Tax Strategies and Asset Protection, with Lalit Kundani

0:02 So there's a lot of estate planning, but at the end of the day, the goals are almost always focused in the same area of asset protection, minimizing taxes, and they figure out how to function within laws across multiple jurisdictions, states or countries. We're excited today to have a leading estate planning attorney from the Bridge Law, actually the founder, one of the founders, and a partner at Bridge Law, Lalit Kundani. Lalit, thank you for joining us today.

0:24 Thanks for having me, Bill. So you know estate planning obviously has been kind of in the news and then now it's kind of out of the news in the sense that there was potentially some very dramatic changes. I think the answer is there's no news but that still means one has to do good planning. So what are meetings with your clients like right now as you get new clients coming in or old clients saying what do we do? What how the laws affect us? What are those conversations looking like right now?

0:50 Yeah it's a great question. So for some clients, they've been, you know, their eye has been on the prize. And so this kind of gives some in some ways the new tax bill buys them more time. If it if it dealt with, oh, you know, I need to do some gifting. I need to get things out of my state for estate tax reasons. Well, maybe they've gotten some more time. For other clients, anytime there's a new tax bill, it brings them to the forefront of what they probably should have already been thinking about 10 years ago. So, for a lot of clients, they're now realizing, oh, wait a minute. this tax bill offers me this thing called QSBS. Well, that's been in the books for, you know, decades. It's just that maybe now you're hearing about it a little bit more because it's become even more sweeter of a prize. So, I think from as far as business goes, folks are always coming in at different times in their journey asking these questions that really all of us should be asking. And the problem is nobody tells us about it. We're sort of expected to kind of know these things. And unfortunately, a large part of what we do only gets known after we die. So, good luck.

1:58 So, you don't have a crystal ball. See, I have a crystal ball. It's right there. It doesn't work very well, but I do have a crystal ball for my clients and they say, "Well, did you know this? You know, I looked at the crystal ball. It didn't say anything about it." So, and it's also kind of like as a real estate agent, we often get phone calls from clients who need help with roof repairs once the rain started. It's not that the rain detected new leaks. They had leaks last year, they never patched, and now all of a sudden they're worried about it and they jump into it. Same with estate planning. I imagine that the law caused them to think about it. Oh, by the way, I did get divorced. Oh, by the way, we bought this new business. Oh, by the way, and so it's a constant process of being in front of customers. So, that basically just kind of a business question before we jump into the details. How do you stay in front of your clients? It seems to me that the most effective delivery of service is with good tight communication between the client and the attorney. Yet clients, you know, I'm one of them. We always wait till we have to do something. We aren't as productive as we could be. What do you do if anything to besides being on my podcast today, which I appreciate. What do you do to stay in front of your clients so that when they do have major milestones or decisions to make, they do consult you before the fact rather than after the fact?

3:05 Well, it's a multifaceted approach. you've you've hit the nail on the head as far as what the biggest problem is is education. Kennedy said, as you as you correctly pointed out, he alluded to this in a quote. He said, you know, the time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining. Nobody's going to be fixing the roof until it starts raining. So, even if it's not a tax related matter, somebody gets into a car accident, a horrible one, they've been sued. Oh no, I need to protect my assets. Anything I can do? Yeah. The time that you could have protected your assets and the time you weren't getting into a car accident. So yes, that is the big problem. and there's good news and bad news. The bad news, let's start with the bad news. The bad news is a, as we just said, it's it's it's almost unlike statistically speaking, we're getting calls after the fact. So what that means is at best clients waited too long, which means it's more expensive to do it. at best clients waited too long, which means the valuation was too high than more than it should have been. they're creating more trust than they should have at best. At worst, you can't even do the planning. So, that's the bad news. How what do we do and how do we get in front of it? A we go on podcasts like this, not because we can predict that everyone's going to listen to it. The more the advisors know, meaning the more your CPA knows, the more your life insurance knows, the more your real estate agent knows, the more that all of the other folks in your life know about what potentially could be an issue, the more likely they are to forward you over to someone like us. So, we see a lot of business coming in, most of our business actually comes in from advisors. Not that the client knows about it, but we are seeing more and more advisors be up to speed with other facets of what might affect their client. And that really separates them and their services from the next guy. So, you know, we see, you know, maybe a CPA who may not even practice in gift tax and estate tax, but who knows enough about it to go, "Hey, wait a minute. You have an issue. Go see this or a real estate agent who goes I

5:09 Know that if I sell a piece of real estate to someone who's not a US citizen there may be tremendous tax consequences when you die and so that's the good news is advisors are becoming you know more aggressive in terms of becoming more educated and also the good news is we live in the world of AI so you see queries coming in through chat GPT you see queries coming in through clients googling it you know we used to say never google don't don't google your medical problems I'm I'm I'm not so I'm not sure that I think there's a certain part of that that's right and a certain part that's wrong. I think you should be inquisitive enough to take matters into your hands and research it. You should be smart enough to know when you go okay now I need to go to the right person. But the good news is I think we are seeing that we write articles people read these articles find these articles and that means they're searching the right way.

6:00 And that's what caused me to do this podcast. I think you hit on the head which is I think in the past business could be siloed. You could be an estate planner, I could be a realtor, we would never have to cross paths. I think the difference now for me to be a great realtor is if I can help look at a customer and say, "Hey, this is deed in your name, Bob and Mary. It's worth more than a million dollars. Are you aware of the advantages of estate planning? And have you even considered it?" And I'm really trying to get every realtor I work with to ask those questions or how long has it been since you updated it? and we're and we're we're buying property and are we buying it consistent with the plans and things like that and

6:36 And I'm telling you obviously you know this but this is not a plugin. This is true. You should be working with a realtor who is looking out for all of what could possibly happen because to not do so is to live in this imaginary world where we think death might not happen. Well, guess what? That's one certainty is that there's taxes and there's death. And if we're not factoring those two into it, that's, you know, we're kind of living blindly there.

7:04 Well, there's also an intermediate I mean, I'm I'm not telling you something, you don't know, but just for the listener, there's debt, there's taxes. There's also when you're alive and maybe incapacitated medical issues and I go through that all the time and how, you know, what do we do with remains and you know, so and so has this religious practice and this person doesn't and how do we resolve that and or you know, making medical decisions? I don't know. I just saw an interesting podcast on some of the scary practices of hospitals regarding organ donation. And not saying that you shouldn't do it. I'm just saying be aware and make whatever your position is. Get that in writing to a person who can effectuate what you believe. Either donate everything or don't donate everything. But at least it's your decision, not the hospitals or the doctors. And they're good doctors and bad. But we still should be in charge of our own I think decisions. And I tell the client, my clients the same thing. I go, there's there's two doors in our office. There's the front door and there's the back door. And it's not a question of whether you're going to ever come and meet someone like me in your life. The question is going to be which door do you come from? Unfortunately, that's the reality. The front door is the door that says, you know, I'm educated enough to know that there's something there that I need to deal with. I'm going to deal with it. I'm going to be proactive and it's going to be under my terms. And what the backdoor looks like is it's the government plan. It's the more expensive plan. It's called probate, it's called conservatorships, it's called lawsuits, right? And so you can you can deal with it that way, which is to say, don't do anything. Wait till the event occurs incapacity, death, a coma, a lawsuit, whatever you call it. Wait till that happens and then try to deal with it. Now you're reactionary, not proactive. Now you're paying me a lot more money than you could have if you came through the front door. But more importantly, who's suffering? Your family suffering, your loved ones, the people who you care about the most are the ones left dealing with this ordeal.

8:59 And that's the problem. So, one question I'd like to ask every estate planning attorney because I get asked this question. I answer it and I'll say, "Well, I'm not an attorney, but this is my business answer." I would maintain that and of course, I'm a real estate agent who does probate, so I see when people don't have estate plans. That's my business basically. though I also do with estate plans and that but I would say that 90% of people are better off with a bad better off with a bad plan than with no plan because the no plan option is really the DMV government plan and even I in my experience the worst online template inappropriate plan gave more protection to the family almost always than the no plan. True or false? that a plan even if it's limited even if you get started with it putting everything at trust at least has the odds opportunity 90% chance of being better outcome than the state plan

9:55 I completely agree I that's a true statement and I wish more people believed in that I do and I try to get that you know and I try to talk to nonprofits and say you should be seeking your biggest donors making sure they have a plan in place and you know if they're gifting you money regularly talk about how that fits in their estate plan. If they don't have one, you should be bringing those resources to your donors, for example, or your key partners in business. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, the biggest misconception I get is, oh, if I have an estate plan or I have a trust, there won't be any lawsuits. Now, that's just I know it's actually not true. So, tell me, you must get that same question as well. If I do this and I won't be sued and so how do you set proper expectations? The reality is it will protect you when you're sue. But if you have enough money, odds are somebody's going to sue you for something, right?

10:48 Yeah. I look at my opportunities in front of clients, is that an opportunity? It's it's not an opportunity to actually do anything more than educating my client. When a client walks through our door, I tell them as soon as they sit down, I go, I am not going to quote you a price. I'm not going to sell you anything. I'm not going to ask you to do anything. I just want you to listen and I want you to take notes and I want you to ask questions. And one of those things that we talk about in that meeting is what a trust will or will not do. So we talk and educate probably like 60 to 90 minutes we're sitting there and talking about this. There's something called a revocable living trust. Here's what's good. Here's what's bad. There's something called an irrevocable trust. Here's what's good. Here's what's bad. 99% of the time you're going to do a revocable trust, which is good, but remember it's not going to protect you from lawsuits. It's not gonna reduce your taxes. It's it's so you're not doing it for something that's going to benefit you. You're doing it because it's going to benefit the people after you. And if you do the revocable right, which most people don't, by the way, but if you do the revocable right, not only is there not a probate when you die, but you can protect your kids from lawsuits with a revocable. You could protect your kids from estate taxes with a revocable. or your grandchildren with a revocable. So the revocable is confusing while I'm alive. Really very little benefit. When I'm dead, you can act if written right you can cause there to be tremendous benefit and irrevocable I tell clients is where you want for yourself while you're alive. You want the tax benefit or you want the asset protection benefit, the lawsuit benefit.

12:30 So if while I'm alive I want to experience those benefits then I'm I need to also do an irrevocable. Another misconception that clients have is well should I do a revocable or should I do an irrevocable? And I go that's the wrong question. The right question is do I need to choose between the two or am I doing both? So, it's really about educating ourselves to the point where our questions are right, not

12:56 The two most famous questions, right? Is how much is this going to cost and how long is this going to take? And that's I tell clients that's like me walking to a car dealership today, Bill, and saying, "Hey, how much does a car cost?" Right? What do you got and how much does it cost? Of course, you're going to get a range and you're going to go, "Well, what do you want?" You know, blah. And it's no different with a trust, you know? So, I think the clients need to just start understanding it's not about just how much it is or how long it takes. It's what are the differences? What do I need? How does this work? Educate me. And even if you come in for one thing, you should expect to know that you should walk away from that meeting with more knowledge than you sought. because otherwise it's just a transactional relationship. You're not going to get anything out of that.

13:42 That's a good analysis. know Elon Musk is famous for saying if you ask the wrong question the right answer is impossible because you're going to chase the wrong answer and you're never going to find the right answer and so the right question is so is so critical I think with estate planning as well what are you trying to accomplish and that's so often people kind of think they're supposed to do a certain thing okay but what are you trying to do and I've seen cases where you know most recently where a married couple you know one of them inherited and almost always attorneys want to keep that a separate property for the heir that inherited and this particular husband he doesn't really care about the money. He really wants to enhance the connection of his family and his wife and security for her and for whatever there's a lot of personal stuff going on as a why. But for him the right was to co-mingle and that's a whole different process to do that. So again it's the right questions that hopefully attorney is going to help you ask rather than just the right price. Price is important. How long does it take? it's important it get done right but those maybe aren't the right questions to start from. So let's talk about kind of the major areas of you know benefit people look for that at least in my experience and my customers one of them is tax strategies. What are one or two of the most common problems that people encounter regarding taxes and what one or two of the strategies that you employ to help them minimize their taxes or maximize their after tax income? Yeah, maybe what I'll do is I'll go through just different taxes and in a strategy or two for each of those so that way clients can kind of hear what's out there. So, let's start just because we're talking about real estate a lot here anyway. Let's start with real estate. So, one of the most misunderstood taxes and least talked about in my opinion are California property taxes. A lot of people think that if they do trusts or they do an LLC or they do some type of estate planning that when they die, they have this maybe they haven't thought about it through enough, but there's this expectation that well, when I die, property tax is going to stay the same because I did a revocable trust or the

15:44 Property tax going to say stay the same because I did an LLC. So, property taxes have their own unique rules in California depending on whether they are owned individually. And when I say individually, I'm including in that revocable trust because revocable trusts are still viewed as individually owned in many ways. So there's a difference in the law in California if property is owned individually versus in an entity. So in an entity, it's governed by Prop 13. If it's individually owned, it's governed by Prop 19. And so I think with a lot of clients who wish to pass property down to their children in a way where the property tax won't go up and get reassessed at death then they need to take affirmative steps during their lifetime to get themselves eligible under Prop 19 which very limited to do so or put themselves in the Prop 13 category which so with prop we do a lot of property tax planning for clients who have substantial real estate, they want to keep it in the family, they don't want to sell it, the kids don't want to sell it, then they're going to take affirmative steps to do that. So, this is really not talked about a lot. Our firm specializes in it. Another tax that we do a lot of

16:58 Before we go on, I just want to because highlight how important this is. It's also an area that's had recent legislation and major changes in how this is treated. And so, people who had great advice 10 years ago, that's totally wrong today. And so if you have substantial real estate that you want to keep in the family, usually income producing property I would say the most common example is that definitely talk to attorney get an update on where they are because every I won't say everything's changed but there have been dramatic changes in this area and this is the area where I have customers with the biggest bad surprises. Nobody's ever called me said well that's great I'm saving a lot of money on property tax assessment. No it's only bad news. So I'm sorry to interrupt you but I just want to that one just put a pin on that if you have own property and you're watching this. What one of the greatest parts about talking to fellow adviserss and colleagues like yourself is we share the same anecdotes. I always say the same thing. Nobody ever calls me to say, "Hey, things are going well. I just want to let you know." so another tax that we do a lot of planning over is something I think a lot of people have heard about. It's called the estate tax, otherwise known as the death tax. This is a tax that gets imposed. Generally, people think, "Oh, it's on the super wealthy or the ultra wealthy." Believe it or not, I have seen estate taxes get imposed in situations where no one actually considered themselves ultra wealthy or wealthy. And that has a large a big part to do with how you know what year they die and what the rules are when they died or what they didn't do when both spouses were alive. So there's a lot we can be doing on the tax that we do a lot of work on. Another so that involves irrevocable trust usually. there's all kinds of irrevocable trusts we can throw at that problem, but that that's another tax that we specialize in a lot.

18:40 And that's and that's one that's particularly difficult for families because often the ass there the estate is asset heavy of illquid assets. So imagine a case of owning the Dodgers or the Lakers and that's why these companies get sold is they're worth billions of dollars. They don't have billions of stock or bonds or bank accounts. And so when somebody passes to pay the share of taxes, forces to sell the assets, not in those cases, but in many cases at cheap prices, right? If you have a business, you have a grocery business or you have a manufacturing business, and you have to sell, unfortunately, if you have to sell, then you're not going to get as good a price as selling it when you choose to. So that's why these kind of asset protections and planning and tax strategies have to be appropriate and up to date on where you are because the builder of the business might have had a great plan for him while he was alive, but when he passes unfortunately those tax bills may come due and again this is an area that's had I think some dramatic changes particularly in California. So I'm sorry to jump in.

19:37 Yeah. Yeah. And just to kind of piggyback off that like the other part of the estate tax which surprises many people is it how much I can leave tax-free when I die depends on if I'm married depends on the stat my citizenship status my wife's citizen stat status. So if for example if I'm not a citizen and I own real estate and I'm not what's called a US doicile which has a very specific you know convoluted definition but if I don't meet that criteria the maximum amount I can leave taxfree at death is $60,000 period that's it

20:16 So I tell folks ch you know I challenge you to find me a piece of real estate that that doesn't fall in that category here in California right so 60 you're basically saying at death just about in the entire value of the real estate the government's going to take 40% of that because I shouldn't have taken title that way. I shouldn't have owned it in my name and I didn't know that. So this is so important why I love working you know with colleagues who care about enough to share this information. So estate taxes could be at 60,000 it could be at 15 million. You don't really know until you speak to your adviser. another tax that people love talking about is capital gain tax. You know, I'm going to sell my business. I'm going to sell my property. I'm going to sell my real estate. And boy oh boy, is there a huge capital gain tax, especially in California, because we have to factor in not just federal, but state tax as well. And so, it would be great if there's methods to either reduce or entirely eliminate that capital gain tax. And there are. It's just that again as we've been talking about large part of the problem is people come after the sale and go is there anything I can do? No, you needed to have had this conversation before the sale.

21:33 And doesn't mean that we can help everyone but there are certain situations where when we can help, we're able to save millions and millions of dollars of tax and it actually doesn't even cost a lot. So it's just about educating and holding things the right way. So capital gains is a big one. and then I'd say another one and maybe the last one is the gift tax. This happens a lot with real estate. mother and father own a piece of real estate and they go, "Boy, we want to add our kid to the property because we want them to get it one day." Well, that what they should do is they should do a trust, but instead what they do is they add someone to the deed. They add someone to title. They add a brother or a sister. They remove someone from title. So, every time you are adding or removing someone from title, not only are you risking property tax reassessments, but you're also triggering gift taxes from a federal standpoint, you are either making a gift or you've received a gift, and there's going to be tax consequences of that. People say, "Well, I did it all the time. Nobody cares. Nobody stopped me. How are they going to know when's this going to come up?" Most of the time, it comes up when people die. And so, that's the reason why you never hear about it because you're not here. It's the family that's going to hear about it. So you know these are just a lot of things when it comes to taxes depending on which type of tax we're talking about.

22:51 When you deal with ultra high net worth let's say you know 30 $40 million and up it's like a whole different world of rules almost in that I was just involved with a case where the CPA he said you know below $10 million estates you can be aggressive you make decisions you document it maybe get audited. He said, "Anything over 40 million, you're 100% going to get [unclear]." Like, you need to do your you need to plan your execution of the estate with the assumption you're going to be sitting in front of the IRS two or three years from now documenting every single decision you make. True or false?

23:28 I'm going to say true because the old the ultimate sentiment is correct. You have to be very careful the larger your estate and you got to make sure you do things the right way. Having said that, you know, I think one of the I wouldn't say it's a it's a well-kept secret, but filing and disclosures to the IRS triggers the clock for the IRS to audit. The problem that some people do is they don't disclose and they don't start the clock. And so if you don't file the necessary forms then technically the IRS has an indefinite period of time to come back and audit you which means lifetime. So you we have seen situations where a client may have not a client but an individual may not have done a filing or disclosed or reported and because of their failure to thinking oh I don't have to no one's going to know and the IRS does find out 20 years later 30 years later the tax just becomes even more egregious. So

24:35 I do think it's really important to do it the right way as you said. Now the what I was leading to is start the clock. We have seen situations where you do a gift tax return, three years to audit, they don't audit. Great. Guess what? You're in the clear and all it took was to do it the right way and start it and start the clock. And you hear about what's going on with the cuts over at the IRS right now. I mean losing billions and billions of dollars in budget in budgets to do what they really need to is audit and their ability to their inability to do that let's say for the foreseeable future makes this a very good time to be a bit aggressive and perhaps get those disclosures out because the chances of audit are probably slim to none and therefore if you got away with a more aggressive strategy then you got away with more aggressive strategy. the rule is whether something is permissible or not depends on who over at the IRS says it. It's not

25:35 Seems like seem depends who you are and who you get and what kind of mood during that day. There's a lot of luck with that. So we talked about tax strategies. Let's talk about asset protection a little bit. You know for there are people we have customers who they're making plenty of money and you know even after taxes they're still you know doing well but they're more focused maybe a stage of life with protecting what they have from some sort of catastrophic. So what are one or two you know problems that you see customers come with or one or two solutions that you help them with in that area?

26:01 Real estate is always a big one. you know there's lawsuits that emanate from injuries that take place on people's properties allegedly or otherwise let's say. so for those you know LLC's are humongously important. I can't you know overstate that enough. I think people have read enough about them to have their own opinions, but there are good ways to do it, maybe not so good ways to do it, but that's exactly what you said earlier. Even a bad LLC, I would say that, but it's probably true. Even a bad LLC is better than none. So, I would say LLC's are great for real estate, obviously, the you know, we could talk more about that. Irrevocable trusts otherwise are kind of the gold standard. And whether you layer LLC's with irrevocable trust, that's even better. But irrevocable trusts are great if done the right way. It basically is saying you are saying I no longer own that anymore. I have gifted it. I've reported to the IRS. The IRS knows it's not mine. It's not mine. It's not mine. So when you sue me and you expect that you can get that just because I have some control over it. No, I don't. I don't own it. I don't own enough to use it to pay off your judgment. So irrevocable trusts are still the gold standard. it amazes me how plain and simple that is and yet how so many people still have this view of, "Oh my god, it's irrevocable. I no, never. Why would I do that?" Well, it's because again, we haven't asked the right questions. Can you still change an irrevocable trust? Can I still control an irrevocable trust? Even though it says irrevocable, you'd be surprised at the answers that you get. You're like, "Oh my god, I didn't know that." So, irrevocable trusts are great. LLC's are great. Now, car accidents and those types of things, of course, living in California, we do see it all the time.

27:42 Insurance is really important in my opinion. I can't overstate that one enough as well. I tell clients openly, it's better that you pay your insurance a little bit more money than pay me a lot more money to do very complicated things. So, start I always say start with like first layer of defense insurance, second layer of defense, LLC's, right? And third layer of defense for those who can afford to do it and it where it makes sense for them to do it is consider irrevocable trusts knowing that there's different kinds of irrevocable trust even ones where you could still change still control right depends on your situation again talk to your attorney get the specifics because all these are tools in a toolbox but you can't build a house in a toolbox you need a carpenter or contractor to get that done talk a little bit about cross-border it just seems to me that makes because of California's economy is sluggish, absent the high-tech companies. much like New York, more and more California companies are doing more and more business internationally. It just seems like other states don't. I know my colleagues never do business, their business is much less likely in other states, but here in California, of course, Los Angeles being a very international city. Talk about a bit some of the issues that come up in cross-border situations and what some of the options are tools to protect those assets. We have seen so much of this bill. So when we say cross-border I think we can also talk about what that means. So cross border can mean the border between California and Nevada is a very common cross-border question. Someone says I bought a house in Nevada can I not pay California income tax? So you know we have to get under that hood. but also cross-border which we see a lot is US versus another country. So we see a lot of US citizens living abroad but still holding on to US real estate, US assets. we have the opposite where we have non US people owning real estate or businesses here in the US. So cross-border does introduce their own layers of complexity but we

29:45 See a lot more of it because this is just the nature of the world we live in. So, one of the problems that we want people to realize is if you're not a US person, and I think we talked about it with regards to real estate, but this is with regards to anything. If you're not a US person, not a citizen, and generally speaking, you're you're not really boots are not on the ground here, then you can only leave $60,000 of US assets free and clear at death. You have a company, you have a piece of real estate in Newport, you have anything like that. 40% of it is going to be taken at death. So for those cross-border clients, we look at figuring out a way to restructure the ownership so that they're not the owner, but there's landmines in the way. There's property tax, there's gift tax, and we have to make sure we don't trip those wires in order to get it restructured. But generally, the restructure will look like something like a foreign entity owning the real estate at the end of the day. That's the easy part. The hard part is how you maneuver so you don't trip those other wires. another cross-border one that we see is clients who are selling an asset and they're they're citizens of different countries where there might be a treaty and the question is do I have to pay the tax in both countries or does the treaty allow me to write off some of these taxes. So we work really closely with global CPAs and in fact most of the business comes from them but we have to work alongside their opinions in those local countries because what might be very good as a US solution may work not so well in Germany or Switzerland or wherever their home country is. So we got to work alongside the advisers in those countries and see if we can find a mutually acceptable solution.

31:24 It's just amazing the different possibilities and permutations of these situations. And my son-in-law is a CPA for from this family office work and high net worth. And it's just the numbers of possibilities of ways to treat taxes is just that's why you need a professional to do this stuff. I think make sure but you can't get the best professional if you don't get to a professional. So make sure you talk to somebody. So, one of the last one of the last topics for me is and this is maybe my bias and one of the things that caused me to do this podcast was kind of the execution. I feel like we all want to be in our profession, right? Attorneys want to do law. But at the end of the day, we're really a business person giving a service to a customer who wants it. And one of the things that really just drove me nuts when I launched this caused me to launch this was I had a customer, I'm glad to have him. It's it's a great business for me. About a $40 million estate who went to a estate planning attorney, wrote a big check, got a lot of work done, has a beautiful binder, never signed, executed the documents. Now, it might be he wasn't sure. It might have been second thoughts. It might have been who knows what, but the end of the day, he has nothing. He has the California probate plan which looks like going the drivers like the DMV and waiting in line there for $40 million estate and paying incredible sums of legal fees and taxes and transfers and parties. And so I always wonder, you know, what now it's not always the attorney, right?

32:47 Could be the customer. They may he may have had 20 phone calls. He ignored them all. What's your approach to getting customers to finish the plan? because you I'm sure you take pride in you devise a great strategy and it's up to date and you and the customer on the same page but it doesn't matter until they sign the documents and or you record the documents. What's your strategy or what's your thing on that subject?

33:09 Well, I'll say two things. One is we made a commitment when we started doing this a long time ago that we wanted to do it the way we would expect it to be done for our own family. And the reason I say that is my own father went to estate planning lawyer well before I was a lawyer. And he had that very similar experience that most people do is they transacted for a document, they got they expected a document, they got a document, they walked away thinking they got what they wanted because again remember the question was wrong. So if the question is right and the lawyer is correct in explaining all of this to the client from day one and I tell clients I go when you walk out my door remember what I'm giving you. I'm giving you an empty box. So, if you're my client, you're listening to this, you will you will hear what I just said and you will remember that is that something I told you. I go you're walking away with an empty box. It is your job to make sure you fund your trust. And we go through this in great detail. Not only do I give you a lot of material to read, I know you're not going to read it. So, I make you write it down in the office and then have you repeat it back to me. Here's what you're gonna do. Here's what you're gonna do. So we go we build our business with the idea ahead of time that we want to make sure that we're not setting you up for failure. So that's one. So we do that through educating to the point where the client's like, I heard you already say this. Let's the horse is dead. Let's stop. But number two, which I think is really important for the lawyer to keep in mind, is you don't always get the lawyer should not I should not be making recommendations to clients based on what I think is best for them.

34:45 I had a you know for example I had a meeting today where I gave a client two or three different solutions. Now what I would do might be very different from what the client the reason for that is exactly what you said. It makes very little difference. I could have the very best plan. I could eliminate all your taxes making it zero. I would think it's easy to do that. but I may not I may need to understand that the client is not going to be able to do that. Maybe they don't maybe they're not going to remember to do the things I need them to do on an annual basis. Maybe they're not going to work with the right CPA who's going to file the way it needs to be filed. Maybe they're not going to tell me when their situation changes as they should. So, when I'm making recommendations, I think I need to also be wise enough to let the client know here's what I would do, but here's what might be easier for you. And understand that it's a tradeoff. So you might end up paying a little bit more, doing less, but that might be what's best for you. And the client sometimes will say, "Yeah, you're absolutely right. I know I'm not going to do this." And I think what I'm trying to say is a lot of times I think the lawyers try to solve the problem for the client, but maybe the problem isn't just always dollars and cents. It's the human life element of executing the plan like you said. And I think for those watching like me who are real estate agents, this is our opportunity to offer service when we refer a client to estate planning attorney, feel free to call the customer back. How was it? You know, how'd you leave things? What's the plan? What's the process? And when they tell you're done, go online and check the public records because we know if that deed was changed from their on their residence, for example, from Bob and Mary to the Bob and Mary trust. And if not, you have permission to call your customer back and say, "Hey, I know you went to the you went to the estate planning attorney. I know you got you told me you got this trust done. I don't see it. Did he tell you he's recording it? You're recording it. Where are we at on that? There's services you can refer them to get it done. But this is our opportunity to give better service to our customers, our competition. So, Lalit, you've really given us a lot to think about. It's a very broad area.

36:43 Fortunately, you have a lot of different resources you bring to this. I know we can send people who want more information about you to bridgelawllp.com is the website and also your contact information I put on the screen as well. either particular you want to highlight which is somebody make sure they hit when they go to your website.

36:59 No, that's great. I mean, you could ask for any one of our staff members or office managers are great and we will be happy to help in any way we can. And thanks again, Bill. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for appreciate it. Look forward to continue our conversation down the road.

37:11 You as well. And for the rest of you, this was [The Estate Planning Podcast]. We get together every week with leading most commonly estate planning attorneys to talk about strategies, trends, and topics to help us work with some vendors as well. new episode drops every week. If I can help answer any questions, reach out to me. I'm at Bill Gross Probate on social media. If you like this, please like it, subscribe, send questions. You have questions for Lalit, I'll forward them for you. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.