Do-It-Yourself Probate and Living Trusts, with Byron Batres of EZ-Probate

0:03 Okay we are live on youtube hey this is bill gross the la probate expert dot com today coming to you from new york new york so nicely named it twice now this is not a virtual background i am actually doing this call today from a exp office in new york on avenue of the americas right down the street from the rockefeller center hold on one second here there we go i gotta i was on the other line and so we do this call every week to share with real estate professionals investors and wholesalers how to build our business focusing on probate real estate and i teach a class the 11 ways to get a sale in real estate and most of the companies that i have bought data from or come across in my career teach really only two ways in my experience they either teach say the data with the petitioner's information and teach you to approach the petitioner cold call them mail them whatever and the other way is to contact the attorneys and they say the cases and you cold call them or mail them or email them or whatever and those are great you know talking to petitioners is great can i get an audio can't hear you okay talking to petitioners is great talking to attorneys is great but one of the things where people get hung up in my experience in probate real estate is that number one getting to attorneys is very challenging right i think the companies make it sound easier than it is i think that attorneys are a tend to be a certain type of personality style that either fits or

2:05 Doesn't fit with you more so than other businesses i think that they have a preconceived idea of our business and so it's challenging to come in and change that in this competitive space and the other thing i learned because the hard way was when i ran statistics in l.a county only five percent attorneys did more than one case a year now there are a few that are very active and very productive and are certainly worth having as clients perhaps that group at five percent that next 95 percent of the attorneys they do one a year which means a couple things one is getting all their business isn't going to pay your bills unless you have a lot of them and second i found that too many of them like too many realtors do so much broad business they don't know enough about probate to be effective and so a common challenge that i get now i've made myself available for realtors and investors across the country to call me with challenges and problems trying to help them out and i get called all the time with real estate agents or investors who call me and say that there's a problem that in the attorneys who have not done the job they're supposed to do for example i've had cases where people say they're waiting for the letters for three months after they're approved in a court hearing and the reality is either they're posted and the client didn't know it that's happened numerous times when the attorney never submitted the order in l.a county for the judge to sign on some counties like in san bernardino the court prepares the order but in that county the attorney has to prepare it prepare correctly and each time they don't it gets rejected adds a week or two to the process and i've seen escrows get hung up for months because an attorney who might know a lot about contract law might know a lot about divorce law drug driving a lot of things doesn't know that each individual administrative particular or doesn't have a great paralegal to get

4:08 The job through and so one of the things i've done in my business is reach out when i found customers who are on their own pro per or pro se handling the case on their own and struggling or working with an attorney and struggling or working with a service struggling is i'll ask some questions how'd you pick them how did you come across them i've met different document prep services and across the way i reached out and met what particularly does a high volume business in la county in particular does business nationally all they do is probate related work they also do trust living trusts we talk about that a little bit as well how to avoid probate but they do it in my experience at a much higher level than 90 of the attorneys will and i'm not saying to undermine an attorney's business what i'm saying is when you get a consumer who's not tied with an attorney unless you know they're going to be a good fit my experience is you're barefoot referring them to a service like the one introduce you to today ez-probate.com and i'm really honored to have on the call today the founder of that service Byron vitris Byron welcome thanks bill good evening or afternoon everybody depending on your time zones well most people are in southern california where it is four o'clock i'm in europe at seven o'clock but i'll tell you new york we've they restrict dropped all the covered restrictions and it's 72 degrees and perfect today so new york it's like a day time here so everybody's having fun sure so tell me a little bit what was it that you're the founder of this company so you know accept a little bit but tell us let's go back to the beginning why do you start probate EZ-Probate easy hyphen probate.com sure so number one i'm a certified financial planner so for 20 plus years i used to help mostly rich people avoid probate so i knew a lot about

6:10 At least the theory on why you wanted to avoid probate but it's one thing to know something in theory it's another thing to then go through it so in 2012 i was named an executor and my wife's grandmother passed away i was the executor in the trustee of her affairs and like many in my position you typically inherit a lot of problems which is essentially we had we had the state had very little money the trust had very little money but there was commercial and residential real estate in the trust and frankly without getting to the details of the attorney who drafted the document really committed gross incompetence there was a couple of clauses in there that really caused a lot of issues and for me the administrator executor and trustee that i wanted to strangle the attorney and so not only you know by the time you petition when you're ready to petition the court typically it's after the funeral it's after you've already started paying some bills of the person who died so i was already starting to get strapped for cash and then you got to pay you know a ten thousand twenty thousand dollar funeral bill and you're like yeah i can't do that and pay the attorney 7 500 and the attorneys don't really lift the finger unless you pay them upfront or at least a retainer and so my frustration with the attorney and then ultimately my i would call it knowing what to do i was able to just research how to do this on my own without the attorney and that's what we did typically probate is not something you would you know do over and over again you know i've never been an executor since i didn't really think much of that kind of skill that i accumulated if you will until my good friend's mother calls me up and says hey i'm at the attorney's office is twenty thousand dollars too much to pay to probate mom's house or her mom had passed away and so i knew her really well i was like yeah you kick that attorney you know for the sundown sign and get i'll help you in with probate so i helped her in pennsylvania then i helped another

8:12 Financial planning customer in new york then i helped somebody else in ohio and that's when i realized i was like oh these are the same dumb forms over and over again i bet you i can create a turbo tax-like system and so in 2016 we put pen to paper and then essentially that was the launch of EZ-Probate and since then we've changed i used to be very anti-attorney now we've developed a little bit more of a closer relationship with like attorneys who kind of fit our model which is affordability accessibility speed and accuracy so now we actually have an attorney plan that we've rolled out mostly nationwide it's it's in several states not in every state but definitely in california so now we have a flat fee again flat fee probate attorney plan for five thousand dollars total in california if you know anything about california probate attorneys are able to charge a percentage and it's typically way up in the 20s 30s if not hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the percentage or the size of the estate and obviously there is no relative difference between a 200 000 state or a 20 million dollar state on the petition for probate it's just an extra couple zeros and so to me it's ridiculous that they can charge as much as they do and so our system is automated and you know thorough when it comes to the probate process so let's break down a couple different scenarios because you thank you for giving the bigger picture so there's the there's the standard paperwork one error executor maybe one piece of property and a couple of goodies or something standard deal nobody's going to contest it nobody's going to litigate it you know and then i'd say that's probably some percentage 80 90 percent of what i see go on so what services do you offer that person as opposed to 5 000

10:17 Attorney fee when the service this is really your standard business is the front end you mentioned i know you're proud of it and i think it's important that you have it as a fallback but what percentage the percentage of cases that go the journey is very small climate it's relatively small yeah so yeah i should mention that we have three levels of service a complete do-it-yourself for six hundred dollars flat fee start to finish until probate is over so stop right there so it's right there six hundred dollars everything if you can do it all yourself now that means you go online you're uploading forms and filling in but basically that's really what you're doing not going to court necessarily you're not you're scanning and uploading and you'll fill out the forms or for those of us who are realtors can maybe help our client do that right yeah exactly so a customer would go online fill out our questionnaire takes maybe about 20 minutes it's the basic who what where when how much and then immediately and instantly the petition for probate packet is filled out all online it's complete and the customer then just downloads it signs it mails and you know notifies who they have to notify we provide instructions we provide video on how to do things we provide reminders of what they have to do so that hopefully they can you know they can read and write they should be able to follow our instructions and do it themselves and so that's our flat fee start to finish again through the entire probate process until the discharge form is signed now EZ-Probate will help them fill out all the forms and provide them instructions and so what percentage of your cases do i don't know how much you're allowed to share i know you're not a publicly traded company so i'm not looking for trade secrets but what percentage of cases are that it's the overwhelming amount i mean most i mean actually i would say it's probably if i were to kind of give a good ballpark we're probably in the you know 45 to 50 percent do it yourself maybe 30 to 40 percent in our concierge our concierge service

12:20 Is still a do it yourself probate in the sense that the petitioner is going to represent themselves but we do everything except go to court so instead of the customer you know printing signing we will send everything to sign electronically california does not require a notary so there's no notary if any court a couple of ports do require notary for like some waivers and consents we can do an online notary california does allow that and so then we e-file for the customer we arrange the public notice we notify the family we file all of the necessary documents that normally the petitioner or an attorney would do to get well i hate to say guarantee to really increase the chance that this is one of those pre-approved cases and if it is a pre-approved cases which most of our concierge cases are then typically there's no hearing so for the second level i'm sorry just to lay it out here so the service office 600 your concentration level sounds like it's it's the self-help with some help and some of the other actions being done what's the total cost for the concierge level yes but yeah so the concierge right now it's 12.50 we are about to raise that price to 17.50 at the end of this month so but so really it's 1750 for going forward is what we're going to charge and so even other customers just start with the 600 find it they think they can do on their own when they realize what that really means they stepped up the cons that's been my experience about half of them will step up and pay it's still much cheaper than any standard legal fee is going to be and it's 12 1250 going to 1750. and you have to pay it all at once credit card credit card we have we have payment plans available so we can spread it out over six months right same with our attorney plan it's not 5000 upfront it's a thousand dollar down payment or it's a you know kind of a payment plan and then typically we don't charge the balance due until they have access to the estate assets right and so they don't have to come up with

14:22 More than 1250 or 1750 in the concierge or more than 600 they might get a payment plan or credit card that's cheaper than that and that's going to be about 90 of the cases and then if needed and so let's talk about not going to court so today in la county we a petitioner might need to appear for the initial hearing unless it's already approved right yeah so the way it works is that if you do everything correctly you're going to be on the pre-approved list where everything has been filed everything is there's a thing called the court examiner think of it as the judge's helper they're going to review everything typically it's actually an attorney who basically that draws straws and i think has to every attorney maybe has to rotate through that's kind of what i've experienced it usually changes and so they review all the paperwork and if everything is done correctly everything's filed correctly you know you'll be on the pre-approved list but granted there's always a chance somebody shows up to the hearings as i object and so we do still recommend that people call in or they don't have to because if someone does object then they'll just get continued right it'll be pushed out further so most of the cases typically you don't have to attend the hearing and even if there was a hearing or whatever questions the judge wanted to ask you can attend remotely and so but you'll know the day before if it's approved recommended for approval that 95 yeah you'll notice you'll know that in advance yeah nine minutes at a time there's recommended approval it's going to be approved you don't need to show up and then these people would show up or attorneys will say oh it's best to show up there's really no reason to if it's recommended for approval yeah and that's the big thing i find also i see look i make money on limited authority cases i mean i the more of those more real opportunities for me to buy but the truth is i cringe when i hear people apply for limited authority or sell property with court approval because i feel like it's going to cost the customer a lot more money in the long run that way right so usually for full 30 that way from that point on they have control of

16:26 The process yeah and so this is where every county is a little different so for example alameda county routinely does not issue full authority if there's no attorney or they don't do a bond waiver if there's no attorney so even though there's no law that says you can't have full authority without an attorney each county has its own kind of local rules and so you do have to navigate those we have found a lot of times people come back to us and say you know what i'd rather have the attorney because the court notes say everything's correct but they are recommending limited authority or a bond and because there's no attorney and so sometimes you know you may want to upgrade to an attorney simply because of those of those issues got it now one of the things that one of the reasons why i invite you or look advice i like you and we've done this before but the particular reason i invite you today is i'm in new york city and i've been meeting real estate agents here i'm my business expanded to include new york as well probate was to talk a little bit about specifically new york new york is a little different well it's very different one thing that's different is in new york they use closing attorneys rather than we use in california escrows or separate company and so one thing i've learned is that realtors are concerned about the business relationship with a primary attorney because then they get referrals from these closing attorney types and who also want them to give them back the probate so that's a challenge but that said what do you see as probate process in new york in general or some of the more populous counties specifically yeah sure so number one queens county is probably the most challenging just because the court there is i'm gonna call them like persnickety they're just they're just difficult but actually new york i would model it from a lot of from a from a state level i think it's one of the better probate states because it is it is deemed informal

18:30 Unless somebody objects so what does that mean so the petition for probate is like any other it's who what when where right if everybody signs a waiver and consent there is no hearing like period no hearing no probate notes if everything if everything is done correctly sign a waiver and consent no hearing no publication right so there's no in the paper and more importantly the settlement of the estate can be done by informal agreements so that's to say there is no closing procedure probate as long as nobody complains and the executive administrator has a waiver and consent and a formal i'm sorry an informal closing agreement then there's no closing also the inventory part is super easy there's no probate referee there's no extra expense you just it's it's a very rudimentary inventory so probate in new york is very easy in most cases and can be done informally and so we find it to be a really great model for other states to potentially follow because again it makes the process super easy now there's still lots of forms people don't understand what to do there's still a lot to navigate but you just don't interact with the court in each of these stages so it becomes way easier and also more importantly no notice of proposed action like in california where you have to notify all the parties involved and file it with the court and at least 30 days has to pass or unless everybody consents so in new york and really as soon as you get your letters of authority you can you can get started with you know any of the administration and probably this is the most important part pre-pandemic you can walk up to court and then within an hour walk away with your letters of authority again if you showed up wow with all of the documents you know in your hand sign notarize you're walking away with letters of authority

20:34 Wow so that's that's actually i think a significant difference and again most attorneys probably don't do that they're going to snail mail everything and so yeah e-filing is harder in new york than california but that's a little bit that's more in the weeds a little bit more on our you know administrative side but e-filing sucks in california i'm sorry he finally is terrible in new york way better in california although certain counties in california are really bad okay so now you do business in other states as well right how many states do you operate in i mean we over in every state there's about five states that require an attorney by law texas and florida are two of the big ones and that is in most cases there are exemptions exceptions and so we operate in every state although some states obviously we just don't don't do a lot either because of an attorney restriction although we have attorneys in texas and florida but like a state like iowa mississippi other states that have these attorney requirements are pretty small we kind of stay away from them although we could do them if needed you know one of the things i'm a member of the i'm an affiliate member of the la bar and the beverly hills bar and there's like a chat room that they allow members participate in and one of the hot topics i find all the time is what they call practicing law by non-licensees or non-attorneys and really you are like got to be public enemy number one or i guess legal zoom would be number one maybe you're somewhere on that list of enemies of attorneys really and yet i find two things you save the state thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars and you get the job done more quickly more efficiently

22:35 Which saves time and aggravation as well but you're also under a little bit of heater pressure i know you added the attorneys to your service talk a little bit about some of the risks that that like as a real estate agent i run the risk of an attorney watching this video and calling me up saying what the heck are you doing talk about that sure so i mean without getting into details number one the bar has already tried to shut us down just like to try to shut down legalzoom the bar has tried to shut down accountants from giving tax advice and so the bar is notorious for what i would call and this is an opinion right this is not a company opinion per se my legal advisor would probably caution me to say but really the bar operates in fully known unlawful territory so for example there is no statute in california that says you have to be an attorney you know to fill out probate forms there's no statute in california that would limit our speech in any of the normal in a ways obviously there are limitations of speech without getting into the theory of it and one of giving advice is not one of them so the bar is on shaky ground and they routinely lose lawsuits although going all the way to the state supreme court every time legalzoom sued and won against california north carolina you name it 2019 another company legal tech same kind of system we do but for traffic tickets got in the same kind of trouble they sued and won in the florida supreme court so the issue of the unauthorized practice of law is more of a bar issue the bar says you can't do it the law doesn't again that's an opinion backed by precedents so what we operated in is what we call the scrivener exception so think of old-time you know i mean the law comes from kings essentially right the history of the law is the king would decide so a scribe who would write down things of a king would write down what the king says a

24:38 Scribe is not declaring themselves king if they copy verbatim what the king says right and that's essentially the same principle a scrivener exception allows a company like ours to take verbatim like a mail merge and take answers from a questionnaire and put them in the correct spot in the correct form and so we were able to prove that we don't practice law we don't give legal advice again there is no definition of that there is some lines that you have to be careful with but now integrated in our system we have an in-house attorney who quote unquote has reviewed all of our processes and we've also if you will subcontracted with our attorney partners like in california they have reviewed our logic reviewed the forms that we spit out reviewed our output kind of give us a quality control so now every part of what we do is at least rudimentary at a kind of process level reviewed by an attorney if not actually reviewed by an attorney and more importantly for a lot of our customers we have the ability to ask an attorney even for our diy and concierge cases if there's a kind of a question that comes up that is probably a legit legal question well guess what now we have an attorney partner that we can just email text and they get back to us really quickly because we provide them a lot of business right so i can say this i don't have i'm not going to make a legal opinion or express one but i can say as a business professional in real estate and as a businessman 90 of clients be better off no doubt with your service than with the attorney they had now there's a percentage that there's litigation and more complicated and i don't know your attorney you know who it is and what their service is having haven't evaluated wouldn't say it's good or bad and i've seen some great attorneys in l.a that i'm very comfortable referring business to that's appropriate for them but for the routine matter i can say as a professional as a businessman not as a matter of law that ninety percent are better off with your service

26:40 Than the attorney and as professional i can say that i've enjoyed our relationship i have insurance i'm on good terms with but i'm not getting rich out for the referrals i've given out more business and i've gotten back in my experience so i would say for all of you professionals you might get some pushback from an attorney but our job at the end of the day is to serve our customers we get paid based on the value we create for our customers if your customer is the estate or somebody owns a property our job is to help them save money and buyer is a great opportunity to do that yeah and i would actually just add i mean i came from an industry that you know fee compression is a thing right i think realtors probably you got to fight for your commission at times every day and so imagine telling a customer if you use you as a realtor you can help them save 30 000 on probate costs that's going to go a really long way our typical savings about 15 you know because again typical fee in california is about 15 very commonly just because of the percentage of the real estate of the assets of the that attorneys are allowed to charge right so yeah we could definitely help you help your customer save money well it's true in a million dollar house you know the real estate fees might be five percent and half that would come to me at two and a half percent and so 25 000 is a lot of money but the attorney's fees would be 23 000 and the difference between your 600 or your 1250 or 1750 and that 23 000 in my experience 90 of the time you will outperform the higher price fee now it's true that people can sell a house without me it's not true that they're going to get a better net profit when they don't use me or a good real estate agent and that's the challenge we as professionals need to create value for customers if we don't we're going to be out of business we will be internetted out and we all feel that to some degree with business we've lost but that's

28:43 That's the role that we're in and i'm not here to her attorneys in any way i want to give good attorneys some business i see one he i don't see any questions chat box if you have questions i want to pivot to your other business Byron but before we do let's clean up and finish up on probate justin i see your hand up you have a question for us yeah bill i don't know if you remember a while back i talked to you about a woman that had a house in los angeles that was going through a probate issue it's probably when i first started with the brokerage back in november yeah she's still going through that issue and i talked to her today and kind of recommended to maybe to have you talk to her but she says that she's paid 70 000 so far in legal fees she got a lawyer that is a professor at ucla and she says that during the last court proceeding the guy didn't even show up she was really disappointed you know in l.a for most things now i would say almost everything a train does not need to show up they can be on video but i would say i show up for my client because if i can get better service by being in person my customers pay me good money i need to give the best service i can it surprises me i get if you have a health issue 100 but if you don't and theoretically the court is operating safely unless you have a particular health issue i don't get not going to court when your client would be best served Byron yemeni is a question a couple of thoughts here and granted i'm allowed to talk about strict procedure [Music] oops i think we lost you Byron hello can you hear me i think i have audio Byron i don't see you i think you're froze can you guys hear me testing one two three yes yeah i can hear it looks like Byron

30:45 Shows up i can hear you okay we are able to hear it thank you thank you so much i think Byron i think you close up only you need to we come in or what but okay so any so let's say i think he's gonna have to either whether the internet is happening is gonna have to pass or you have to come back in somehow any questions for Byron or me while we're waiting for him to log back in now feel free to put the chat box or raise your hand or just unmute yourself and speak any questions that we talked about which is interesting and helpful yeah so i think the next part is even more interesting because this is about when you have a probate we have leads in probate and for most of us in the call we need more we need more leads so if you need more leads say aye if you want more leads say aye if you don't say i you're not gonna get more leads so i think you're muted still either yeah so what i was about to say because i think this is an important point attorneys are not allowed to charge their full fee for probate they can take a retainer so if your client has taken seven has been billed 70 000 and has paid for probate that's literally not allowed attorney fees are only ordered at the end of probate so i would i think it was justin let's i would recommend that we chat there if she's paid there are ways to recover those fees and that's what i would consider highly suspicious from that attorney yeah they might i think what happens is they call retainer they build it up and they're billing against

32:49 It as well and then you can fight that so yeah definitely yeah you can definitely fight that yeah good excellent and look i don't want to be able to have money they've earned we want to beat the bad actors out it's not nobody's here is talking about taking money out of attorney's pockets who are giving valuable service to their clients that's not what this is about many of them don't know what they're doing and i have the thing that frustrates me is i call them to offer help and they always have to act most of them act like they know more than they do and don't help the client that that's where the problem comes in let's pivot a little bit because one of the other real valuable parts that really maybe we should we talked about before but in particular i'd like to talk about some other states as well is your service where you do living trusts or avoiding probate right yeah so it's a natural combination for we as realtors and i think that we often look for well show me something who's selling a house right now we all want that but one of the things that i teach is 11 ways to get a probate sale one way to earn it is by offering your clients a tool to avoid probate in many states it's a living trust and if you help them do that cost effectively and they appreciate that you're showing your need you're creating value of course who are they going to call when they need some help hopefully that's you and barnes cup in addition to helping people who are in probate has the product that helps many people not everybody many people avoid probate living trust let's talk a little bit about your living trust product as well i know traders will tell me that services like yours aren't worth it i'm not going to get a legal opinion with my business opinion tracking estates tracking results nine 95 people be better off with a bad living trust then no living trust that's my personal experience watching people in court based on my business assessment not a legal assessment but what's the case tell me why you guys in that business and what you are for customers sure so again i'm a certified financial planner so like i dealt with you know 100 million dollar net worth

34:53 Families as well as in a million and under kind of the mass affluent if you will and so i've seen every document you can possibly can you know think of whether it's an irrevocable life insurance trust a grant or retained annuity trust you know all the charitable remainder child will lead trust like i've i haven't drafted them but i've led i've been the lead if you will in the estate planning process on these trusts i've read them i explained these trusts to my customers i probably have read maybe 1500 to 2 000 trusts total you know so remember when i told you when i was the executive trustee i knew we had an issue as soon as i read that trust and the will i was like you know oh f we were screwed this attorney really screwed up and so a to avoid probate there's really two things you have to do number one either have assets automatically transfer to somebody else think of like life insurance ira accounts with beneficiaries joint tenants rights of survivor that kind of stuff it automatically transfers somebody else or you own it in a vehicle like a trust where the trust is if you will in perpetuity to well not in perpetuity if it lives on after the grantor as a legal entity and owns the assets therefore no probate is needed because there's no court order additionally there are things called ladybird deeds or transfer on death deeds so you can just have it in the deed that says upon my death my children get it as long as there is no court order required to transfer the property you don't need probate and so our estate plan produces a revocable trust a power of attorney a medical power of attorney a poor over will i pour over i mean it will obviously requires probate but ideally it's the last resort if you do everything correctly there's nothing to go through the estate except maybe a car because that becomes more administratively a pain in the butt to

36:54 Owned by the trust and then of course we provide a quick claim deed so you can actually transfer the property into the trust and so by owning things in a revocable trust you are then able to avoid probate because the trust would then be in existence own the property and then ultimately you know transfer to the errors without probate so all that sounds great and what's the cost and what's the time involved so if i'm just a individual person and i own property and i want to avoid probate and i you know have just a simple you know a couple kids maybe i don't what's the cost to do it and then if i'm a husband and wife again simple family kids no kids what's the cost to do a basic program so we charge again a flat fee of 300 for the estate plan which produces all those documents if you're single 500 if you're a couple however you wanted to find a couple so we just say who do you care about who do you want it to go to and then that's really the couple that we that we that we consider again if you compare that to an attorney it's three to eight thousand dollars for the simple estate plans and again i would i would say that there is no quote-unquote bad trust it might be bad terms in the trust but that's oftentimes driven by the customer but really ours is a boilerplate document we call it the 90 percentile rule our trust would work 90 of the time when there's you know a family whose sole purpose is to avoid probate right if now all of a sudden you start talking about tax strategies or you start talking about this is my fifth spouse and i have children from multiple partners yeah this isn't for you we would tell you that you need our attorney plan within our trust structure and then we would you know give you legit legal advice because you're going to have more complicated situations but i think probate and estate planning are very simple it's usually the transfer is what you're thinking about and then the asset may be complicated but really the trust is a pretty

38:56 Straightforward in most of the time right in that ten percent when people have multiple families multiple combinations maybe a complicated business or a live assets where taxes are an issue and who they leave things to or they don't leave to certain kids that's where they need to sit with somebody who they know like and trust and violence company has an attorney feature but that's why i refer them to a local attorney and as a professional my job is to kind of assess that and make the right referral there's attorneys that i've done zooms with invited on this call and promote because i think they do a good job for the more complicated cases i would call the medium and the more expensive ones that that need a maybe need a local expert also maybe a trainer knows the local attorneys maybe not and you could talk to Byron's company as an alternative as well but there's no reason for most people the other problem is sometimes these attorneys my experiences they make it too complicated to finish the job and then the customer doesn't get the benefit you know if they don't there's a question i guess if they if they felt the trust and never sign it and never deed the property in now you're basically going to probate court to try to say hey we meant to get it done and we didn't get it done but there's no reason to go there and the advantage of Byron's cases is much quicker much faster so how long you guys been doing it in how many states do you do living trusts yeah so living trusts you can do in every state the requirements for state do vary a little bit but really you're looking at for the trust it just has to be notarized because it's just a contract it just has to prove to be valid but the contract is between the grantor and the trustee typically themselves so it just needs a notary and for the remaining documents it just needs two witnesses so there's no state we can't operate in i'm in the living trust again personally i've been doing trust work since 2000 on the certified financial planner i worked for morgan stanley ubs but for EZ-Probate we launched the estate planning in 2020

41:00 And i will note that we always offer a free will and a free medical power of attorney like even pre-pandemic the pandemic has really shown like why a medical power attorney is so needed so anybody who does our estate plan and doesn't want to pay or just wants the free will we always offer a free will and a free medical power of attorney so important having been through that unfortunately with you know having lost four parents with me my wife having those in place are incredibly important it's tough enough with those documents trust me without the documents is just a nightmare getting medical attention making medical decisions and all that so yeah so bill terry just asked the question does it cost extra to put a house in the trust it doesn't cost our customers anything extra we include the quick claim deed which is the deed to change the ownership from the person to the trust what you'll then have to do is register at the recorder at the counter recorder of deeds and then whatever the filing fee is it's usually you know coupled maybe it just depends by county it's it's it's very minimal very good so yes they prepare the quick claim deed and the customer has to get it recorded at that point and then you get a copy of it for them but that's another option as a real estate agent you might consider for key client doing that for them getting the deed recorded through a vendor and then offering that back to them as part of the package good question hey mark pedro's i saw a couple questions or comments from me i'm not quite clear what those are free leads in california if you just found distribution in this file i'm not quite sure is there a question there that we didn't cover mark prederosa no it's just inquiring about it that's all oh and what does you want to query about is there no i mean yeah you were what was it again who wants leads or probate oh god it got it got it yeah okay got it maybe i'll just be facetious but yes that's just really my personality but yeah you think probate man i'm

43:01 You know i'm doing my best to be here every thursday or tuesday whenever you have your zoom meetups but yeah thank you i'm continuously learning even though i've been through it personally myself there's like nine of us other kids right and so but that's a different story but yeah i don't want to interrupt you but thank you thank you thanks so much yeah for those of you anybody's interested as a real estate investor wholesaler wanting to do some probate lead generation love talk to you i do get leads i do share them with people in our groups i'm glad to help you with that if you're a real estate agent interested in getting into lead generating the probate space i'd be glad to do a consult with you one on one and kind of help do that as well so that's great but one of the ways i teach all my agents even if you don't want to cold call petitioners you don't have cold call attorneys one thing we all should do is take advantage of what Byron just offered everybody in your database past client server influence people sold houses to people you didn't sell to you need to find out do they have a living trust or not and they all either do or don't and they don't you should tell them about this service that's very cheap because most people think living trust costs three thousand or five thousand dollars and literally he just told us it cost five hundred for a couple and three hundred for individual now that he's sitting in a free will and free health directive which is fantastic for the trouble so they go through the process you should all call every client you have in asking that question as a service i'm curious i'm just on a call with an expert in this area with the founder of a company and that will generate leads for you i promise you one of my 11 ways to generate business is this center of influence calling them all finding out who has a living trust and who doesn't have a living trust and those that do directing them to an appropriate solution now if they have a higher net worth either Byron can handle them help them with that or you might want to find a local attorney that's more appropriate for that kind of a customer or maybe easier for them to work with if they're local i don't know but at least call them tell them you care don't come from a and by the way who knows looking to buy or sell no just

45:04 Could it come from i care about you and i don't have a record of you having living trust and i wanted to make sure you had this opportunity to save some money there are services i'll pay a commission to do this don't do that it's not worth it better to get the relationship and build some money okay Byron in the chat box put free to contact him at [email address shown on screen] and you can schedule a call with him wow that's easy to know i didn't know that Byron thank you for putting that there you can hit him at calvin lee and his calendar is ez-probate.com 30 min and i'll put both of those in the description and the youtube we sent out the replay for that so we'll take care of that as well any other questions for Byron again either on probate service on how to if you're in probate and need to get out as efficiently as possible or how to avoid probate on the living trust who has a question for Byron or me that we can help you today anybody you guys are being very passive nobody all right well for the trust what is a single person cost three hundred dollars so easy hyphen probate.com is the website if you go in there and hit the trust it will show you breakdowns and that kind of thing and i think there's also you can schedule appointment there as well yeah so bill this is a little bit of maybe free solicitation slash advice and or idea you guys are familiar with reverse mortgages right so every reverse mortgage by definition will end in a death you know because that's that's when the mortgage ends and then has to be paid every reverse mortgage that's insured by the government will flow through hud and novad we have successfully been involved in some short sales where we've been able to get the realtor fee our fee and even an executor fee on the docket

47:08 Because foreclosure will cost almost 77 000 and take about 680 days on average whereas probate you can get the letters of authority in typically 40 to 60 days depending on the county and then our flat fee with the attorney is 5000 or you know or even to do it yourself and so oftentimes if an attorney is not involved well then you're preserving some equity for the family and then people are motivated to do it and so if you have any ways to get foreclosure lists really i would encourage you guys this is this is going to be an exploding market as a baby boomers age and start to pass on but i would encourage you guys to think about reverse mortgages see if you have a contact or oftentimes there's a local hud you know either in the county or obviously there's like a state representative you know that it could be easier to reach and they want they desperately want to get these assets off their books so yeah just food for thought that's just something that we've really started to play around with you know this is a genius idea and i got to tell you i see regularly probates that start they the property is barely worth more than reverse mortgage but they take so long there's unpaid interest that gets added on to it so if the if this process isn't fast you add six months eight months at three thousand dollars a month that's another eighteen twenty thousand dollars you can watch away the equity yeah that's destroyed attorneys fees could be on a million dollar house could be twenty three thousand dollars and i've seen them just say well you know what it's not see plenty they try to grind it out and figure it out and i've also seen several they just flip their hands and say it's a short sale and the court doesn't bother with it and they let it go so definitely it's good to know what a great prospecting technique reverse mortgages would be a great way to catch up ahead time that's fantastic i mean i'm gonna know that one guy so i don't know about you but i'm gonna jump on that one good guys pleasure talking to everybody and if you guys need me for anything

49:10 Either contact bill or you guys have my email and if you use that link it'll take you to my townley app which is you can schedule me directly through there thank you i'm happy to thank you so much for everything you do in the industry thank you for taking time with us i really appreciate it okay awesome you guys have a great night thank you bye a great guy but he agreed to stay after to accommodate us any other questions i can help you guys with running probate or his service i know pretty well i've used it for several customers and various products anything can help with before we wrap up i have a question in regards to he was saying with the reverse mortgage is it to find out who has a reverse mortgage and if they don't have a trust have them put the trust together is that what he was talking about he was saying that reverse mortgages that go into foreclosure are particularly appropriate for a discount service like his because the nature versus mortgages can be that you know they the now of course prices are probably going up quite a bit right now but the people who got reverse mortgages say two years ago and there's not a lot of equity left and the condition of property is bad and it might even been the lender over appraised the value when they did the mortgage and so now it's a short sale there's enough money in it to pay off the lender as well as the legal fees which can add up and be substantial and so what he's offering is because it's a discount rather than an attorney's fees maybe 25 23 000 that you can offer the service to your customer of doing it for 1200 1250 or 1750 concierge or 600 on your own and i know plenty of real estate agents who use the service and they just do the concierge for the client themselves to save the money and to be involved with the client and as a service get the client

51:13 The probate get it approved and can sell the property quickly so he was suggesting that you track reverse mortgages they're going into foreclosure as a source of good leads all right thanks good any other questions i just wanted to know how new york was treating you can i tell you that i got here the weather's been perfect last week was raining it was cold it was hot and muggy i got here on thursday it's been 72 and perfectly crystal clear i'm from l.a it doesn't get better than this and on tuesday night they eliminated covert restrictions people are celebrating and the energy is great so i'm loving being in new york thank you very much for asking but i'm doing really good here thank you so much i'll be here through tuesday i'm working today tomorrow so call me text me email if i can help you guys okay thank you thank you one quick question great piece of pizza yeah just real quick though i had a great piece of pizza last night by the way go ahead oh yeah i love their pizza okay so what can you i'm sorry could you i shouldn't have asked him i apologize can you circle back around to what he said about hud and going there to poor resource yeah they don't want their assets yeah now keep in mind that he deals nationally so i don't i don't think that approaching la head office unless you have a connection there you're going to get help there but what he's suggesting the goal here is to find out which reverse mortgages are in foreclosure oh okay and so however you would get that data whether it be a title rep or service or going to la hud and i don't think any hyphen experts isn't going to cooperate with you the point he's making is that they would like to not go through foreclosure and not have those properties for closing nobody wants to do foreclosures today they're just too expensive and wasted assets if you can possibly save the property and get any equity

53:14 For the state that's a that's a big one for everybody yes okay thank you and i got a question is this recorded we record them all and it's on youtube and we'll send anybody who's registered through either eventbrite or meetup you'll get a link to the youtube hopefully within the hour okay i'd love to have you guys i'd love to have you guys subscribe and support the channel love to have you if you like it like it if you don't put a comment in as to why what we can do make it better i'm a real estate broker i'm not selling any coaching but selling data obviously i do get real estate agents for me business i love that i also am building a team nationally if you're interested in changing companies love to talk to you but i'm not here to recruit you for that i sell houses i represent states attorneys i do legal real estate that's my business every day and i do this to teach i do to learn i get people like Byron to talk to me because of doing the scholarly week so i appreciate your support if you're interested in continuing to build your business as a professional come every week you know i do i go into classes in an hour i might get just one or two good tidbits but one or two good tidbits in my business could be a 10 or 20 000 check so that's why i'm on this call myself that's why i do it is to learn myself as well so i'd love to have you guys support this week we're in new york next week we'll be back in los angeles we'll continue it's probateweekly.com and we do it every thursday at 4 p.m pacific 7 p.m on the east coast we also record it's on youtube on my youtube channel thank you for support guys call me text me email if i can help in a new way thank you so much everybody thank you thank you bill thank you thank you bill thank you so much thank you very much appreciate you my pleasure thank you thanks bill thank you