0:00 [music] Who are you? And where are you going? What do you want? Hello and welcome to Trust and Estates Weekly. I'm your host, Kevin Bemmel, and I'm here every Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific time to talk about estate planning and trust and probate administration. uh both from the standpoint of professionals like myself and my guest Josh Jerger who I'll introduce in just a
0:36 moment and also for you know lay people people who don't do this professionally but they may find hey you know unfortunately mom has passed away and I'm her executive or successor trustee what do I what should I be doing you know how do I talk to the advisors in a more intelligent way so I'm I'm really pleased pleased to introduce to you my friend Josh Jagger. Josh hails from what I consider to be my hometown, Santa Barbara, California. It's it's where I went to school from third grade through high school. Uh if you've never been to
1:12 Santa Barbara, all the Santa Barbarians will be mad at me for saying this, but go. [laughter] It's one of the most beautiful places in the world. It always has perfect weather. And uh you know just having grown up there as a kid I I have to tell you it was really an ide idyllic upbringing. But uh Josh is a uh estate planning and and uh probate and trust attorney. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time introducing him. I'm going to let Josh tell you a little bit about himself just so you get a flavor for his background. And then we want to jump right into our subject because we
1:48 actually have uh Josh has a lot I know that he wants to talk about and and knowing his expertise, it's all going to be good stuff. So, so Josh, just tell us, you know, give us kind of the the sound bite on your background so people know who you are.
2:03 >> Um, I'm a trust and estate attorney. So, that means that I do three things like almost all trust and estates attorneys. draft new docs for the young family that just has a condo and a kid and uh refresh documents that are old where mom and dad are in their 60s or 70s and the drafting attorney is retired or dead and somebody needs to do do a refresh
2:27 >> and then hold the hand of the successor trustee which is usually the eldest daughter uh to settle up mom and dad's estate when they're done. So, those are kind of the three primary service offerings that almost every trust and estate attorney does. Some of us specialize in different niches. I'd say my uh niche is the mass market. Um where most of my colleagues focus their practice on pretty sophisticated planning. That's what we get trained in. That's what our mentors have taught us about.
2:59 >> Uh and so lots of cool sophisticated things because those clients are fun, frankly, and they pay more. Uh, and my practice is kind of the mass market, you know, in-n-out burger for trust and estates planning for, you know, the millionaire next door.
3:14 >> Uh, so when when client potential clients come with a net worth above 10 million bucks, I say, "Look, you're probably better served by one of my colleagues
3:24 >> that has a practice that's really designed for more sophisticated tax planning than than I'm geared to do."
3:32 >> Yeah. Now, here in California, pretty much anybody who owns a house is is, you know, gonna and if they have any other assets, they're going to be, you know, pretty much a millionaire, right? So,
3:43 >> yeah, pretty much.
3:44 >> It's a huge market here in California, right?
3:46 >> Yeah. I mean, we we've got 10 million baby boomers in California
3:52 >> and uh all of them are going to be dead in the next 25 years. So whether they have an estate plan or don't have an estate plan, there's going to be 10 million estates or trusts to settle to go through that transfer process either in front of a judge or over the kitchen table with the help of a CPA or attorney or professional fiduciary. Right? So the the need is massive. And my thesis is there's only 5,000 trust and estates attorneys in California. And most of us are focusing on the really big estates
4:24 >> because those are gooey and they're fun and they're highpaying and they're complicated. And so what I've decided with my practice is I'm going to flip it and say I'm going to I'm going to focus on let's say the 8 million baby boomers that have less than 10 million bucks and leave the rich baby boomers to my colleagues who there aren't even enough to do all of those. There's just I mean
4:47 >> for every two trust and estates attorneys that are leaving practice because they're baby boomers, [clears throat]
4:52 >> one is coming into the practice. So we got this collision of the best and brightest of my colleagues, the the best attorneys, the best parallegals, the best judges, the best probate referees, they're all leaving because they're 65 years old and they're retiring. So there there is a train wreck coming and I'm trying to build my practice to be really lean and efficient. Uh everything 100% remote. So we're serving clients all over California and uh it's it's flipping burgers. It's it's In-N-Out Burger for Trust Estates practice.
5:28 >> Yeah. Okay. But it's In-N-Out Burgers, not McDonald's. So
5:31 >> yeah, In-N-Out for sure. Come on. Seriously.
5:34 >> Yeah. Exactly.
5:35 >> There's no comparison.
5:37 >> Exactly. So be before we we started the show, you were talking about, you know, kind of this I think it's a conceptual idea of, you know, if you only had an hour to speak to, you know, mom um a month or two before she passes and and there, you know, you wanted to avoid the chaos that that is attendant, the financial chaos attendant to, you know, a parent passing away. you know what would you what would you want to talk about right and so that's I think if if
6:13 the core of of kind of your what what you want to talk about today so start peeling that for us so we can understand why this is important why it's something that like you said you know there's 10 million baby boomers but there's but you know gen Gen X is not that far behind so how many gen ers are there. Right. So, there's got to be another what, five, eight, 10 million Gen Xers as well, right?
6:41 >> Yeah. They're all going to be the the successor trustees.
6:46 >> Uh they're they're the ones that are trying to figure out this mess after mom died. The the genesis,
6:51 >> but then just to interrupt you a minute being the successor trustee, they're probably also the beneficiaries. And so now they're getting all of this. What are they going to do with it? Are they going to, you know, if it was a mess, are they going to keep it a mess or are they going to do theirs? That for me that's really a that's the next conversation. Maybe that's another podcast that we do. Yeah. But but this is more about me stubbing my toe doing helping the eldest daughter do settlements
7:17 >> and saying dog gone it. Why didn't anyone check ahead of time if the house was in the trust? we have a trust,
7:25 >> but nobody bothered to pull a deed
7:27 >> or why didn't we check ahead of time if the beneficiaries on the IAS were updated because the beneficiary said dad is the uh is the primary beneficiary but dad died first and there was no contingent named on that IRA
7:41 >> or why didn't anyone ask about this time share that's going to be an absolute catastrophe to get through the administration
7:51 >> why didn't why didn't we just ditch Why didn't why didn't we sell it to one of the kids for a buck uh a month before mom died? So, there's all these things that I kept on stubbing my toe on the post- deathath administration, whether it's a trust or a probate,
8:05 >> and realizing, man, a lot of these complicated knots could have been untied if we only had a couple of hours with mom ahead of time. And it's pretty rare that mom dies in a surprise. It's usually like a, "Hey, look, mom's sick. we should have the trust reviewed. And like the most common scenario is we should have the trust reviewed. We pull it out. It last refreshed in 2007 and we call the guy that drafted that trust and he's retired because he was dad's golfing buddy. And so my my I call
8:40 those orphan orphan uh trust docs or orphan settlements where the person that once held the seed of trust to help with these things isn't there anymore because they were almost always a contemporary of the settlers. Mhm.
8:54 >> So then we do this frantic, well, who can review this trust? And the attorneys say, 'N no, I don't review other people's work product. I'll draft you a new one if you want. We can do a full restatement for eight grand. And then like it's like, no, I don't think you understand. Mom's on hospice. Like we got a boogie. So we've got these orphan trusts and they are what I also observed is when when the eldest daughter or the family or the lady with the bad diagnosis is calling, she's thinking in the context, I need an attorney to read the words of the document, the four corners of the document, and identify
9:29 for me what words should be refreshed. Sometimes they have their own um their own preferences. Hey, uh, one of the kids, uh, has had an a drug abuse problem. I don't think it's going to be smart to write them a check for 750 grand. Can we do a long-term trust for them? Or I want to do some gifts to some charities, or there's been some grandkids or divorces or deaths since the since the document was last made. So, there's some like refresh stuff that the client knows they should do. Mhm.
9:59 >> And then there's also legacy language within the trust document that deserves a look, we don't really need to do the bypass because nobody's taxable here and this not this is going to be a waste of time if we have this. Right.
10:09 >> Right.
10:10 >> But but the problems that come up in the settlement sometimes are solved by uh amending the trust but mostly are not. The problems are mostly outside the four corners. And so even when the client does have the drafting attorney still available to help do the amendments or the restatement, that actually doesn't solve all the problems.
10:34 >> Mhm.
10:34 >> So having uh injured my toes enough time on these things, I've created kind of a [clears throat] what would the checklist be for the eldest daughter? like how do we what are the things we should be looking at and noting that sometimes an attorney isn't the right person to answer this question
10:54 >> because it's not about the words in the trust document. It's about the family's unique administrative issues that that aren't necessarily addressed in the trust docu.
11:06 >> So I I break it into five sections. One, you got to have the trust doc reviewed. Let's get legacy language out. Let's speed this thing up. Let's get whatever amendments mom wants in there. So, that's a trust review. Got it. We understand how to do that, right? I can give you guys some tips on the things to look for.
11:22 >> Second is let's get a detailed balance sheet because it is insane for the eldest daughter to try to be figuring out well what assets did mom have and have her looking through the mail to try to figure out where are these assets. So, a balance sheet which then helps us also with vesting. Okay. largest value asset in mom's estates, the house. Check. Where's a copy of the deed? Like, let's let's have a source of truth for every asset because I don't believe mom's right. When she says, "Oh, yeah, the uh the house is in the trust and oh yeah, uh the beneficiaries are right on the IAS. Oh yeah, I've got
11:58 everything teed up on these things." I'm like, I want to see a piece of paper that proves to me that what you're saying is true. So, balance sheet. Then I something I call the treasure map, which is kind of like the all it is really is a Microsoft Word or Google doc. It's the stuff that's really important, but it doesn't belong in the trust. Like what's the contact name for the investment advisor?
12:22 >> How do like how do we get in touch with them? Uh who are all the kids? Where where are they? Uh right
12:27 >> mom's got a collection of ukuleles. uh who's the local ukulele guy that knows about how these things are valued or the coin collection or the stamp collection or the you know whatever whatever the things are that are kind of like we the passwords are a classic one where or the note hey check in the family bible because mom hid a bunch of $100 bills in there. So things that we know that we're going to need but are not appropriately in the trust doc. So, I call it the treasure map because we're we wish we had the where is all this information
13:03 >> that doesn't fit.
13:04 >> Then there's the uh work plan, which is if you know what the trust says and you know what the balance sheet says and you know where the treasure map is of who's the local coin dealer we can trust because we don't know anything about numismatic coins, but dad did and he's got the coin collection,
13:20 >> right? Then we can the work plan is what does eldesta's daughter do first and what she do second and what she do third and what's the plan for the house and like working our way down that list. Um and then finally it's taking this work product, the trust dock, the balance sheet, the supporting data, the treasure map, the work plan, and putting it all into an online vault. And an online vault isn't anything special, right? It's just Google Drive or Microsoft Teams or like it's some place,
13:51 >> right,
13:52 >> where the successor trustee
13:54 >> can jump on it and say, "I know where everything is. We already did. We rehearsed the fire drill. The I'm not scrambling because I spent a couple hours with mom in the year that we knew she was going to die and we organized this stuff and it wasn't just review the trust doc because that's not enough to settle to make it be smooth." So that's organizationally what I'm coaching people on. Look, mom's going to die. Let's do a little bit of work ahead of time. Couple hours of work, some with an attorney. Here's the checklist of the other stuff. Let's get it refreshed so that the settlement is
14:30 streamlined because everything's at our fingertips. We already know what to do, when to do, why we're doing it.
14:35 >> Right. Right. So So you you you mapped out the five steps. Um, do you want to take us through each one more more in more detail now?
14:46 >> Yeah. So, the trust doc, uh, this is my checklist of what I'm looking for when I'm reading a trust doc that somebody else wrote and thinking, do we need to change this? And this first one, is it a mandatory funding of the bypass trust or not? really has to do with mom and dad are still alive and the the first to die is about to die.
15:11 >> So in the old days when the lifetime exemption amount was a million bucks or 600 grand when I came into the business, bypass trust funding was a thou shalt do this. This is the right thing to do because the family's got more than $1.6 million in net worth. We need to take dad's half and put it in the bypass and mom's the successor trustee on that and mom's the beneficiary and we need this because we want to avoid tax at mom's death,
15:37 >> right?
15:38 >> But things have seriously changed, right? Like each has a $15 million exemption and we have portability.
15:46 >> So for my for the clients that I'm dealing with the mass market with 10 million bucks, it's like or less. It's like you don't need a bypass.
15:54 >> Right?
15:54 >> Now I got to put a pin in that. right? Blended family maybe. Uh there there's some some fact patterns, but for the vast majority, it's like let's put a toggle on this
16:05 >> and say the bypass may be funded instead of shall be funded. And then mom and the family and the CPA or the attorney can have the conversation, well, if we fund it, this is what happens. Mom still has access to everything. We're going to have another tax return to file. We don't get a step up in basis at mom's death. Mom's healthy. is it like 15 years from now the kids are going to be locked into dad's basis when maybe it would be better to keep it in mom's basis. So we're going to have the toggle
16:33 >> the disclaimer language added. So it's the same format. It's just look we need a couple of sentences
16:38 >> to say we're not going to mandatorily fund the bypass. So that's one check for bypass. Second is when I'm reading the doc, I see uh Joe Smith is the successor trustee. And I'm like, is Joe Smith dad's brother or dad's CPA or dad's golf? Is he a contemporary? Is he ready, willing, and able to jump on this thing and do a fullcourt press administration? Or if he's from that generation, we might want to think about let's drop at a generation and have it be one of the kids or somebody else that's younger at the law firm or or CPA firm, whatever. Right? So checking the is this successor
17:14 trustee in this town ready, willing, able. Have they ever done a a trust settlement? Um uh I see a lot of times where mom and dad don't want to offend the boys and so they say, "Okay, we're going to have all three boys as co-successor trustees." It's like, "Dude, they didn't get along when they were all living in the same room in the bunk bed. They're not going to get along. Just flip a coin and pick one,
17:38 >> right? and and don't don't pretend that it's going to be easier with three of them. Just pick one,
17:44 >> right?
17:44 >> And you can have language in there like if the middle brother is the right guy to do it because he's a CPA, then have the other two brothers if he if if younger if CPA brother starts to do something crazy, then they can bounce him. And that's pretty simple. That's a pretty simple way to accommodate the concern of it's better to have one than three. and we have three because we don't want any of them to take advantage of the others. There may be some friction. All right, so give the other ones the power to bounce. Um or or have Switzerland. Switzerland's the look, if you guys don't get along, a licensed
18:19 professional fiduciary that's been in the business for five years, that's settled more than 20 trusts that has insurance that has continuing require they're a great candidate. Like if you guys can't figure this out, it's going to a professional fiduciary. So checking who how many occupants of the office there are trustee comp is a problem. Almost all truck docks say successor trustee shall be paid a reasonable amount. Eldest daughter's got a job. She's a fifth grade teacher and she's got to settle the trust and she's going to burn pick a number 40 to 100 hours over the next year chasing bank accounts
18:55 and deeds and BS for her brothers that don't appreciate her.
18:59 >> And what what is reasonable,
19:02 >> right? Let's not leave it as blank. Let's either say successor trustee, you got to take one for the team and you don't get paid. All right, we're clear. Or successor trustee, you get 1%. Or successor trustee, you get 75 bucks an hour. Like, let's say it so that there aren't fights about what reasonable is. I get I get hired probably once a month to write a comp study for a trustee because mom and dad didn't draft what reasonable means. and there's a family fight and we're arguing over a $50,000 trustee comp fee and it's like, dude, this is ridiculous. If we had just
19:37 written something in, it would have been better. Well, I I think just to interject, one of the one of the issues I see a lot in my practice, people know I'm a professional fiduciary, is I almost always am brought in when the heirs are fighting or the beneficiaries are fighting. And what I notice is most of these fights at their core don't have anything to do with the trust or the estate. It's from stuff from gener, you know, not generations, from years ago. Every slight that the beneficiaries ever, you
20:12 know, receive from each other. It's now going to get fought out in the context of the administration.
20:17 >> Totally.
20:18 >> Dad loved you more. It's about who got the bike when they were 15.
20:22 >> Right. Exactly. It's almost never real about a real issue. But the the the point is the trusty comp comes up with some frequency
20:31 >> because nobody ever defined it. Um I see this frequently. We had one I don't know maybe nine months ago.
20:38 >> Mom was dead. And so the specific gift to the church that they went to in Arizona 15 years ago that they have no relationship anymore. Tough. We got to fund it because it says give them 100 grand. And if anyone had checked the trust doc one month before mom died, mom could have write a line through it, put her initial, I don't want to give that to the church. I'm fine with the church, just not that one.
21:02 >> Yeah.
21:02 >> Great. So, specific quest. And the the last one that comes up a lot is the um the kid that has some sort of substance abuse and the family knows this is not going to be good for them to get a third of the net proceeds. We we should put this in a trust and let a independent professional fiduciary sit on it and dole out the assets. It's not good for the eldest daughter to be the one doing out money to her younger sister. Like that's such an easy amendment. It's good for the Benny. Ultimately, the Benny will wish they got the check, but if mom
21:38 knows this is going to do injury to my daughter that struggles with substance abuse and I can't leave my other daughter as the trustee, like this is an easy amendment. So those are the things that when I'm reading the four corners of the document, I'm going in and in 10 minutes just asking the client, hey, any problems with this? What about that? And those can be resolved and many hours of pain and hours of cost and family constrnation can be avoided with pretty simple amendments. Right? All of those things that I just went over, those literally are a couple of sentences of change to the existing.
22:13 Fine. Trust doc's good. We fixed it. And and the and the thing that that I uh realized was that fixing those things doesn't mean that the administration is going to be smooth. It means that we've knocked out those issues, but there are other issues that are outside the trust doc. And that's why I've developed this process uh around it. Okay,
22:37 >> let's take a quick break and we'll come back and and pick it up with uh uh item number two. Okay. When life brings unexpected changes, managing inherited property shouldn't add to your stress. Magnum Properties specializes in probate and trust real estate management. We handle the complexities while you focus on what matters most. From property maintenance to tenant relations, from legal compliance to maximizing value, we're your trusted partner through every step.
23:14 Magnum Properties, Inc. Turning property challenges into peace of mind. Call us today at 2132644396 or visit magnumprops.com. Okay. So, you know, sort of step one, review the trust document. You you you highlighted a number of sort of common issues that you deal with. Now, take us next to step two. Uh so the next one's the balance sheet.
23:46 >> Okay,
23:46 >> this is to solve the problem of the successor trustee looking through the mail to try to piece together what are the assets that we're dealing with and I'm assuming a California family that went through the process of setting up a trust. Right.
23:59 >> Sure.
23:59 >> So it it is common uh so first step and how do you do a balance sheet? Uh I don't I'm not that concerned honestly about the value of these things. I just care that we have a placeholder for okay there's a house and then there's the rental property the first house before the family family moved to the big house and then there's a couple of IAS and then there is some collectible cars and then there's like whatever the list of things is right so I just ask mom and daughter on a Zoom call start with the most expensive thing that you own tell me about it and move on to the next one. Mhm.
24:33 >> So that gives us the okay, at least we know what the assets are. Then we go to prove to me what the vesting of these assets are because I I am tired of trusting the little lady to tell me that the successor beneficiary on the IRA is right because she doesn't remember. She doesn't remember if there's a tod on the Wells Fargo account.
24:54 >> So the second step is I want a source of truth. For every asset on the balance sheet, there's also some other there's a document that proves that this thing exists. So, uh, get me the the um the property tax form or let's pull the deed on the house or show me the lease for the rental. Like, I want to I want to see these things. It also is important because we're building a library for the successor trustees so they don't have to go through this when they hop on because mom knows where these things are and they don't, right? Mhm. Mhm.
25:25 >> So, uh, balance sheet with source of truth that also that brings up the what are the assets that I have to marshall. What are the assets that are appropriately in the trust and double check that they're in the trust,
25:38 >> right?
25:38 >> And what are the assets that are nonprobate assets that don't go in the trust that we need to confirm that uh uh the beneficiary election is correct. And the problem that comes up with a frustrating frequency is the Roth IRA or life insurance or whatever, whatever the non-probate asset is where dad is the primary beneficiary. It's mom's IRA.
26:04 >> Dad's the primary beneficiary. The investment advisors change three times. It's a different bank. We don't know who who like who where is the beneficiary form. Dad dies first and nobody thinks to update mom's IRA because mom didn't die. She still has the IRA,
26:21 >> right?
26:21 >> But the primary beneficiary isn't alive anymore and there was no successor named. It's like, dude, we've got to probate an asset that is a non-probate asset
26:30 >> that could have transferred in two weeks if we had it. So, identifying the non-probate assets, identifying, look, don't tell me that you think you know who the Benny is. Give me the phone number for your investment guy. let's walk into the bank and fill out to forms on these checking accounts. Like, I don't want to mess with this,
26:48 >> right?
26:49 >> Um and and this also gives an opportunity for the the confusion that little old ladies and daughters have around joint ownership of accounts. Mom's got her checking account. It's got 100 grand in it. Daughter is added as a joint account owner because mom wants daughter to be able to pay bills. They don't understand that what you just did is gift a daughter a h 100,000 bucks because there's a difference between being a joint account owner and a trustee
27:16 >> on an account on behalf.
27:19 >> Right.
27:20 >> I'm laughing because I've got this going on in my my own
27:24 >> It happens all the time.
27:25 >> Yeah. Safety deposit boxes, same thing. We had one a year ago. There's a 100 grand of cash and jewelry in the safety deposit box and mom added daughter as the co-box owner, not daughter, trustee. All if it's just daughter, trustee, it's clear, right?
27:44 >> Who owns the box or who owns the joint account? The trust owns the joint account. All you have to do is the comma blank, right? Comma trust and it solves it. But when the brothers find out, oh, daughter got $100,000 from mom's checking account,
27:58 >> it like all hell breaks loose. On the on the deeds to the house, Kevin,
28:03 >> everyone says the house or the rental properties in the trust. Everyone says that.
28:08 >> Mhm.
28:08 >> Right now, my number is one in eight isn't
28:13 >> one and eight. Wow.
28:14 >> One in eight. When if I pull a 100 deeds, one in eight is not in the trust. Okay. And here's what I think happens when there's refinances on properties. The banks say, "Look, I don't really want to fund it on the with the trust. I'm I'm going to swap it out and then we're going to do the loan, then we're going to put it back in." Something happens or dad thought he was doing one deed, but he forgot to do it for the rental property or like stuff happens,
28:38 >> right?
28:39 >> So, it takes I don't know 45 seconds to pull a deed. Like if it's a if we say house and we say it better be in the trust because it's all in exhibit A. Let's just pull a deed, hit print, throw it in the estate vault, the library that the eldest daughter has. Great source of truth, right? Um another encouragement doing this balance sheet is when you some of these little old ladies or old guys end up having a ton of legacy checking accounts. Oh, I got 1,500 bucks in this one and 4,500 bucks in that one. and it's either banks that have changed names and they never change or the branch closed or like
29:15 something happens. So, I'm telling them, look,
29:18 >> every account that you have
29:20 >> is going to take four hours to close of paperwork for your daughter. If there's any way that we can collapse some of these little legacy accounts, let's move from five checking and savings accounts to two or three if we can. Mhm.
29:34 >> And rarely is it actual cash flow management like I need this account to pay for Christmas and I need this account to pay for the rental property. Like if there's a legitimate reason to have the account, great, keep it. But if nobody can explain why, we can save so much time. [clears throat]
29:49 >> Mh.
29:49 >> If mom and daughter walk in, give me a cashier's check. I'm going to take it from US Bank over to the Wells Fargo where I've got most of my boom. We're we're knocking off days and days worth of work for the Benny's by doing that. and frustration as well.
30:04 >> Oh, totally.
30:05 >> So, there's the source of truth, so we're not looking through the mail to figure out what the heck mom has. There's the proof of funding that it is in the trust or if it's a uh a non-probate asset that the bennies are lined up.
30:19 >> Interesting. Just want to note one thing about your your balance sheet and that is you're talking about a situation where it's a child who's going to be the trustee. I'm dealing with a case right now where there were no children. So all of the beneficiaries or they're actually heirs are you know sort of nephews great great nephew and we're trying to marshall the assets and the one who knew things best is convinced that there are some additional bank accounts that we haven't found yet and the only way I can think of to tr to get that information is to get a copy of the deedants's tax
30:56 returns to see what he reported. Yeah,
31:00 >> this is this is no easy task. I've had to bring a CPA in to talk to the IRS to to get this information because when I sent in, you know, the paperwork, the IRS just rejected it with this sort of form explanation as to why they reject it, right? And on the one hand, it's a lot of work and there's expense. Uh, and if we find nothing, you could say, well, it was wasted. On the other hand, we have to do due diligence to find assets, right? And for someone who wasn't involved with the deedent day by day, how how do we do that? Right? So this
31:35 your process avoids that whether it's children or or you know
31:41 >> relation. It does it doesn't matter who the successor trustee is. They're either a friend or a licensed professional or the eldest daughter. The problem is the same problem. It's what assets did we own? Where how do we marshall the assets? How do how can we even do that if we don't know what the assets are? Now, there are there are services that do uh asset searches. So, you can pay a company a hundred bucks to do a comprehensive asset search across everything. The True Estate guys have it, Reuters has it. Uh there's a couple of others that you can sign up for a subscription. So, that's one thing that
32:16 we'll do is look, we're kind of struck. We think we got everything, but mom was telling me that she had an account in Utah for the ski house that they used to have that they don't, but we're not really sure. Look, call line up a service agreement with one of these guys and pay him a f per uh search
32:33 >> and they'll do an exhaustive search on dad's social, mom's social, any names and it's pretty awesome now how those the the probate referees are doing them all the time. So
32:44 >> interesting there there are robust uh resources.
32:48 >> Yeah. To do that. We use True State, but there's, like I said, Reuters and a couple of other ones out there that have the same ser same.
32:55 >> Gotcha. Okay. So, that's step number two. Now, we're on to step number three.
32:59 >> Okay. Step three is what I call the treasure map. Um, and the treasure map is the important information that doesn't really go on a balance sheet or somewhere else. And it's really just a a code for me to say it's all the other stuff like where is dad's little black book with the passwords or uh who is the who is the coin dealer that dad dealt with because we know this collection is valuable
33:30 >> but we don't know if it's valuable because of the melt value because gold has gone up by a bunch or if it's valuable because there's numismatic value
33:37 >> and the kids are all looking at each other saying didn't dad say that one of these was a bomber and we should never sell uh Carson City, but I don't remember which year it was that was important. I don't remember if it was $18,000 that it was worth or $1,800.
33:50 >> Like, who who can we trust to go do this? Well, you know who knows? Dad knows. Dad's still alive. He's not dead yet,
33:57 >> right?
33:58 >> Like, write down the name of the guy that dad trusts to help the kids settle this thing. We had the ukulele problem. One of the I I don't know about ukulele collections. There can't be a lot of them in California. I've got one sitting right there. [laughter]
34:13 >> Th this this gal uh up in the Bay Area had a ukulele collection that it turned out was worth like $150,000 bucks.
34:21 >> Wow.
34:22 >> These these are like each one of these was worth $5,000. That was kind of the low end.
34:26 >> Wow.
34:27 >> And who knows ukuleles? Like how are you
34:29 >> there's there's Yeah. There's like two or three people in the world who really know them.
34:33 >> But you know who knew who they were? Dad knew.
34:36 >> Yeah.
34:36 >> Because he was one of them. and he went to the shows and they traded ukuleles and they knew the story on the provenence on like dude just write it down on a treasure map.
34:45 >> A treasure map is just a Google doc, right? It's not anything sophisticated.
34:49 >> Um
34:50 >> uh one thing that happens with these baby boomers is there's cash hidden around the house. Dad's got $100 bills that are in a coffee can in the garage. So just write down check in the garage next to the screws in the folders can there's some cash. All right, great. That way we're not going to do the garage sale and sell the coffee can by accident.
35:10 >> Yeah. I had an estate where they had this it was a ranch and they were breeding this one particular breed of horse
35:17 >> and the the you know the the father dies and I'm working with the uh attorney and he and I'm I was working on the real estate side of things and he calls me up one and he says he says do you anyone who can tell me what these horses are worth? I said, "I can't, but I I'll I'll find someone who can." Because my my younger sister and I were both involved with with horses at the time.
35:41 >> We I called a half a dozen people around the country. They all told me the same thing.
35:46 >> His daughter knows.
35:47 >> Uhhuh.
35:48 >> Right. We would have saved all that time and effort. Right.
35:51 >> Y
35:52 >> she was the only And I said, "Well, what's going to happen if the IRS challenges it?" Because it was it was a large estate. said no other horse person in the country would challenge what she says.
36:03 >> She's an expert. She's [laughter]
36:05 >> Yeah.
36:06 >> So having that ahead of time, knowing knowing to ask the question ahead of time.
36:11 >> Um so here's my checklist of the stuff that goes on the treasure map. And there can be a bunch more, but these happen all the time.
36:17 >> Uh mom's got a deposit box key on her key ring. It doesn't say which bank in town it's for. It just says the box number is 318,
36:27 >> right?
36:28 >> It's like
36:29 >> she's got and she banks with four different banks.
36:32 >> So, let's write down which branch does the deposit box key go to? Oh, that's pretty easy. There are plenty of eldest daughters and professional fiduciaries driving around town looking for is does this look like your key? [laughter] Passwords, uh, coin collections. Who's the who's the local guy we can trust that's not going to rip us off when we get him to appraise it? And then he slides in and I'll buy it from you for this. Can we trust him? Like, dad knows. Ask him ahead of time. Where's the hidden cash? Uh, contact list of C professional advisor, CPA, life insurance agent, investment advisor, all this stuff.
37:09 >> Uh, tax returns are great, right? Uh, tax return, you somebody that's been in the business can read those like an EKG and extract things from them that that we should have that should be in the vault.
37:20 >> Combinations to the safe. How many cool safes have been broken because nobody knew the combination and we thought that there was gold in there and we take a jackhammer to it and we wreck a night an awesome old safe because we didn't know what the combo was. List of credit cards or a credit report. Oh, mom, you still have a Nordstrom's card. That Nornstrom's closed a long time ago. It's still on your credit report. We should probably think about having that on the list. Uh grandma's ring. Where is it? Who gets it? So those kind of stuff that is like predictably going to be a problem to track down information on
37:55 >> let's anticipate that and write it down on a Google sheet so that the successor trustee has a a faster treasure map to get to the answer.
38:06 >> Okay.
38:07 >> Very good. Okay. What's um what's item number four then? uh it's the uh
38:14 >> yeah it's the uh risk assessment. So there are some things that are going to be a problem if these exist in the family and I'll I'll give you that the house is the most off often asked one. So if the if we if we ask this question are any of the kids living in the house with mom they've been a care provider all you have to do is ask that question and you and I know what that means. Oh crap. We probably have a son, probably the third son, who hasn't had a job in a long time that has been providing care
38:49 for mom while she buys the groceries. And what do you think the likelihood is that he's going to be really cooperative with our desire to sell the house? Probably not. So, let's just ask the question, do any of the kids live in the house with you? And if the answer is yes, all right, that's a risk.
39:06 >> Here are some things that we can do ahead of time. We can write down what mom wants.
39:10 >> Mhm. Mom wants Junior to be able to stay in the house for a year. Mom wants the house sold. Here, here's another one. Is there a line? Do any of the kids want to buy mom's house? Is it likely that one of that the youngest daughter would like to buy the house from the estate?
39:25 >> Right.
39:25 >> All right. So, what's the plan? How how are we going to go through the appraisal process? How are we going to come up with the capital? Does she have her own dough that she can buy it or is she looking to have her siblings carry a mortgage back?
39:35 >> Right.
39:36 >> So, all you have to do you don't you don't have to have the answer yet. You just have to identify the problem. The problem is one of the kids wants to buy the house and we can't figure out how the balance sheet works. Great Kevin, you and I know the guys that can solve that problem. We need a lender that understands a house and probate and blah or within a settlement and how do we get a bridge loan to like that problem can be solved but only if we identify it as a problem first.
40:00 >> Right?
40:01 >> Other things about the house. One of the kids is a contractor. Hey, is there alignment on what's supposed to happen with the house? Does one of the kids want to keep it as a and put 200 grand of the trust assets into it and keep it as a VBO and is arguing, hey, this is a great rental for us. [clears throat]
40:18 >> And does the other kid who's never had any cash in their life say, "No, I don't want to put 200 grand in this in this thing. I don't want 75 of my money going into it. Let's sell it as is right now fast. I want my dough. I need my dough." So then you got two kids with different risk propensities, different balance sheets that with that asset will have different answers for what's supposed to happen next, right? And what if one of them's the trustee or one of them's this the eldest daughter in the middle of the two brothers that are fighting about what to do with the house? Let's have a conversation with mom ahead of time
40:51 >> about,
40:51 >> hey, mom, there's a couple of ways your your house has had deferred maintenance for 15 years because dad died a while ago. Nobody's cleaned the gutters,
40:58 >> right? How are we going to do you want us to sell it as is? What if mom's a hoarder? What are we going to do about all the personal property and the hoarding in there? Let's have a game. Let's let's ask is mom a hoarder? Yeah, mom's house is it we're we probably have 50 to 100 grand of deferred maintenance and mom's a hoarder. Great. We've just identified a problem. That means we can work on the solution before mom dies. Let's get alignment on how this is going to go down. So having a checklist of those things that are predictably problems, a lot of the time it has to do with real
41:33 estate. Sometimes it's about uh out of state assets, which you'll find with the balance sheet. Yeah, we got the the uh family vacation home up in Oregon. All right, we better freaking make sure that that's in the trust because I don't want to do an ancillary probate in another state,
41:48 >> right?
41:48 >> Or you got the time share in Cabo.
41:50 >> Totally. The time sharing. How many times does that come up? and they're fighting about what's it worth and they got the co-pays that have stacked up and nobody wants to buy the thing. We could have we could have transferred that thing to one of the kids for a buck,
42:03 >> right,
42:03 >> a month before mom died and not had a problem.
42:06 >> Mhm.
42:06 >> It's not about the $25,000 that it's worth. It's about avoiding the problem that's going to come up. So that's the risk assessment. going through the checklist of things that aren't really going to show up within the trust doc are not necessarily obvious from the balance sheet because the balance sheet just says mom owns a house. It doesn't say mom owns a house and junior has lived in it for 15 years without paying rent. All right, that's a that's a risk. Let's identify those ahead of time.
42:34 >> Yeah. and and and I I don't know if you look at this under um step number one or step number four, but I've seen situations where the uh the grtor has set up where, you know, I have two children, one's going to get my house, the other is going to get my liquid assets. They're roughly equivalent at the time that I, you know, establish the trust. Now, it's it's it's years later. Maybe there is a big imbalance between the two or sometimes even worse, I need liquidity to pay for my health care or
43:09 whatever. And now even though mom is still alive, the two heirs or beneficiaries are fighting because the one who has the liquid assets doesn't want them defayed to pay for mom and the one who owns the house doesn't want it sold and and he becomes disinherited because now it's a liquid asset. So yeah, how do you handle situations like that? Well, there's two fact patterns. One is mom and dad literally wrote that in the trust doc,
43:35 >> right?
43:36 >> And if the trust doc says Junior gets the house and Sally gets the liquid assets, there is nothing that can be done after death.
43:44 >> That's their instructions. Somebody screwed up in the drafting process. It is what it is, right?
43:49 >> What normally happens is in the drafting process after the drafting the drafting process says 50/50 split between the kids. That's what it says. But the family has said over the kitchen table, "Yeah, Sally, you can have the house and your brother's going to get the liquid assets." Then there's an expectation set. So that's preparatory language. It's it's a preference. It's not actually in the trust dock or it's not binding on anybody, right?
44:14 >> Then it's like, shoot, we've got an expectation that mom set
44:18 >> and we've got the practicality of the liquid assets are now lower
44:22 >> and so we are going to have to take out a mortgage on the house. There isn't an option because we are splitting 50/50. And though we originally thought it would be an easy split and Sally would get the house plus 100 grand and Junior would get a million2, it's not happening. Sorry, it's not happening.
44:39 >> Right.
44:40 >> And and so then it's just planning. How are we going to deal with this? Junior, are you okay carrying back $100,000 on your sister's house? Or the house is free and clear. Sister, go out and get a line of credit. We're going to distribute the house to you. You're going to have a loan back to your brother that gets paid off on the line of credit within six months. Great. No, no problem. Everyone signs the notice of proposed action.
44:59 >> That becomes kind of a risk, a potential risk then at that point, but it's manageable.
45:03 >> Yeah, it's man, well, all of these risks are man 100% of these risks will be resolved.
45:08 >> If you don't know who the ukulele dealer is or the person that knows the value of the horses or what's supposed to be how three boys are supposed to split a 1964 Porsche, it will be solved.
45:19 >> What? It either it's going to be fast because the family rehearsed the problem or it's going to be painful because nobody identified it as a risk.
45:27 >> Right. Right. Let's take another quick break and we'll we'll come back and and finish up on number four and then get to number five.
45:33 >> Okay. Probate and Trust TV, your curated source for the most useful and insightful content on estate planning and trust and probate administration, featuring standout professionals like Bill Gross, Paul Bralet, James Cunningham, and yours truly. Whether you're a lawyer, accountant, real estate professional, or working on your own succession plan, this channel helps you quickly find the clearest, most practical content YouTube has to offer. Subscribe now to Probate and Trust TV.
46:10 Spend more time learning, less time searching. And and what I should have said was they can be pre the risks can be pre-managed or there you know there can be some um alterations if you will of expectations on how this is going to work out. I I I sense that that's really more what you're you're
46:33 >> that entire point. This entire thing is about all the places I've bloodied my feet by not identif by not being proactive about identifying the risks in the last year and saying this is a risk. Well, you can't have a risk-free settlement.
46:51 >> There's no such thing. But you can have a settlement where you have pre-identified the risks and already come up with solutions to them. Mhm.
47:00 >> There there's another one that's kind of a crossover before we move on to the the next step, which is the um work plan.
47:07 >> This comes up a lot.
47:08 >> It's were the were was the money that dad gave Junior for the down payment on Junior's condo, was that a gift or was it a loan?
47:22 >> Mhm. And we don't have any napkin anywhere that says and we know what Junior thinks it was and we know what Sally thinks it was. That will either come up in the balance sheet when we're going through what assets do you have? One of the questions is are there any family loans that we should know about?
47:39 >> Yeah, there are. Are they documented? Is there a piece of paper that everyone signed? [clears throat]
47:43 >> Oh, there isn't. All right, that goes into the risk bucket. Let's get that drafted up. It's like a one pager. It's not a big deal. Just everyone signs. Everyone acknowledges it. or no, it was a gift because we know that with two kids for sure one of them have gotten some financial support greater than the other. It's just that every that's true in my family right now and my kids are young
48:04 >> and so what's how does this family want to deal with it? I don't really care what the answer is. I just care that mom or dad have an opportunity to give an answer so that we're not having a fight about it after they're dead.
48:17 >> Right.
48:17 >> Right. So family loans is on the crossover between asset and risk. Are there family loans? Are they document?
48:24 >> Right.
48:24 >> All right. So then so if [clears throat] we know what the trust doc says, we know what the balance sheet is and we got a source of truth. We know where the bodies are buried and we put that on the treasure map how we're supposed to deal with the 64 Porsche.
48:39 >> We know what the risks are that Potm Smoking Jr. lives in the house with mom and doesn't want to leave. Then we know what the last thing is, which is the work plan. In most cases, the successor trustee has never settled a trust before. They have no idea what their job is. And usually they're the most competent of the kids, the most responsible. That's the one that gets picked, which means they have a day job,
49:04 >> that they're already getting paid because they're responsible and they're busy running a what the paint factory or the whatever the restaurant, right? So, they don't have time for this BS. They don't know what they're supposed to do first. They're going to have to be driving around looking for safety deposit boxes. Wouldn't it be helpful for them if we mapped out the steps? Because we know what the step, you and I know what the steps are. We can we can look at a balance sheet and know, all right, I know the 150 things that have to get done from this balance sheet. We already got it. So, why don't we help this family out by literally creating the checklist? First thing you're going to do is notice of death at the and uh
49:40 beginning of administration. Let's get everyone to wave the 120 days so that we can start working on this right now and not have to wait for four months to start. Let's get the EIN. Let's set up an administrative trust checking account where all the DO is going to go.
49:52 >> Let's uh go to the go to the post office and redirect mail. Let's get let's start closing accounts. Right? So if you the the estate settlement process fundamentally is about changing ownership of assets from they are titled in one pocket and we need to move them over to the other pocket. And if we have the balance sheet, we can say, okay, these are the steps you're going to need to go through for the IRA. These are the steps you're needing to go through with the coin collection because that told us who to call. These are the steps you're supposed to go through with the deed on the house. So we already we already know
50:27 what they are. Let's map them for the successor trustee and and have a little opportunity to say, well, we got to keep really squeaky records because there is a duty to account here and let's have a conversation ahead of time. Are we going to hire a bookkeeper to do that? Are we going to do it in QuickBooks? Are we just going to solve this by giving your brother the duplicate statements on everything?
50:48 >> Right? So having the work plan creates the expectations for everyone about how long it's going to take and all the work that's going to be need to be done so that the sibling that isn't the successor trustee or the beneficiaries that are being served by a professional fiduciary have a reasonable expectation. They can't be saying in three months where the hell is my money? It's like dude we're on step two. Like we're working our way through. We're stuck on this one because nobody identified this as a risk and we're working through how are we going to get liquidity. so you could buy the house, blahy blah. Right.
51:20 >> Right.
51:20 >> So, if we know what the balance sheet is and we know what the trust doc says, we also know what the work plan is and that can be documented
51:28 >> and time expectations so that some beneficiaries legitimately say it's taken too damn long. How do I know? Because there was a work plan [clears throat]
51:38 >> and we're supposed to be through stage two four months in. And I don't know where we're at in this process. And eldest sister says, "Yeah, I'm swamped. I need some help." Great. let's offload some of these projects to somebody.
51:50 >> So, setting reasonable expectations and what in fact are we supposed to do? And then uh the last is the estate vault. The estate vault is just a shared drive. I like Google Drive because everyone's got a Google account. That means they've got a drive account. You could share files in them. It's like take all of this work product, mom and dad's trust and the balance sheet and the source of truth and the treasure map and the risks uh and how we're going to solve them and the work plan. Let's throw all of those docks, old tax returns, old life insurance policies, everything goes into the vault
52:26 >> so that everyone knows where everything is and it's in case of emergency break glass. And we're going to need to do this when mom dies. So, let's get after it. And it's already organized. It's already in one place. we already have the checklist and if we went through that process. So it takes me about three hours to go through this process with a client. Might be five on the outside if there's a bunch of assets that we're helping them figure out. But it doesn't take that long to do this work.
52:55 >> And my thesis is for every one hour that we spend on this estate audit process, this pre-planning process,
53:03 >> we are we have got to be saving five hours on the back end. have to be. Oh yeah, for sure.
53:07 >> And it might and it might be more
53:09 >> and and that's to say nothing of the uh tax and legal and real estate fees that can be avoided if we pre-plan it.
53:16 >> Well, and also the the stress, the aggravation
53:20 >> totally the non-financial burden. Right.
53:23 >> Right. Right. Absolutely.
53:25 >> So that's the process and and all the stuff that I just said,
53:29 >> none of this is proprietary. Right. This is just best practice. This is what everyone on the planet knows is the right thing to do, but nobody's organized it in a way that look, it's just a checklist. There's a process. There's five elements to it. Every family that's got more than a million bucks has to go doesn't have to is advised to go through this process. It's not that hard to do if you have the checklist,
53:52 >> right?
53:53 >> This is actually a great gift for mom. I've had these awesome meetings where we know mom's not going to make it to next Christmas. and the relief she has when she hears, "This isn't going to be a burden on your daughter. We've already rehearsed it. That we've done the fire drill. We we know how this is going to go down." It's such a cool gift to tell them it's going to be okay. You you focus on the dying process and you focus on your family at this time. Don't stress out about these stupid things because we already buttoned up all the loose ends.
54:23 >> Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I know as someone who does this professionally, I have my list that I go through. Um, and you know, my list also includes several non-financial tasks like you know cancelling driver's license, cancelling passport, cancelling voter registration, right? All of those are part of my you know work plan, right? Bec for the proper administration of an estate. But without that that list, even a professional like me, I'm going to get
54:58 lost because some there's so many details. Yeah.
55:02 >> Something's going to get left out. I can't rely on my my head to did I, you know, on the estate of, you know, blah blah. Oh, did I, you know, do this thing? I, you know, I don't know. So, I I have it, you know, I have it all all in a list. It's it's really for something as task inensive as an administration, whether it's a probate or trust, that's what's required, I think, professional or lay person.
55:29 >> Yeah, it's there's got to be a workflow. I I've got a little side riff I want to do for your community, the licensed professional fiduci.
55:37 >> Absolutely.
55:37 >> So, you guys get written in all the time as successor trustee, but there's no work to do yet. You're waiting for the old gal to die,
55:44 >> right? My my thesis is look, they're hiring you to make sure that all of these things are solved and it is incumbent upon us and you to do this ahead of time
55:57 >> and it it should be paid for. You should tell the family, "Look, you're hiring a pro and for me to do this right. You got to pay me 500 bucks to do this work ahead of time or we're gonna do an annual review and I'm going to charge you 250 bucks each time we do this and I'm going to start collecting these things." It depends obviously on how much time you have before, right?
56:20 >> But if you have notice, don't be shy about saying, "Look, in in order to get a pro outcome, you got to write me a check." And I found a lot of professional fiduciaries are are hesitant to say there is planning that must be in order for me to take the baton and run and do it in the best practice for these bennies. It is a condition for you writing my name in here that you pay me to do some of this work ahead of time because that's the only way I can keep my promise to your kids that it's going to be done right or the charities that you care about.
56:54 >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that's actually a great idea. So I I'm seeing some of that in my own practice and uh you know typically I'm relying on because most of my business comes through attorneys right so I'm relying on them to essentially make sure that the estate plan is you know properly drawn up but but indeed sometimes they're only focused on this one part
57:22 >> they are I am I am those attorneys we are only focused on the four corners of the document and are never going to ask the question, are there any ukuleles or does Potm Smoke and Junior live with mom? We are never going to ask those questions because we have too much work. We're booked out a month from now,
57:39 >> right?
57:39 >> And so, whoever the successor trustee is, that's the place that value can be added. For those uh uh who are watching this that are in the investment advisory space, the people that are managing the money for grandma, there's value to be added by asking these questions ahead of time because you are going to you are going to serve the successor trustee who you want to keep as a client after mom dies by anticipating these problems and adding value ahead of time. So whether it's charged for or not, I think it's on all of us with this train wreck coming of 10 million settlements that are going to happen in the next 25 years to get
58:16 ahead of shrinking the time to do the settlements by doing one hour of work ahead of time to save us 10 hours of work after because there are the resources are not going to be there,
58:27 >> right?
58:28 >> Uh 15 years from now as our colleagues are retiring and dying,
58:32 >> right? at even a million dollars average on these 10 million settlements, we're talking what 10 trillion dollars or something like that. Did I do the math right?
58:40 >> Yeah.
58:41 >> I mean, we're talking about a massive transfer of of of wealth. So
58:44 >> that's California. It's a hundred trillion nationally.
58:50 >> It's 10 to 20 trillion in California is the estimate. Depends on what your assumptions of inflation are between now and
58:56 >> when people pass. Yeah. But it's it's it's massive amount of money and there are not
59:01 >> there aren't enough service providers and there not enough licensed professional fiduciaries.
59:06 >> There's not enough attorneys that do settlements. Like probably 70% of my colleagues, their practice is drafting documents.
59:14 >> They're architects that draw blueprints. They don't build houses. They're like, "Look, I drafted the document. I don't get my hands dirty with the settlement. That's on the successor trustee." Well, and what's interesting is with with the rise of of uh large language models and such, the drafting of the documents can be done so much more efficiently. It seems to me that while there is an overabundance of business, but where a lawyer or a fiduciary like me really adds value is in the more sort of human component of all of this, right? Dealing with all of these issues, there's no AI
59:50 that's going to deal with that issue. Maybe when they finally get humanoid robots, you know, up to speed, which I've been hearing about in the business press, but but until you got C3PO, you know, doing your
60:02 >> going to the bank accounting relations, right?
60:04 >> Yeah. To find which safety deposit box, right?
60:07 >> Yeah.
60:08 >> Yeah. That the the post-death administration is where the hard work is. The the building of the house is the hard work. Drafting the blueprint is fairly easy from a hours and labor standpoint,
60:19 >> right? And 70% of my colleagues, their practice is drafting because that's where the demand is now, right? That's what the baby boomers are asking for. That's where there why there's a proliferation of DIY solutions with Trust and Wills and Estate Guru and Wealth.com and Vanilla and all of them, right? Because there's a problem. There aren't enough attorneys to draft the documents.
60:39 >> It it's 10x that problem. There aren't enough attorneys to settle the estates. There aren't enough professional fiduciaries. So the I I'm really encouraged by the the efficiency that large language models can bring to the settlement process.
60:55 >> Like we're we're building bots here at Anidos so that each one of these little things can happen real quick. Like day one, we don't need to work on one project. We can work on 10 projects because we know what all the projects are because there's a work plan. You don't you don't have to do it linearly. Month one, you get the EIN. month or two you set up the No, let's work on five projects. Let's go. Each of these is a checklist and those those uh tools, the AI tools help do that. I I don't I don't think that AI is ever going to replace you or me. I think what it is is uh a
61:33 really really sharp knife that if you know how to use a knife, we are going to be able to settle many many many more estates than we currently are, which we better get ready to because there's 10 million coming.
61:45 >> Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, Josh, we're we we actually were we're a little bit over time and uh but I I I really appreciate uh all of that you shared. This is just a tremendous amount of information and extremely valuable. So,
62:01 >> sure. Love doing it.
62:02 >> Thank you enough for coming on the show.
62:03 >> Happy to do it.
62:04 >> Good. I'll have you hang tight for just a minute. I'm do a quick wrap up and we'll we'll talk offline for a moment. So, uh you know, you you heard it here. I I I don't need to embellish. You you heard it all from Josh. uh you know, if you have any questions, comments, criticisms, uh links to social media, it'll be in the show notes once the episode posts on um on uh YouTube. And um Josh's contact information will be there as well. If if you've got uh a a um an estate or a trust under $10
62:39 million in assets that that you need administrated, Josh is your man. There's nobody better in California on that. [laughter] This is me. I always give I always give the shameless plug. So, you know, so you don't have to. But but you know, in in in all honesty, I've known Josh now for for several years. He's just, you know, he he his intensely focused on the part of trust and estate administration that he's been talking about. He thinks about it a lot. he works on it and and that's
63:16 the kind of intense focus I think we all want when we're working with a professional. So I I unqualifiedly uh you know recommend Josh to you. So uh that that wraps up the show for today. Tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific time is my show Business Lessons from the Military which I I can see a book on Grant over your shoulder. Josh was a guest on that show I think a couple years ago now. Uh we had a great time talking about the battle of V Vixsburg if you recall. And then on Wednesday at 10:00 am Pacific time is my show People Making Money. And
63:52 then every other Thursday, check in to Jiggers's place at 5:00 p.m. Pacific time. We'll have a cocktail and a smoo and talk about all the things unrelated to business and finances. So thanks so much for joining me, Josh. Again, thank you very much for being my guest today. deeply appreciate it. And signing off as I always do, Marie darling, you are my bell. Courage at all times, my friends.