Nearly a quarter of Americans have no traditional next of kin, yet the financial planning industry has long operated as if everyone will eventually have children. Melissa Joy, CFP® sits down with Maddy Roche, co-host of the Child Free Life by Design Podcast and Chief Growth Officer of Partnerships for Child Free Trust, to talk about what changes and what becomes possible when you are building a financial life without kids. 

Maddy brings both personal and professional perspective to the conversation. As someone who is child free by choice, she shares how a financial plan created specifically for her shifted her entire mindset around spending, legacy, and the concept of dying with zero. She and Melissa dig into why estate planning has been so hard for this demographic to complete, why that needs to change, and how Child Free Trust is filling a gap that trust companies and traditional advisors have largely left open. 

What You’ll Learn 

• Why child free people represent a distinct and underserved financial planning demographic 
• How planning assumptions tied to children create blind spots for advisors working with this group 
• Why long-term care insurance matters more than life insurance for most child free people 
• What the die with zero philosophy means and how it gives child free people a financial permission slip to spend and experience more 
• Why upwards of 70 percent of child free people do not have a legally binding estate plan in place 
• How to reframe estate planning as contingency planning and why it matters long before death 
• What roles are required in a complete estate plan and why they are especially hard to fill without children 
• How Child Free Trust serves as a professional fiduciary in the roles of medical and financial power of attorney, executor, and trustee 
• Why hourly billing rather than assets under management makes professional fiduciary services more accessible 
• How the Child Free Trust care document captures everything from pet care plans to end of life wishes 

Estate Planning and Membership: ChildFreeTrust.com 

Thought Leadership, Podcast, and Community: ChildFreeInsights.com 

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