0:00 who are you and where are you going what do you [Music] want hello and welcome to trust and Estates weekly I'm your host Kevin bamel and we're here every Monday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time and we talk about all matters relating to estate planning TR and Trust in estate Administration both from the standpoint
0:37 of individuals who need to engage in this process for their own sake and also professionals uh like me who help people with that either in the estate planning or uh as in my case with the on the administration side so uh today I'm going to talk about um how you track a court case so strange as this may sound anyone can file a probate action
1:12 whether they are an air or not is immaterial so and and it sometimes happens that what AM amounts to a complete Outsider will file a probate action so what why why would that happen well let's take a situation where there is a house uh in in someone's neighborhood and the house is not occupied it's um falling into disrepair
1:48 which is um um attracting um uh you know vagrants perhaps or even squatters uh and and it's detracting from the attractiveness of the neighborhood um if the uh lawn is uh or or not the so much the lawn but if the the Landscaping is overgrown um this could be causing a fire hazard something that is of course um quite has been quite devastating here
2:24 in Los Angeles over the last week or so and so um for all of these reasons um someone in that neighborhood could look at that house and they might find that the owner of the house has died okay and for various reasons Maybe the owner of the house had no will or or trust and or the the owner of the property had no close relations who um
2:59 um you know were were um in touch with the person on any kind of regular basis or maybe you know he had some sort of distant relations who lived in another city they don't know that the person has died because they weren't contacted by the relevant officials um so they had no way of knowing um or it could be they had you know no uh relatives at all to be contacted and and so when they passed away you know they were buried and now their
3:36 house is sitting there and nothing's happening with it so in that case someone could decide to file a probate action with respect to the house and in fact the person following that action could even uh um petition to have them appointed as What's called the personal administ a personal representative of that estate so it's unlikely they would know of any will to be probated and so the property would be um would go
4:13 through probate on an inate basis meaning it would just be handled in accordance with the laws of the state so here in California it's called the laws of disent and distribution so um and and you know the person filing it could just be a real estate agent who wants the opportunity to sell the house um and so that agent uh files the probate and uh takes it upon himself to um you know see to it that there's a search made for heirs I know someone who
4:49 does that in fact he was a guest on my show um Michael's Wick um who lives in in Florida and um you know someone who's you know completely unconnected with the deant um could hire Michael or someone like him to search out heirs and um you know lo and behold those people you know sort of won the lottery if if if anyone is found in the meantime um the person who files the probate can proceed with Gathering the
5:24 assets Gathering the debts seeing that the funds are there to pay the debts and then uh Distributing any remaining assets to The Heirs while collecting a fee for the administration of the estate now in California those fees are set by Statute uh as as I recall an administrator gets 4% of the first $100,000 of value in a state uh 3% of the next 100,000 2% of the next I think it's
5:59 three 00,000 after that and then I think the next um million above that or something is 1% but but in any event those fees are set by Statute here in California and the person who administrated the estate would be entitled to those fees in addition to potentially potentially there being extraordinary fees if there's extraordinary work like the selling of a piece of real estate so finding out if they is uh an estate I'm um a um um a probate action um
6:37 already in the works would be the first step before someone attempted to file a probate and so what I'm going to do is is show you how to do that so GNA go ahead and share my screen [Music] here and I think we want to go to this one I hope it is uh nope sorry sorry I took you to the wrong one uh let's see what is this yeah I want to go to case access one second
7:15 here okay this must be it let's see okay here you go all right so the first thing you're going to want to do is go to case access so I'm GNA take you to um this uh this is a this happens to be the um online portal for the Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles now before we're done I'll take you on one for Riverside County each each uh County court has its own uh
7:51 portal okay and you can see here these are uh online services by the court so you see case access appet T of rulings appet case access civil court document images court reservation system case calendar civil etc etc etc um the ones for probate that are going to be most relevant are first of all going to be case access civil and case um document images uh which notice here it says uh probate oh actually wait a minute I bet
8:26 this is too small for you to see yep let me make this big okay there you go sorry about that let me let me go back there okay so you can see uh case access civil okay right here and you can see um uh Court Document images you can see there's probate right there okay and another one that's relevant for for probate is what are called probate notes and I'm not sure if that's going to show up on this list let's see
9:02 okay okay so if you actually I'm going to take you down here you can see specifically um case access probate probate e filing case calendar probate hearing reminders probate uh filing Court load probate okay uh and search for case number probate okay and probate notes Here you go which this is this is one of the most important things okay so we're going to go to uh case access
9:37 probate okay access now now I'm this is a I'm going to show you a case as an example um where uh um I'm I'm being considered for administrating actually let me do one thing before I do this uh case access F Court locator let's go to filing Court locator first okay oh no this is not the one I wanted
10:13 sorry um okay so we're going to go to um case access probe eight okay and you can see here now by the way this is not the attorney attorney portal Because unless you're an attorney you can't get in um so um uh okay so I'm going to show you the record for a case where I'm being um considered to administrated so you see here okay here's you see here's case
10:50 access okay and by the way you can print all of this out um and you see the case number you see the decedent the the court the file um I mean the courthouse where was filed the date it was filed okay the type of the type of case and uh its status which um it's it's open okay next you and you see across here um different um categories of information you'll notice they are not in the order in which they appear so for
11:26 example the second one is register of actions but future hearings actually um applies next so um you have future hearings these are upcoming hearings and there's a there's a hearing schedule for February 25th um and it's a petition hearing appointment hearing basically it's about who's going to be appointed to um administrate the estate who's going to be appointed as a personal representative okay then you have party information okay so you've got the attorney for the petitioner and then you have the petitioner that's the person
12:02 who filed the original petition you have an objector someone who objected to it now I'm not going to I do know some things about this case that are not public knowledge so I'm not going to talk about those I'm only going to cover uh issues that are here in the court record okay so you might be wondering why did Corey Campbell object well you can go I'll show you in a minute you can go into documents filed and presumably you will find that out okay um inheritance Funding Company Inc asene uh I'm sorry so Campbell uh kosala L
12:39 Campbell that's the decedent okay inher inheritance Funding Company Inc asene so this is a company that will advance money to an heir okay another objector is Ronald Jackson and then there's another petitioner Rosie Lee Milligan who is petitioning for something perhaps to be the personal representative as well next you have a list of documents filed and you can see all these different documents so here's an assignment okay filed by asene okay so we look up here we see Asen is
13:15 inheritance funding company so they filed an assignment so that means they have advanced money to one of the airs here's another one here's a third one okay minute order 12224 so when the judge makes a decision that decision is boiled down to what's called a minute order okay this is not a formal order it's basically kind of a notational order for the court but many times that's all that's necessary in a probate action there isn't a need for a
13:51 formal order to be uh issued okay other times there will be a need for a formal order and then the one of the attorneys will draft that order submit it to the court and the judge will have to sign that order and issue it um in order for that order to be active here you see a notice of hearing here's a petition appointment of Guardian at lium uh filed by the objector so this would be uh probably a petition a p a guardian at lium um is typically
14:29 someone who is um looking after the best interests of a minor okay so it's filed by the objector so there's two objectors we don't know which one of them filed this okay but they probably filed it on be they may have filed it or they filed it on behalf of of most likely a minor okay here's another minute order here's proof of service filed by an objector so whenever um an an action is going to take place and probate it needs to be served on all of the parties that you
15:06 see listed here so that everybody is aware of what's happening with the case Okay uh proof of service okay supplement this is a supplement to objection to pief report probate and issuance of letters and it's filed by one of the objectors okay and then we I mean we can go on here's a notice petition to administer estate filed by petitioner okay and there's a supplement to it so what is a supplement a supplement means that something was added to an original document in this case supplement to objection to petition in this case
15:43 supplement to petition okay um here you go supplement to petition for appointment of gal Guardian ad lium for Kenneth Hana okay kenana must be a minor and so one of the object filed a petition for appointment of a guardian M lium it may have been that the objector wants to be appointed as the guardian adum or it may be that there's uh a third party who's neither who's not the objector um nor of course the the minor who is being sought at to be appointed
16:19 as the Guardian guardian ad lium okay now you'll notice lot of activity in this case it's been going on for uh eight about eight months no about seven months sorry no 12 by 12 eight months yeah it's been going on for about eight months now okay and and you will notice that there hasn't been um a a um a p a um a personal representative um appointed yet and and part you can see that obviously there's some dispute going on here again I'm not
16:56 going to get into the nature of it um although some of it is it well the documents are available so you could you could download them okay and by the way notice here's a list of proceedings held okay so there was an original uh appointment hearing held on in June okay and it was continued meaning it was put off to another day and then in on in July that happened again okay on in August there was an appointment hearing it was not held um and was continued on
17:32 the Court's own Mo motion we I don't know why um Jonathan Rosen Bloom did that but he did on October 2nd there was uh um a hearing held and again it was continued okay and then on um November 26 there was a court hearing held um don't know what that was about okay and then and there was a petition hearing held on um December 20th that was continued okay
18:07 and that was an appointment hearing that was continued to here you go future hearings uh um February 25th of of this year okay and then finally you have a register of actions oh actually I'm sorry we went through the register of actions already Okay so this gives you an idea of what's going on in a case now um the next thing you may want to do is you may want to talk you may want to know more about the case so you could search the case
18:43 document images okay and the way you do that is you go to probate case document images okay and these tell you what images are available okay you scroll down it shows you what the cost is it's a dollar per page for the first five pages 40 cents per page for six plus pages per document and then $40 is the maximum amount it comes in a PDF format okay so then you you you go here to continue in in my case I'm a registered Customer
19:19 because I use it on a regular basis but you can also continue as a guest okay I'm going to continue as a guest in this case um because that's most likely what you would do okay document download fee schedule in case you want it okay we're going to look at the same case oops the estate of Campbell okay and here is the documents okay and this um all of these are available for download you don't have to be uh a party interested in the case
19:54 anybody these are all what are called um um public uh Public Access if you will okay so um Summer Long here's a supplement that's 24 pages long proof of service two pages minute order that's typical it's one page okay and let's go all the way back so the original petition for letters of administration was seven pages long that's pretty typical an objection was filed it's eight pages here's proof of publication so if if there's a a a will there has to
20:29 be has to be published if there's not a will the um inate intestate succession needs to be published okay um here's a proposed fee waiver um and I don't know what happened with that um okay here's uh objection subscriptions da da here's another fee waiver um uh um that was uh filed okay and then what you would do let's say you want you want to know what is this assignment on uh January 7th this would have just been
21:04 last week so you click on that and you go down here and you press submit okay and here it's it's it's telling you what it is assignment Pages 1 through six um $540 is the total excuse me you click proceed okay and and then you would click you can cancel payment if you change your mind or you can click pay and you fill in your personal information I'm not going to fill this in um because I I don't want to I don't
21:40 I'm not going to buy it you would hit continue you'll fill in your payment information you'll verify it and then you're done well actually yeah I really don't I I don't want to let me actually let me go back let's see let's we'll we'll do let's go back oh oops and I realize I'm sorry I forgot to switch where I'm sharing okay so let's see we want to go here right
22:19 yeah okay um okay I'm so sorry I always I always forget the screen sharing doesn't uh transfer over so stop screen sharing and then let's start it up again okay here we go okay so sorry about that and let's make this large again okay all right so just just real quickly take this back through you again so you
22:55 can see what it says here's here's the case document images um page and you it shows you what the fees are so a five-page document is going to be $5 any page over that 40 cents okay so you go down here to continue and oh I already clicked on as a guest okay so then you put in your case number search and here's the list of cases so I'm going to go ahead and just show you um I'll I'll spend a dollar to do this so let's let's download uh let's get the one of the minute orders okay which is a one-page
23:32 document so you submit it okay you can see it's going to cost a dollar proceed okay here it is minute order one page a dollar pay it we're going to pay a dollar so you fill in your uh your information mine populates automatically because it's all programmed into uh my browser continue okay and uh actually you know what I don't want to show my credit card number okay but you would fill in your credit card information okay um and then you would
24:07 click continue and what's going to happen is um that um you're going to um you're going you're going to come to a screen where you you fill in your email address and then you click you click basically send and it will send you an email well it's going to send you two emails one is going to be a receipt for the cost and a second is going to be um a PDF of of your of the document that
24:43 you just you just bought okay so that is um okay so that's how you buy um case documents okay so gonna take a little break here now um something I learned uh from my my friend Bill gross and um just want to tell you that this that my show is not the only place where you can go to learn more about uh being involved in um trusts and Estates on LinkedIn I have
25:19 a group called trust and Estates experts and this is a place where this is a group you can join if you're uh involved in this field and it's a place where you can go and post a question and other people have the opportunity to chime in and help and help you get an answer to a question that you have so if if especially if you new to um the trust and Estates probate business or and especially if you're someone who likes to help other people in the profession
25:55 get up and going so I encourage you to go to LinkedIn Su uh it's it's you'll find the group is open to the public it's called trust Estates experts here actually well I'm not going to show it to you but but um and click uh to join and and I'll see you and and admit you to the group and and we can you know we can have we have that Forum um also available to help us um learn solve the problems that come up and and uh help each other out okay okay so next
26:30 I'm going to show you what are called probate notes so um probate um unlike um some of the other areas the way the way it works is there are what are called probate attorneys who review the documents and the status of the case and they let a judge know uh when there are what are called matters to clear meaning that there are
27:06 things that need to be done before the judge can make a decision and so anyone who's involved in the administration of an estate needs to be checking the probate notes at least once a day now you'll note here probate notes are updated at the following times uh Monday through Friday 9 10 10 10 11 10 12 10 1 10 2 10 31 410 510 and 610 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at 610 p.m. only okay now the um the clearing period is not expanded as a result of an Internet
27:41 uh internet access to to calendar notes okay um and supplements and other documents to be filed to clear the probate notes must be filed no later than 3:30 PM of the second court day preceding the hearing date okay and that's that's according to Los Angeles County local rule 4.4 so what that means is if there's a hearing on Thursday okay and assuming there's no holidays that week so um documents and supplements to clear a probate Note have
28:17 to be filed by 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday that's the second day preceding the sorry uh Monday not Tuesday because Monday Tuesday Wednesday and then and then the the the hearing date is on Thursday okay if you don't if the if the uh um items to be cleared um are not cleared by the deadline then the
28:52 court is not going to hear the matter and it is going to get continued meaning uh put off until a later dat okay so following tracking the probate notes is very important so just like with the other ones you put in your case number okay now this particular one you see future hearings okay there are no probate notes for the hearing coming up that's because the the future hearing isn't happening until February 25th and so it's too early for there to be
29:28 probate notes on it but you can view past hearings and you can see that there was a probate notes issued on December 18th okay this was on a a continuance of a hearing it was the fourth continuance um this in this case it was from um October 2nd and you can go through these and again this is all public access okay so first of all you'll see a list of Prior prior orders kind of a a quick summary of the case okay there's the facts of the case Okay in this case what assets
30:04 are are in the estate okay and then that you get some some basic information okay now in this case you see matters to clear none okay um in in the original that's in the original petition now here's an objector objection filed by Corey Campbell n she's she represented herself okay here's the facts um as as the petitioner at least alleges the facts okay so you go to that okay then there was an amended objection and you see the facts for that okay and here you
30:41 have matters to clear okay amended objection not verified meaning signed under penalty of perjury only the supporting declaration is proof of service filed on August 22nd is not sufficient petitioners Council alone is not sufficient must serve all heirs meaning everyone who's listed in the petition as an heir okay amended objection alleges decedent and objector were of domestic Partners was the domestic partnership registered if so file copy of registration if not provide legal authority to support standing to
31:17 object to the petition as a non-registered domestic partner okay so again that the what the what the probate attorney is saying is you've got some problems here and until these problems are resolved the judge can't make a decision um finally cannot request affirmative relief in a petition I.E to be appointed as an administrator if seeking to be appointed as an administrator you must file your own de111 petition for probate okay so it's a specific document that has to be filed
31:53 okay then relief this is what the petitioner is seeking okay okay and you see here there's a future hearing for uh appointment of the Guardian at lium okay and then recommended um dis dis disposition sometimes the probate referee will recommend a disposition I.E for example that the petition be granted if so what that might mean is rather than going through a hearing the judge could just before when the calendar is
32:28 being called just just say that unless there's an objection at the time the judge is just going to go ahead and approve the petition um without actually holding a hearing okay so this is why it's so important to um check the probate notes so you know what's going on okay now so that's the probate notes uh in Los Angeles County Superior Court okay now just to give you uh another idea I'm going to show you a case this
33:04 is uh County of Riverside okay now notice here um you can search a case by name but there is a charge for doing that okay so you can't charge um by you and you have to purchase credits okay and if you purchase credits then you can do name searches so um and and the um uh Los Angeles Superior Court has the same function I I don't I don't use it so that's why I don't didn't have it available um but um if you don't know the case number then you can search by
33:41 name so so in the example I gave you of of the house that you know seems to be you know falling apart it's not occupied Etc so you could look up in the public records the name of the owner of the house and then you could search that person's name uh in in the name search and and get the CA and see if there's a a a case under a prob probate under that person's name and then and then once you have the uh the the case number so then you can go search by case number okay which is
34:17 free and you'll you can see here these here's different type you need the full case number now by the way a probate will be P probate or r r River that's you know County of Riverside okay so let me just show you this is this is another case where I'm being um considered for uh being the uh the the personal representative the estate okay and here it is it's the estate of Evelyn Joyce okay and you click on the case number and you're this is this is the
34:52 equivalent of the case access that um I showed in the Los Angeles so this was originally filed on uh February 21st so almost a year ago and by the way you can print an entire case access report which can be um useful you see here here's proposed administrator this is me represented by uh David sheett who's who's the the lawyer who's who's representing me in that petition okay now they spelled my name wrong when they originally put it in there but this is me petition for letters of administration okay here's a
35:28 list of hearings Okay now what's what's kind of weird is um here under parties they show the most recent one first and here under hearings they show the most recent one last I don't know why they they flip the the date order it's just something that they do um in Riverside oh I'm so sorry I don't know what I'm I'm okay hang on sorry about that I did it again okay let me let me take you
36:05 back okay so here's here's your original screen where you can search cases here's the name search okay and this is what it looks like and you can see you need to add credits um because and you you purchase credits and then and then you have them to uh to to search by name once you have the name then you can go back and you can search by case number okay I'll go through here's the case number I put in before click I'm not a robot you click search the case number comes up and you
36:41 click on the case number and that's this gives you the case record okay um and okay so here you go so this is what I was just saying the parties are listed the most recent party first um and the hearings are listed the the farthest back hearing first so why they switch the date order I I I I don't know okay here's all the probate notes all contained within the court record now okay um but you will still
37:18 see um matters you know if there are you'll see matters to be cleared okay so if there's uh here's a recommendation um uh clear for documents to clear deficiencies he's recommending here here's deficiencies now these have all um been uh already filed so um you can see it was last updated on the 31st of December so um when the probate notes are
37:54 um uh next updated um it'll show all these deficiencies cleared okay and then you have a list of documents and um some of these documents can be um can be purchased and some cannot so you see here um confidential there's a list where is it confidential it'll say yes confidential okay these are ones that um there is no Public Access access to otherwise you can go to download
38:32 documents okay and you can you can buy the various documents okay and and there is a cost for them just just like in in La um let's see let's just add one to a card so uh okay so a dollar for the first page and let's see let's take one that's six pages okay and you can see um in the case of Riverside they charge a dollar for the first five pages and 50 cents for each page thereafter okay so um that that is how things work it's
39:10 it's a little uh smoother in Riverside you don't have to go to different screens um the way you you do in in Los Angeles okay so what if you're not in California so there are other states with online access um however in some cases it's only the lawyers who have online access so I know um having worked in the state of Alabama at least right now uh even as a a um uh you know someone who serves as
39:48 a um personal representative I don't have online access to the court record um my attorney does but but I do not so it really it varies by state to state and so if you're wherever you're at just you know find find out the name of the court in your area um or of the area where you want to search to see if a particular probate is going on go to that Court's website now these days I think virtually every Court unless maybe it's a a court in a in a rural small
40:25 rural area is going to have have an online portal of some kind who has access to it the all of the public or just the lawyers that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction uh but if you're in a jurisdiction where you do not as an IND as a non- attorney have access you might be able to make a deal with a lawyer um to to do some searches for you um and and and you know maybe the lawyer will do that as a favor because you you
41:00 referred him some business or or maybe he'll just charge you a very nominal charge for doing that I know I needed a case searched in I believe it was Connecticut and I contacted an attorney uh in in Connecticut uh or it may have been Massachusetts who also practiced in Connecticut and explained to her what I was what I needed done and she just did it as a courtes see she did the search uh for me now I wasn't doing a lot of searches I had I it was for a friend of mine who's whose mother passed away in
41:36 Connecticut and we were trying to figure out if a probate had been opened on her estate and so that's why we needed the search done so in this case the lawyer did it as a courtesy um very very nice of her okay um so again if if it's a situation like that where you know you are potentially an interested party and and you don't know if there's a probate open or not um if you contact a lawyer there's a good chance that lawyer will do that search for you without charging you it takes just you can see how quickly it can be done and and the
42:11 lawyer um you know was doing it so that if you do decide to uh you know file a probate for petition I'm sorry a petition for probate um you'll you know potentially consider that lawyer to uh repres present you in in filing that petition okay so that's that's you know tracking court cases getting access on line and uh again in California very robust other states um at least at this point not not as accessible um but but
42:46 probably you're going to build on that um you know as as time goes by so thank you so much for joining me today on trust and Estates weekly always great to see some people watching live and um if you have any questions comments you can always post them on the show notes you can uh join my group uh trust and Estates weekly um my colleague Bill gross has a Facebook group I'm sorry my LinkedIn group is called trust Estates experts um my friend bill has a
43:25 probate group called old um nope I just clicked on the wrong thing okay here we go okay so yeah my friend bill has a group on Facebook called probate weekly and his is his is geared more toward uh people in the real estate business but um there are non-real estate people in that group including me I post um my show in that group as well so um that's another opportunity for you to interact and learn about U the probate
44:02 business okay but feel free to like I said post questions comments Etc tomorrow at 10:00 a pacific time is my show business lessons from the military and I'm going to be talking about taming bureaucracy and um as you might imagine there's quite a bit of Bure bureaucracy in the military um often times not oftentimes too as detriment so I'm going to be talking about that on Wednesday at
44:37 10: am Pacific time is my show people making money and I'm going to be talking about a new way of building relationships um it's something that I've been refining um and and and it's going to give you for especially if you're someone who uh is is analytical like me and and you you you're looking for a way to quantify how well your relationship building is going I think you will find this technique uh quite quite interesting and useful and then on
45:12 Thursday is my every other week's show jigger's place where we have a cocktail um in and and the cocktail we're going to have this week is called the deliberation um in recognition talking about jury duty so the the the thing that everybody loves to avoid and I'm gonna I was I had to serve on jury duty uh last month I'm gonna talk about that and and um give you a few thoughts on uh I I was very um glad that that I served
45:48 it was a terrific experience uh quite quite interesting okay so um and that's at 5:00 p.m uh Pacific Time on Thursday so again thank you so much for joining me wishing you a wonderful rest of the day here from fire ravaged Los Angeles and signing off as I always do Marie you are my bell courage