Trust Settlement and the Eldest Daughter Problem, with Josh Yager of Anodos

0:02 Often times the key to success is not some fancy strategy, but I think like in most businesses, it's the nuts and bolts. It's the blocking and tackling in football, not necessarily the fancy plays. In trust administration and probate administration, the blocking and tackling are often times the repetitive, detailed administrative tasks have to be done. And when somebody does them once in a lifetime, they struggle with it. When you have a professional does it regularly, or even more has a business focus on that, you get better results. Josh Shiegar is a company. He's a an attorney as well as but focused on the administration of trusts, as well as estates and probate on behalf of third parties. Josh, thank you for joining us again today on Estate Planning Weekly. Sure. Happy to be here. The reason why I'm I really appreciate being here and you know, it came up in a conversation with somebody else, is I find myself in a position where there's a trustee who's a great person and named in the trust or a probate to be the administrator. And has a good business and knows what they're doing, but they just have never done these details, these forms, these procedures, and it bugs them down and busy with other things. And I'm constantly recommending the attorney as a third party, and there seems to be some hesitation. Talk a little bit about what I think you call the number one daughter problem. What was the term that you have for it?

1:19 Eldest daughter. There you go. Eldest daughter problem. So when I read trust docs, probably 90% of the time, it's a family member or a friend that's named as a successor trustee, that's supposed to follow mom and dad's instructions and bring this thing to conclusion and cut checks for the heirs. And I call it the eldest daughter problem because the eldest daughter is the most trusted of all the kids, if there is an eldest if the family's blessed enough with an eldest daughter, she's responsible and can keep the knucklehead brothers moving in the right direction. She's the one that mom trusted. So eldest daughters end up disproportionately being named as successor trustees. The problem is mom and dad are in their 80s. That means the eldest daughter's in her 50s. She's got kids that are packing up to go to college. And she's busy being a fill in the blank with whatever her profession is. So she is she is spiritually and intellectually inclined for the office of trustee. She's the perfect person. Except she's never done the job before. And she has other pressing responsibilities like getting the kids packed up and on the plane to go off to college. So it's the eldest daughter problem. Somebody with Somebody with great trust of the family, of the settlor, but no training to do the work. It's a It's like It's like asking me to rewire my electrical panel at the house.

2:48 I'd kill myself if I tried to do that. I'm competent at something. To do it. Right. Right. Sit with you and walk you through and bring in the tools, cuz you don't have the tools to rewire. So if they brought you the tools and sat next to you and talked You're capable of learning it. Yeah. But you've never done it before. Yeah. And that's that I mean, we've got 10 million baby boomers in California with 20 trillion dollars of assets. Like 70% of them are going to be dead in the next 20 years. We've got We've got a horrible settlement conundrum. And the vast majority of those 10 million have named eldest daughters or eldest sons or golfing buddies or next door neighbors to settle their estate. And that's a that's a discipline that few people have any experience with. It's unusual to have settled an estate. Yeah. I mean, it's very unusual and then each of the details, it sounds you know, sounds basic enough, but it's really like taking over a business, you know, even if you have assets of a million, two million, five million dollars. It's like you're now the CEO of a business that wants to liquidate. And you know, you still have to maintain expenses and payroll if there's employees or whatever else is involved. And then there's you know, there's details and forms and filings that seem to trip people up. At least that's my experience. Those are It's the little things that trip them up the most, but it's those little things that make the difference. So let's talk a little bit about your offerings. Now, do you do you act as a fiduciary, or you're more of a service to the person who's acting as a fiduciary? No, the family, mom and dad chose the eldest daughter for a reason, because they trust her. She's trustworthy. She should hold the office of trustee, not me. They don't know me.

4:29 What the eldest daughter needs is a glorified secretary that has been here before. And can say, "Oh yeah, we've settled tons of trusts. I know exactly what the problems are that are going to come up. Here's a way we can solve this one if you have that fact pattern." So it's mostly just playing offense on managing the long list of tasks to conclusion. And I and I think one of the problems that the legal profession has gotten into when settling trusts is that we do everything linearly. We first apply for the EIN. And then we give the notice of administration. And then we wait 120 days to do something. And then we So we're only doing one thing at a time. And it occurs to me, look, we know what the checklist is. The 150 things that have to get done. Yes.

5:22 Some of these are interdependent, but some of them can be worked on concurrently. Like there's no reason that we can't do you know, walk and chew gum at the same time on settling this. Let's go out and get the appraisal right now. Like we don't have to wait for month six to do that. We could in week one, we could get the appraisal. Let's start talking about how are we going to take care of mom's clothes and sofas and silver collection. Like let's not wait till the end. Let's get this going. And so my observation is what the trustee needs is someone directing them on only you can go into the bank and close the safety deposit box. I can't help with that. But I can help with these other kind of perfunctory things that got to get done. And let's meet once a week for 15 minutes and say, "What did you get done this week?" And then assign tasks again. And when something I had a boss that said, "Whatever gets written gets done." So that if you on a once a week basis have an iterative process of "What are you going to do this week, trustee? Here's what I'm going to do." And my deal is I want to have three times the number of things on our list as the trustee's list. So that they feel there's value in the relationship, that we're checking more stuff off than they're checking off. Often times I find that the things that you do and I've looked at your checklist on trusty-help.com has a set estate settlement service and you talk a little bit about some of the things that you do on your website that often times clients wrongly assume the attorney's doing that, when most commonly, the attorney's doing the attorney stuff, the legal work.

6:58 And at best, they should have you and or variety to offer and say, "We do the legal work. We don't do the administration, but here's somebody who can help you do that." And for what some reason that conversation doesn't seem to get across to the client. And I often get a client saying, "Well, I don't know why the attorney didn't file for the EIN." Or I don't know why the attorney didn't open an account or And the answer is, "Well, they generally don't do that." but they should have had a conversation, so whoever's supposed to do that knows who's supposed to do that. And that seems to be like where you kind of fit in the middle there between those two. I do that on my probate real estate transactions. I feel like there's that mismatch, and so I want to be the glue in the middle or the oil in the middle of the gears. Sounds like you're the oil in the middle of the gears on that trust administration process. It's pretty it's pretty rare that I would be engaged if there also is a trust and estates attorney involved. Cuz that's like that's like having two heads. You can't have two CEOs in the administration. The colleagues that I'm that I'm aware of that do trust settlement, which to be sure is a minority of practitioners. Most practitioners say, "Look, I'm really good at drafting documents. I'm really good at avoiding estate tax.

8:15 Settlement and probate, not my thing." So there is certainly fewer attorneys that are comfortable engaging with post-death administrations, either probate or trust settlements. And those that do, those that are willing to raise their raise their hand say, "Yeah, I drafted the doc and I'm willing to settle this thing." I think they're rock stars, other than there's some efficiencies that could be brought. I think it's mostly that they're overwhelmed with work. There's a lot of clients dying. And they just have too much work and haven't used technology in a way that it is helpful to them. That there's a there's legacy history on staffing and how we in the legal community think we should get paid, which implies how we staff our practices. So it's pretty rare that I would be involved with an attorney. I am an attorney, and so I get hired as the guy that makes sure to keep the trustee out of trouble and keep the family out of trouble. That's kind of a Ooh, that's cool.

9:18 Sorry about that. My dude just I do not to start popped off. Sorry about that. Yeah, no worries. So usually it's just it's just our team going and checking things off the list. There are some instances where a turn the drafting attorney starts the process and they hear one of my schpiels or hear me talking at a bar association or read an article, and they say, "Hey look, I want to off this to the Anodos guys, because it looks like the majority of their practice focus is settlement, and the majority of the of the referring attorney is drafting. And our practice is just the opposite. Like 70% of our revenue is from settlement, 30% is from drafting. Drafting for me is an accommodation and it's usually done at the back end of a settlement. We're cutting checks and we're like, "Hey, you want this to go in your own name or joint tenancy?" Like, that's not smart. Let's set up an estate plan for you really quick before you get your inheritance so that

10:13 Right. There's process around it. Right. And so I see that challenge as well and that's where I say the attorney, maybe it's time to turn over to somebody that has administrative work. They have a paralegal on staff. That takes some time and money and also takes a paralegal off of the other work they're doing. So, if they don't staff properly and if they don't have it the time allocated properly and it tends to become an ebb and flow work, you know, that they get caught short. And so, I feel like just in talking to you when you talk about linear versus really a short path or, you know, taking a value-added approach to designing a production system, that's only somebody who specializes in that field that's going to think about that. If you're a drafting attorney primarily, you're just never going to think about it cuz it just doesn't really enter your space. Well, actually it's the opposite discipline. In a drafting process, you must go step a, b, c. You can never jump to step Let's move on to on to changing deeds. No, we can't do that till we have a conversation. So, they're almost different disciplines. Right.

11:18 Yeah, in the things that are required for how the business is run. In your right, in estate settlement, much of the work is done by paralegals. It's usually not done by the attorney. Right. In drafting, it's mostly done by the attorney who's the front line and the paralegal's doing the assembly. And the problem is that the because there aren't there aren't many hard fast dates on settlement, like, "we'll get around to it. We'll do the appraisal." Like, there isn't any mandatory thou shalt get this done. There's no there's no judge with a hearing date like in probate. Things get dragged and they are on paralegals' lists because the pressing thing is dealing with the trust doc assembly for the gal that just came in and is sick and needs their trust doc executed. So, it's like a priority gets missed and the poor family who's doing the post-death administration is wringing their hands, "Hey, when can I get some money to pay for my kid to go to school?" I also think one of the opportunities of the age we're in, you know, I've been in business for 40 years in real estate and it went, you know, we've had the internet and technology and systems and AI and globalization and virtual assistants and we're doing this on a video call, the opportunity to segment a business into what you're best at and then bring in people who will supplement the parts you're not.

12:48 You know, for my business, traditionally it'd be the have to be the real estate company that had a transaction coordinator and had their in-house escrow to give me service. Well, nowadays for me to find a transaction coordinator who's a third-party company, I work with other agents who visit properties, show properties for me, meet inspectors cuz time-wise is more important. And I think it's the same with attorneys. The traditional method of handling the matter from front to back, I think is, you know, the older method and I think the idea of saying, "Look, you know, we do a really good job on this. We make and because we do a good job, we get good revenue and profitability on this and we got the right staffing for this. We just don't do this well, then maybe, you know, you're denying your customer the best service by getting somebody who specializes. And again, that's why I think it's so important for attorneys to come take a look and self-reflect and consider the opportunity that of outsourcing some of this work they're not particularly good at. So, let's talk a bit about your offerings in particular if we can. If I can walk through them. On your website, you offer two different services. One is a estate audit service. Talk about what that is and how a audit is going to Well, the audit is before mom and dad dies. The marketing tagline on the audit is what you hope is done before mom dies.

14:08 And it's all the stuff that happens when somebody calls their attorney and says, "Hey, mom got a bad diagnosis. She might not make it to the next Christmas. Let's make sure all the T's are crossed and I's are dotted." The problem is that drafting attorneys think the solution to that problem is review the trust doc, which that is an important component. Is the successor trustee ready to go or are they a contemporary of mom? They're also 85 and not ready to go. Is there a kid with drug use or problems and they're not it's not appropriate to give them their inheritance outright. We should set up a testamentary trust to hold the dough for the kid that has money problems, right? So, review the trust doc to be sure is the first is an important component of an audit, but there's a bunch of other stuff that my colleagues miss because their focus is on trust docs. Another is the balance sheet. Like, the successor trustee, the eldest daughter a year from now, she needs a really good balance sheet. She can't be looking through the mail to try to figure out what mom had because it's her job to transfer the title from what it is to what it should be. And with the balance sheet as a source of truth for everything. Like, just cuz mom says the house is in the trust, don't believe her. Pull a deed and make sure the house is in the trust. Like, we if we made these little fixes, "Oh, yeah, the IRA goes to the kids." Well, look, looks like the primary beneficiary of the IRA was dad. Dad's dead. There was no contingent beneficiary. Now we're probating an IRA which is designed to not be probated because nobody checked.

15:41 Nobody shot an email to the investment guy. "Hey, we're just doing an estate audit. Could you shoot over the beneficiary form on the IRA?" So, that's the that's the balance sheet. That's phase two. Phase three is the treasure map, which is it's just a Microsoft Word doc or Google doc, which let's throw the stuff in there that we want to know. Where's the passwords, Dad? Did you hide any cash in the house, Mom? What do you want to be done with the yard rose, Mom? Who gets the Porsche, Dad? Like, the stuff that is predictably going to be a problem that doesn't really go into the trust doc. Where's the CPA Who's the CPA? Who's the investment advisor? Like the it's kind of like the bulletin board of the stuff that they need.

16:24 Tax return? Where's your latest bank statements with account full account numbers on it, not the four digits? So, where's the Yeah, exactly. Where's the key to the safety deposit box and which bank in this town does it go to cuz the key doesn't say which bank it goes to. So, like fundamental things that eldest daughters get tripped up on all the time. That's the treasure map. Then you go on to the risk assessment, which is those things that attorneys and investment advisors and real estate professionals, we all know they're going to be problems. They are problem assets like the oil and mineral rights in Texas or the vacation home in Oregon or the timeshare or like and it's not just real estate. It just happens to be that real estate is one of the asset types that are most problematic in a settlement. So, going through a risk assessment of, "Hey, we might have a problem with this one. Let's try to button up that problem before mom dies when she still can sign papers that avoid the hassle. After the risk assessment is the work plan, which is we already have a balance sheet. We know what the trust doc says. We know what the vesting of all the assets are. What's the thing that the eldest daughter does in week one? And what's the thing that she does in week two? And let's work through what is the process of changing title of these assets from mom to the administrative trust or directly to the kids. So, it's like the it's the to-do list and then the last component of the audit is some place to put all the stuff. A Google Drive or Microsoft Teams or some place that everyone can hop on easily and all of this stuff is put there. So, that's the audit. And none of that is proprietary. None of it is Josh came up with this brilliant idea. It's just me stubbing my toes for 20 years on settlements thinking, "Why the heck didn't somebody do this?" Well, maybe somebody never wrote down what the series of best practices that we all recognize are to aid the eldest daughter in actually doing the work when

18:28 Mom gets the bad diagnosis. So, that's the estate audit. It's a get in, fix everything. One of these parents is going to die. We got two weeks. Better get done at the end of two weeks so that it's teed up and ready to go. That's what the audit is. And the cost of that is 31 That's pre-tax. The cost of that is 3150 and I'm not sure attorney rates are, but just a round number, $600 an hour, that's 5 hours of work. You know, just to avoid going to probate on one piece of property, they look to the client and they're like, "Hey, I'm telling you. Yeah, it is it is really Yeah, the other thing it does is it teases up the settlement so the settlement's going to go fast, right? If you have everything vested right, you got the nice balance sheet, you got the work plan, you know where all the bodies are buried, like, that cuts 6 months easy, 6 months off of a settlement that'll normally take a year. It should take 6 months now cuz you invested 3,100 bucks to get organized. Right. Right. And so, just that alone is going to be paid back in many estates. Most of these I deal with just the return on the money that you get your hands on rather than sitting there stupidly in some sort of a non-account or in the extra fees and the and the aggravation, of course, and then people have to have their own time. So, that's the pretty So, at what stage, you know, mom's sick, mom's going into the nursing home, mom's at what stage do you see that to be the most the most effective make that phone call?

19:52 While somebody's alive that can still sign papers. It like deeds, titling, vesting, beneficiary forms, instructions around who gets the house. Like that if we have one or two hours with mom before she dies that a way better outcome will be created. The successor trustee will feel empowered. They know their job. They know what they're supposed to do. They got Anodos to help now cuz we're now familiar with it. We then get the next call. The audit was really for me being frustrated with client engagement post death and thinking, man, I could have added so much value on this one if I had two hours with this family before mom died. And so it was it was kind of a reaction to my frustration of let's spin up a product that's fast, the price is fixed so nobody's going to be surprised by a weird bill. We get done with it in three or four hours. It's a couple of zoom calls, we're done. And we're 90% better than we were if we hadn't done it. I'm just curious my morbid sense of curiosity, do you ever get a phone call from somebody to do the pre-audit and they're bringing their estate plan and you notice the plan's not executed or you notice the plan had deeding properties into the trust and they never

21:05 All the time. That's the point. The point is to catch it. It comes It happens all the time. People executing documents and they think, okay, I met with the attorney, I got the binder, I signed everything. I have an estate plan. But the last letter of the binder from the attorney says, you're responsible for funding this thing. You can engage us for 1,500 bucks to fund it, but the client doesn't read the last page of the binder. Right.

21:30 And it's like, oh my gosh, we got to move fast. And there's a bunch of ways of moving fast, right? You can get transfer on deaths done same day. You can call the investment guy and get IRA beneficiary forms. You can get a quick claim deed filed in 24 hours remotely. Like it's not a big deal. Right.

21:48 But it's issue spotting that's the that's the problem. And the eldest daughter and aging mom are not in a position to do issue spotting. You know, I'm working on a large estate. It's about $40 million. A lot of real estate, a lot of investment money. The client actually went and met with the estate planner then three or four times, had the binder, never executed and it might be cuz he had in mind to change it. He was debating the format. And I'm thinking if he had just signed it no matter how bad it was, it'd be better than what we're going through. It must be costing this estate half a million dollars and not a million dollars which is it can be fixed if you maybe could read this and say, okay, this is terrible. Here's a quick change to give us a little bit of a tool to fix things on the fly, go and sign it and let's get stuff started and then we'll deal with the rest later. It seems to me I don't know. It's Yeah, I've found that probably of the things that delay the settlement it's actually rare that the errors or omissions are in the trust doc. Clients think, dad's sick, we need the trust doc reviewed. And to be sure there's some things like the successor trustee is a big one. A lot of families put the three boys in as successor trustees cuz they think that's going to work great and we know it's not going to. It's like the World Wrestling Federation. Yeah, exactly. Or more common it's the successor trustee was a contemporary of mom and dad. Yeah. And 20 years ago when the trust was drafted, they were the perfect person. Right. But now they're 85 and struggling with their own issues.

23:22 They're not in a position to do this heavy lifting. But it's pretty rare. Like at the end of the audit, I'll say, look, I think these three amendments to the trust should be done. I think these are smart to do. These will make the administration go faster. If you want us to do them, we can do them on a fixed fee or you can go back to your attorney that drafted it who loves drafting stuff and have them fix it. My job is to issue spot. And then to hand off the responsibility for fixing the issues to whomever on the team is can fix them. If it's the investment guy, look, fix the IRA problem. Fix the vesting problem on this thing. If it's the real estate guy, fix the quick claim deed on this. Or if you can't do it, I'll handle it. So it doesn't I don't really care who ultimately is responsible for solving each of the issues that are spotted. I care that somebody's name is related to solving it. And there's too much work for me to be greedy about I want Anodos to do it all. I'm more saying, look in two weeks here's here are the issues that need to be addressed. If you want to engage us to fix them, great. You have an attorney. Somebody drafted this doc. They might be retired or dead, but if they are, then we're happy to help. That's the audit.

24:34 I just don't see maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see attorneys referring to do the audit on their drafting. But they really should. Like I could see this I could see this as being a value-added piece and say, you know, my estate plan fee is X and for the X plus Y package, we include an audit from an expert in the administration. I just don't see that. I don't To me it makes sense.

24:56 Not They're not referring They're not referring business this business. This is going to be consumers who know they have a problem or potential of a problem and It's CPAs and investment advisors are the ones that find us and say, look, I got a client. We've tried to get in touch with the attorney. They're really busy. More often they're not in practice anymore. They were in solo practice. They were 60 years They were 60 years old 20 years ago when dad got this document. Nobody's looked at it since. There is nobody. They're or this is an orphan case. There is no professional that is engaged with it. That's happening all the time. We've got 5,000 trust and estates attorneys in California right now. Right. There are two leaving practice from death or retirement for every one that's coming in. Yeah, I see that. It's a it's a it's a big deal. So I most of my work is coming from orphan cases. There usually isn't a drafting attorney anymore. And it makes sense. A CPA would know enough to know these are potential issues, but can't solve them. And same with the investment advisor, they know enough there's a problem here, but they don't know how to solve it. And I also feel like it's a way for them to bring you in as a as service Okay, so that's the that's let's switch to the administration part which is again often going to be perhaps central to this drafting. More commonly going to be a CPA or real estate agents I can imagine would have a client bring them the trust and Yeah. The trust is not available and there's obviously some gaps in this. We have some problems. The customer is overwhelmed, the eldest daughter.

26:27 Talk about your offering as administrator versus the standard attorney process. Like you said, you devised a process they said let's talk about the differences. Well, I the outcome's the same. Right? In order to get the trust to settlement there are the steps that have to be done. And whether there's an attorney helping the eldest daughter do it or whether the eldest daughter does it on her own, at the end of the day that title on the house will be transferred. The BofA IRA is going to be closed. The coin collection will be sold, right? So the outcome is defined. The issue is how long's it going to take, how much is it going to cost, and how much frustration is there going to be? So our thesis is, look we're only experts because we've stubbed our toes so many times on these things. It's not that I'm a really bright guy. It's that I'm a dumb guy and kept track of all the times that I stubbed my toes on these things. Said, oh, I've seen this one before. This is what you're supposed to do when the kids are fighting over the silver coins. Or this is what you're supposed to do when there's a 63 portion all the boys want it, right? So it's just a familiarity with, okay, I've seen this movie before and I know how it ends and there are some there's some engagement that can be done to help the family get over this thing faster rather than having it drag out for two and a half years, which is kind of the common process. And the pro So the checklist the checklist that I make, there's no magic. It's the same checklist that my colleagues have. It's the same checklist that the eldest daughter will get off of online or that ChatGPT will create for her. It's knowing, okay, how do we actually navigate the checklist? Who's supposed to fill up this paperwork?

28:12 Right. Who's going to actually call the bank and make this happen? Who's going to have the family meeting and have the discussion around the house? One kid wants to buy it, the other kid wants to sell it as is, the other kid wants to make it a VRBO. All right. We're not going to wait for 6 months. We know that there's conflict around what's going to happen around the house. Let's engage with it. Let's have a process of discovery of the answer and at the end of the day tell the trustee, look, this is a benevolent dictatorship. You have to make a call. You have all the information now. What are you going to do? And equip them to make an informed decision. And sometimes we find you know, customers are a little too smart for themselves. You know, the smart person like I said goes on ChatGPT, gets the checklist. I deal with this in real estate. A common example is a reverse mortgage and mom and dad die. And they go online and say, oh, you can request extensions so you won't go into foreclosure. So we have 6 months to decide what to do. No. Yes, you can request extensions. No, in California they don't offer extensions. They're going to race to foreclose. You better plan ahead or you're going to run the risk of losing that property or spend a lot of money legally fighting foreclosure. None of those are good outcomes. Let's plan ahead now and I know the answer cuz I've dealt with 10 or 20 reverse mortgage lenders. And every customer says to me, well, I have I can ask for up to two extensions. Well, you can also ask to fly.

29:31 I promise you're not going to fly. You're probably not going to get extensions. So I imagine it's the same with you in terms of requesting things from banks and lenders and that you kind of know who does what, who doesn't do what in these other areas. The expertise is not the answer from ChatGPT, but your actual experience. Yeah. I've got no problem. I mean, I use LLMs all the time. That's in part how we're able to do our work so fast. Is a lot of our processes are tech-enabled, are automated. So, it's I think that I think that's more a that new technology is like a really sharp knife. That it can hurt you if you don't know what you're doing with it, or it can be an amazing blessing to create good outcomes faster. Yeah. So, just like it depends on how sophisticated the person is that's writing the prompt. Can I get extensions? Are they given in California? Well, I've not I've not I've not seen one in writing in California for first mortgage out of the 20 I've been involved with. I've never seen I've never seen one. Now, Yeah. Do they? I imagine somebody got one, but I haven't seen it, and I certainly would not advise a client to wait 6 months because the odds are you're not going to get it. And I think the issue with the with the LLMs, and I use it I mean I'm AI all day long every day, but the thing I find is that I know better certain things. So, I get certain answers, I know that's wrong. Right.

31:03 Sometimes the problem with consumers these days they believe they're right because they've been empowered. Well, you've been empowered, but now disempowered cuz you've been given wrong information that you are convicted as correct. Right. It can be dangerous, and that's why I think again, there's no substitute for working with somebody who's at the best of their game and specialize in this area. And I just see all these AI is kind of forcing every industry to push us to become experts and specialists, and that way we still bring value to our customers that the AIs can't really replace, but can supplement. Yeah. I had one of my early bosses said, "Josh, the answer that you give to the client is not what they're paying you for." Cuz anyone can come up with answers. We've got all the answers we want. We can go on our phone and get all the answers we want, some of them conflicting. But what the client needs is to know that their backstory informed the answer, number one, and that number two, there's a plan to implement the answer. Cuz the answer like the answer's the road map. You actually have to get in the car and drive. And that's where things get fumbled. Is Okay, we know that a deed has to be filed. You know, there's a whole bunch other things that have to be filed be- besides a quick claim. And I could rip off a how to complete a quick claim off of chat, but if I don't go on and look at LA County for what other things are supposed to be filed? Do we have a property tax exemption on this one, or don't we? And do we divide it by all three kids, or just one? And do we get an exemption on the transfer tax, or don't we? And does LA County have a different form to get that transfer tax, or don't they? Like there's like a whole list of implementation impediments that the answer doesn't provide you. Yeah, you can transfer the house to the next guys, but getting there's tough.

32:52 You know, I had an interesting conversation with a spe- estate planning specialist with taxes. He who confirmed something I believe cuz it seems to me that despite putting in the exemption form at the time of the sale, every customer gets a reassessment in the mail and calls me in a panic every single time. I said, "I know we did the form, and I go online. Yeah, we did the form. We sent it in. Here's a copy of it." I understand. And what this attorney said to me he met the actual tax assessor of LA County, who said to him that they're 18 months behind reviewing those assessment forms.

33:25 Yeah. So, you file it, then you get the reassessment automatically. And the county goes, "Well, if you're going to pay it, great. Right. I don't care if you think you're exempt." And then but you still have to I guess file some sort of a appeal in a certain timely manner. And if you And then they'll look at the appeal, but if you don't file the appeal, you kind of lost your rights. And I how can that be every single time? Well, that's the county, and I imagine they make a lot of money on people who don't know the process. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't I wouldn't say that it's 100%, but there is some meaningful minority that the exemption request isn't processed in time. Sometimes it's delay on the on the on the trustee that they wait too long and a cycle goes through and something happens. Sometimes it's on the county. Usually it's both. So. Hm. It's a wild swing. Well, look, I got a little long on our time. I really appreciate your generosity in explaining this. And I think this is again, as a practitioner of real estate, I don't you know, I'm not an attorney. I don't really but I work with attorneys every day. I work with wealth managers. I work with accountants all the time. And we constantly come across the problem of both the estate that's been prepared, but the succession trustee is not prepared to actually do the job, and or they're prepared to do it, they just need some help along the way that will help them be more efficient, more productive. And I know that this is your area. Endnote Law is the company, the website trustyhelp.com.

34:55 I should bring it up if I was a little faster. And Josh Yager is a managing partner, [phone number], and [email address], or reach out to me for the contact info. Josh, thank you so much for your time today in explaining what you do. And I think also thank you for the business it ran that I think so many people need and are benefiting from your service. Yeah, happy to do it. I love the work. Thanks so much. And for the rest of you, this is Estate Planning Weekly. We get together every week with usually estate planning attorneys, so in this case one who does the administration side, which is important as well. And again, the purpose here is to find the best services, best vendors for our customers to help us do the best job we can for them. If I can help, feel free to comment, reply, reach out. I'm at Bill Gross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.