Smart Probate and Estate Planning Legal Services in North Carolina, with Andrew Atherton

0:02 Welcome to Probate Weekly. I'm your host, Bill Gross. Bill Gross at Bill Gross Probate on social media. We do this every week to talk about different practices and how to be better in serving our customers, whether a real estate agent or attorney or vendor in the space working with real estate and succession, whether it's planned ahead with estate plan or not with probate or in some cases North Carolina one can be passed over without planning. And yet avoiding probate, we're excited to have here today partner in a law firm based in North Carolina from McGuire Wood and Bissette. We have Andrew Atherton. Andrew, thank you for joining us today. Thanks, Bill, for having me on. And so, one of the things we talked about when we started in North Carolina is that you don't need probate to transfer property in North Carolina in many cases. Talk a little bit about why that is. So, yeah, North Carolina is unique in the sense that real property, so your house or land that you may own, that's in North Carolina, the North Carolina real estate law says that when someone dies, that land or house passes automatically at the time of death to the named heirs under a will or named or if there's not a will to the intestate or the North Carolina written state written will succession plan.

1:34 And so, that is different than I think in a lot of states in which you've got to go through a process in which the court authorizes the transfer of that property to the named people in the will. It frees us to not particularly because the house ends up being a land ends up being most people's largest asset, frees us to not always look at revocable trust as a way to provide probate avoidance because we can, you know, their biggest asset doesn't go through the probate administration process anyway. Though, when I think about the probate cases I deal with, I can imagine you've cases where there's fights over who is a spouse, who's not a spouse, who's a child, who's not a child, other side agreements, last minute deeds. So, I imagine there still probably is a vigorous probate litigation business in North Carolina as a result of that. Oh, absolutely. And you know, it doesn't mean just because it passes by to the heirs under intestate succession, it doesn't mean that it doesn't that people shouldn't have a, you know, a good plan in place. I would always encourage people to have visit a lawyer and understand and know what their plan is. And likely everybody should document that at a at a minimum a will.

3:06 But in a lot of cases it does end up being some sort of revocable trust. So if you have land that's owned by a business like an LLC or other sort of corporate entity that does go through probate. It has to require the administration process. So, we in the vast majority of cases use trust as a way to own that LLC prior to death so we can avoid the estate administration process. One of the questions came up in a case I dealt with recently. I was surprised to find that an LLC owned by a trust that they could transfer that by selling the LLC. Therefore, even though the self property might require court approval in this case in California, I know the laws change by state. That didn't require court approval because they weren't selling the property, they're selling the LLC. So, I'm sure there's different layers of risk and different layers of opportunities and nesting and then who gets the assets. That's why you probably have to have a plan in place to get the result you really want at the end rather than getting close. A- Correct. Right. And it's good to I mean, that's why, you know, we start planning as an estate planner by asking sending out a client questionnaire and asking about you know, extensive details about what assets are out there. It's because it's not one size fits all for folks and it takes us, any sort of planner, knowing really the details of what assets you have, how they're held, whose names are on them in order for us to help shape kind of where the where what kind of documents or plan you need.

5:10 One of the biggest challenges for estate planners that I deal with here in California is that often, or not for the planners but for the customers, is that the plan never got funded, meaning they met with the attorney, they signed the book, they signed all the documents that all the property is going to be in this estate plan, but they don't actually deed the property from Bob and Mary to the Bob and Mary trust. Is that an issue as well in North Carolina and how do you resolve that or is that just you missed the boat? Yeah, so a- as long as you can do that funding pre-death, then you're okay, but you're exactly right in that it's not just enough to take the step of creating the documents. Right. Have to go through the process of either funding assets in the trust or directing changing beneficiary designations and such so that assets pass to the trust or pass to heirs directly. Right. That's the reason that we again get a lot of asset information and a big part of what we do is help folks sort of walk through that funding process on the back end.

6:29 Yeah. In fact we've had conversations as a practice group. We've it's myself we've got about 26 lawyers in our firm and about 12 of us do planning and probate administration or estate administration work. And so a big part of our firm does that and we've actually talked about potentially hiring like a paralegal or someone to literally just work to help folks fund their estate plan because it's so important that step when skipped really means a lot of the documents the documents still may work the way you want them to but a lot of the goals of the documents get missed. Right. I give you if you have multiple siblings or children and they want to disinherit one for example in the trust they do that or you know reduce their inheritance substantially. But if they die don't execute the estate then the property is decided at least in North Carolina by the standard distribution. So I imagine each of the children get an equal amount and that might not be the intention at the time. Maybe the Maybe the decedent gave extra money to other children at time and wanted to make things equal. Who knows? But unfortunately, law is not going to anticipate all those details and your good work of doing the plan goes down the drain. So, you talk about maybe getting a paralegal. The other one is following up with the customer, right?

7:57 That you send them home with a nice book and you give them a list of things to do. And if they don't do that, now do you handle the deeding of the property yourself, the finding of that, or is that something you sign to the customer, or do you have a vendor you that you refer them to? We've got a We have a real estate lawyer actually two real estate lawyers in our firm that do deeds for us. And so, particularly when it's real estate, we'll assist with preparing the deeds to make that happen. We'll, you know, at the moment we'll reach out to if we have contact information for like their investment advisor or banker, then we'll reach out and give them some funding instructions. And at the moment we have left it to them the cust you know, the client to follow up and finalize that funding instruction besides executing a deed. We've done all that stuff and recorded it. But we've left it to the client to do the final follow up with their advisor. That's where we're having conversations. Do we need to bring somebody on so that they're not paying lawyer rates to you know, hound or encourage people to keep working through the funding process.

9:20 Yeah, that's a challenge. At some point, you stop being an attorney, become kind of like somebody's mother. Right. You didn't fill You didn't send the documents. You get back to me. You didn't get the property deed over. And at some point, it's one hand, you want it done to get the customer the result they want, the client. On the other hand, you want to make sure you your lawyer hat and not your mother hat. So, that can be a challenge. So, the other one the other issue seems to come up from time to time is the storage of the documents. You know, I've had numerous customers who passed where there was a trust and we know it was because the property was funded into a trust, but whoever, you know, at that point, successor trustee or second successor trustee or third can't find a copy of it and now we're out of luck. So, what's the law in North Carolina regarding property's been a trust, but you don't have a copy of it in order to determine who has authority or what's supposed to be done with it? Yeah, so we have the uniform trust code and that gives us some flexibility if we have a copy or can find a copy, even an unexecuted copy can sometimes be utilized as evidence that's what the intent was with regards to the document. And so, you know, if there was not a executed copy that can be found, then the it would require some sort of process of going to the to the court and getting a judge to you know, agree or sign off that document was is the document that was executed. That can be complicated and expensive and take a fair amount of time, so we try to avoid that. One of the ways that our firm has a has worked to avoid that is we actually offer for clients, we are lucky enough we're actually in a historic a historic building in

11:23 Downtown Asheville that was formerly a couple of different banks. And so, we have the both blessing and curse of having vaults all over our building. And so, we store original documents for individuals with that have our clients of ours and we keep those in fireproof safes and old bank vaults. And we find that it's the best way to make sure that we can locate an original when someone passes away. My father was an attorney and growing up he had a small firm and one of his partners was did wills and trusts. And in their law office building they bought it they bought a small office building and they built basically a vault. As a little kid I used to go in there and see all the originals and it seemed like that was the standard practice for attorneys and I think you know reading history about you know famous people who were attorneys like Abraham Lincoln and John Adams, that was common they stored documents for customers. Of course, not as sophisticated as vaults, but whatever they had. But it seemed like that stopped happening as the course of business, at least in California.

12:41 Maybe it was there was liability issues or they couldn't find them. And so, it seemed like that changed at one point to a period of where attorneys didn't want to keep the forms. And then now it seems like with online there's other ones who you know keep originals and or keep online copies of it. Do you as well now I'm really impressed to hear you guys keep the original. I think that's fantastic that as a service to the customer cuz the original is always better than a copy. Do you also offer you know digital services and is that part How do you integrate that into your practice? Yeah, I mean all of our scanned our all of our documents that are executed with through us, we scan into to our cloud portal. And we store those for individuals and we keep a copy you know in our system. The you know the ability we do I can say that our litigation attorney is that does our trust and estate litigation work. Every time we discuss vault storage she tells us how terrible of a decision from a liability standpoint that is. So Right.

13:59 She doesn't love the fact that we store those documents but just from a from a perspective of lawyers but we just think it's such a good client service to do that. I know you know it's a struggle. I think we do we are set up in a in a sense that because we have you know a number of lawyers and have been around our firm just celebrated its 130th anniversary this last year. Wow. And have been around so long that we feel like we're aligned to be able to store documents on a continuing basis. I've seen private I mean definitely I think if I was a private practitioner, I'm not sure I would want to necessarily store documents. The law requires us to if we're shutting down our office or have retired or passed away, those documents have to find its way back to a home. And that can be an arduous task if it's a individual practice for sure. Yeah, I think one of the real advantages of a larger firm you have the leverage that it offer an additional service I think that your customers can. To me it seems viable to have it. I you know, it's funny that the trea- your attorney tells you about the liability. I As a real estate agent, I would say, you know, the attorneys will always tell you why not to do something and if you take all their advice, you'll never do anything.

15:35 You'll sit at home in a fetal position because that's the best way to avoid any liability. But, the question is where is our fair risk return and I think keeping original documents for your customer at least you're making the effort to try to serve them. I think that's always to me the North Star. What serves the customer and you do your best you can in that area. So, you probably along the way also seek customers who come to you or clients who come to you with problems from estate plans done by other firms. Do you guys handle administration and or litigation of plans that are developed outside? And if so, I guess that's the first question. Do you handle those kinds of plans? Yeah, we do. And just notice for those watching, just notice the frustration in his voice there. The tonality cuz he's really saying, "I don't want to, but we have to because we want to be good customer service." But, I could feel that, the pain. Our we do have we do have a trust and estate litigation attorney. And she does a lot of advice regarding rights under prior documents. I say that in that in that I hope that our litigation attorney is working on things that we haven't drafted as planners. That's always the scare, you know, the worry as a planner is that you've done something.

16:57 Right. But she we do, you know, in North Carolina because having because we do have the Uniform Trust Code, we've got a lot of flexibility on adjusting estate plans. And the way the way I describe it is that we can almost do estate planning for people after they've passed away. In the sense that if the documents or the plan doesn't necessarily match up to what we can clearly tell was the deceased person's wishes our law provides a an extraordinary amount of flexibility to work to try to adjust a plan on that. It uses, you know, we can do things like decanting trust, which is essentially taking an old trust that had some maybe language in it that was built in maybe the 1930s even or 19, you know, 1940, 1950s and creating a trust that has language that's more modern and refreshed and has a better outlook as to the way our law works today. And there's a big amount of flexibility in doing that and she does a fair amount of that work.

18:26 We do a fair amount of work in sort of helping families find a way through disagreements and arguments about how things were set up. You know, I say it that way and that, you know, everybody thinks of the litigation attorney is the one that goes in with guns blazing, but honestly, a good litigation attorney is going to try to it get people to the point in which they can come to an agreement as to make things work out in the way in which, you know, the deceased wanted things to happen. Well, or another way to put it, I think is a great anything, litigation attorney or anything, gets the customer what they want as best as they can. Right? And often times you can't get the customer what they litigation cuz it's not to anybody but the judge at the end of the day. But you do the best you can to get them what they want and sometimes the best way to do that is by you know, resolving matters, negotiating matters, mediating matters. And sometimes it's gun blazing and there and I'm sure you also see customers there's some who just if I can just, you know, shoot guns non-stop and spend every dollar I have. I hate my brother or sister whatever so much I don't care. And there are attorneys who will do that, there are attorneys who want to do that. So it's that's giving the customer what they want unfortunately I think in some cases.

19:49 Yeah, and you know, I mean we try to avoid you know, good lawyers are we are going to make sure that their client has reasonable expectations as to what happens cuz you can spend tens of thousands of dollars when you end up in a courtroom and so trying to avoid that is at all costs is a So what would you say are one or two of the most common mistakes you see in estate plans that end up getting litigated? Like what are one or two maybe preventable things or errors made that could be caught but weren't that for at least the litigation? So I do a lot of special needs planning. I do a lot of helping folks understand and work out plans to take care of disabled adults and we do a fair amount of modification and maybe it's not even necessarily disputes but we do a fair amount of modification of documents or trust after someone's died because things have are going outright to an individual that may be receiving a whole litany of government benefits that would be affected by receiving an inheritance and you know, this isn't like folks receiving $10 million and all of a sudden they're off Medicaid. That may be not as big of a deal as someone that's receiving, you know, $200,000 and all of a sudden they're off Medicaid.

21:31 If healthcare becomes something they have to pay for privately, that money will go extremely fast and so we do you know, we see a fair number of folks that haven't thought that through. Either one because they've done planning on their own either by pulling forms online or whatnot or they've you know, gone to a lawyer that may not do this as a full-time job. They may go to a lawyer that does have their real estate closing attorney do their will. Which may or may not, you know, lead to the result in which they're asking all the questions and the lawyer's not necessarily asking all the questions to get the documents correct. I would say isn't that part of the whole the problem and I think that you know, a bad at least in California, a bad estate plan that at least gets the property out of probate is better than none 90% of the time. But then that 10% if you're in the 10% it's bad.

22:50 It depends. Yeah. Yeah, so it always depends on your circumstances. I think the more particular circumstances, the more you need to be thinking about these things ahead of time and obviously children and even and adult special needs, medical situations. These are all things that require care. Otherwise, you end up blowing through hundreds of thousands of dollars that you didn't need to for some reason. So that's a common So, if I were to say to you and if you were, you know, I'm sure you two must answer the question on a live podcast, but if it was just me and you on the phone, I said, "I'm just curious, why would you think that you guys stand out as an estate planning, you know, service compared to the competition?" I mean, I know I tracked you online a little bit and saw you and I was impressed. But, you know, if you were to say, you know, what were one or two things that maybe you feel like you distinguish as a firm as an offering to a to a client or prospective client over the competition or that you aspire to, what would you say that is? So, I mean, I think you know, the lawyers in our firm, we have all committed to focusing on our specific practice area, whether that's estate planning, you know, elder law work, corporate, real estate, even to the extent of probate. We have a couple of lawyers that do most of our administration type work.

24:11 And because we have committed to focusing our practice and working together as teams and getting other lawyers involved if there's a corporate interest involved, then we have really learned our craft well and have a in-depth knowledge of you know, trust and estate planning, and don't feel like that I'm I don't feel like I have to be everything to a client. I have to know where concerns may jump out and by being able to focus our craft, I think that helps in being a subject matter expert. I mean, we want our lawyers to be those subject matter experts. And then I think I do a lot of I mean, I'll say I and then the rest of our lawyers do a lot of work with our state bar association on in working with attorneys across the state and doing things like drafting legislation and other items that keep us on the edge of what's happening in the legal realm.

25:34 Now, I know you're in Western North Carolina. Do practice throughout the state? Is it is it is it kind of practice you can do statewide or is it really limited to certain jurisdictions? Primarily, it's limited to Western North Carolina. Western North Carolina square footage is a pretty large area and because large part of our side of North Carolina is we do a lot of work. I mean, Asheville's the biggest city in probably a couple hundred mile radius and so well, you know, west of Charlotte then we do a fair amount of work for folks all across the western part of the state mostly. Got it. I have random clients across other parts of the state but mostly because we connected with their connection through Western North And so, from a business point of view, I would imagine that you must get business referred by attorneys just like you say that you're going to handle Western North Carolina, you know, attorneys in Durham or Greensboro or even Charlotte would think that are familiar with the particular practices of your jurisdictions. I know in California the laws are statewide, but each county has their own rules and procedures and I think also style and feeling and they're completely different. So, is that good Chuck? Your business is coming from attorneys other parts of the state?

27:08 A huge portion of our business comes from attorney referrals both attorney referrals across the state. Mostly I think attorney fair amount of attorney referrals locally. I think getting colleague referrals is like the best form of flattery and it's why it's important to us to be a part of like these statewide groups. Even though it's a maybe a you know, 4-hour drive to Raleigh the to work with the legislature, we do it because it's important connection-wise and important sort of to stay involved and provide good client service. I know having a grown up watching Mayberry RFD driving to Raleigh is a big deal, so It is. It is. Driving to Raleigh still from Western North Carolina it feels like that time and So, I've been it has always And it has taken off to So, a lot of people on my platform are real estate agents and at least in California and one of the things I try to also evangelize is that real estate agents should be involved in because we see how people take property or hold title to property where they have a plan in place or not.

28:27 We see that. Good time to get one if you're buying a property, good time if you're selling a property to evaluate those questions. Do you work with real estate agents much? If so, how does that what's that look like in your practice? Yeah, we have a I mean I have a huge connection to real estate. They're great support services both you know, we do a fair amount of trust in the state administration ourselves. So, that involves buying and selling real estate at times with us being the sellers or buyers. And so we work with real estate agents in that way. And I think just having good connections and bouncing ideas off of each other for and what's going on in the real estate market is really important. I'm personally involved with the strategic planning group that we get together once a month and it's about three real estate agents, a individual that does reverse this mortgage broker that does a lot of reverse mortgages for seniors and a couple of different folks that provide like both financial advising services and senior type caregiving or transition type services.

29:50 Couple of eXp brokers, too. How about that? Those are the good ones, just FYI if you're wondering. So, you know, one of the challenges of real estate agents is they when they want to get a probate business, they think, "Oh, I should just call every attorney and ask them for referrals." Not understanding that the business that they're asking you to refer is what finances your fees and also is critical to your customers. It's just it's a very intimate relationship, I think, that's not most commonly going to be secured by just a cold call. And I also know that many Realtors® present themselves as experts in probate and really haven't done the work, you know, they it's easier to buy a certificate and a and put up a fancy website but actually do the work. So, what do you look for? You know, you must get phone calls from Realtors® your customers want to work with or that you have a property you know, they need a real estate agent to sell and obviously, you know, the customer has to has a say and you know, you have a say. What do you look for in a real estate agent to determine whether or not this is an agent you want to work with both in terms of just on the customer you have in front of you and or maybe even future referral business? You know, I think ones that are, you know, willing to ask questions and get that aren't necessarily you know everything. I'd rather I'd rather real estate agent be willing to say, "Hey, I'm not I'm seeing this on a deed and I'm not totally understanding what this means. Can you help me make sure that I'm writing the contract correct correctly? More than if someone just tries to quickly put it put a contract together and hopes that it's all right. And then we have to go back and fix it or make, you know, changes to it. I'd rather somebody ask the question up front and, you know, be willing to issue spot capable of saying, hey, there's a I

31:54 Think there's a problem here and be willing to ask the question. I think that's helpful. We do a lot of in our working, I mean, we hold ourselves out with real estate agents and financial advisors, accountants. We're We offer, "Look, if you've got a problem, even if it doesn't end up with a referral to us, I mean, we're happy to answer one-off questions for you if you just ran up with an issue." In California, we have like two tracks of real estate sales in probate. 9% I would call standard. There's maybe a no supposed action gets filed with the court but publicly but basically otherwise looks like a regular transaction with some with a form that protects the estate. And about 10% need court approval where they literally are there's a process you have to you know advertise a certain way, bring it to court reviews it in detail. And they require a lot more sophistication and I and I in California we're really blessed. We have I think very great forms that cover all those circumstances that I can attach to a listing or a purchase that protect me as the agent protect my client. And I'm amazed to find out that no other state has anything like that. So I guess my question is you must account in North Carolina have occasionally properties that you list that don't aren't standard but need a court process.

33:19 And so what do you do to protect your client? What do you do you have a template that you give your clients or is there a certain wording you put in that's sufficient or is it just California so much more litigious and in North Carolina you're all friendly people, nobody sues each other? Like what do you what do you advise your clients Definitely litigation. I would think you're a litigation attorney, so I would think. So we often times court approval's required for cases in which there's an incapacitated adult or an individual yeah or minors associated with that and so that requires a court approval process and we actually don't have forms for the court approval process. A lot of the reason is that it most of the time really needs a lawyer to help shepherd that approval through the court system. And so you know what we typically advise is either getting that lawyer involved prior to putting the house on the market for sale if possible. I mean that's the preferential treatment. Or sometimes Realtors® come forward and have gotten an offer hopefully haven't signed the contract yet because you know, if we're if we've got an offer then we can put some language on the standard offer forms that the Realtors® use to state that it's going to require court approval in the process and subject the essentially subject the contract to sell on court approval.

35:10 And we've done that in the past. We have run into situations in which the offer to the contract was already signed and then it was later determined that there was court approval required. In fact, I was recently purchased a house as trustee of a trust that we're administering. And the seller had was selling on behalf of an incompetent adult and I had suspicion that it was happening like that, but the contract wasn't written to indicate that. And so I went on and agreed to the contract as a buyer to later find out that they didn't have authority to sell until the court approved it. Knowing the process that they had to go through and be and not and then I was willing to kind of wait cuz I wanted the house for my beneficiary, but you could certainly run up to a scenario in which the buyer is not so happy about the situation. And so then as a real estate agent and contact you and say, "Hey, I'm representing working with a client that's your client as well. We want to list a property." and I imagine a certain verbage, so we'll just list it.

36:35 We'll mention court maybe required. And then when we get an offer, I'll come to you and you'll provide some sort of a template or some sort of a form that you want to attach to Walk through the Right. Right. Walk through the process of getting the court approval for the sale. And so what fascinates me, you can imagine. I mean I guess in California, we have standard listing form for probates and standard offer form for probate as well. And as a listing agent, when I list a property, I can copy some of that verbage and put it in my MLS. But really everywhere else in the country, it's just one attorney writing a memo or an email or a form at a time. It's just I just find that fascinating. Is it just Is it just cuz it's not common enough to standardize or It seems like an advantage to you that if you've already done it, you know what to do. And over time you have learned this verbage works, this verbage doesn't work. So you amend it over time. I imagine that this is part of what people pay for you as a as an expert. As an expert. And you know, I don't know. Our we have we have a agency or part of an agency called administrative offices of the court in North Carolina. And they write whole lot of probate forms as like standard probate forms in order for someone to work to administ- administer an estate on their own if they want to.

38:02 And but it's that's never been a document Yeah. That they've created as a form process. There's there may be they may feel like there's too many quirks or too many differences between one situation and which you're asking for a court approval to sell or not. But remember the vast majority of our real estate after someone dies does not require court oversight for sale anyway. At all. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big difference. That's a big difference. It's a big difference. And so if you have a smaller amount of just at some point and of course California's a huge state and so you know everything is small becomes big at its scale and but I as far as I know anybody who's listening to this podcast I believe California's the only state where Realtors® have preset forms for probate, conservatorships, guardianships and no state has that set form. But I think what Andrew's laid out here is this is a great way to show your interest in your business is call the attorney and say, "Hey, this is where it's probably headed. You do you agree? And if you do, what's your process? Do you provide some verbage for the contract? And so that way it's not a surprise but something you plan on ahead and also be a good dialogue starter to do some business with you." So It would be a good starter and it shows that the real estate you know, agent is focused on helping troubleshoot and make sure that the sale goes smoothly Right.

39:42 Instead of just, you know, trying to move on to the next, you know, the next client or the next contract and it really is sort of makes you stand out as like doing your due diligence. One of the again because I do business at scale, there was things that come up that are probably more rare for some practitioners but one thing that commonly is there's a property that's going to be transferred or being litigated but there's no liquid assets and the inheritor, the beneficiary needs money for hiring attorney, paying for fees, and so on. And so, I'm really involved in two different procedures. One is advances to heirs, which is expensive money. Kind of like a factoring. Where they're not going to see the money till the end of the probate, but they get a portion of it ahead of time. Or loans to mysteries, which are more like a business loan, expensive, but not, you know, like a factor. Are you involved is your firm getting involved with either of those services? Do you help customers who can't do that money up front, or do you need somebody to write a check and be able to finance the process? So, you know, there's we don't typical we have not in the past utilized those services or offered sort of advanced loans or any of those things as part of a piece. Typically, we're looking for folks, especially if we're dealing with an estate in which the only assets real estate, and we think we're going to have to get court approval on a sale.

41:21 We may ask for money up front in order to make sure that we're covered fee-wise in order to help someone walk through that. Unfortunately, it can just be a time-consuming process, and we've at times been burned on trying to wait on that to happen. For sure. So, you're in western North Carolina. The only thing that I've heard of late of western North Carolina is the devastation from the hurricanes last year. How has that happened in your area, particularly Asheville, and how's that affected your business? So, downtown Asheville was, you know, did fairly, you know, didn't have huge problems with Helene. We you know, all of our county suffered significant issue and damage to our water supply system. Well. Which meant that for downtown, we had little water for weeks. About 4 weeks and once the system was restored, the water was brown and undrinkable for another three or four weeks. So, we went from like September 27th when Helene hit to right around Thanksgiving until our water system was in which you could actually drink the water.

42:58 Wow. And so, that was that's been pretty devastating. We've got a huge you know, we're fairly large tourist town and so, downtown restaurants, businesses, those sort of folks got hit pretty hard. Some of the other things that hit us really pretty difficult was the fact that we are a tourist town and the hurricane hit right at the top of our busy season, which is sort of the leaf season, fall, leaves turning and it becomes a you know, beautiful hues of orange and yellow and red all around us in the mountains. But you know, there a lot of us are counting our blessings that we've come across and fared fairly well because there are big swaths of our particularly sort of eastern side of the county and areas around us that got hit really hard. Yeah. The mountains kind of that had always been our refuge served as sort of a funnel for all of the water. We had about two days worth of rain before the hurricane hit and the mountains just funneled all of the water into the valleys where people lived and so those outlying areas just got flooded and the little creek in your backyard turned into a raging river and you know, it hit those but hit a lot of folks around us really hard. Downtown didn't get the destruction damage but is still struggling. We need people coming back and enjoying our area because our small businesses are

45:02 Are still teetering a little bit. Well, one way to solve that is to do business with a law firm that specializes in estate planning in Asheville. Andrew, I really appreciate your time today. I know we got a lot of things and I'm kind of coming up on the time here. So, and you're early right? I can't keep you extra. I'm just teasing. Oh, no. You're fine. I do appreciate so much. Our guest is Andrew Atherton who's attorney in Asheville, North Carolina which is Western North Carolina and you can get his contact information on the screen and we'll have it in our description notes as well. And he's attorney with McGuire Wood and Bissette in Asheville, North Carolina and they do business and can help throughout that Western North Carolina area. Thank you so much for your time today. Andrew, it's really a pleasure meeting you and look forward to continuing to work with you. Absolutely. It was great to meet you, too, Bill and great love what you're doing and getting information out there. Thanks. Thanks so much. And for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week and talk about probate information, how we can better serve our clients, whether you're an attorney, Realtor® in the space, or vendor. And you can continue the conversation with the Facebook group Probate Weekly as well. Go there with questions or to referrals. You're looking for referrals, have referrals. Love to have you do that, whether you're a Realtor®, real estate agent, or attorney, or vendor. I'm Bill Gross @BillGrossProbate on social media and contact information below. Do you like this episode? Let me know. If you don't, let me know what you'd like to talk about, what you talk about. If I can help in any way, please reach out. And as always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.