The Estate Planning Mistake That Makes Your Living Trust Worthless, with Scott Schomer

0:02 So, I've literally seen clients who spent $10,000 or more on what could have been the world's greatest estate plan. It was beautiful, well-written, in a binder, never executed, and for this $4 million estate was essentially worthless. The most common mistake in estate planning is just not finalizing the deal. But part of that I think sometimes is the handoff between the client, attorney, and all the other team members cuz it can be complicated. We're excited to have today not only one of the leading probate attorneys in Southern California, but and an estate planning attorney, but also somebody who does wealth advising and kind of puts those two pieces together to bring clients I think a better solution at the end. Scott Schomer, Scott, thanks so much for joining us today.

0:42 Bill, thanks for having me back. It's a real honor to be here and spend some time with you. So, I know that this is the area that you've kind of grown or pivoted or changed the emphasis on the wealth advisory part, which to me goes hand-in-hand, though that's a tough set of skills to put together. Talk a bit about the impetus to put those together, and then how you bring that value to your clients.

1:04 That's a that's that's a great question, Bill. So, I've been doing this for a few decades as I like to joke. I started when I think I was in sixth, but it's not true. Certified specialist as a estate probate attorney. And when you start planning, in many ways this becomes a giant cycle working with the client. And what do I mean by that? So, if you've been somebody [snorts] comes to see you to do a plan, you sit down and you write up their plan. And then inevitably you're going to get somebody from the family that comes back to you. Could be within months, it could be within years, could be within decade. I was back to with somebody who whose plan I did about 20 years ago last week. because that person has passed away. And so, it's wonderful that you have this plan. But now we have to implement it, right? We have to we have to make it work. And it's not just my plans that I've been administering but it's also I administer a lot of other people's estate plans. So I'll get you know, people not connected to the firm who will call me up and say, "Oh, my mom hired this lawyer. I think the lawyer retired or died and what now what do I do with this trust?" So in the process of doing this over decades the thing that I see more often than not is the lack of coordination between the plan itself and the actual asset which can really have fairly devastating consequences and often undermines the whole idea of doing the plan in the first place.

2:38 What am I what am I talking about specifically? Well, here's sort of an easy way to illustrate it. So I will have let's say a daughter walk in the door and you know, mom died. I'm really sorry. We sit down, she drops trust down and I'll flip through the trust and I'll go, "Okay, so you know, what assets did your mom have?" And she'll say, "Well, the assets that are in the trust." And I'll say, "Well, you have this lovely trust agreement here but I don't I don't see a single reference to an asset. I mean, there's no discussion of property, there's no schedule of assets, there's nothing specifically devised. It just it just all the technical language of the trust. I see how the estate will be divided but no reference to it." And the daughter will literally look at me and go, "I don't know. Aren't you supposed to be able to figure that out?" Altogether we work through that. So the first thing we do is we go pull title, we go see was the property actually put into the trust? And then we tell the daughter, you know, what you need to do is monitor the mail go through our books and records and see what types of accounts show up. And what we often find is the big disconnect is somebody has sat down and done a plan but they've not taken what is really in many ways the hardest step which is getting the assets into the trust.

3:56 And if the assets are not into the trust or funded or transferred into the trust, then essentially they often become probate assets. And if they are probate assets, what that means is we have to open a probate for the sole purpose of processing them and then transferring them to the trust so we can then distribute them at that point in time. Now, I get some people that are a little bit more developed. They'll maybe have a list of assets, but I was looking at one about 2 weeks ago. And the list of assets included a bunch of accounts at Washington Mutual. Bill, [laughter] have you ever heard of Washington Mutual?

4:35 I do. I worked for them at one time. [laughter] Or I get people with First Republic or some of these other, you know, and I've even seen I've even seen trusts show up with assets at Security Pacific.

4:47 Wow. Security Pacific was the first place I banked when I moved to California. I loved it, but that doesn't exist anymore. For 30 years, right? So then we find ourselves going on this great, you know, Easter egg hunt to figure out what are the assets, where are they How are they titled, what is going on? what is happening? So that was that was sort of the early genesis of this. And the way I describe it is I say, you know, look, you're in my office. We're going to do great work together. I'm going to put this great plan together. But now I have to send you into Ohio. I have to send you to go visit Washington Mutual or Bank of America or Wells Fargo, where they don't have lawyers that are sitting there in the bank department. They don't understand everything that we do or why we do it or how we do it. And the real the reality is even with these some of these investment facilities like your Fidelity or even Charles Schwab, it takes time, effort, and permination to get the assets properly working with the trust. Properly funded with the trust. And the reality is a significant portion of people just don't stick with it. They get the plan done and then they go, "Well, I did it. That was probably good enough." And they don't take care of business.

6:07 Or they don't update. They go open up another one of my favorite ones, but the people that will go chase slightly higher interest rates. So, they'll they'll have a CD at Wells Fargo and they'll look and they'll go, "Oh, Ally Bank is offering a you know, 2/10 of a percent more. I'm going to go put my money in a CD there." And every time you do that, you have to make sure that that new account that you're opening is in the name of the trust. And all I can tell you is that it tends to fail. So, that So, this was sort of the sort of the genesis. It's like, is there a way rather than sending my clients out into the wild deal with all these institutions, is there a way that I could essentially be inside the bank so that I could be person that actually makes sure the accounts are there. That they call up and then and I could I could open up their records and I could say, "Yes, we absolutely knew. We have a current statement. We can tell you exactly where you are." Is there a way we can do that? So, that was sort of the initial lead into doing the wealth management. The deeper level is I just started looking a little harder at some of the investments and some of the things that my clients were doing with their money.

7:23 Oops. And right. And I just for a went, "You got to be kidding me. Is this you know, I Love you people. Forgive me for bringing this example up, but I had one about 9, 10 months ago, a couple in their 70s had done very well for themselves. Had several million dollars of investable assets. They're actually working with a financial advisor. And they have it invested in 11 tech stocks. 11 stocks. Now, if I'm speaking French to you, if you don't sort of know what I'm what I'm saying, stocks are one of those amazing wealth creation tool, but the key to using them and being involved with them is diversification. You have to hold a broad basket of them because they can be very volatile. Even some of the highest and you go through your list, you go through your Facebook, you go through your Apple, you go through your Amazon, your Cisco, all these companies within short periods of time have lost 90% of their value.

8:25 Mhm. Right? As opposed to a collective diversified pool of stocks over 100 years of history, I can show you generally will deliver an annualized return on average of about 10%.

8:40 Okay. So, the way I boil this down is it all comes down to what we refer to as the fiduciary standard. Right? So, you're coming to see me

8:52 [clears throat] to stay away from probate court, you're coming to see me to help protect your family assets, protect your loved ones, to protect your children and your grandchildren, protect all these things. So, we're going to do that from the legal side. We're going to build these wonderful structures that keep you far away from probate court, make everything much easier. But, none of that really does you a lot of good if you go do something crazy like put your money in 11 stocks and lose 90% of its value. Right? So, I speak a little bit from personal experience in that. So, I but I think I may have mentioned to you this I grew up in the Detroit area. My father was a manager with Ford. Most people I grew up with were all we all worked for one of the big three or big four auto companies. my father got very suddenly sick and ended up passing away from a horrible illness in about 2 weeks from diagnosis. And it hit him in February of 2009. Now, if you remember what was happening in 2009, the Bear Stearns thing had collapsed

10:01 Right. October, November 2008. Ford and GM were flying to Washington begging for giant bailouts. GM went bankrupt.

10:12 Right. Right. And the whole area was devastated. So, there he is laying on his deathbed having worked all his life to build these amazing resources and assets and protect my mother and do all these things. And he opens up his portfolio and it's down 50%. You say, "Well, he's got real estate." Well, the real estate market in the Detroit area is off 50, 60% because all the auto companies are going out of business.

10:39 Right. And you say, "Well, he's got a pension." But GM goes bankrupt, the pension ends up going to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. I mean, all these things end up being vulnerable, right?

10:49 Right. So, if you stop and think about it, when we're dealing with an estate, we're dealing with a com- most for most people a complex collection different things, different assets. And our whole goal is we want to make all of this work together and work well. We want to anticipate all the bad things that can happen. And we want to make sure that all the pieces connected and working properly. Because you just need one or two little leaks in the boat and you can cause all kinds of problems. So, that's really what drove us and our whole goal is, you know, we want to make sure you're invested in the best manner possible. We want to make sure your investments are broadly diversified, that you understand what the risks are for what you're doing. You want to make sure that everything works with your plan. Because we're not just here to create documents, we are here to protect your family and to help you grow and develop generational wealth.

11:50 Well, the other thing else also, I think it's not it's not the best plan that wins, it's the best plan that gets executed the best that wins. You have to execute whatever that plan is and then sometimes it's left too broad. And the other thing I find with wealth managers often times, you know, 90% of clients just want to protect the assets they have. You know, they built the business, that's their where their most of their net worth is. Maybe their stock in that company, that's one of the hazards I guess or one of the opportunities depending how that works out. But for the rest of part, they're not looking to really make any trades, they're not looking to trade options or they're you know, they're just looking to hold on to things and the estate plan has to reflect that and I think there's a little tension with the investment side, they want to push the return as a competitive advantage versus the estate planner whose job is to hold on to things and it seems to me that the communication between those can be challenging and has to be really coordinated and I imagine you also have to get involved with tax specialists or do you have training in taxes well or do you have staff that does tax as well?

12:51 On both fronts. so we do tax planning, we do tax advising advise every day of the week. Our firm doesn't prepare income tax returns. we will we do review and revise estate planning tax returns, but we also see this is a very critical part.

13:09 Yeah. And all of our financial advising is always aimed at tax efficiency. Yeah. Right? So the last thing we ever want to do is get you into something where you're going to incur a big capital gain or you're going to have a surprise or we're going to try to look at all these things and make sure that they all work together. It's really a multi-disciplinary practice.

13:31 You know, when we talk about estate planning and finding the trust or finding the assets, I always remember the Seinfeld episode, I don't know if you're a Seinfeld fan, of the rental car. He said, you know, anybody can take the reservation. Taking reservations easy, you get a reservation. The hard part is keeping the reservation. And I think with a estate planning, anybody can write a good plan. You know, there's websites and you go in and it's perfect, ChatGPT, it's perfect. But if your assets aren't properly titled in the plan, then you've kind of like the rental company didn't have the cars when you show up. Not to oversimplify your job, but it just to me just seems like an obvious thing. The challenge, I think, as attorneys is is you're you're not sales people. you have some limits as to what you can and can't do. You don't want to be too heavy-handed. Like say with me, I want my clients to make the right decision, but ultimately it's their decision. how do you or how does your firm address getting customers when you do that wealth advising on financing? Is that part of the plan? Do you do you help fill out the forms to transfer into the trust? And it's one thing to send them to be a VA. That's That's a client abuse, I think. But when you when you're involved in does that help simplify the process of getting the assets properly titled?

14:43 Yeah, so we do a couple of things. So, real estate, we can literally transfer and fund in the office.

14:54 That's fantastic. We notarize, we have we have a service where we just, you know, boom. Often our property transfers are done the day plans are signed, if not the next day.

15:04 And may I just stop you there one second because I don't know that you realize how different that is. Now, there are others that do that, but it's not the majority. It's not even close. And this is what creates so many problems as a probate real estate agent. I mean, I guess I love that I get these listings, but I feel I'm heartbroken for clients who didn't do this. So, if you just listen to what Scott said like that, that they literally in their office can transfer the deed from Mary and Joe to the Mary and Joe trust, notarize that transfer, and then record it all in their office, why would you not do that versus, you know, every realtor who's been in business like I have for 20 more years has gone to the client's house, and you say, "Well, I see that you have the property titled in your name, not in your trust." "Oh, no, we have a trust." And you go, "Really?" "Oh, yeah, let me get the documents." And your heart sinks because you know they're going to walk in the room with a beautiful binder, non-hydro leather, they're going to open up tops of cover letter that says, "Don't forget to put the property in the trust and record it." And they didn't it. And then you go, "Well, now you need to call Scott Schomer, and by the way, mention the word 'Heggstad petition,' he'll know what to do." so, this isn't common

16:10 This week. Yeah. I If those who are listening, when we when we refer people refer people our clients to estate planners, to me, this is a minute that wasn't unique a service years ago, maybe pre-COVID. To me, this is like the new minimum. And again, I don't mean to any way disrespect you. You say it so simply cuz you take it matter-of-fact, but I do think this is a key point of distinction. If you're going to do business with an estate planner, do they transfer the deeds in their office, notarize the deeds, and record the deeds? So I'm critical. I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm just on a I'm on a rampage on that topic cuz I just can't believe clients who come back and say, "Now I have to get it recorded." It's just It's just not It's dangerous. It's just not good.

16:48 No, Bill, you're you're preaching to the choir, and I and I'm I'm grateful you appreciate the importance of this topic. and I, you know, I can't tell you how many times where I've seen other people do these self-help things or lesser planners, and they're like, "Oh, they gave me a letter, and they said I need to go down to the county recorder's office." Yeah. Like any civilian knows how to go to the county recorder's office. You know, I mean, and you wind back my practice 15 years ago or 20 years ago, I used to on a regular basis have to hire a guy and send him down and stand in that line and

17:21 Right. wait and sit and get the whole thing stamped and I mean it's it's remarkable, right? So, we consider that basics and it's not just California real estate. we're not quite as fast with out-of-state real estate, but we have the same process all over the country. But, the part that I'm even more excited about is you talked about going down to the bank. So, we have several levels of the way we work with people. So, I don't yet have access to a full bank, but what I do with my advising is we custody all of our clients' assets at Charles Schwab. I'm sure you've heard Charles Schwab. They're one of the biggest institutional investors. And we can literally do the same thing that we do with the deeds with Charles Schwab. So, you give us the thumbs up, you want us to roll over your IRAs and have them all housed in one place, you want us move your brokerage accounts, we can literally run the forms in our office, you can sign them, we can notarize them, you can sign you don't even have to go near any of those branches. and with a with a with an account like a Bank of America account or Chase account, you give us a routing like a canceled check and we can electronically connect these things for you and that then gives you the ability call us up and say, "Hey Scott, I've got too much money in my Chase account, could you move it into my Schwab?" Boom, within a day or two we can move it that way. You call us back and you say, "Hey, I'm going to put a new roof on my house, I need $50,000." Give us a day or two to clear the sales, we can liquidate the assets, and we can move it back into your Chase account and do it. So, and where this really hits the road, the place that that I get the most reward, is not to be sexist cuz I've had it go both ways, but when I get the widow that comes in,

19:11 Mhm. right? Widow that comes in and they say my husband died. Oh my god, I'm so sorry. How are you? I'm CS. First question is, do you have everything you need? You don't, we'll make sure you get it. You come down and you go here it all is. Here's the an exact current account statement. Here's how it's the assets have been performing. Here's where all the Everything is laid out. We are literally a one-stop shop for all this stuff. And to make it that easy for people, it's that simple. I mean, my mother is my father laid there, you know, in a death bed back in 2009. My mother would have killed to have something like that. and that's really part of what sort of has inspired me is, you know, gosh, you know, it's a fancy title. You're a real estate agent, you're a probate lawyer, or you're a you're all the thing. What are we really doing here, Bill? We're helping people. We're protecting people. We're helping people and we're designing our program. So, what I Things I may have mentioned this the last time we talked about it. I just It's one of the things I didn't fully realize until later in life. Somebody pointed out the origin and the meaning of my name. Right? Right. Guardian. And so, that's what we're here. We're The name technically means guardian of the realm. So, we are here to guard and help and protect your family. And by being able to be centrally inside Schwab, be the bank there, be able to do with the real estate transfers, and to make it one call, it's just it's some of the greatest work I get in my career.

20:47 Yeah, I always you know, when it comes to me to send a client to the bank, I just That's just client abuse. I You know, the classic is

20:55 [laughter] the client who does their own probate and they get the letters of authority and they, you know, print a copy off of the printer at home and they go down to Bank of America and Bank of America says, "Oh, no, we need a, you know, a certified copy. So, they go back to their computer and they print out a They get a certified They get a certified copy, make a copy like, "No, we need a wet certified copy." And it's like, "How many times are they going to send you down the bank?" They could go online and verify, just like you could or I could. We know There's a court order, it's signed, it's in the system, but it just feel like they want to torture their clients. And I If we can avoid sending clients to the bank, I know for me I've done some fiduciary work and I create a bank to do that cuz I didn't want to send clients. I don't want to be the client at the bank. And I see that that's such an important piece of the puzzle is to not control necessarily all their assets unless they want you to, but at least to be able to help move things when they need to be moved and be effective. So, that describes kind of the wealth advisor part and I think why I think it's so important to have at least that connective tissue between the attorney and the world of finance and the actual numbers. Let's talk about the estate planning part because I know that you know, it's an area that you've been a long time, you know, successful prac- practitioner in. What are one or two of the biggest mistakes you see in estate plans that put people's wealth at loss? Obviously, that funding that we've talked about.

22:15 Besides that, what else do you see as the maybe the one problem area that you end up in litigation on or end up in litigation or that you focus on to make sure that you don't end up in litigation over?

22:27 Yeah, there's a Probably, you know, the biggest number one issue again is funding. That causes more problems. Yeah. Assets outside the trust not working. The number two one I would say, and there's going to be a lot of people that that are going to criticize me for this or not going to like to hear this, but I'm going to say it anyway. And that is what I refer to as joint fiduciary.

22:49 Mhm. So, you know, a will needs an executor, a trust needs a trustee, power of attorney needs an agent or an attorney-in-fact. You need to put somebody in charge when you're they're able to function, right? So, I can't tell you how many times I've seen folks where you know, oh we have two sons, we'll put them in together as co's because, you know, they need to get along. And I mean, I probably have I probably have three active lawsuits. Not with my trusts. I mean, I think probably I probably created close to 1,000 estate plans over my career and I think I maybe you know, well, with a married couple, of course you'll let them do it, but in terms of like putting two it's I think it might have happened twice, maybe three times. Very opposed to it.

23:36 What could go wrong with two siblings who fought over who got the bigger piece of cake when they're 6 years old? What could go wrong with an estate plan? Right. You know, one of my I wrote a blog I wrote a post about this. I have a Substack page called Trust I wrote a Substack and the title of it was and she never let me have front teeth, either. And I had a I had two sisters where, you know, one was doing it they were fighting and they, you know, literally we spent all day at a mediation and we get done and we settle and you think it's all resolved. He gets in the car for me to drive home and she looks at me, she was like, you know, as a kid, she would never let me have the front seat.

24:15 [laughter] I was like, really? You know? I mean, a lifetime and it all comes down to that. That's what it is. So, yeah, I'm a I'm a I'm a big believer that, look, you have two kids, you have three kids, one at a time. This person's the trustee and that person, they can't serve that person as the trustee. If you can't figure out biological order is often a good way to do it. if you don't want to go by a biological order, if you got one that's more, you know, sort of responsible, more economically oriented, that helps. Proximity is also good. If you got one that's in England, you don't want to have them serving. You'd rather have somebody here that's in California. so, these are things that we talk to and I work with my clients on my plan but my plan for them but that would be you know how do we say mama don't let your sons grow up to be cowboys mama don't let your don't let your sons be co-trustees one at a time.

25:14 Talk about as we kind of get to the end here the role of professional fiduciaries that can help in that. I know I had a family member who passed and I'm the oldest of my siblings and I assumed that and she'd sent me one time that showing me to be the successor trustee and I'm you know I'm in this field I'm I'm I was glad to do it but it turned out she actually named my sister cuz she felt that for whatever reason my work and busy and maybe and my sister who was married and more of a housewife with kids out of the house now we do whatever for whatever reason she picked my sister. My sister's very wealthy and I kept think saying to her you know there's like services you can use to assist you in the administrative work because you just don't realize how much work is involved it's like a job I would say maybe full-time but it's a at least a solid part-time job to administer even a modest trust or modest estate. Talk about where you get like what's your threshold when you bring that to the attention of clients and you might want to consider hiring somebody or do you have services that you provide either in-house or do you refer to that can help them be more efficient?

26:20 Another great question here Bill. I appreciate you asking. So and this expresses itself in a number of different ways. One is you get the get the family that

26:32 [snorts] they're not their kids are not thriving they're not doing well they don't really trust any of them so that's one issue. Another issue is you get people who just don't have a lot of family depth they maybe never had kids or their kids died off before they did or close to their family. I mean we see these situations all the time right? So go back to our what I affectionately refer to as our old-timey days, and really the only option you had was to maybe approach a bank or try to find like somebody like an accountant that could maybe do it. So, one of the things that we're really blessed with here in California is we have a really well-developed, robust private professional fiduciary practice. So, what is a What is a It's a California licensed professional fiduciary. a couple of decades ago, they set up a licensing scheme. You have to get meet certain educational requirements. You have to have experience. That's why you were probably considered to be one of one point five people with all your knowledge and experience. You have to go and go take a test. You have to be licensed. You have to pass a background check. But, at the end of the day, these are people that just essentially hang out their shingle and say, "I'm available to hire to serve in some range as a fiduciary." And that could be maybe a conservator. It could be a trustee. It could be an executor.

27:52 It could be any one of these positions. The organization that's really doing more to elevate the practice and promote the practice is an organization called PFAC. Professional Fiduciaries Association of California. The website is pfac-pro.org. I've spoken at their events. I've attended their conferences. I can't speak highly enough. But, it's really a group of very earnest, highly educated, experienced people who are there to help you. So, when the situation comes up that somebody comes in, you know, people get a little intimidated about doing an estate plan, but I go, "Look, really, we're really having two conversations, right?" Who do you want to get your stuff for when you're not here? Who do you want to have your house and your car and all these things? And who do you want to be in charge to manage that process when you can't do it, right? Who's going to be the fiduciary to talk oil and gas company? So, if you don't have someone that's a good choice, that's where you can go and you can lean on people. you can go hire them directly or you can name them in documents or you can name a category and let somebody pick the appropriate person at that point in time. Right? And the beautiful thing about these professional fiduciaries is they really come from a really a broad range of experience. I was meeting with a new one yesterday who has an has a master's degree in accounting from USC. He had been an auditor with Deloitte, all kinds of like really high-end level stuff.

29:29 To on the other end of the spectrum, I got people [clears throat] that are really sort of what I would call social work-oriented. They're really great caregivers and they've come from that world. So, it's a wonderful option and I explore it with all my clients that have a need for it.

29:42 Very good. Yeah, it's one of the areas that more I get involved in it, I see it's really underutilized. You know, it's hard to sell somebody on let's spend more money and have this person help you. Having worked with fiduciaries as a real estate agent, man, it's pleasant to do business with them and I think the state is very well served. They seem to save money here and there and they have of all groups of people I work with, I think they have the best Rolodex. They know people who do the most obscure stuff that in some weird case save you a lot of money. It's it's just consistently one of the one of the professions that really impressed me consistently. Whereas you know, we all have our pluses and minuses but this one but thanks for sharing this. Now, do you do you act as or does your firm have staff that acts as fiduciaries ever? Do you or is that just something you contract with outside third-party vendors?

30:33 Yeah, so we do not serve as a as a fiduciary. We counsel fiduciaries, we advise, we direct, we do all that stuff. That's where you get into the risk of a of interest. Especially, we can't do it if we're holding cash assets, right?

30:47 Correct. we're not allowed to. So, one of the blessings in my practice is that I've had the good fortune of having a whole bunch of these private professionals, probably upwards of 20, be clients of mine over time.

31:01 Wow. And the And the where you get the typical situation is either with a family that doesn't have anybody or what I'll get is the cases that I talked about before or I'll get a call from one of the big firms in town including some of the folks that you've had on the podcast that'll say, "Hey, we've got We've got this knockdown, drag-out, horrible litigation and the brothers can't see each other without spitting. We need an adult to come in." And so, they'll call one of my clients or they'll call I got I got an email last week from a big firm saying, "Hey, we're looking for somebody. Do you have any recommendations?" And I provided a list of about eight or 10 people that I work with and said, you know, "What's your flavor? Who would you like somebody more technically oriented? Do you like somebody more with better bedside manner? Here's what their background is." and it's wonderful. And so, we come in and we get to be really, as I like to say, the Boy Scout of professional. We're just here to get things done. We're not picking a side. We're not going to tell We're not going to tell the kids who gets to sit in the front seat or not.

32:00 [laughter] We can be fair to everybody. and we're just our goal whole goal is just to do it simply, fairly, transparently, and get it done quickly as possible. All right. So, that's really it's a wonderful resource.

32:14 And those fiduciaries that work with those families are some strong people. [laughter] They are. It's detailed, but emotionally, you have people that hate each other and you're dealing with them on consecutive phone calls or in a meeting or something and it's And they just don't seem fazed. Like, I feel like I'm pretty stoic. I feel like I'm pretty I keep my cards pretty close to the vest, but I every once in a while you see a fiduciary and you're like, "Wow, that's another level." Because they focus on the job at hand and the emotion to them is just a noise that they have to pay attention to but not be affected by. So, it's an amazing industry. Look, I've kept you a little long. Scott, obviously you're a fantastic resource for industry, a fantastic resource for my platform. For people who want to talk to Scott and or his firm about legal services, whether it be estate planning or wealth management, Schomer Estate and Wealth Advisors is the firm. schomerlawgroup.com is the website and you can reach them at [phone number shown on screen]. And Scott is the founding partner and I guess name partner. Great guy and if you're driving, can't write that down, feel free to reach out to me. I'd be more than glad to make an introduction. Scott, thank you so much for time today. I really appreciate it.

33:22 Bill, as always, very engaging conversation. I hope I didn't talk too much, but I liked it. It was great. No, thank you. Thank you so much, of course. I'm glad I'm not paying by the hour though, just for the record. I don't know if I could afford that, but thanks so much. if you're watching this is [The Estate Planning Podcast]. We get together every week with estate planning attorneys. In this case, we also got some wealth advice, but more I think on administration and systems. I thought that was great insight as well. hope you liked it. Please like, subscribe, give me a comment. If you didn't like it, something you'd like to see next. If you'd like to be interviewed on this program, let me know as well. Reach out on at Bill Gross Probate on social media. And as always, make today your best day ever. Thanks for