Post-Death Settlement Risk Mitigation for Trustees, with Attorney Josh Yager

0:01 One of the real exciting parts of doing a podcast with really good, talented professionals is watching their business develop, grow, and respond to the market needs. I met Josh Yager a few years ago through a very good close friend and talked about his business and along with the market moving, he's rebranded a little bit, but still offering the same great focus on helping families that need help with settlements. Josh Yager is a trustee service, trustee help service, and legal support. Anodos Law is the law firm. been the call a couple times. Josh, thanks for coming back.

0:33 Happy to be here. Now, you and I see the same problem from different sides. I guess for you there's is perspective business. For me, it ties up my clients who because of the increasing number of people aging out with assets, passing with assets. more and more people are faced with the opportunity to get professional help or do it themselves. And for me as a realtor, I think too many do it themselves to quote save money unquote and lose money in the long run, but also a frustrating experience. Talk a bit about how you see the market and how your offering has changed a bit since we last spoke.

1:06 Well, the problem is that we've got 10 million baby boomers in California and all of them are going to die at some point in the next 30 years. Mhm.

1:17 And they either have a trust or a will or some sort of estate document or they don't, but it doesn't matter. Their estate will pass. It'll either pass the hard way through probate or the easy way through a trust administration. so there's a huge volume of transition asset transitions. those 10 million baby boomers control about $20 trillion of assets in California. So, it's a massive amount of money. Most of those assets are in real property, their homes and other stuff like that.

1:53 And there's only 5,000 trust and estates attorneys. And of those trust and estates attorneys, a third of them are baby boomers. Right. I was going to say a lot of them are older themselves. when the ones that when I've looked for

2:05 Services for clients, it's hard to find somebody to take on certain jobs because yeah, not just they're older, but they're established, they have business, they can be particular, they can be, you know, focus on their niche and not,

2:16 You know, there's a saying, hungry dogs hunt best, but when somebody's older in their career, they can be more particular and it's hard to get the service that you need for clients today because that population is aging out. And I think the age of the trust attorneys is older than the age of the population controlling assets.

2:31 Yeah. Yeah. it. I mean, if you think about it, back in the 80s, you wanted to make a bunch of money, you became an attorney or a doctor.

2:40 And now my kids, when I say, "Guys, there's 20 trillion dollars coming down the pipe. There's 10 million estates to settle. Freaking go to law school and come work with me." My kids are like, "No, I want to be an influencer. I want to be a golf coach." I'm like, "All right, like whatever. That's cool." But the need is massive. And there's there I'm sure you've seen this where you have the family, mom and dad die, eldest son picks up the binder with the estate plan that mom and dad wrote in 2004 and they call the attorney whose name's on it

3:11 And that guy's not around, right? Because he was a contemporary of mom and dad. He's dead or retired or too busy. And it's like I call that an orphan case where no there isn't any professional

3:22 A legal professional helping the successor trustee do that job that they've never done before at best if he was in a firm there's a young person who has no relationship with the family at best but too often you're right the attorney he was a sole practitioner I see this all the time so practitioner and he's out of the business one way or another or just unable to help at the scale the family needs I see that all the time there's Another piece to this which is you have declining service providers population and aging.

3:53 You have increasing market need but so much of this even trusts often have to get kind of forced through the government bureaucracy and with all the technology and all the productivity in American business. The one segment of that's not much more productive from my vant is the government. The state California is not going to turn to AI and make this whole process more efficient.

4:15 Right. Yeah, I mean that's another podcast on why is probate so painful in California, but in Texas and Florida, very few people actually set up revocable living trusts. They set up wills because the probate process is streamlined in those states and California hasn't adopted the uniform probate code which makes that happen. But that's a conversation for a different day. It is what it is, right? settling and it doesn't matter whether the family died in testate or with a will, i.e. you're going through probate to get to clear title on the house to sell it or whether they've done it through a trust. In either case, the settlement process, a probate and a trust settlement are basically the same except one's in front of a judge and one's not. The duties and responsibilities are the same irrespective of which hat you're wearing. The problem is that the successor trustee, the eldest daughter, who's highly competent and that's why she was selected because she's the most responsible of the kids. She's got a day job and she's got her own clients and she's got her own kids and husband to worry about and like she's busy and settling an estate through a probate process or through over a kitchen table with a trust settlement, a non-judicial oversight process. There's like 10 or 20 projects within that settlement and each project has five or 10 tasks within it and the successor trustes never done it before and their brothers are chirping at her, hey, when are we going to get our check? And like it's a it's it's complicated. It's a bummer. there's a huge amount of work coming down the pike. everyone who I know who's in the settlement business, be it probate or non-probate, is swamped and nobody wants to go into the business. I'm like, this is a golden opportunity to do really good work for families and get paid a fair fee and not have to fight about getting clients because there's more clients we could possibly deal with and to use best practices and project management and AI

6:20 To streamline the settlement process. So, it's measured a conclusion measured in months, not years. And it's like this is obvious people and it's just not obvious for as many as I would have hoped.

6:33 You know, when I think right before I met you was referred by a friend, but that friend I got him into the business in a sense as a fiduciary as a professionally licensed fiduciary because I saw the market. I really believed in it. Now, it's not for everybody. I mean, that business is is tough. And I, you know, I've come to know you obviously very bright, very strong. I mean, these are these are challenging situations. you're getting paid to resolve, you know, thorny problems. But for somebody who's going to do the work,

7:01 I think it's a phenomenal career opportunity. And like I said, you we and I have a mutual friend. I want to say his name just whatever reasons, but he's he's thriving in this industry because a he's good at and b because there's a need for those services. It's just a different

7:15 Yeah. set of competition. This wave of baby boomers and their settlement need is massive. Yeah. And there's huge opportunity to add value. and make a lot of money. I think those two things, like the money comes from doing good. You're rewarded for doing good.

7:30 Yes. And it doesn't matter if you're selling real estate through probates or if you're doing probates themselves or if you're a property manager or if you're an investment advisor or a CPA. It's like this wave is huge.

7:43 And it doesn't really matter where we pick to surf on the wave. It just matters that we call it out and say, "Look, this wave's big. I want to create expertise in this area. I want to add value for this massive population

7:57 And everyone's busy. Everyone is busy and it's going to go 3x. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I see that and I see 3x business coming down the pipe in terms of the number of estates and the value of the states. I don't see 3x the population of service providers. Maybe realtors is a little more competitive. That's a little easier to get in and out of and a little more well known. But what you're talking about a attorneys, trust attorneys specifically and fiduciaries that I that

8:26 CPA is another one. If those populations stay equal, it would be amazing. I don't know. They're going to say analysts are going to stay equal over the next 10 years.

8:36 Yeah. Yeah. So there's massive need. It's a big deal. And really when I read a trust doc, it's probably 95% of the time mom and dad have selected a family member to be responsible for settling it. So even though there is this new service provider option, the certified licensed professional fiduciary, which I think is killer, all of those 1500 lences are busy. They are adding to their ranks every year and still they represent a very small population of the universe of settlements. It's mostly falls to one of the kids to like figure this stuff out.

9:20 The classic case is also you know mom and dad I picked the oldest or the most successful in business. And so I had a family member, not my parents, but who I'm one of three siblings. I'm the oldest and said to me, you know, she had asked me to be the successor trustee. And you know, I if people ask you to do something, I try to, you know, be of service. I later found out that she didn't. She actually named my the youngest, my sister,

9:45 Who great gal, we got along really well. I remember and my sister called me saying, "I'm coming to tell you this, but you know, and then we thought about it and changed, you know, and I'm thinking, thank God, [laughter] right? I appreciate that my sister felt that way about me and it was very nice and I appreciate that my aunt had to kind of lie to me about it to make it work but I didn't have to do all that work because it is a job.

10:07 Yeah, it's a big deal. It for a nonprofessional it can easily run into the hundred maybe 200 hours to fit into your life in a year,

10:20 Right? just bird dogging all the tasks, all the projects, all the things you didn't know about, all the oh shoot, we forgot to do that. Oh, there's still a loose end,

10:28 Right? Like it's a pain in the neck. And you know, that's you 100 hours is over, you know, let's say two weeks vacation time that you would not get or give up for that or something. I mean, it's

10:37 It's a chunk of time. So, let's talk about what are the one or two major things that you see when, you know, clients come to you already started on their own and they've tripped up. They're fumbling the ball. They're asking you to help them. What were the two biggest mistakes you see people make in the beginning of the process?

10:52 I think there's a number, but one is the delay. The successor TR doesn't know what to do first. They don't understand the sequence of things that have to be done. And so things aren't done in order of necessity. They find out, oh shoot, I need to do this notice, but they only they only do it like six months or eight months or a year later because they didn't know. or they sit on their hands and everyone's kind of trying to figure out what to do with all the mom's stuff in her house and there's going to be fights over the Porsche and who gets that and so the family just stops because the trustee doesn't understand their role is to be a benevolent dictator and to bring this thing to conclusion. their duty fundamentally is to distribute checks and they delay way too long and that builds up frustration with the other siblings and why aren't you working on this faster and they're saying I'm trying to but Morgan Stanley won't get me the paperwork and why are you working on the Morgan Stanley stuff and not the house and why like they're they're they are overwhelmed by the detail and they don't know which of the things should come first and what is the sequence that I should go on and how do I how do I manage a project? Settling a trust is probably 20% legal where you actually should probably have an attorney drafting some of these notices or notice of proposed action or the trustee fee study or some of these things that are kind of statutoily driven, but 80% of it is just who did what when and what's the next thing in the sequence and what has to come first to get this thing done.

12:32 Yeah. And it's just a lot of it's a lot of tasks. It's like assume every asset in the trust or in the estate is a project. And every project has five or 10 things that have to be done before that asset is ready to distribute. So if you got, you know, five checking accounts and a house and a rental property and a brokerage account and life insurance and like gold coins and cars, it's like, dude, every one of those is a project. And each one of those projects has five to 10 steps to get to done. And I think people focus on one thing at a time. They focus on I'm going to work on the Morgan Stanley account first.

13:13 So they start working on it. And it's like, wait a minute, you could you could advance the ball on all of these concurrently to have it done. Don't do one thing at a time.

13:23 Yes. have a the master list of all of the things that you need to get done and just start hitting the ball over the net to the people that have to do something. The real estate agent, the life insurance guy, the investment advisor, whoever.

13:39 Get the clock started. Yeah. Get it get it started. Have it have a list of who's supposed to do what this week and yell at them.

13:47 I come from a before I was in real estate, I was electronics manufacturing. I ran a production line for company made electronics for satellites and aerospace. And so my job was to, you know, we had certain products and they all had a checklist and I have to, you know, confer with the production line manager and make sure we're all on the same page and then release the release the project to the line and then track it. And you're right that, you know, the whole goal was to get to-dos off of my side onto other parties, whether it be this department, that department, the QC, whatever. to get the ball moving because nothing good happens when you sit around. You know, in the case of a business, you have inventory and the owner say, "Well, look, that's just my money sitting there depreciating, waiting to get stolen, waiting to fall apart, waiting to be broken, waiting to do something wrong. Everything's bad until, you know, we ship the product in that case and then they get a bill." In our business, you know that I have a saying in real estate, there's nothing good that happens from the day I sign a listing agreement until the day the client receives a check. Everything is bad. every single day is risk or cost to my client and more work until we close the thing up.

14:53 And I think if you're going to be a trustee on an estate on a probate or a trust estate, you have to have that attitude that it's all bad. It's just overhead and you have to keep the ball moving quickly and efficiently. So, I think what I'm hearing you say mostly is just knowing where to start and having a plan of action. And obviously, you've done a lot of these. You have a set of plans that you implement, I guess, customize, but implement basically some of the same activities over and over again. Meaning, you've seen a lot of these things. So, it's not new to you that that guess what? Morgan Stanley's also to respond to requests,

15:29 Right? Yeah. And just to note, it's not Morgan Stanley, right? It's the entire industry. yes. all it's not it's it's that these poor kids in the estate settlement departments at all the big banks are overworked and underpaid and have too many projects. But it all comes down to [snorts] project management and engineering best practices.

15:53 Yes. So engineers for 70 years since World War II have known how to build stuff quick. Yes. and have accountability and pivots and if then and that's because they're rewarded for completion of things as an engineer. there's a there's a 30-un apartment building going up around the corner from my office. That thing will be built, completed, and occupied before many trusts are settled. The time to build this enormous complex project. Right.

16:26 Right. And so my observation was, huh, why don't we in the trust in estates practice learn from project management best practices? You can get a PhD in project management. It's like a developed

16:41 Researched documented field. And so what I've been doing is just kind of remembering and learning from the disciplines of engineering and science and construction and logistics of how do you get stuff done fast and you described it well like there's only probably I call them modules. There's only probably 30 or 40 actual things that ever have to get done in a settlement. So I call that the module library. Each one has a known, hey, you need this data in order to complete this type of task. You need this information. Here's the workflow process on it. And so when I meet a new client, I say, all right, what is your fact set? And where do we have to pull a module from to solve this? do we have any time shares? Nope, no time shares. Great. We don't need that module. Are we going to do a formal accounting at the end of this or are we going to do an informal accounting? Informal. Everyone's cool. Great. Informal accounting. Are we going to keep mom's house as a rental or are we going to sell mom's house? We're going to keep it as a rental. Great. disperse, fix up, hold in an LLC, have a co-ownership agreement with it, management agreement, and delegate. So, every single thing within a settlement has already been done. This is not the first time that people have died and assets have been transferred. Right? We can we can read Julius Caesar's will to know what he said should be done. So the discipline the practice of distributing estates is probably as old as humanity.

18:22 So let's just modulize those things. And part of it part of the problem I think is because many of us in this practice are paid hourly to do this work. So, if I'm an attorney and I get a project, I'm going to hand it off to my parallegal at 290 bucks an hour to do it. So, what's the incentive to move fast? There isn't any incentive,

18:45 Right? Well, if you're you're a licensed professional fiduciary charging an hourly rate of 250 an hour or you're a CPA helping the family work on the project. So, all of the disciplines within trust and estate settlement are almost entirely done are compensated by hourly. And my flip on it is what would happen if I said this is a fixed fee deal. I get paid 10 grand whether it takes me three weeks or three years there. Here's the fee. I looked at your list of all the stuff that has to get done. I give you a fee. And it changes everyone's incentive. It aligns what I do when I show up on Monday, what I ask my staff to do because it's like, man, I want that check as fast as possible. I want to earn. I want to have more turns in a year

19:35 With modules and AI and workflows than I could have by just set my staff loose on, hey, work on this project and tell me when it's done.

19:47 Yeah. I think that what you're describing what I see is kind of the you know it's described as AI which is an amazing tool and phenomena and period of time in our history but it is more the engineering of business that's changing and it's gone on for a while and it's gone through different phases and computers create some digitalization of it and now we're set up to have computers make a lot of decisions you know for us through AI as but really it's the engineering you describe that really well because that's how I approach my business too that even this podcast when I started doing this you know I used to spend maybe for every episode another hour of administrative work between uploading downloading labeling you know now to be honest it's 100 it's 99% automated I have one virtual assistant I've worked with for years who QAS the YouTube before we let it go

20:38 Everything is done automated up until then the whole process and that means I can do more I can do it faster I can do it cheaper spend more time talking to people it's just It's just work. It's just workflows. It's taking a, you know, there's that joke about how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time,

20:53 Right? You take a big project and you break it into a bunch of little projects and you add dates and you add accountability and you have some sort of database, whether it's Excel or whether it's some cool high-powered engineering thing, it doesn't matter. It's just a and an important part in the trust settlement business is knowing the sequence. you get to a problem and you can't solve that problem unless you unless you've solved two other problems ahead of it,

21:19 Right? So having the having the experience to know look the first thing we have to do is X because there are five sub projects that are dependent on X being completed first, right?

21:29 And we don't want to find that out when we're halfway through project L. And I think you described it right that you know the experience creates the efficiency or productivity is one of the aspects and that's why somebody doing one in their lifetime or two in their lifetime can't possibly do as well as professional because and if your time is valuable you know if you're if you're a business person now you're running the trust you're not you're not paying per hour to somebody else but you're using your own time 100 hours per hour to do the work and you're doing it you're spending more time on it because you don't know what you're doing you have you're learning on the job for a job you're never going to compete.

22:04 I think the other part of it is I've experienced and this is something I've done learned from my manufacturing days was when we close a transaction I have a checklist we review the checklist before we archive the file to say well what do we do wrong here or what could we do better next time what changes should we make and many times it's nothing but after you know there are times I go wow if I done this or that things would have gone a lot more smoothly by the way that's why I'm so adamant on promoting the concept of fiduciaries or attorneys who do the trustee work administration for the clients. Why? Because what I realized was, you know, I'm waiting to get paid, yes, an extra year when it's being done by somebody on their own. But it also means the customer is not as happy. It also means they're more likely to get involved in a conflict of some sort. The customers are happy with life and I just happen to be in the middle of their mess. And so I think having experience both along the way, you've learned, but more than that, I think you learn how to do it right the next time. And that's the goal of the whole process.

22:58 Yeah. Yeah. For those of us that are in the business, CLPF, real estate, attorney, CPA, doing that afteraction report like the military does. Okay, we did it. What went great? What went wrong? What can we learn from this? What tool do we wish we had? Right?

23:13 As to the cost, there's always the cost of hiring the professional, right? I could have a gardener, but I don't. But I understand what a gardener would cost me or a plumber. And so there's there's some calculus. I think that many trustees do that. They say, "I'm just going to suck it up. I'm not going to pay the CPA or the licensed professional fiduciary 10 or 20 grand to get this done." Because they're thinking about the nominal dollar. And there's two costs that they don't think about often, which is one, the time value of money.

23:46 You do this on your own. You're going to sell mom's house for $1.5 million. Will you make more money for the beneficiaries if you pay 10 grand for somebody to get this thing done in six weeks? Or are you going to fumble with the deed and the all of the associated documents that need to get done? It's going to take you six months. Pick a 5% rate of return on a million bucks. That's $50,000 for every six months you missed. It's like there's an opportunity cost. So that's a quantifiable one. How fast do you get your check? The other is a bigger one, more concerning. The residual beneficiaries are waiting for their check. And the longer you the longer it takes for you to deliver that check or to convince them that look, there's a process. I'm on top of it. There are no balls being dropped. We're not going months without anything happening, it reduces significantly their likelihood of starting to chirp. family dynamics. Somebody files a petition to remove you or for accounting and it's like, dude, I was doing the best I could. Yeah, my kid got sick. I had some stuff at work. Oh, a month and a half went by. You may you may have breached your duties as a trustee to act prudently under the circumstances by delaying this because it's not your money. It's your it's your beneficiary's money. And you have to act with their money as if it was yours, which means it's their time value of money. It's their $50,000 per million on a CD

25:14 That you got to be thinking about. Well, and you break it down to six months. I would say, you know, in a month or two, using your same math, which I think I do all the time on listings where clients will say, well, you know, we're going to take two or three months to fix a property up and sell it for more. I say, okay, well, let's do the math on that. And you realize that, you know, relatively modest time value of money. You're talking about $45,000 a month of delay. Are we going to sell the property for $15,000 more because you wait three months and pay it? I don't I don't see it happening.

25:44 Yeah. And yet as a trustee now, you're responsible to your siblings for the money you lost. It's one thing to say, "Well, it's my money. I you know, I went to Vegas. I lost some money." No. You lost their money. They're if they find out, they're going to be pissed.

25:58 Like, and rightfully so. And so can I bring up a that mom's house is always an issue in every settlement,

26:07 Of course. So, I want I want to do a little get give me some coaching on this. You got three kids. One of them, this is their first shot ever in owning California real estate. They want they want mom's house. They want to buy it from their siblings, but they don't have enough cash. You've got another kid that's got a bunch of debt, but they already have a house, so they want the house sold as fast as possible. Third kid is a construction worker and says, "Look, we can fix this thing up. All we have to do is put a couple hundred grand of mom's money into doing a new kitchen, do a little landscaping. We're going to get more money from this. So, give me coaching on how that issue is resolved. Noting there isn't a right answer, but it's correct. They have conflicting objectives

26:51 And how do you coach families in that those tough decisions? You know, I was in a networking meeting and another agent gave this presentation on how they rehab houses and sell them in trusts

27:04 And their website had 10 examples and it sound it looked very impressive before and after and you know and the other agent would sell for this and we sold for that. Well, I went on to their website and I took the addresses and calculate the actual value of the property time they listed it that what they sold it for. I took their numbers and what they said they fixed what they put into it. assuming they're accurate, they might understand it,

27:27 Right? And then add time value of money and everyone lost money. This is on their website promoting their service of rehabbing properties for families.

27:36 That doesn't even count legal liability. That doesn't count property tax reevaluations. That doesn't even count, you know, dated death and deadlines for, you know, passing property with exemptions. Just the cost of the value of the property is a complete loser. how to convince me that you had to run the numbers. It takes some work and I created SPR. I actually did a whole podcast on it. I have you know hands out videos that go through that company. I took their examples and net they lost you know every single time I think or maybe all but one. So that one I think is just numbers. Now of course the contractors don't want to hear that and he's going to tell you he's a magician and but if you put it on paper and numbers my experience is people are more likely to make the right decision. they'll that you have to give them the information in a way they can digest it

28:25 On the one that that you know wants to live there. You know, there's different ways to pass that and that gets to an estate planning attorney on how do you want to pass the property because as you know there's step up basis, there's reassessment.

28:36 Well, let's say let's say it's too late. Mom and dad are dead. There is no estate planning anymore. It's literally a house is worth 1.2 and one daughter has there's two daughters. one has a half interest in the house like how is it refinanc I think between there's difference between giving him the whole house and him giving them cash or a note in exchange versus splitting it 50/50 and then him buying them out. That's my point. again, I'm not an attorney, but I've had attorneys walk through me the process that he would get the full step up. And so I think the default proper way is if the one can afford to buy it,

29:17 Distribute the whole house to him and he gives cash and or note to the other parties and has a time period to refinance and pay it off if he can if he can swing all that. Reality is in my experience the child who wants to live in the house in my experience as a realtor I won't say scientific never can afford to buy the house. That's the one kid who can't afford to buy a house. he'd like to. And so we have to do with that one is I think again walk through the numbers and say

29:42 Here's how the step up works. Here's how we have to do it. You have to qualify for this loan. I know guys who do those loans. Can you swing that? And typically the answer is no. So it just depends. But my experience is the one who wants to live there never can afford to buy the house.

29:57 Right. And how about the last well we covered the renovate and then sell, right? We covered the sell to one of the kids with a true up payment of some of mom and dad's. you take the brokerage account and I'll owe you 200 grand and I'll give it to you in five years. Something like that,

30:12 Right? How about the family that genuinely says, "You know what? We can rent this thing. It's got a great ADU in the back and none of us want to sell it

30:21 And we want to keep it as an investment property." Sure. what would the what would the process be around that property manager and like how would that be? depending who they are and how they work. You know, some the person who does that, again, my experience is a real estate guy who has five or 10 other properties and they have a system. Either they do it, mom runs the books for the father or their property management company or they own their own property management company many times

30:48 And do that kind of thing. Again, the problem there is going to be that loan to finance it, you know, if they're going to finance it because they got to pay out the other, you know, now if they're all on board and going to split the money, that's different, but typically

31:01 One or two of them need the cash. So now, you know, the one's getting maybe he's entitled to a third, but now he has to come up with an equal third because you can't finance 100%. You can finance maybe 70% of the property. So again, those typically don't work. Where it works is somebody's very wealthy and just wants to keep the house in the family for nostalgic reasons and they can afford to do it. That's the one that doesn't sell and that's their prerogative. I think, you know, I'm not here to judge what people want to do with their money. but it economically it almost never makes sense not to sell the pro it almost always makes sense to sell the property for tax reasons for cash flow reasons and then again the makeup of those families typically somebody needs to get their cash if all three could take an interest in the property yeah renting makes in this environment and if you can keep the you know the property tax depending on if it qualifies for exclusions or not yeah it could be a really good deal but that that's a pretty rare bird right now.

31:56 Yeah. Yeah. I'd agree. I would say in my practice, it's almost the debate or fight is always do we use trust assets to fix up this house because all of these houses have five or 10 years of deferred maintenance, right? Dad hasn't been around like it's a it's a piece.

32:14 So, do we sell asis and get out or we put 200 grand into fixing it? That's the one fight. And the only way to for the for the trustee to have to make a prudent decision in my mind is you got to do the proforma. Get a couple of bids for what would a $200,000 thing be? How long is it going to take?

32:33 What's the delta in value of that versus this? Yes. Get it in the file and then make a decision. If you think it's the right thing, fine. Make the decision.

32:41 Yes. rely on your real estate agent to help you with the time value money calculation, but CYA on why you did what you did when you did it. I'm not going to put 200 grand in the house. Great. List it.

32:53 I agree with you 100%. I would just add one other caveat, which is I work a lot of investors. I list property, they're distressed, you know, they're they're beaten up or whatever. So, typical buyer is an investor and they, you know, become my best friend regularly and I, you know, ask about their business. And what I can tell you is every investor tells me three things on every deal. They always paid more than they should have. It always cost them more than they budgeted. It always takes longer than they imagined. And so I say to the family member, just understand these are professionals who do five or 10 a year. This is their business. They buy five or 10 properties like yours and they fix them up to make money. And that's how they put bread on the table for the families. They've done that for 20 years. And they're telling me it always costs more than they expect and always takes longer. Just know that when you make your budget, that's the reality. And that's why for an individual person. Now again, if the heir is a or a beneficiary or the trustee is a real estate developer, different story. If they're a professional, they know what they're doing. But 99% of the time they're not. That is a tough business you're competing with. Why not let the professional make the design decisions? Is it worth an ADU? Is it two ADUs? Is it a maybe add-on second floor? There's a million ways to cut the property. Let the professional maximize the value. And by the way, as a realtor, my job is not to sell the property for what it's worth. My job is to get the top dollar that we can for the property. And if somebody assumes they can build a six-bedroom house and it turns out they can't after they bought it, you don't care. We sold it to that guy. So, right,

34:21 You can't afford to make the mistake. And as attorney, I think you also have to caution your trustee that if you set this renovation and you have the kind of problems people have,

34:30 Who are you liable to? Right. Right. Yeah. It's it's a big deal. It's a big deal. I my preference in those places or the role that I play is look, I don't I don't know what the right answer is. I know what the right process is and I'm always assuming that one of your siblings sues you and what do we hope is in the file. We hope that Bill did the proforma for us and did the math. Yes. Yes.

34:56 And we got a piece of paper and when brother says you could have gotten more for the house like you may think that it's not a breach of trust if I'm relying on advice of a licensed professional that knows this place and I decided to do dot whatever the dot is keep it sell it sell it to your brother like as long as it's cy as long as the file is papered with that's a big decision and the some estates require a big decision most though there's agreement all the and say, "Look, we're not going to put 200 grand in the house, sell it as is. Let's go get the cash. We want to pay off our credit card or pay for our kids going through college or add an ADU on our own property." In which case, everyone's aligned. But when they're not aligned, it's really important to document why you did what you did when you did it. I do think also, but even in that case, it's good to document the decision because it's easy for them to agree at one time and they list a property thinking it's worth [unclear] and the market tell you they think it is and it sells for 16 and then the one goes really we could have got 2.4 if we just you know put on $50 worth of paid from Home Depot and you're like right

36:02 No it's not quite that simple. I again I would say that even though I generally assume the numbers are going to work out where it does make sense to do the renovation, they should always do the perform and document it. I'm always glad to do it for a trusted or fiduciary because it has to be done otherwise you're really just rolling the dice and those are people who regret it. They're the ones who the property's been stuck for six years because they've run out of money and who's going to come up with the last $50,000 and now there's resentments built and it's just it that's the disaster that happens once.

36:34 Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, look, Josh, I really enjoy talking to you always. I'm a little over budget your time, but it was a lot of fun. I think we learned a lot and got a chance to go in some details. but I just really appreciate your time and I really feel more importantly educating people on the importance at least considering getting professional help for what is a very challenging job. talk a bit about specifically Anodos Law and what your role is as far as the marketplace. What do you offer both the families in these situations and I think what do you offer the professionals who maybe need to lean on you or delegate some work for your firm?

37:09 Well, we're a traditional trust and estates law firm which means we do three things. draft new documents for the young family that needs documents, review and refresh old documents when the drafting attorneys retired or dead, and settle trusts. So, pretty much all attorneys do those things in different degrees of focus. our firm, what makes us distinguished from my colleagues is number one, I am not looking to serve the ultra high net worth family. I built this practice for my parents who are like the millionaire next door with a couple million bucks in a house because I think that's an underserved demographic because there's only 5,000 attorneys and we get to pick, hey, it's more fun and we get paid more to work for the $30 million guy than the $3 million guy. So, it's mass market. number two, it's 100% remote. I'm in Santa Barbara, but nobody comes in my office. It is 100% Zoom. So I'm have clients in Sacramento and the Bay Area and San Jose and San Diego. So that having it be remote can speed up the delivery process.

38:20 Yes. So our elevator pitch is twice as fast, half the cost, 100% remote. And it's just it's a niche. It's a mass market niche. It's kind of like you know, it's the millionaire next door type practice. And the thing that I'm really pressing into the first two, drafting docs and refreshing existing docs, that's not anything special. We all are turn we all are using the same templated document set. And so that's just how fast can you turn it around? How many hours does your staff take to do that work? And with automations and remote delivery and transcripts, my experience is we can do it in half the time and make the same amount of money as my colleagues with a big office with a floor to ceiling glass thing. But settlement is the thing that I'm pressing into because I think that's where the problem is is serving the eldest child who's responsible for settling this big project that they've never done before.

39:17 That represents probably 50% of our firm revenue right now. And that that's the fastest growing piece of our practice. And that's just saddle up, get on the phone with the trustee, make the work plan, use project management best practices, use technology, and get through that list as fast as possible. And our wrinkle is everything's fixed fee. We don't do any hourly anything because I think that incentivizes the wrong behaviors. I would rather learn how to do things fast for 2,000 bucks and find out, oh, it didn't take me three or four hours to do. It took me one hour to do it. Client's happy with the outcome. They got what they wanted. There's no change orders. There's no surprise invoice at the end. So, within all of our services, but particularly with settlements, the successor trustee gets a fee quote. We talk about their case, how many pieces of property, how many accounts, how many crazy beneficiaries, and like it feels like a $12,000 thing. I'll take half up front. I'll take half when we're done. And I'm working as fast as possible to get the half when we're done as we can, which is what the beneficiaries want, which is what the trustee wants. If we end up figuring out how to do it really efficiently, we are rewarded for those efficiencies that we bring. And still we're half the price of what my colleagues would charge giving it to their parallegals at 290 an hour.

40:42 Yeah. it. I think one of the frustrating things for clients and for me is when there's a delay for no real reason. Typically paperwork's not done properly.

40:50 Yeah. It's just the nonchalance of the firm where you know, yeah, their legal fees delayed 30 days, but this family is a lot of money. They have a lot invested in it. So I think the alignment of interest is just very interesting and I think right on point with the marketplace and that's why I've you know enjoyed talking to you want to continue to promote you as an option for people considering that whether it be your family or your attorney who does the administration documents but you do the actual administration Josh be a great resource for you and your clients. his phone number is [phone number shown on screen] and the website's trustee-help.com. You can reach Josh at josh trustyhelp.com. Josh, thanks again for being on the program. I always learn so much when we talk. We appreciate your time today.

41:37 Sure thing. Thanks, Bill. This is fun. Thanks so much, [unclear]. This was [The Estate Planning Podcast]. We get together every week with attorneys talk about devising estates, updating estates, administering estates. Today went deep on the administration side. Hope you find it interesting. I know I do every time we talk to Josh. I love to get your comments. Reach out to me. Put it in the social media if you're watching this. If I can help in any way at Bill Gross Probate on social media. And as always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.