ASHE COUNTY — For some people, retirement just means the opportunity to find something else to do. That’s what lifelong Ashe County natives Pam Barlow and Ben Hurley have discovered with their recent decision to start Strategic Estate Planning of the High Country, LLC.
Barlow, who just announced her decision to retire as Ashe County Clerk of Superior Court, will join Ben Hurley and his wife, Grier Hurley, forming the business as a way to help individuals make some of the most important decisions they will ever make in their lives.
Ben will be retiring at the end of this month after a 35-year career practicing law alongside business partner John Kilby in West Jefferson. Kilby will be continuing to practice law at the same office in downtown. Grier, a native of Wilmington, met Ben in law school at Campbell University and the two married in 1988. Grier retired as the attorney for the Ashe County Department of Social Services in 2021. Barlow has served as the Ashe County Clerk of Superior Court since 2006 and will be retiring on Dec. 1 before officially joining Strategic Estate Planning of the High Country in January of 2025.
“The reason for my decision to retire was I just wanted to retire from the full-time practice of law,” Ben said. “We all wanted to do a lot less and do more of what we want to do.”
Strategic Estate Planning of the High Country will help people make estate decisions with Last Will and Testaments, Living Wills, Health Care Power of Attorneys and Financial Power of Attorneys.
“As a clerk, estates are where I had most of my training, ever since I started in 1996, in what we consider special proceedings, which are adoptions, foreclosures and partitions. I love guardianship, I love the estate work. It is a sad topic but it is a huge part of the clerk’s office,” Barlow explained. “We have seen the bad parts of it for so long we want to try to provide a service for people around here that would protect that family farm, that would protect those family assets that people have worked their entire life for.”
Even with the decision to take a step back from practicing law each day, Ben said he will always have be grateful for his time spent working alongside his law partner.
“I’d like to thank John Kilby for being like a big brother and a second father. I’ve had great mentorship from John for all of these years and without him I would be nowhere,” Ben said. “I have had a great staff and they are just wonderful.”
Strategic Estate Planning of the High Country will officially begin accepting clients on Oct. 1. They are not planning on having a brick-and-mortar building but will be easily accessible via phone and a website that they are currently working on.
“We will come to a client, we will meet with them at their residence, we will meet them at a public place or we’ll meet them at our homes. We’ll take it on a case by case basis,” Ben said.
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