Trends in Estate Planning, with Attorney Robert J. Silverman

0:01 Estate planning is really a very wide topic and when people often call me and say, "Hey, I have a I need help with estate plan, who do you know?" Well, I wish I could ask some questions, see what they're talking about because they can mean a lot of different things. And really excited to have today somebody send somebody back on our program we've had several times, attorney Robert J. Silverman, who can talk about the wide breath of niches and some of the specific trends in state planning. Bob, thanks for joining us again today.

0:25 Thanks for having me. So let's talk about it. If you know, you've been doing estate planning for a while. I forget for how many years. I want to say 30. You've been in law, right? I know for 30 years

0:35 Since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Bill and I have been in real estate for decades too. I think I would 32 years. Yeah.

0:43 So, let's talk about what would you say are one or two of the biggest changes in estate planning since if you were look back when you started and you were to pop in a time machine here today. Wow, I can't imagine that change. What have been one or two things that pop out as major changes in estate planning since you started the practice?

0:59 Yeah, great question. There are a number of them. I'd say one is back u you know in the mid 90s when I first started practicing law and estate planning in particular the estate the federal estate tax exemption that is basically how much you assets you could give away during your life and on your death without being subject to this nasty federal estate tax was $600,000. Today it's $15 million. So very dramatic changes. The so a lot of the folks who had relatively modest estates call medium-siz estates back in the 90s they did a lot of sort of more complex planning to structure things for potential estate tax liability. Nowadays, it's less than one p onetenth of 1% of the people in the United States who have a federal estate tax problem because the exemptions are too so high. So, the certainly one trend big trend is that there are other more important things for the vast majority of people than planning around estate tax. For example, building in good creditor and marital protection.

2:17 That's a huge trend over the last 10-15 years and we pay a lot of attention to creditor and marital protection in our planning.

2:26 So, let's go back to the first one because you're right. You know, when I started in real estate decades ago, you're right, the focus was on limiting or maximizing the opportunities at that time $600,000. And it seemed like estate planning was all about that. And now it seems like it's more of a whack-a-mole where you know the limits changed and recently were codified by law but weren't you know is it going to be not going to be but then you have not just estate taxes you have state I'm sorry not just estate taxes but you have state taxes in California you have property taxes and reassessment issues you have you know as you mentioned credit issues you have you know protection of assets you have guardianships conservativeships it seems like that now estate planning is more of a whack with a number of possible enemies or concerns or risks and you as a as an estate planner need to have a more holistic or overview of the client's life than just merely well how much do you have $10 million let's figure out a way to hide that. So it seems to me that your practice must have been more have become more holistic or more interpersonal by the nature of the change of the marketplace.

3:41 100%. You know and you know the it is broad a lot of people sort of forget about they concentrate on living trust and understandably because living trust is still you know the golden ticket to avoid probate and I have a very robust probate practice as well as estate planning in my firm. But not that we don't advocate for that. It's just that there's no shortage of people who don't plan and it's not terribly particular. It's not particularly difficult to plan to so that your family can avoid a long expensive inconvenient court proceeding called probate. Doing a trust you simply there's a statute that says if you have substantially all your assets in trust when you die then you get a pass on probate. And so u so there's a lot of focus understandably on trust but there's not probably enough focus on the other important documents will like you mentioned people come in with minor children they say well we have kids now so we should do planning yes trust but what about guardianship a huge deal guardianship nominations that is an the will is an appropriate instrument to put guardianship provisions not a trust so wills are super important not only for minors, but just in general, powers of attorney and advanced health care directives. What happens during your life? Forget, you know, aside from on your death, you got your will and your trust that are operate, but what about during your life? If you become incapacitated and need somebody to step in your shoes, have legal authority to handle the financial and medical things for you. That's a big deal. It's a lot more likely that you know as you age that you become incapacitated than you die prematurely.

5:32 So there's not probably enough emphasis on that. So that's the broad scope those four core documents and then of course beyond just doing the documents particularly you know with the trust is okay you signed your trust it's been prepared you've worked with a good attorney you have a great document that's not the end of it of course then this whole idea is what do you do with the trust well you fund it you transfer actually transfer your real estate and investment assets into the trust and keep it funded during your lifetime. And the an adjunct to that is not just funding your trust, but do beneficiary designations for life insurance and retirement plans that aren't that are going to be governed by those beneficiary designations if you have any as opposed to being governed by your trust and will documents. One of the things that strikes me over time and u was about personally unfortunately my father-in-law and then mother-in-law being incapacitated and needing the health directives using the health directives was that it seems like as fast as you can write good documents the regulations change the institutions become more rigid more defensive I think it just seems to me that u more particular and so it you can't necessarily paper way you have a problem. You need to kind of, you know, do your best to prepare and but something you wrote five or 10 years ago may or may not stand up if there's any change in regulations or any change in law. So talk a little bit about you know I know people often think about well I changed my you know I got married, divorced, somebody passed, somebody just born. Obviously, those are triggers for reviewing your plan, but I it would seem to me that one of the issues also is just the change in the nature of laws, regulations, and institutions and making sure that particularly if you're incapacitated, you're going to want the right people have the right powers. Otherwise, you're

7:34 Going to not be able to make the right decisions that you want. That's right. Reviews are critical. There is some misconception out there or myth that you know once you establish the estate plan and you're good. It's a one-time deal. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's not like you know very few planners say hey come in every year and review it. But on the other hand don't wait 15 20 25 years to review it. As you point out, Bill, there are there are tax law and you know, trust and estate law changes that happen fairly frequently. And it's like anything else, if you don't keep up with it and if you don't adapt and revise your documents accordingly, and most lay people, they don't necessarily have the you know, tools to keep up with it. So, you go see your estate planning attorney. Our benchmark is every three to five years or sooner if there are any material changes in your financial or your personal or family situation.

8:40 It's al making sure that people you work with have that. I know my wife was recently at a major hospital here Sinai and they checked to see if she has health directives. Well, she did have one a long time ago because the hospital would give you one. You would check out the boxes. We had our own done but they had really the wrong one I guess is the way I would put it. Or they're the right one and we had the right one sitting in a box here at our house. And so I think sometimes it's about also making sure the plan is ready to implement rather than just getting the documents done and not used. And that goes to you know use the word funding. You know, as real estate agents, we've all heard the story. I've experienced it where you meet with a customer and you know, you pull the tire report before you go or a profile and it says, you know, home is owned by Mary and Bob Smith who you're meeting with or maybe it says Mary Bob Smith and Frank Smith and you ask and oh, Frank's our my father, my whatever uncle who owns it with us. So now you know who the players are. But sometimes you ask that question, they go, "Oh, well, but we own the property in a trust." And I look at the form and say, "Well, that's funny. I you know I know my tile company is not perfect but I pull this profile. Oh no we have a trust and I'd say are you sure? And they'll run back in the living room or the bedroom and pull or their office and pull this beautiful book and it's naggahide or leather with all kinds of tabs all kinds of papers and they open it up. The first page is a letter from the attorney customer saying don't forget to sign this and get it recorded.

10:02 And it's not signed. It's not recorded, which really means it's not really I mean it I you know I'm not an attorney but generally speaking it means it's not really in effect. So talk about what does funding do and what kind of steps do you take as an attorney to make sure that customers don't just leave your office with a beautifully bound book. I'm sure it's beautiful, but they also leave with a plan that's ready to implement.

10:25 Yes, indeed. In fact, just as an aside, I gave a talk last week to a about 40 real estate agents at a very successful brokerage firm and we talked about, you know, marketing and, you know, for real estate agents, it's been somewhat of a trend. It's still a niche for agents to go down to access court records and see who filed probates recently. And if the probate has real property, they contact the attorney or the administrator who's on file and it's open to the public, so you can find out who that is and they try to get the listing. Hey, perfectly valid marketing you know, opportunity. But I posed this hypothetical this proposed change in the marketing view or in addition to that said to the agents, look, if you access in your farm, if you access in your the neighborhood that you work in records of titling and you go down a list of a hundred folks on a street or in a neighborhood and you see who has their property titled in their trust and who just has it in their own names. Yes. And you contact them and say, "Look, I was look, you know, this is just sort of for your education and just I noticed because I work in your area. And I noticed that you don't own your home and trust. Hey, I can send you a brochure or whatever." You might want to consider doing that. If you want a name of a good trust and estates attorney, I can I can give it to you. And you're doing a service. You're not saying, "Hey, I want to get your listing. Are you looking to sell?" I mean that's traditional real estate but it's a little bit different.

12:14 You're providing a service. We service professionals best we can do I think is you know kind of value add it. Hey

12:22 We don't know just about our area but we know about a number of areas we not only want to be your real estate agent we want to be a trusted advisor. So that's just an aside but getting back to the tool

12:34 Before we go any further for any real estate agent watching this that's phenomenal. If you're going to farm, the biggest question Realtors® have is, well, what do I bring? Do I bring a list of the sales? Other agents do that. Do I bring a list of the active listings or not my listings? But what you're saying is learn a little bit about value for that homeowner and then share with them both what you know and a resource that might help them be more effective. And I and I've never thought about it on a farming perspective. I've always said the opposite, which is all your past clients, if you sold them a house, you know, how they took title and maybe at the time you just worry about your commission and it's it is hard to get a customer to start an estate plan when they're buying a house. I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces and I understand we don't overwhelm people, but there's no reason not to go back through your database and take everybody owns a house and say, "How do they have it titled?" And all those who don't, like you said, I teach this all the time. The best free marketing call already, you know, check public records. That they own a house if they do is entitle not and is not offer them to some resource and it might be hey I saw this great podcast with Bob Silverman and he's a local estate planning attorney or maybe you have another one that you like better that's if you can imagine a better option than you I don't know there is such a thing and I think the opp the other part is those who have plans I always tell agents ask them if they're happy with the attorney because I find half the time they'll say oh yeah Betty Boop she's the greatest now you have another excuse to call Betty Boop and say, "Hey, my clients Bob and Mary say you're the greatest. I thought Bob Silverman was, but maybe you are. Can I just chat a bit about how you know, serve your clients and maybe we're a fit?" But half the time they say, "No, and by the way, I've had this happen personally and I needed my plan updated because now we're divorced, now we're married, now we have more kids. Do you know somebody?" And so these are things that when you really dig in and seek to create value for your customer, you go from just being a real estate hack who's cold calling, you know, leads to really saying to somebody, "Hey, I care about you enough to look up public record

14:36 Information and to try to help you with it." So that's a fantastic suggestion and I would take it a step further, make sure we talk to our own current clients. Bill, that's a that's a great point is that you know, hey, cold calling, if you will, you know, is fine and it can be worthwhile, but warm marketing, you know, following up with clients who you've already done business with. Hey, that's a great excuse. So, that's a that's an excellent point. The back to sort of resources and funding the fact is that you know transferring assets into your trust. People sometimes don't get good advice or they get complacent. So they fund their trust, they transfer assets into the trust, but then they buy another piece of real estate and then they forget, oh, you know, I did a trust three years ago or 10 years ago and I forget we're supposed to take title in our trust and we didn't do that. Okay. So, a and then they intend to transfer it into the trust and something happens and they're gone. All right. So, the we like to build guard rails. And there's two ways that we help clients build guard rails so that if something happens and they haven't fully funded their trust and therefore they're vulnerable to a probate, there's a couple of things that they can do that can help prevent a probate avoid a probate. And one is having an assignment. We do an assignment for 100% of our clients which says we hereby assign all of our assets of whatever kind real estate business partnership interest bank accounts investment accounts into our trust and everything in the future that we acquire. Okay. So, and they sign it's a one-page form. It's pretty simple. And but that form that assignment form after the fact they forget to piece put a piece of real estate in their trust.

16:34 But they've signed this assignment. They're gone. Their relative now goes to an attorney and the attorney says, "I can go to court with what's called a Heggstad petition." I know Bill, you're familiar with them. A lot of listeners may not be, but a Heggstad petition is basically going in to court and saying, well, you know, this decedent intended this asset to be in the trust, but it didn't happen, but we don't want to have the family suffer to go through a probate when it's otherwise avoidable. This assignment is good evidence that of that intent. And most judges will take that and say, "Yeah, that's good enough. We will deem that it's in the trust even though it didn't actually get transferred. One other similar tool is schedule of trust assets.

17:24 So if you have a schedule of trust assets and even if you didn't actually transfer it and you put down on the schedule 123 Main Street, it says schedule of trust assets, the Bob and Mary Jones revocable trust. Again, that andor the assignment can go in to court and for a few thousand dollar and in three months you've got an order that says that is in your trust as opposed to a 15, 20, $25,000 probate that takes a year. So, scheduling your trust assets you know transferring them of course first and foremost but just in case they don't or the classic example is somebody puts their home in the trust but then they refinances they refinance

18:10 Happen and the lender says no you don't want to deal with your trust you got to take it out of your trust they do that and how many people forget to ever put it back in that's a common example but again if you've scheduled it then that's a that's a safety net for you.

18:26 So just a little color to this because this podcast is national. The Heggstad petition Heggstad is a court case in California that found that the court has the ability to determine the decedent intention. And so that's what Bob's talking about is proving that intention. To my knowledge that doesn't exist in any other state. That's uniquely California. You know we have a unique laws and that's one of them. And the other thing I would say is a little different in Southern California because I know Bob you're more in Northern California that you know while people say oh it's no big deal I can get a Hstead petition. Well in California in LA County that's a six-month filing minimum today. You file your hearings out for six months out. Yes there's expartes and extending circumstances but generally speaking and it's not as expensive as a probate but it's not cheap. So I guess on one hand I'm glad we can share this for people in that situation. Call the right attorney, call Bob, and you get your property put back in the trust or whatever has to be done. But for the rest of you, don't consider a hexapetition as part of your estate planning tools because you really don't want to. The whole point of the system is to avoid having to go to court and depending on the judge and spending the money. We want to do it the right way and Bob's putting out some guard rails that makes his plans more effective, but we really don't want to do that. We don't want to hear Bob and go, "Oh, great. I don't have to worry anymore." Yes. That's a worthwhile you know point to emphasize for sure. There's nothing like fully transferring your assets, funding transferring your assets in any state this is going to apply where just doing right you know establishing a trust signing it is not enough. You actually have to transfer substantially all of your assets. By the way, I use that term and sometimes people say, "Well, what you keep saying substantially all your assets? You don't have to transfer all your assets. What are you talking about, Rob?" Well, so what I say is, I tell people, look, the legislature in California, and there are

20:30 Similar, statutes in other states, the legislature provides a cushion. The real world is that almost nobody puts every single asset in the trust before they die. So, you die and you have your real estate in the trust and you have your investment accounts in the trust, but you have an automobile and you never went down to the motor vehicles department, whatever it's called in your state, and transferred your car into the trust. That's okay. It's okay here and it's okay in California and it's okay in most states because there's a threshold of assets, total assets that you can have just in your name, in other words, outside of your trust without triggering a probate. In California, they just increased that number. It's $208,850. A weird number, but so it's a pretty good cushion. So, you're not automatically going to go into probate. So, you do want to concentrate on getting, of course, all of your real estate and the bulk of all your investment and bank accounts, but you got a little checking account. You never keep more than a couple thousand dollars in. And you have an automobile, and those aren't in your trust. It's usually in virtually any state that's going to be there's going to be an abbreviated much abbreviated you know fairly inexpensive procedure to without going through a full probate to get that to your loved one.

21:51 One of the issues that can come up it's a little more sophisticated but on larger states is kind of the blending of separate property and community property. Right? You have somebody maybe who has a previous marriage and they accumulate certain assets and maybe they have children from that marriage that they want to designate some of those assets for and they get remarried and they now have new kids. And I think there's a little misnomer that you know you can't have any kind of blended plan. But I believe you can have a blended plan just accommodates and identifies assets separately. So talk a little bit about how somebody who has some separate assets and has some community assets might go about protecting their desire of how those things are distributed.

22:32 Yes. So the another myth is that you must have two different trusts, a his and hers trust. You can't just have one revocable trust if you're married and you either has separate property as opposed to community property. At least in California it's community property. Different other states have all sorts of different characterization of property and the rules are very different. But here in California, community property is you acquired essentially you acquired the assets during the marriage. Separate property is you owned it before marriage and brought it in or you received a gift or inheritance during the marriage and it was just you. That's separate property. With a joint living trust, you can hold joint community property and separate property. And check in your state if you're not in California, but you should be able to have one revocable trust in which you have both separate and community property or joint marital property in one single trust. That doesn't mean you have to do that. I have clients who have a joint trust, married couple, but they one or both of them have a significant separate property. So, one or both have separate property trusts as well. You can have more than one trust. So, and there are a lot of different factors that govern whether or not that's a prudent or necessary thing to do. But you can have separate community property. And you know, most people think, okay, as soon as I've taken, you know, I inherited this bank, this account with, you know, $250,000 in it, and I put it into my joint trust, I've tainted that. It's no longer separate property. Again, check in your check your state law, check with an estate planner, but the here in California, just putting it into a trust doesn't change the character of the property. It can, but how do you distinguish it? You can have schedules.

24:33 Again you can identify his you know Bob's separate property, Mary's separate property and joint property and you can have different schedules so that it can be identified. You can also do a little tagline you know with a brokerage account or whatever or a piece of real estate that says you know Bob and Mary trust FBO Mary as her separate property FBO for the benefit of. So there are different ways of putting it into a joint trust but still distinguishing it as one spouse's separate property. Again, check with your attorney and in your particular state about that.

25:14 So let's pivot a little bit in our last few minutes as I'm coming to the end. We talk about the business side a little bit. You've been this business for quite a while. You established a successful business estate planning and you do some probate work as well, probate administration. You know, attorneys I find when they when they start out, you know, start and point broadly over many different topics. And I know when I make referral to somebody, I'm always looking for somebody who's a specialist because I feel like the customer is going to get much better service from somebody who really knows one niche area. Talk a bit what would you recommend to an attorney starting out in business as far as you know finding that niche finding the area that they're going to work in that's both going to be you know deep enough for them to be successful and yet you know they'll be able to find that and broad enough they can you know have some business

26:02 Yeah that's an interesting question I mean most people know that regardless of the field we've become a world of specialists and that can be very valuable. On the other hand there's value in just you know doing just good basic planning among the you know huge numbers of folks don't have any particular you know very specialized need they just need good core documents. So with the transfer of wealth in the last you know 1015 years and the coming 1015 years baby boomers who are dying and so forth that the transfer of wealth is in the trillions of dollars there's no shortage of work for estate planning attorney it's a it's not an easy area. There's a lot to learn and if you get into advanced planning which I'm involved in as well for higher net worth clients as well as core planning then you've got to do a lot of you've got to learn a lot about sort of more sophisticated tax aspects but there are a number of specialties that you can go into where there's plenty of work special needs planning is one of that one of those you know public benefits if you receive public benefits it's there's a lot of special needs trust planning that should be done so that basically special needs beneficiaries can enjoy you know inheritance and can enjoy assets without jeopardizing their with entitlement programs like SSI and Medic Medicaid those are means tested and if you just have assets that are available to you because you happen to have this inheritance that's going to jeopardize your public benefits. Whereas, if they're they go into a special needs trust that's been created, then and it's done drafted and done properly, you can have your cake and eat it too, you can enjoy those funds for special needs without jeopardizing your public benefits.

28:06 That's a huge area. Elder care is often goes alongside of that. So that's an area of specialty if you want to and you're good you know with international estate planning. Lots of folks have property in other countries and so forth and the laws are very different. That's quite specialized and there's very few planners who do international planning. So there are some niches within estate planning. U but there's also plenty of opportunity for newer attorneys to go into estate planning and thrive even if they don't have a super specialized focus.

28:49 One of the kind of ancillary services to estate planning probate administration are fiduciaries. In California we have a series of professional licensed fiduciaries. In other states they're just fiduciaries that act as third parties. I think often times, you know, they're needed more than they're used. I find that attorneys are maybe hesitant to recommend them because there's an expense to it. But on the flip side, I also see the customer is overwhelmed when they try to do the work themselves as the administrator. Those who are fiduciaries tend to be older or aging out. I don't see people entering into that business. And so just talk a little bit about how is common are you involved with using fiduciaries for on behalf of your estates and clients? Is it something that you see a growing need for? Or is it something that maybe just there's a it's static? I mean, at least my perspective seems to be as the states get bigger and the litigation gets more complicated, there's more needs for somebody who's professional to sit in the middle rather than just a family member who is designated.

29:48 I agree with that, Bill. I think there's a growing need. There's there have been a lot of folks here in California who have be become licensed private professional fiduciaries and about I don't know 15 18 years ago or so there was a statute in California a whole statutory scheme where you used to be able to just hang yourself you had could have no experience at all and you could hang your shingle saying I'm a private fiduciary name me as success or trustee of your trust or as agent under your power of attorney. Nowadays you know in the last couple decades there are educational requirements and to get licensed you have to be insured and bonded for the work that you do. There's plenty of opportunity and I think the more estate planning attorneys, Realtors®, you know, financial advisors, insurance advisors, learn about this, the more valuable and the more they talk to their clients and their colleagues about it, the more private fiduciaries will be used. And the classic example is I'm talking to a couple and they have two kids and they say, "Well, you know, talk about who should you name as successor trustees of your trust." Well, we have two kids. Let's I don't want to pick sides. We're going to name the two of them. Because either what either one would be really upset if I just named one.

31:14 Sure. Well, so I'm going to name them together. Do they get along well? Oh, no. They fight like cats and dogs. Oh, well then, okay, then that's a great idea. Let's go ahead and name them, right? And let's see if there's a big battle. So they can't really they don't have other relatives or good close friends that are good candidates and they don't really want to choose their kids. They want to have a neutral third party. That makes a lot of sense in a lot of situations. And as you mentioned, Bill, the more assets you have, the more sort of protective you are. And so you want somebody to do it neutrally, objectively, somebody who has experience as opposed to maybe your well-meaning child or grandchild or sister who just doesn't have the skills to do it. So, I think it's a it's a big grow it's a growing need. I use private fiduciaries and recommend them in not only core planning, but also in advanced planning where we're setting up specialized kinds of irrevocable trusts and being set up now. So somebody wants to gift their assets into a specialized trust, that's effective now. But for some tax reasons, the people who are making the gift, they're not the appropriate folks to name as the trustees. So we name a private fiduciary to handle that. So big need and the more people understand about the advantages of naming a fiduciary, the more growth that we're going to have in that in that area.

32:38 Yeah, I see more and more and larger states that they're moving more towards professionals and I think things go much more smoothly. The whatever fees they charge, they seem in my experience to save and reduced litigation expense and then better yield. I just did a deal the other day where fiduciary kept money in a CD for four months. I don't think a nonprofessional would have thought about it and it was like 1,200 bucks. So maybe he build for a half hour of his time, but he bought the estate back, you know, 1,200 bucks of money sitting there just for four months while we're waiting for something to happen. So these are things where I think professionals, yeah, you can do it yourself. You just don't want to do it yourself. Last question if I can. You know, the hottest topic in real estate is artificial intelligence. If you want to fill a room at a convention, talk about it. It seems to me, and I'm big in tech. I use all the platforms. I'm testing. I'm using stuff all the time. It's become my new hobby, but it doesn't seem yet to be transformative. It seems to be empowering and most of all the tools I already have. I feel like I'm getting more powerful use out of my MLS and public record information and other things. Talk a bit as an attorney, a state planning attorney, where is artificial intelligence affecting your business, your practice today and what are you doing today maybe to just safeguard yourself that you're going to be relevant or stay up with it over the next few years?

33:55 Yeah, that's a great question. Of course, AI is you know on everybody's radar and I think you know in the law the resources that we have the educational resources and tools that we have all of the big ones they already have AI firmly incorporated in those programs right so it's just the way of the world but just on a relatively casual basis I mean you have to you know I attended a seminar a virtual seminar on AI maybe three four months ago go and the overriding theme is trust but verify. Okay, so there's a lot of you know they call hallucinations, right? And you know madeup stuff and there are examples and I'm sure some people who are listening today know of there have been cases where attorneys have cited legal citations for cases that they've gotten hammered by the judge because the case doesn't even exist.

34:55 Yeah. I think really called in the carpet by the judge in one case I saw. Absolutely. So you have to be careful but the efficiency with which we can help people if there's research that's merited in a case but you know it's not a million-dollar problem or maybe a $100,000 problem but it's an issue. The AI resources that are there as long as you verify can plug you right into almost anything very quickly. And for attorneys this seminar again that I went to and there are many like that says you know older attorneys and folks who've been in this field for a while often say you know that's for the next generation I'm going to ignore it. I'm going to hide my head in the sand. And the emphasis there by the presenter was you can't do that anymore. You can't do that anymore. Why? Because you could get sued for not you know use not having them not at least understanding the available resources. It doesn't mean you have to use it in every case, but to just sort of ignore it is potentially committing malpractice on the you know and so you can no longer hide your head in the sand. You need to plug in and at least have a general knowledge about resources that might be available to your client and to you for the benefit of your client. So very interesting. You know, for me, I can put in data and have it analyze, let's say, a closed cell data and create an analysis on the data I give it. But what it can't do, it's interesting, it can't access Zillow and Redfin and other online because those websites block the AIS because they don't want them scraping their data. Yet, the AI will come back with an answer from Zillow and I'll check in is wrong. And it's it

37:00 Thinks it's supposed to have an answer. Maybe it was an answer that got on that property, you know, nine months ago or something, but it's not accurate. And so, it's one of those things where I can use it for summarizing my own data, but I can't really use it fully for data that I don't really understand or have any access to. And it sounds to me like as an attorney, it's the same thing that you can maybe synthesize some things you've put together, but still not a position where you can really rely on, let's say, pulling up cases. I would think that'd be the most dangerous, pulling up case citations. If you don't check them and then my experience is if you check them, you're probably going to find a few of them are wrong. Well, if you pull 100k citations, you check two or three and add 20 and two or three are wrong. What do you have? Who knows 80 like? So, is that kind of where you're at with it where you're you can use it for stuff. I just don't think it's really it's certainly not replacing me. I don't think it's replacing you anytime real soon. It's going to empower us if we use it properly. I think

37:51 I agree with that, too. Yeah, it's interesting. I first started using it a few years ago. So I write this monthly article and I have been for probably about 25 years. Put it into a local publication each month and then I reprint it in an email newsletter and that I sent out to you know thousand couple thousand people each month and so I met with somebody and say do you know about this AI and there's chat GPT and blah. Hey you write this article every month you should you should use that to generate. So I tried it and this is again in the earlier stages. I tried it and I was I plugged in. I wanted to write an article about sort of the estate planning blunders that have been made by famous people. And so I said give me a 700word article on this. And in 10 seconds 15 seconds I had a 700word article. It's like wow this is fantastic. And I went through and I checked and it said this is what happened with this particular celebrity and I checked it and it was in some cases was absolutely wrong. I mean not even close and others it was close but it wasn't correct and so I went through and I had to corre I did have a great start on it. Okay. So this is what you're talking about. You can use it as a resource, but you know, keep the brain on and do some further digging because it's hardly a per perfect and also it's not necessarily your style. You can have something that gets spit out that may be even accurate but it doesn't necessarily convey what you want or in the style you want. So useful tool, but we're not being replaced anytime soon.

39:35 Yeah, I don't see it. You know, it's interesting. One time I did try taking so I do it any email every week as well. I write out and then I video it and send out in video format as well. And so one time I did the opposite. I did the video off a quick outline and then I use AI to rewrite it into the email. And I have three people right away said that's not you because my writing style is unique. And I think that's the thing that we want to leverage is our unique,

40:01 You know, connection with the people who hear us and appreciate our sty of communication. And if ChatGPT could replace us, replace all of us. It can't replace me, it replace somebody who's not as good as me, but it can't replace me as long as I'm good and better than ChatGPT. So, well, good. I think we're on the same page there, Rob. Always learn a lot from you. I really appreciate your time today. For those who want more, let's see here. Servermanjaffy.com is a website and there's a phone number there as well as we have contact information here for him as well. Phone number and email address and website and thank you so much for taking time today to teach us about more some of the details of the estate planning issues and how to be more effective in providing for clients. Really appreciate your time today.

40:45 Thank you, Bill. And for the rest of you, this is estate planning weekly. We get together every week, usually with a state planning attorney, oftentimes with vendors or other people help us be more successful in our business. Whether you're a real estate agent or an attorney or other professional, we want to learn how to be more effective in helping our customers achieve their goals. If I can help, reach out at Billgross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.