with professionalism and care.

By Associate Attorney Nicole M. Perozzi
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High school graduation season is here! If your child is heading off to college this fall, you’ve probably got a million things to do.  From making tuition deposits, to picking meal plan selections, to buying dorm supplies—the checklist of things to do over the next few months feels never-ending.  However, there’s one important item that most parents do not even realize is missing from their checklists.

Now that your child is 18 years old, you no longer have the legal right to make financial or medical decisions for them.  Colleges won’t discuss academic or financial records with you, even if you are the one paying the tuition. Doctors and hospitals won’t share any information with you about your child’s health, even in an emergency. You may be thinking, “But they’re still on my health insurance!” Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter.

The good news is there are three simple documents that can fix this: a Financial Power of Attorney, a Health Care Power of Attorney, and a HIPAA Authorization.  A Financial Power of Attorney allows your child to appoint a trusted individual to help manage their financial affairs now or if they are unable to do so in the future.  A Health Care Power of Attorney allows your child to appoint a health care agent to make medical decisions for them in the event of incapacity or unconsciousness.  A HIPAA Authorization allows your child to designate individuals to receive health care information about them, regardless of incapacity. Together, these documents ensure that you can still be there for your child when it matters the most.

Getting a Financial Power of Attorney, a Health Care Power of Attorney, and HIPAA Authorization signed before move-in day is easier than you think.  Having a conversation with our team here at Jesson & Rains means one less thing on your checklist this summer.  Plus, you can use this as an opportunity to talk with your child about what to do in an emergency and how you can still be a resource to them, even as they start this new chapter all on their own.  Give us a call!

​By Attorney Kelly Jesson

You’re working hard, building wealth, and, because you're a responsible person, you've purchased a large life insurance policy to protect your family when you're gone.  While that's admirable, this is one of the most common planning errors we see among high-net-worth individuals. They do everything right in terms of getting the life insurance, but the way they structure ownership quietly sets their heirs up for a significant, and often completely avoidable, tax bill.

Here's what many affluent individuals don't realize: when you die owning a life insurance policy, the death benefit gets included in your taxable estate, even if you name a beneficiary.

Think about that for a moment. You purchase a $5 million life insurance policy to take care of your family. You pay the premiums. The policy is in your name. You are the owner.  You name your kids as the beneficiaries.  And when you pass away, the IRS considers that $5 million to be part of your estate, along with your home, investment accounts, business interests, retirement, etc., even though the money goes to your kids.

If your estate is already large, adding a $5 million life insurance death benefit could push you into federal estate tax territory or deepen the tax burden significantly if you're already there.

As of 2026, the federal estate tax exemption is $15 million per individual ($30 million for married couples using portability). For most people, that is a large, unreachable number.  But it’s certainly easier to hit if you add a $5 million (or larger!) life insurance policy to your portfolio.  At your death, if your estate exceeds the exemption threshold, the federal estate tax rate is 40% on every dollar above the limit.

A $5 million life insurance policy owned in your name could generate $2 million in federal estate taxes that would not have existed if the policy had been structured correctly.

Even worse, if you had purchased that life insurance policy in order to pay estate tax so your family wouldn’t have to liquidate real estate or business interests, now you have $2 million less with which to pay said tax.

The good news is that this problem has a well-established, time-tested solution: an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust, commonly called an ILIT.  Instead of owning the life insurance policy yourself, the trust is the policy owner, the trust pays the premiums, and the trust is the beneficiary of the death benefit, which means that it is not part of your estate when you pass away.  The trust can then distribute funds to your heirs according to the terms you establish.

While it’s not impossible to transfer an existing policy to an ILIT, it is a lot trickier (because you are “gifting” some present value and there’s a three-year look back period), which is why we are always disheartened to begin working with a high net worth individual only to learn that they were just sold a large insurance policy. Or even worse if they purchase the policy after they start working with us without telling us about it! The latter example is one of the reasons why we have an annual estate planning Legacy Care Club so we can stay in routine contact with our clients and their trusted advisors.

To summarize, for high-net-worth individuals, large life insurance policies can sometimes do more harm than good.  Additionally, it is important to involve your estate planning attorney (a fiduciary) in important decisions like this.  The better approach is to have the ILIT purchase the policy from the start.

Please give Jesson & Rains a call if you’d like to talk about whether an ILIT makes sense for your situation. You should review any existing policies to ensure your strategy to protect your family does not end up costing them a fortune.

By Attorney Kelly Jesson

If you changed jobs in the last decade (and statistically, you probably did), there is a real chance that a piece of your retirement savings is floating somewhere in financial limbo. And if something happens to you before you track it down, your executor may never find it either.

A landmark report released in September 2025 by Capitalize, a retirement savings platform, in partnership with the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, put numbers to a problem that estate planning attorneys have long seen play out in probate: Americans are losing track of their retirement money at an astonishing increasing rate.[1]  As of July 2025, an estimated $2.1 trillion dollars in 401(k) accounts have been forgotten or left behind by their owners. That’s nearly 25% of all money held in 401(k) plans nationwide!  The average forgotten account balance is $66,691. That is not pocket change.

When a plan administrator cannot locate a participant, the account does not just sit there indefinitely. After a period of attempted contact, administrators may transfer the funds to the state as unclaimed property, a process known as escheatment. At that point, the tax-deferred growth stops, taxes and potential penalties may be withheld, and your heirs are left hunting through state databases to reclaim what should have been a straightforward inheritance.

And that’s if your heirs even find out about it!  This is not a problem of bad intentions. It is a problem of disorganization and assumption. People assume their family knows. They assume the accounts are obvious. They assume it will all work itself out. It often does not.

The legal reality is that your executor has a fiduciary duty to identify and gather all assets of the estate. But your executor can only find what they know to look for. A forgotten 401(k) from a job held in 2007 may never appear on any document they find in your files. Without a comprehensive inventory of your financial life, you are leaving your family to do archaeology instead of administration.

As an added service to our clients, Jesson & Rains can work with our clients to create what we call a “Family Wealth Inventory.”  We ask our clients to upload all of their financial statements, we verify type and title of assets and beneficiary designations, and then we organize it in a way that makes it easy for the family and executor to locate assets when the client passes away.  If a client has a trust, the Family Wealth Inventory also includes detailed instructions for transferring the asset to their trust.  For our Annual Legacy Plan clients, we will keep the Family Wealth Inventory updated every year.

If your loved one has already passed away without a family wealth inventory, here are a few resources available to search for missing assets: 

• Department of Labor Retirement Savings Lost & Found Database: lostandfound.dol.gov 
• UnclaimedRetirementBenefits.com 
• State Unclaimed Property Databases: Each state maintains a free, searchable database. You can search all 50 states at once via MissingMoney.com
• Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation: pbgc.gov.
• Contact the HR or benefits department of any prior employer. If the company has closed, search the DOL's Form 5500 database for the plan administrator's contact information.

If you’re interested in creating and maintaining a Family Wealth Inventory, give Jesson & Rains a call!