0:00 [Music] 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 bemel and we're here every Monday at 10:00 a.m Pacific time to talk about all those matters related to estate planning as well as trust and estate
0:36 Administration both from the standpoint of us as individuals who need to take care of this for our own uh well-being um as well as um as professionals so today my topic a little bit different so the probate Courts at least here in California are are broken and I I've unfortunately gotten gotten to see this firsthand um this year and so I wanted to talk about what
1:13 some of the problems are and and and and give some thoughts on what needs to be done to fix them and and you know perhaps spark a a discussion as to what needs to be done to improve the system here in California so let me let me say from the beginning that um all my years in the military uh most of the commanding officers that I had and they were not interested in hearing the problems that
1:51 were going on in their units unless they came with a solution or at least a proposal on how it might be solved and I think that's a really good perspective for us to take on these kinds of issues it's all good and well to complain about them but the complaining doesn't do anything except for upset us upset other people and and in many ways make make the problems worse so as much as um you know this is identifying issues that need to be
2:26 addressed it's it's it's really more about what are the things that that we can do so I've just got a a short list of items here uh two four yeah six items that um that I want to talk about and um if you're watching this live I encourage you to put your comments um in the in in the various uh chat functions um they do aggregate here um on on this side of of my restream screen and so if if someone
3:01 does make a comment I will take a moment to to address it otherwise if you're watching this not live so nonetheless feel free please to comment on it or contact me with it because I think this is this is an important issue for those of us involved in this area and it's not going to get better through neglect that's that's for sure so first off and this is an issue that I've I've talked about before it wasn't identified by me it was uh it was first
3:36 brought to my attention by my friend Josh joerger who's a a a a trust and estate lawyer and administrator based in Santa Barbara and that is in California there were just flat out too few administrators so Josh tells me there's roughly 6,000 um lawyers who are involved in trusts and probates in California many of whom are um on the o older side of of of life and and
4:11 so the profession is not attracting or not the profession but this area of law practice is not attracting younger people and the way it used to now I do a lot of Outreach to uh trust and probate attorneys I through through Linkedin I contact UM 20 every weekday basically um by way of of establishing professional relationships and I will say that at least half of them are I think more
4:47 toward my age late 50s in into their 60s and maybe older um and very few seem to be in the early part of their career in their you know late 20s or early 30s even the younger ones seem to already be in their late 30s and 40s so um I don't know why that is if if you know if you an attorney and you have some thoughts on that I would I would love to hear it um from from the perception of or from the perspective of what I do which I'm a
5:24 licensed professional fiduciary here in California so uh my license number is 1 1941 now I I did some research before the show as of 2021 there were only 1,50 licensed professional fiduciaries in California now I got my license the following year in 2022 so it was about 18 months after that figure came out so you know do the math there were 90 in 18 months which is
5:59 rough ly five a month so um that that works out to be about 60 per year so since 2022 we've maybe had another 100 or 120 um join the ranks if that pace holds true so we may be somewhere around 1450 to, 1500 professional fiduciaries now here's the rug in 2021 when there were 1,50 only 825 were active so two 23 roughly so let's take the most optimistic the more optimistic figure
6:35 1500 and if that holds true the the the you know 2third so of the 1500 somewhere between 1100 and 1200 are are are practicing um which which isn't a lot that that Stacks up against uh what what Josh told me I think was 800 trillion dollars in wealth that's going to transfer here in California over the next 10 to 15 years so if we have somewhere around seven to maybe 8,000 professionals to handle that
7:13 you know just kind of do the math that's hundreds of millions of dollars I think that each one would would have to administrate and and and and that's a lot you know um so we really in the end we just have too few administrators now I think there's there's like I said I can't comment on the attorney side of the equation I'm not an attorney and and I haven't spoken to attorneys about this so I'm going to focus on the professional fiduciary side so as of
7:50 this year the license fees for professional fiduciaries quadrupled so when I got my license in 2022 the fee was $650 for two years when I renewed it this year the fee had risen to $1300 per year now I get it the state of California wants to generate Revenue to cover the costs of the program but the fact of the matter is for someone who starting out to pay $1300 a year for a
8:27 license fee that's that's far and away the highest license fee here in California by contrast a real estate license is I think around $4 or $500 uh even an appraisal license I think is is $800 something around there real estate appraisal license so clearly the the the fee is is is much too high and and the state of California would be far better off encouraging more people to become licensed professional
9:03 fiduciaries and generate Revenue through volume rather than through a price increase that's number one number two I I I was I was at a networking event a week ago today and and this was a group of uh primarily real estate professionals but it but the sophisticated real estate professionals it was sponsored by George Smith Partners which is now part of axis I've known the president of George Smith Partners Steve brand for literally for
9:38 decades this is one of the Premier real estate Finance organizations in the country and they do very sophisticated uh you know real estate financing all of a commercial nature and as I talked to people there none of them knew that there was such a thing as a licensed professional fiduciary they all understood at least in a general way the need for trusts and Estates to be administrated but they didn't know that there was such a profession as the one
10:13 or such a license as the one I had and in fact one of the people I spoke to thought it would be an ideal profession for his brother who was looking for something else to do because he didn't like what he was what he was currently involved in professionally so I think too that there is there is woly insufficient knowledge that this profession exists having said that and and this is a an issue that I identified um in talking with another friend of mine Kaa Johnson who coincidentally is
10:50 also a Santa Barbara based um administrator so Ka and I think that a very large percentage of licensed fiduciaries here in California actually come out of the healthc Care Arena and their primary interest is in acting as conservators and Guardians and and they're involved more on the the the personal care or the health care of their clients and so they don't have a particularly sophisticated background in financial
11:26 management um of of any kind so look any anybody can pay bills that's not so complicated but when it comes to the more complex aspects of of trust in EST State Administration someone with a health care background is is going to be challenged I'm not saying that they can't do it but they probably don't have you know a lot of experiencing experience in that area and so it's more difficult for them they can't work as efficiently and so you know again that that I don't want to say it exacerbates
12:02 the shortage it doesn't but it just it you know they can't handle as many cases as they might otherwise want to until they get up to speed on the financial side of things so I think there needs to be some kind of initiative taken by either Pac which is the professional fiduciaries association of California to publ I to other uh types of professionals maybe bookkeepers accountants non-cpa
12:37 accountants um uh and and other people um who have a financial background to consider becoming a professional fiduciary so I know I I have a um a colleague here in Los Angeles and I'm going up on his name we spoke last time I think about seven eight months ago he was actually an accountant working for Sony Pictures and he decided that it was it was kind of a dead end with with what was going on in the film business during covid and he switched over to become a a
13:12 a licensed professional fiduciary and he has he has a great practice here in LA and and and as well he should the kind of financial issues that he's dealing with at a huge company like Sony Entertainment are are a great back ground for making the shift into uh probate and Trust Administration now he may not know the legal issues very well but because of his background I'm sure he learned them quite quickly and and that's what has allowed him to be successful so this is you know too few
13:49 administrators is the problem I do think that uh dramatically increasing the awareness and the Outreach of professional of the professional fiduciary license would be a step in the right direction of solving that next there is a misalignment of priorities now this this sort of meshes with another problem which is there are too few judges in the probate court so what I see in Probate courts today is
14:28 a PR priority on clearing one's calendar so if if if I were a judge you know I'm GNA have a calendar basically every hour or every hour and a half a calendar of cases that I need to address and and that calendar can contain easily 30 or more cases okay so let's say I've got a an 8:30 calendar and I've got another one at 9:30 and on the 8:30 calendar I have
15:04 30 cases that I have to address well the fact of the matter is rarely are all 30 cases ready to actually appear uh and and and in front of me um but it may be a third of them do 10 of them do so in that so in the hourlong period that I have as a judge to deal with that calendar my clerk is likely to take anywhere between 15 minutes and 30 minutes calling the calendar which means essentially taking role making sure that
15:40 the parties who are supposed to be there for a hearing are in fact there that's number one and number two dealing with the the cases that don't actually need to be heard either because there is a reason Upfront for them to be continued to another date or one of the parties at the calling of the calendar is go it wants to request a continuance that's number two or number three there has already been a decision made by the judge either to if it's a
16:15 petition for example go ahead and Grant the petition without a hearing or deny the petition without a hearing or um continue the hearing because the judge feels um you know advisedly or not that there's something missing and so it's not worthwhile to hear to have a hearing on a particular matter because there are things missing perhaps the lawyers were told they were missing and they didn't get them into the court soon enough in order for the judge to be able to review
16:50 them or it may just be that there there's another issue which I'm going to deal with um in a few minutes but let's say even 2third of the 30 cases are dealt with by the clerk okay and and by the way the more cases that are dealt with by the clerk the more time it takes for the clerk to call and and and and set the calendar okay but but let let's be really generous and say that those 20 cases are dealt with in 20 minutes very unlikely but let's say that they are that leaves 10 cases to be dealt with in
17:27 40 minutes or on average four minutes per case okay now I'm sure you can appreciate this is in the vast majority of cases inadequate time to deal with any kind of substantive issue and what I find is the judges are under or at least feel they're under tremendous pressure to clear their calendar and so they really rush through cases and and if there's any kind of
18:04 dispute the judge may hear literally a minute or two from each lawyer but that's it and then the judge is making a decision and often times that decision is to postpone deciding on the matter while the parties either confer directly if there's some kind of dispute or while there's additional information filed with the court uh so that so that the the issue the judge's concerned about can be clarified or I I saw I watched one case a couple of weeks ago where the judge basically
18:42 is trying to convince the lawyer to file the matter in a different Court up in Northern California even though the lawyer clearly believes that there is good reason for it to be heard in the Los Angeles Court and so there's a misalignment of priorities there that that in part because there's too few judges and they feel compelled to get through their calendar as opposed to make progress on cases these these matters get continued and continued and
19:17 continued and they take much longer to deal with than frankly I think they ought to the reality is just to give the parties to a case even if by the way even if they're not contested so I've been in I've been in hearings where we were not contested there was no other party disputing what we were saying it's the judge had questions and in one case she would give us literally no time at all to give her an
19:52 explanation and in the in another case she gave us four minutes to to you know try and explain what what it was that that she said she didn't understand in the latter case we at least made some progress because she agreed to take it under advisement into issue and opinion later that day now because of some problems with the court system we didn't actually get a decision until almost a week later um that's not necessarily the judge's fault but the amount of time that she
20:30 gave us to make our argument and and flesh out the case was minimal at best and and the decision she finally rendered was it was kind of a Solomon decision it was a split the baby decision and there was no reason for that if if she had been now in this case she also was not properly prepared she hadn't read the pleadings in advance which is also a problem that I'll I'll get to in a minute um but um it it very very
21:05 frustrating because we're trying to make progress on a case and really the judge is fighting us on that and not not for any good reason um in terms of the the real purpose of the Probate Court which is to protect the beneficiaries and make sure that they're being treated not only in accordance with the law but in an ethical and sound fiduciary way as well so um very very frustrating situation now this this the cases that I've just
21:42 mentioned they dovetail with the next problem with probate courts and that is in my experience with the judges they they lack the knowledge of the law and expertise necessary to really understand anything other than the real basics of the kinds of issues that they're confronted with in you know in the probate cord so if it's a very simple matter maybe there's you know a house and and a couple of bank accounts or
22:18 whatever I you know seems like you know not not a big deal but the minute any kind of complexity enters into it so maybe there's uh the estate owns a business that needs to be run maybe there are disputes between heirs maybe there are um complex real estate dis situations where there's real estate entities there's loans on the real estate and and and the loans may not necessarily be only against the real
22:53 estate there may be personal guarantees on the loans and you've got a lender that it has called a loan because now the the the personal guarantor the is now the decedent they're dead right that gives them the authority uh to to call the loan and and require that it be paid off those kinds of complexity in my experience seem to be be beyond the expertise of the judges that I've had to deal with and uh in in another case again this is a this is a large complex
23:28 syst state where we're the the estate is going is subject to estate Taxation and so we need to have valuations of assets that will be credible for the IRS and so we've applied to have the appraisal by the probate referee waved because the probate referee does not have the proper credentials that the IRS requires for evaluation being done for estate tax purposes and we are as a matter of law
24:06 when I say we I mean me as the administrator and then you know the attorney that is uh the is representing me to the court as well as the beneficiaries although they don't as as for those of you who saw my my episode on the power relationships uh the beneficiaries don't actually have any standing in the court per se however I make it a practice to communicate frequently with beneficiaries to an estate and and make sure they understand what's happening address their questions
24:43 and and see to it that they're fully versed in the progress that that a case is making so so that's what I when I say we I mean you know the group of us who have an interest in in seeing the Administration process you um conducted in a timely manner so we have a situation where we all not only agree that the um probate referees appraisal is of no value to the estate
25:18 um but we have a statutory um basis for applying for a waiver which means that as a matter of law we can apply for a waiver now we've been dealing with this issue in this one particular case for months now and the judge handling the matter actually said From the Bench she's never seen a waiver and and so um she she's skeptical of it and and while she hasn't made a decision because the hearing isn't until the the hearing kept getting put off the hearing
25:54 finally got put off until the beginning of next month she said we we should you know take a clue from that as to how she's likely to rule so essentially what this judge is saying is I'm going to require you to spend 40 or $50,000 getting the appraisal by the probate referee even though number one it has no value to the estate at all number two um it it will in fact damage the estate because it will defray the assets of the estate
26:31 by that amount okay and number three this is this is a complex estate with a lot of Highly skilled highly experienced individuals involved and so the idea that a a an individual in this in this case the probate referee who does not have anything like the the credentials and the experience and the skill that the people who are already involved is somehow going to add some value to the proceedings is is you know quite frankly
27:06 ludicrous so the the problem really comes down to this judge is relatively new to the bench but by the same token lacks what I would call the humility that the judge ought to have by being new to the bench um and and so it's causing a lot of problems it's caused the estate to have to bear additional costs for legal fees Etc while we bolster our argument for for having this uh this uh appraisal by
27:43 the probate referee waved and and it's it's not just the money by the way the while a probate while an appraisal by a probate referee by Statute has to be completed in 90 days the probate referee has the ability to apply for an extension and for an estate of the size that we're dealing with here it it wouldn't be unusual at all for the probate referee to take five to six months to get that appraisal out which basically means the administration of the estate would be halted for five to
28:21 six months while the probate referee does his thing and and there's no reason reason for this especially since the pro since the estate owes estate taxes so we be in ACR uh interest on the taxes owed because the estate doesn't have the liquidity necessary to pay the taxes and so in addition to uh um you know having to pay the probate referee unnecessarily because we're going to have to turn around and hire a qualified appraiser to do the
28:56 appraisals again will also be paying additional interest to the IRS while we wait for the probate referee to do his thing so that we can then sell the assets that we need to sell in order to pay the estate taxes so all of this comes out of the lack of knowledge of the law and the lack of expertise on the part of this particular judge and if this were an isolated case that would be one thing but but it's not um unfortunately there's been a big
29:31 turnover in judges at least here in the Superior Court in Los Angeles I think that's generally speaking true throughout California and the new judges just do not have the legal knowledge and expertise that the previous generation of Judges had and so how do we solve this problem so I I you know part of the problem is is structural as I mentioned earlier about the fact that um there's only about 6,000 um trust and estate attorneys here in California and they're getting older
30:08 so that would typically be where judges the best judges would come in other words people who have been practicing in this area as lawyers for you know a couple of decades at least and so have dealt with these issues day in and day out they understand them they have a very thorough grounding in them and so when they step into the role of Judge they they're able to understand matters quickly and and they don't have to either put matters off in order to
30:43 clear their calendar or put matters off in order to gather more information and and as well when they read pleadings they can quickly absorb what they're saying because you know they've written hundreds of them in their careers before so that would be that would be historically that's where judges came from these days they the judges in the Probate Court tend to come from other areas of the court and so they have little if any background in Probate matters and they're learning it somewhat on the Fly and that's a very inefficient
31:20 way to to handle the the the the training if you will of Judges so I think we need need to go back to looking at the qualifications of judges in a critical way now that is somewhat difficult here in California because we elect judges and the vast majority of Voters I think don't even vote in these races and that's a big mistake so I think we as Citizens need to do two things one is we
31:56 need to commit to doing the research necessary in order to understand the qualifications of judges and excuse me encourage our friends to do the same thing there are I've been doing this now for the last I don't know six seven eight elections I think and there are websites they're very easy to find you just search a judges a judge judicial candidate's name and you find the website once you found the website you can just plug the name
32:31 of each candidate in and get some basic information about them usually you'll get kind of their their CV or their resume you'll see who's endorsing them often some of these judges now have their own websites and so you can also get a a sense of their Judicial philosophy which can also be important so we need to take the election of Judges as seriously as we take the election of city council members of the of mayors of District Attorneys and City attorneys of you know state senators and
33:07 assemblymen of Governor Etc judges have an increasingly large impact on our lives and so I think we have the obligation to take the time to do the research to learn about them and vote for them that's one thing that's number one number two rather than judges being just assigned to the the Superior Court in general I think judges should be running for specific areas so we should have a a pool of Judges running for you know uh the Probate Court we should have
33:43 a pool of Judges running for Family Law Courts we should have a pool of Judges running for civil litigation we pool of Judges running for criminal litigation or me criminal cases so that we can look and see what are the qualifications of these judges visis the area that they're running to be a judge in okay so that way especially those of us who practice in specialty areas so like like me like you we practice in trusts Estates and
34:19 probates so we can look at those judges and and you know get a sense as to whether they have or which ones have the the best skills the best knowledge the best experience for dealing in this arena for lawyers and other parties for example mediators who deal in say family law so again they can look to see do these judges have the background the expertise the knowledge to be dealing effectively in that Arena or which ones who are running due right and in that
34:56 way we can we can we can have judges who are much better prepared to deal with the case loads now the fact of the matter is we need more judges as well that's a fiscal issue um but the the fact of the matter is we pay for this one way or another we could pay for more judges or we pay for it in in it takes longer and longer for these matters to be dealt with which costs more legal fees it costs more ration um lost time in in
35:31 attending hearings and and having nothing decided and having to come back all of these things at a cost to us now you might argue well it only the cost is only um only impacts those people who have matters before the court and so shouldn't they be the ones paying for it well yes that's that is that is a good point I would argue though that having courts that run smoothly is part of the social and business climate in where we live and so
36:08 to the extent that courts do not run efficiently it has a depressive effect on the ability for our society to operate and to operate well and that and that discourages people from all kinds of things whether it's starting businesses coming to the state Etc ET Etc so it's a problem not just for those of us who are routinely dealing with the courts it's a problem for us as a society and so I think the the the solution to excuse me too few judges and judges
36:44 who don't have the proper background are number one hire more or you know elect more judges and two Focus the elections on by by the skill set that the judge needs in order to be effective in a particular court now there may have to be some some reorganizations so maybe it's too narrow to have a judge who focuses only on probate maybe they need to focus on family law and probate so that they can do either so that the courts have enough flexibility that you
37:19 know if a judge goes on vacation or is sick they can still cover the case loads okay so but I think those kinds of problems can be overcome nonetheless we need to better be able to understand the qualifications of Judges so that when we V when we commit to take the time to figuring out who are the best candidates we know that they're going to be able to do the job for which they're being elected okay so those are the uh first four is issues that I've identified the
37:55 next issue uh as to how probate is broken is the costs are unnecessarily high so what's what's interesting is excuse me the average estate in California is is really not that big even if the decedent owned a home and so you know the estate may be somewhere between um 700 500,000 750,000 to maybe a couple of million dollars now you say well that's a lot of money well it is but but when you take into account that probably 50%
38:32 or more of that is really the value of the house so it's not a particularly complex estate and the fact of the matter is that the the reason it's so costly is the process is unnecessarily complex so my friend Josh joerger I I referred to him earlier Josh and I have had a number of conversations about this there have been some attempts to make the process easier so for example here in California we have something called a certificate
39:08 of trust and with a certificate of trust that's that's duly filled out properly signed um witnessed by a notary Etc that allow should allow a trust to be administrated even if the original trust document is lost here's the rub even though the form of that document is is a statutory form meaning it's a part of the law allowing for certific or or creating certifications of trust in my experience every institution that uses
39:45 that allows or that will accept certifications of trust wants it on their own form even if they get one that has all the same information in the same order but it has some other institution's name on it they will require one done on their own form it really is crazy and so and that's just one little thing so the the the paperwork that's necessary to transfer a bank account or a brokerage account from the decedent's name or the decedent's estate to the beneficiary to the air
40:22 every institution has a different form now you would think these institutions would want to get together and create a uniform form um but so far that has not happen now I have talked about this issue before um by way of talking about the uniform probate code which has been adopted by I think half or two-thirds of the states at least parts of it so this is a step in the right direction but I think that there needs to be a a I don't know a movement that sounds so you know
40:59 1960s there needs to be effort on the part of um of of financial um um can't think of the word but by Financial companies to not just streamline the paperwork but to make it so that LE let's say you've got an estate where there's accounts held at five different financial institutions so it you know you're going to have to fill out five different sets of forms it would be much more efficient to have a
41:34 uniform form that all five institutions would accept and so I think that while it wouldn't NE you know people like me in in in point of fact you know we get paid for you know for doing this work and so if there's five times the forms that you know need to be filled out well that would seem like a good thing for us because we get paid you know five times as much the reality is I I prefer to work efficiently and I think as fiduciaries were required to work efficiently so the fact that it would
42:10 might benefit us financially to fill out five different forms needs to be you know set behind us in the interest of our clients and we need to be advocating among financial institutions for uniform form not unlike so for example excuse me in um loans on personal property there's the in the Uniform Commercial Code there are uh form uc1 I believe it is this is the uniform form used to create a security
42:48 interest in personal property it's used by virtually all lenders so we need the equivalent in the probate realm and it it can be accomplished it's going to take pressure I think on financial institutions to get them to do this but but that would be that would be a large step toward taming some of these unnecessarily high costs other things now California has a law for certain small Estates or certain simple Estates I think that law
43:23 needs to be looked at again because you know again with the with with the huge increase in the values of homes so many Estates that seem you know quite large a million and a half $2 million dollar really still are pretty simple and so we could probably expand that and and simplify the the administration process and in so doing we we could um bring down the costs um both the financial costs as well as the emotional and
43:58 mental CA of of of going through this whole process finally and this is my this is my the last of my six uh problems that um that I've identified as being you know the problems in Probate here in California and that is I think there's a lack of wisdom now I would argue this is a a problem in our society in general um we seem not to to prize wisdom the way it used to be
44:33 and and the fact of the matter is wisdom comes with time there there is no there is no substitute for it someone who's brand new to a profession they may have a lot of information about it they may have a lot of insight maybe because they you know the synapses in their brain are particularly uh attuned to what it is they're doing but they're not going to have wisdom because wisdom comes with having struggled with the various human problems that arise in a particular
45:10 Arena and so I think we need to re-evaluate the the kind of focus on on youth that or the not the focus I let me let me rephrase that the enamor ization of of Youth that we see in certain functions in our society and one of those is trust and probate matters and the reason I say that is because while probate is primarily a a financial
45:45 process because it's the collection of assets and debts the payment of debts and the distribution of assets right which are all monetary issues there is a huge range of emotional issues that get involved first of all we have somebody who's who's died and in a lot of cases probably in the vast majority of cases that's a that's an actual loss that people are not happy that the person has died now they may they may be pleased that they're
46:20 inheriting wealth um but that doesn't mean that they're glad that their loved one has died and so the ability to deal with these human issues is very very important and it takes some experience and wisdom to do that it's not sufficient to have empathy empathy is important but it's not the only quality and you know as a Chaplain who has helped numerous people through traumatic circumstances that include the
46:55 death of their service member uh abusive situations spousal abuse uh child abuse all of these things empathy was never enough it just wasn't so I you know I as I recently had the opportunity to talk to a few people about my career in the Navy in my now is as I talk about my profession you know here in in Tres and Estates and I remarked to them that my time as a Chaplain has been
47:31 incredibly important to what success I've had as as a professional fiduciary and one of the things I realized was my success as a Chaplain came from the fact that I was older than almost everyone that I dealt with so especially the vast majority of enlisted people they were young enough to be my children um when when I enter when I became a chaplain an active duty chaplain and so when we sat down together first of all there was a sense
48:07 that I had something to offer them they were talking to someone they could trust someone who had more life experience than them so that coupled with empathy I think made a big difference another thing that made a big difference and I'll I'll never forget this I had a young woman come in to see me who uh was very very troubled and I I asked her to sit down and I I said you know how can I help you and she proceeded to tell me about the life that she had lived prior to joining
48:42 the Navy and it was it was horrendous and she had been talking to a chaplain previously who had um who had his time was up and he had left the island and she was looking for a new chaplain to talk to and the fact of the matter is I had never experienced anything that that she had experienced and my my sort of gut reaction was to say well you know I I I empathize with what you're saying um but the fact of the matter is I didn't it wasn't that I
49:19 didn't empathize with her it's just I my empathy would was very shallow because I had never had her experiences and so I said to her I said look I I said I'm perfectly happy to talk to you about this you just have to know that I haven't had these kind of experiences and so my ability to understand them in a viseral sense really isn't there and and I said but I'm absolutely here to listen and and if you want me to give you my
49:54 thoughts I will but you just you just have to know uh I I I have not lived a life like you've lived and she looked at me and she said you're the chaplain that I want now I think as a younger man I wouldn't have had the courage to do that I wouldn't have wanted to expose what I viewed as my shortcomings but it was in fact the right thing to do and I think I don't think I'm so different than other people I think as young people we we are
50:29 nervous about exposing our shortcomings and and that's why wisdom takes time to develop and so we need to have people involved in in Probate and Trust Administration who have been around the track a few times as I say about myself and and have had the opportunity to develop some wisdom so those are my thoughts on the problems with the probate court and some of the things we can do to to solve them I I again I in I invite your thoughts uh
51:04 I invite really would love to engage with you on this I just realized the that's that's so weird I have the wrong set of uh the wrong uh I don't know why it's not let's see okay there we go it was the wrong train going on underneath us all this time um I I really would like to hear your thoughts I think these are real issues that we need to deal with and for the good of our our clients for the good of the beneficiaries for whom we have responsibility or to whom we have responsibility we really need to
51:39 get this figured out so I thank you very much for joining me today and tomorrow at 10:00 am Pacific time is my show business lessons from the military that was what you were seeing the title crawl for and my topic is optimize your resources and I'm going to be talking about how the military has struggled with optimizing resources and the interservice fights that have gone on uh
52:14 with respect to to that issue so I think you'll find that pretty interesting on Wednesday at 10: a.m. is my show people making money and I'm going to be talking about the types of relief relationships we need to be dealing with in the workplace I've I've identified eight of eight of them okay and I'm going to go through them we we I think we have a narrower view of workplace relationships than we should this is not about relationship etiquette I'm actually going to be talking about that next week
52:50 this is about what kinds of relationships should we consciously be seeking out in the workplace in order to buoy our success and then on Thursday will be a classic edition of jiggers is place this is my every other week show and I'm gonna um have a a show that I did with my friend Anna Rook on and she's going to be talking about Healthy Living RIT large I think you will find Anna to be extremely knowledgeable in this area she and a
53:26 part part started a company called acasha superfoods but her knowledge and experience in this area despite her young age is incredibly deep incredibly insightful because she has been involved in this arena for a long long time since she was a teenager seriously involved with it so I I I think you will learn a lot from from Anna and that is on Thursday at 5:00 pm Pacific time and then of course a week from today we'll be back with the next edition of trust and Estates weekly so once again I thank
54:03 you very much for joining me always great to have you live and wishing uh signing off as I always do Marie you are my bell courage