0:17 good morning and afternoon depending on where you are in uh in the country and or in the world I'm Kevin bemel and this is trust in Estates weekly one of the way to wow shows and our in our purpose here uh each each uh Mundy is to look at all things having to do with trusts and Estates how they work how you can work with people involved with them in order to enhance your own business so we're here at 10 A.M Pacific time and 1 p.m eastern time
0:54 every Monday for 30 minutes and we're gonna work together to figure out this whole sort of world of of trusts and Estates it always sounds to me like you know something that uh you know some big landed uh mansion in the English Countryside it's it's not that at all everyone has an estate or I should say everyone who owns anything has an estate and what hap how it's handled while they're alive and what happens when they
1:31 die Are all uh important questions for us us as we navigate our careers and our own lives so today I'm going to talk about how one gets uh how um someone who's working with an estate gets started in particular someone who manages an estate how we get started so I'm a professional fiduciary when I first um you know taken a state in or a trust for that matter there's many things I need to know about it before I can take
2:09 any actions there's a whole information gathering and and understanding process that we have to go through and and through looking at that process what I'm hoping you'll see are ways for you to be involved so that you can develop this aspect of your practice so let's go to the screen share here we go and here we go slideshow start Okay so Preston Estates Weekly right
2:44 and uh you know here I am over here in my notebook okay um so getting started there's three functions if you will that are involved in getting started with any trust or estate okay and those are documents inventory and accounting now as you'll see in a few minutes as we go into some of the categories even if you're just involved in one part of
3:19 dealing with the estate one type of property perhaps this is still the process that you're going to want to go through in order to make sure that you are properly handling the situation whether it's whether you're working for the trustee or whether you are the trustee or working for the trustee whether you are one of the beneficiaries and want to make sure that your um your matters are being taken care of properly these are the three fundamental
3:55 getting started steps okay so documents inventory and accounting we're going to go through each one of them so you can understand them better first of all documents okay this is a gathering stage so once you've determined that you're going to manage the estate or manage the trust I'm going to well they're not the same thing I'm going to be using those words sort of back and forth um because it works pretty much the same way okay um and if you're interested well what is the difference of between a trust and an
4:31 estate if you'll go to our YouTube channel um look at uh I think it's episode one I talk about those very basic issues the difference between a trust and an estate what a probate is so you cannot begin start beginning to understand this whole world of business all right so the first set of documents that you're going to want to identify are agreements and contracts Okay so there could be well there could be none at least none that are in writing
5:06 um or there could be a huge number so let's just say for example that um you've got a trust and among the Assets in the trust is an apartment building that um is is owned uh either by the trust or by the grantor the person who put the trust together okay so there's likely to be some many agreements associated with that apartment building first of all there's hopefully um rental agreements between the owner
5:41 of the building and the tenants okay hopefully they're in writing um these days there you will still find situations where people rent apartments on what amounts to a verbal agreement but most um even small landlords use written agreements these days there's standardized ones that they use others have their own drafted up by their lawyers or they do it themselves but in any event that's step number one get a hold of those rental agreements now there may be other agreements there may be a property management company who's
6:16 handling the day-to-day management of the property if so you need a copy of that agreement now the owner of the of the property may not have it anymore may not know where it is they may know that there is a management company or in a case where you're taking over because the owner is incapacitated in some way um and so they're not able to guide you in this a drive by the building you you might see a sign listing what the management company is so call them up and explain to them the situation you're
6:51 taking over managing the estate and you you see that there's a their sign is on the building and um you know are they are they still actively managing the property and the reason you you want to ask that question is sometimes they will have been fired or let go for various reasons or they may have stopped handling it for various reasons and just not taking their sign down okay that does happen but in any event um they're probably going to want to see some kind of credentials on your part so that you you can you know they're verify that you are indeed
7:27 um you know the person managing the estate now and then they can give you a copy of that agreement so you may have to get it from the other party sometimes okay agreements and contracts are really the same thing people use the terms interchangeably there could be other contracts um there could be Supply contracts there could be um uh uh so I'm trying to think of a different kind of prop uh different kind of property okay oh so so they may have um a portfolio of financial
8:02 um uh financial asset stocks bonds whatever and maybe that's being managed by a wealth manager okay so then there there will be a contract between uh the wealth manager and the owner of those assets and again um you'll want to get a copy of that contract okay now you don't just want the copies of course you need to read them and it can be very enlightening reading contracts okay oftentimes even the owner does not fully
8:38 understand everything that's in that contract okay A lot of times they'll have chosen an advisor and because it's they know the person it's a friend of theirs or they they you know they've been in business with the person for a long long time okay and there are causes in that contract that can have a significant impact on how their Affairs can be handled and they don't they don't even know it okay so so get copies of all agreements and contracts that you possibly can either from the owner or
9:13 from the other party if if you're aware that you know some kind of agreement exists or you think there might be some kind of agreement so it's worth your contacting anyone who has a significant hand in handling the trusts assets uh to call them up and ask them is do you have an agreement with the owner or is the agreement is the agreement with the owners the agreement with the trust trust okay so the person might have set up the trust and perhaps they transferred the um property into the trust but then
9:49 there was someone managing that property and and from that that manager's point of view their agreement never got updated to reflect that they're now managing the asset on behalf of the trust not the grantor okay so so things you know people don't always keep things up to date and so that all has to be examined to make sure that everything is is is properly has been properly set up or has been revised along with changes okay so that's that's one set of documents the other is
10:24 statements okay so if there are securities uh maybe there's some kind of brokerage account so you're going to want statements on that account and hopefully more than one okay um you know ideally you'll get you know all of them although if the account is very very old you don't necessarily need you know 20 or 30 years but minimally you're going to want the the last year-end statement so you can see what happened the whole prior year and the statements since then on a
11:00 monthly basis is that if that's what they're issued or sometimes they'll be issued bi-monthly okay it depends on the type of property that that you're dealing with okay if it's a 529 account I think um my daughter has a 529 account I think I only get statements on that every two months okay whereas on a brokerage account I get statements every month certainly on bank accounts um checking accounts and those kind of things you'll get a statement uh one once a month now on something like um uh what do you call them um
11:36 government bonds okay so you're not ever going to get a statement on those um however once they're registered on the website where where ownership of of of government securities like that are registered so then you can log on anytime and essentially download a statement same with retirement accounts okay they you know the the owner may have set up to get online statements only okay and so and they may not download them every month they may just
12:12 go online and check them whenever they you know want to check them okay and so it may entail getting access you know online to those accounts so that you can then go back and download statements that you need in order to see the history of the accounts okay now ideally you'll be able to get at least year-end accounts for several years so you can see what's happened in the account over a period of time okay that would that would be ideal but look you'll you'll you'll get as much as you
12:48 can now um for someone who has never set up their their account access online and only has paper okay so you know they may have it sort of stashed away in a box okay and you'll have to you know get the box and get everything organized or they may have you know gotten their paper statements read them and thrown them away okay so as as you may know just because they were getting um paper statements doesn't mean that there's not an archive of online statements PDFs that can be accessed probably can okay and the and what
13:25 you'll need to do is set up an online online access for them and and then you'll be able to access those account records and then you you in in some cases at least could get the um on a good get records online for the entire time the account has been in existence okay again that may not be necessary for you to do what you're doing but but it's it's nice to know that those records are there all right so documents is first thing next is an inventory now there's there's basically sort of two
14:01 levels of inventory that you're going to want to do and one is an overall inventory of what property is out there okay and these are the four categories that you're most likely to find okay so first of all real property which is real estate could be apartment buildings um could be Office Buildings retail specialty properties a hotel I mean it depends how extensive their properties it may be nothing more than a
14:36 single-family residence or a condominium it may be nothing more than by the way the rental agreement for the property that they're living in and they don't own any real estate but they have maybe maybe they have a lease on the place where they're living Okay so technically that lease is not real property most like especially if it's a residential lease it's a personal property interest in real property but on the other hand they may have some kind of long-term commercial lease on some property and and there may be value
15:12 in that commercial lease and so you're going to want to you know again astronet is broadly as possible so okay so that's real property next is personal property and personal property I mean it runs the the full gamut it could be anything from Furnishings um dishes jewelry collections cars um artwork uh any any kind of property that's movable that's personal property now I mean do you need to do an
15:49 inventory of you know their clothing Pro probably not okay it depends now if they have some valuable clothing for example do they have any Furs I don't mean faux Furs I mean you know actual like a mink coat or a chinchilla stole or something like that anything where there's any kind of significant value you're going to want to inventory it okay if they you know they may have you know stainless steel flatware that they use every day
16:24 you may not need to inventory that but if they have silverware actual silverware made from silver sterling or stir or silver plate okay there may be significant value in that and so then you're going to you may need to to inventory it okay um again artwork um collections do they have stamp collection coin collection do they have a wine collection by the way the collections may not be on the premises um they may have a wine collection that's stored off-site in one of these
17:02 um they're they're sort of um wine like like warehouses they're special storage facilities temperature controlled where people store wine especially if they're a collector and they're buying you know cases of wine that sort of thing they may not have enough space in their home to uh to store it or to properly store it and so they store it off site so again you know look around look through um um you know receipts and and that are they paying for you know some kind of Storage off site by the way they may just have a storage room off site where
17:37 they're storing what turns out to be just you know what appears to be a bunch of junk okay do not assume that there's nothing of value in the jump okay I went through a house one time and and and in the in the basement there was a huge stack of books and when I say huge it was about eight feet by six feet and about four about three and a half feet deep okay just Stacks and stacks of books and the person I was with was like oh we can just have this all the way I'm like no no no no no no no and we started
18:13 unstacking the books and in the midst of the stack of books we found a coin collection okay and and some valuable coins some of them were over 150 years old okay so you know you can't take these things for granted and just make assumptions when you're doing an inventory you have to inventory all the items okay so that's personal property then there may be Financial assets stocks bonds CDs bank accounts um you know Futures contracts
18:49 um option contracts um who who knows I mean the full full gamut now uh there could be by the way I mentioned government bonds now I have a situation where the uh person owned gosh a couple of hundred thousand dollars in government bonds they still had the certificates okay now if you buy a a bond these days you don't get a certificate anymore okay it's it's all done online okay so I had to go through a process of con of getting those bonds
19:25 listed online to do anything with them okay and it was just it was just an envelope with with a I mean they're they're really cool looking by the way if you've never seen a Government Bond but you know so you won't necessarily find Financial assets you know in some kind of statement okay you may okay and that's a good place to look but you can also you might find shares of stock you know in an envelope or in in you know some kind of portfolio meaning an actual you know portfolio like you know those those sort of brown folding folders with the you know sort of rubber band like
20:01 strap that goes in them you could find shares of stock there that are that are old and that they they've never been you know sent to a brokerage where where they are now recorded in an online account okay so so again all the papers have to be gone through um to make sure that nothing has been overlooked nothing's been left behind and by the way just because you find a a um you know a brokerage account and and the person is set up online access and and you know there's all kinds of assets
20:36 there that doesn't mean there aren't other assets that aren't in that account and that haven't been put online I had a situation like that where the person had a large brokerage account and yet still when I went through his stuff there were you know paper certificates for other Securities okay so you you still have to do that inventory okay now the last thing is intangible property and I was I was watching a a presentation a while ago on um on being a professional fiduciary and
21:11 the person was saying you know intangible property has no value so you don't have to worry about it now that is not true with due respect to the person who said that that is not true in some cases intangible property can be among the most valuable property that someone owns okay so intangible property will be things like trademarks okay so let me give you an example of what a trademark is okay the Coca-Cola Company a big chunk of the value of the
21:47 Coca-Cola company is in the trademark for Coca-Cola okay and that trademark is intangible meaning it has no physical form now you'll say well wait a minute I see it on bottles and cans of coke all the time that's the use of the trademark the trademark itself is intangible property and it's worth billions upon billions of dollars okay so anything like that can have tremendous value now with the average person have you know some kind of trademark that has a lot of value
22:23 accrued in it no probably not however they may have they may own patents on certain inventions okay or they may own copyrights to books okay all of those intangible all of that intangible property may have value so for example they may own publishing rights to some songs okay again that that's intangible property you can't touch it you say well I I can pick up the the the the CD well
22:59 that's true but the CD is not the publishing rights the CD is someone someone probably licensed to publishing rights and made a CD okay the publishing rights themselves are intangible and they can be very very valuable if you follow if you follow news on this at all you'll see that there have been several performers um you know kind of baby boomer performers who are now in there getting into their 70s and such and they're selling their catalogs for in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars or more
23:36 so these music catalogs are enormously valuable okay and and and in fact may be the most valuable asset that the uh person owns it may be the most valuable asset in the estate or trust okay and so you need to know about it now how do you find out about these things well you got to kind of be a bit of a detective you you're gonna have to do some um exploring you know looking through records what did the person what does the person do or what did the person do professionally how you know how could
24:13 they have possibly been tied to any kind of publishing rights um uh could be that they wrote books maybe they invented things maybe they're maybe they're uh uh parents or some relative invented something and when that person died those patents or those copyrights hadn't expired and so they became the owner of those copyrights or patents or publishing rights okay and if that's the case the again just because they weren't the Creator they that doesn't mean that those those assets no longer have value they may it depends on
24:50 whether there's any term left to those rights okay so make sure that you search out intangible property are you going to see it commonly probably not okay probably not but but you will see it and and to overlook it would be a tremendous breach of fiduciary duty okay let's let's move on because we're going to run out of time here okay next you're gonna do an accounting which means you're going to figure out what is all this stuff worth
25:26 okay now we talked I talked about wills and the court process and Executives and administrators okay and and you you may need to do an accounting that that's submitted to the court it depends on um you know what exactly is going on why the trust was set up um was was what you're doing the result of someone having died is there a probate going on or or is this really just you're taking over management of a trust the person could by the way the
26:01 person doesn't have to be incapacitated they may just not want to do it anymore and so they're going to bring you in to do it and and nonetheless you're still going to want to do an accounting to get you started and and and so that you've got a base set okay here's all the assets I found here's what they're worth you know here's where they're at you're going to want to do that summary because somebody is gonna somebody may want to see that at some point okay and you want to be able to show hey I did the startup process correctly and here's what we
26:36 started with okay here's the Baseline okay and then from there then there's a way to determine whether you've handled things properly now I don't follow the Trap saying well if there's no Baseline they can't figure out whether I've handled things properly properly or not well I mean you may think that but if there's no basis for determining whether you've handled them properly or not the presumption could be that you have not handled them properly and then how are you going to prove that you did you say well aren't I innocent until proven guilty well yes and no when you have a
27:14 fiduciary obligation you have to be able to demonstrate that you have fulfilled that fiduciary obligation if you cannot you may be in very deep trouble not just with respect to a licensing Authority but with respect to whomever you're accountable to whether it's beneficiaries whether it's you know and or whether it's the Grand Tour on whose behalf you're handling things it it it wouldn't matter they can hold you responsible for the work that you've done of course you don't Siri okay so you're going to want to do an
27:51 accounting and again whether it's happening because there's a will you're you know you're probating a will or there's some other court process you're an Executor and administrator all of in any of those situations you're going to want to start out with a baseline accounting and then you're going to be what you're going to need to be uh updating it periodically probably monthly okay probably monthly all right so that's how you get started now I'm going to go back here just real quickly because we have I have just a couple more minutes and note if you're a real property professional if you're a
28:27 personal property professional if you deal in financial assets whether it's Securities whether it's Insurance you can see you potentially have a role in in helping um handle Estates and trusts okay because you can see all of the types of properties that an estate or trust could own okay and if you're a specialist in any of these areas then you could enhance your business by helping people who have State Estates and trust or working with other people who work with them okay you know look you may do
29:04 something exotic you may be an appraiser of intangible property maybe what you do is you value music publishing catalogs okay well there you go there there's an in you have on a potential new source of business I know you're a virtual assistant um I gotta tell you Siri drives me crazy um if anybody knows how to turn off Siri please let me know I gotta get I gotta get rid of her um so
29:39 there there are times periodically when property needs to be appraised it could be to make sure that it's properly insured it could be because um an estate is facing some sort of tax liability could be a myriad of reasons so you can see that there are lots of ways for you to potentially get involved with handling Estates and trusts depending on what your profession is all right so that's that's the show for today and here's how to contact me on these these will also be in the show
30:16 notes for today's show after OS on our YouTube channel so thank you very much for watching just real quickly before we go a reminder tomorrow at 11 A.M Pacific Time 2 p.m eastern time is our Tuesday Show Business lessons from the military that's a half hour show and we talk right now we're talking about how you can use Marine Corps for a war fighting Doctrine to better run and help your businesses expand and then on Wednesday at 12 30 PM Pacific 3 30 p.m
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31:27 uh please do consider subscribing that way you'll know every time a new show posts so thank you thank you very much for joining me today wishing you a fantastic rest of the day and looking forward to seeing you later this week and next week as well Marie darling signing off you are my bell all the best folks