It's Never Too Early to Plan Your Estate, with Attorney Grace St. Clair

0:02 Welcome to Probate Weekly, where we get together with leading attorneys and talk about either how to how to get through probate, how to get out of probate if you're stuck in litigation, or avoid probate with estate planning. We're lucky today to have an attorney who both deals with probate, getting through it, as well as avoiding it with proper estate planning. Grace St. Clair, Grace, thanks for joining us today.

0:22 Thank you. It's been It's been a good It's a good experience. I'm looking forward to it. And I know we're talking about it's never too late to plan your estate, and you mentioned you had a client particular and this is a common thing where business people don't properly value their business in their estate plan. Talk a little bit about the perils of not properly planning, particularly when you have a business.

0:40 Yeah. You know, it was funny cuz he's an auto shop guy, and he had a lot of contracts with AAA and many insurance companies, and yet when I was working with his estate plan, he wasn't even thinking about his business. He was only thinking about his son, which is fine because you want to avoid your family going through those kind of problems. But in the end, I was like, "Well, what about your business?" What? "Oh, I don't I don't pay that much for my business, you know, it's only worth like $15,000." Which I thought First of all, have you done an evaluation? clearly not. But he doesn't pay that much because he tries to write off most of his expenses, which is what a lot of business owners do. But I was like, "Oh my gosh, what about all these contracts? Like, are you living on the income that you're earning from your business?" And of course he was. It was significant. And I said, "Well, what if something happened to you? What would happen to your wife? Is she suddenly going to be without this cash?" He And he goes, "Oh, I hadn't even thought about that." Which I knew from the fact that he didn't value it at all. He said he only pays $15,000 of taxes, so therefore his business is not worth anything. Which that's not true. And in Torrance, there were only a few I think they weren't even allowing any more of these licenses to occur. So, he certainly could sell at least the business license that he had to another auto shop person.

2:03 So, I had to do a lot of educating there to explain to him that your business is worth a lot more than you think because your family is surviving on the income. First of all, that's one of the huge things that people don't even think about. It's his income.

2:19 Well, there's a lot of companies who are worth billions of dollars who pay no taxes at all. I know in real estate, Zillow's a case of a company where they're worth I want to say 30 or 40 billion dollars and they don't pay income taxes. So, you know, we should all be fortunate enough to be worth that and not pay. And so, that's a great way analogy that people may not understand the value. I guess another problem with that would be if it went into probate, is how do you maximize the value? Because if you don't know that and you do it yourself, you might say, "Well, it's it's not really worth much. He only made 15 He only made $50,000, $60,000. I'll sell it for one times the revenue, let's say." Not realizing the license itself could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

2:58 Right. Right. I know it I represent a lot of business owners in my practice because of this because it occurred to me, that's why I say it's never too early to plan your estate if you want to keep the state out of your business. It's the state of California and it's also the state out of your business. It could be your personal business. It could be your own business, but most people are doing some investing outside of their work and they own property with other people and they don't consider that a business. I had another a client who was actually with family members in their house and their father's house, I think it was. And one of them was getting divorced and he ended up stealing the money and went off on his own, but you know, you have to think about that. All your business incurs occurs every possible scenario and that's why we try to talk about that because probate is where you end up if you don't plan very well.

3:52 Yeah, I tell people it's not of It's kind of going to the DMV. It's just not as fun or as customer service oriented as the DMV is. I [laughter] don't know if the DMV is that customer service oriented either.

4:03 That's my point. They do allow appointments now, but it's it's, you know, certainly not They don't really care that much about what you're doing and that's the problem. I'm so amazed at how even after COVID, so during COVID we were very busy because people were worried about dying. The first year everyone was worried about dying. The second year they were frustrated because they didn't have any control over their lives anymore and so they were worried about their family and they would kind of complain to their families. The third year they started suing their family first and not even talking to them about it cuz they were still so frustrated with having no control. But we when we came back we had 25 cases in the morning calendar before COVID hit and then we had 54. And that's twice as many cases and now after COVID we have 54 at least. So the judges do not care. If you're not ready for your case, you get continued. They still allow people who aren't represented by counsel to appear, which I think is good, but in the end we end up waiting longer because we know what we're doing and we're able to push the process forward.

5:11 Yes. Whereas most people they don't file the right paperwork. They don't look to see if they have the right paperwork and they don't know who to ask. Now Los Angeles has plenty of support staff down there to help people and I'm surprised that a lot more people don't use that. it's more readily available than people probably realize. But they will help you, but they can't give you legal advice. So we constantly hear that in the middle of court. You know, I'm sorry, I can't give you legal advice cuz judge will say that when they're asking for legal advice.

5:40 Right. And then what do they do? They go back to their home, misfile something and they don't seem to care. Well, I think there's a combination of things. They misfile, deadlines are missed, and the case gets continued. And then the other heirs get frustrated and decide to object after a period of time. So, you just create more time periods for opportunities and you end up digging hole deeper and deeper as you go along, whereas like in real estate, I've I've always coached my team that there's nothing good that happens from the day that we list a property until the client gets their check. Everything is bad from the day we sign until they get their money. Now, we can we can limit the bad, but it's all There's nothing good. Nobody wants to talk to me about their listing. They just want the money. It's like in probate. Nobody cares. You can be the nicest probate attorney in the world. Nobody cares about you. They just want their money, right? And anything that happens, anything that's between them and their money is going to end up being bad. And so, that's why the timing of it so important. And you talk I think for anybody who's thinking about doing on their own, they should go to probate court and just watch. You know, you can walk in the 8:30 courtroom hearing and watch them the judge deal with 50 cases. And I'm convinced if you did that, you would never represent yourself.

6:53 Yeah, for sure. I know. Well, you have a fool for a client if you represent yourself, even as lawyers. what was I going to say? There was something I was going to mention about the real estate. Yeah. In the beginning of the case, too, you don't get to the heart of the matter. And people that represent themselves don't understand. They think they're going to come to the judge and talk to them about the issue that they're really bugged about, which is when their sister's, brother's, boyfriend did something to them when they were 5 years old. And that's what they're still hanging on to all these years. And then now he's in charge and now here they are issuing, you know, getting more issues. And they don't realize that the You don't get to that issue until the very end. Like in the beginning, you got to file your paper right. If you don't have your papers right, you're continued. So,

7:36 Right. figure that out first. And it's not that easy to understand. I'll never forget my first probate case where they were stealing the property away from me and my client who was disinherited by his mother and the nephew found him and came after us and said, "Hey, you know, this should be his money, not mine." And so, I ended up we ended up even dealing with secured party to try to help to get them to understand we were selling the property. They still were fighting us. And in the end, they ended up trying to sell the property to a bona fide purchaser. And I end up finding out on LinkedIn who it was and I reached out to them and so we're going to sue them up the ying yang because I thought that was disgusting that that we were working with a secured party, but you have to remember banks have different departments and if you don't communicate with the right department another department's going to be doing something. They all get a piece of paper in their department and they run they run with it. So, reverse mortgages are hard, but in this case it was a lender. And she had property still. She had a loan against her property still. So, we had to sell the property, pay it off and he was going to you know, start a business with that with what he

8:47 [clears throat] made. So, luckily we were successful, but I was sitting there and negotiating on my vacation because I was leaving the country and there I was in front of the pool with my purple rains in my hand arguing with the secured party until we got it right.

9:01 The reverse mortgages a growing phenomenon in my probate business where more and more I think those loans are popular for various reasons. One of the problems is the way you end up the reverse mortgage, you don't ever pay it off. You either die or then you know, at some point you sell the property, but usually after the decedent's gone. And so, the common challenge I have as a real estate agent, people constantly say, "Oh, my mom and dad died. They have a reverse mortgage. I want to sell the house." Okay, how's the title? Well, it's in mom and dad's name. Oh, well, we need to probate that and can handle through there and that can take a couple months. Meanwhile, the clock's ticking on the reverse mortgage. They usually give you 6 months. And the big misconception is the lenders say that you can get the lender may give you an extension up to two extensions of 3 months each. They may, but and pigs may fly, but it never happens in California. They don't give you extension. And so, what do you do when you have a probate that's been filed and now you discovered the reverse mortgage property's not titled in the same trust, it's titled in the in the decedent's name. You don't have letters of authority. it seems to me your choices are to try to get ex parte to get temporary authority or for sure you got to get the authority done right away. What's your strategy or does it come up in your practice?

10:21 Yes, it comes up often. And unfortunately, they don't Banks don't like to speak to real estate agents, and they don't like to speak to brokers, either. So, if you have an attorney, that's the only way to get their attention. And I had one where it was a property in Palos Verdes. Million seven it was worth, and the $300,000 reverse mortgage was really minor. And I they the broker sent a letter to somebody, God knows who, because it didn't arrive at the right place. So, they tried to they filed the NOD, and we had to go through that whole process. And I just wrote this screaming ass letter to them about, I can't wait to get you in front of a judge so you can explain how you're going to give a million three surplus to the borrower. Like, they're going to be pissed at that. That's ridiculous.

11:10 Right. But, I had to say that because they were just like going through their process. And it happens all the time. I think, you know, I just recently did one. Now, we knew have a new law in I think it's in California, but for sure in Los Angeles, where if it's $750,000 or less, you can do a quick version of a probate. [clears throat] And we just recently did one of those. We had the same problem where they went on their own and tried to go through the reverse mortgage and refinance it and it was in the name of mom when they closed. They were trying to close. Like for some reason no one even thought to check that when they when they got the reverse mortgage refinancing.

11:50 Right. so luckily at the very end, we had until April 30th and luckily we got our paperwork together, but we only had until the 5th but then it in the end they gave us the extra 5 days. So 2 more months to refinance because they realized the judge had said, "Yes, this property goes to the son."

12:07 So in your case in this case, if you can disclose it, I guess give the names, was the reverse mortgage paid off or were you able to transfer title using the streamline process or the AB

12:19 Yeah, we're going to pay it. We're going to refinance it. But again, you know, they didn't accept the check because I said, "You can always keep paying on it and tell the reverse tell the reverse mortgage company that you want to make it in payment status, you can do that." There are things you can do, but you have to talk to the right departments. Like I'm saying.

12:37 Right. You know, you don't ask the right And who knows who the departments are? You get the reverse They each have a reverse department, reverse mortgage.com a lot of times. reverse at somebody Carrington I in this case it was. But you know, you never know what department that is and then you have to follow up with the supervisor just to make sure you have the right person. Make sure they're not going to foreclose [laughter] on you because they just flip it out there. That that's how they That's the foreclosure department. That's what they do. Once they get a file, they foreclose on it. They don't look to see if it's right or wrong.

13:11 Right. And Well, there is no one overseeing that. It kind of looks like the same thing and in state of California when we have laws like no one oversees all these things.

13:22 This situation becomes so prevalent that I started a podcast a year ago, the reverse mortgage podcast, and invite on reverse mortgage lenders, and then I got invited to speak at the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association meeting in Irvine last year. And the services there, and they were surprised to hear that people thought they didn't give good service. I said, "Well, let's just be honest. The deed of passes and what I find here in California is the lenders just transfer the servicing rights to another company, but that company is really just a law firm that forecloses on property. That's all they do. The lender doesn't want the name the loan in their name anymore cuz they don't want to be thought of as being a barracuda, so they just sell to a barracuda and take their profit and run. I said, "You know, that's what you're doing. You know, don't don't lie about it." But I also feel like you want to arm the customer with the solution, which should be information and your originator should be calling the decedent's family to say, "Hey, I can help you with this." And have the right phone numbers. They But they don't. And so for attorneys like you, this I think a key part of your I imagine your practice, and other attorneys that in fact were just lost as to what to do. They have no They don't want to get involved. They don't want to do it. they don't want to make the phone calls. And like you say, they won't listen to a real attorney. They won't listen to the customer. It's not authorized yet. So to me, this is an increasing opportunity of business for sharp attorneys who take their business seriously.

14:42 Well, let me say one thing though cuz I think reverse mortgages do have a lot of value. Yeah. It is a financing vehicle. And when you're over 65 and or, you know, 70 or 80 and you need more money, it's a great way to get your financing in order. And it works fine. If you have children, they're going to get a little bit less of the property. If they want to help you live your life, they can supply the money. But a lot of times they can't do that either. So it's not that it's not a good financing vehicle. But when someone passes, you have to know you only have limited amount of time to make a decision to sell, buy, refinance, whatever you want to do. And you should reach out to the person, for sure, who got you the loan if you know them. If they're good, they will help you, but they're not always, if they haven't always done it before, they're not always going to know. So, I have a good list of people on my resources that I work with to make sure that they're going to be able to help me and my clients solve their problems cuz that's one thing that is very important. If you can't solve your problems, you're going to be like everybody who's out there in the dark, bad world waiting to try to do something and you can't always do what you want to do.

15:55 Yeah, and this is increasing challenge. I do challenge originators on my podcast to be involved in reaching out to family members, create some sort of document if it's going to be a state plan with the reverse mortgage company name, the loan number, the contact number, your contact number. I do encourage originators. You know, if you call an 800 number with some Hollywood star, you're never going to get any help. But, if you're using a good people mortgage originator who does reverse mortgages primarily, they know who to help. They have a service department they can contact. And if you're watching this, you need some help, feel free to reach out to me. This is the area that I work in quite a bit and I have I met most of the services at this convention and they say they want to solve this problem. Now, there's you know, there's a saying you want to solve it and there's actually willing to proceed and doing the hard work of serving customers and Grace, I appreciate that you also have a Rolodex of people to go to cuz this is the hard work that really makes a difference. It's it may not be per hour the most productive in the short run, but this is what helps customers in the long run, builds a business. I think this powerful. So, Okay, so that just to kind of put a final pin on it then, what are tactics you can use to prepare if you have a reverse mortgage? Seems to me, for sure, you should have the property in trust. Like, that should be either before you finish the reverse mortgage if you can or if you can't, right away, you should be getting a plan put together to transfer title out of the decedent's names into some sort of entity, is that preferred advice?

17:21 Oh, I mean, absolutely. I recommend people as soon as you have a child, you should start planning your estate. At least have powers of attorney. Mhm. But more importantly, like I recently have a client who her boyfriend died and they had a child together.

17:38 Mhm. And he owned a home and no plan in place. And it's such a mess. He owns guns, so that's a problem. He has siblings and he was only in his 30s. And it's really sad, but you know, if you're not planning your estate, then someone else is planning it for you. And it could be the court system or it could be your parents or someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

18:02 Yeah. Or people you don't trust. So, you should always, once you have a child, you should always start planning something for yourself because without those plans, you have no one to help you. And in his case, he didn't think he was going to die, of course, and he's in his 30s, but he was a motorcycle rider.

18:18 Wow. So, things happen and you know, you're never expecting those things to occur, of course. That's why you plan it you know, in advance to make sure that if you want your father to have the property, then you at least have a will. It's stating that you at least could probate that at some point in time. You could always do a handwritten will if you had to. Those kinds of things are not the best, but at least it's better than nothing. But you need powers of attorney just in case you're in an accident or anything. So that someone can help you act if you can't. And that's the easiest thing you can start with.

18:53 I think the biggest misconception I deal with in consumers is that if you have a will, you avoid probate. I say, "No. No, if you have a will, it just means you're going to you know, have a tool in your probate process that may or may not help you. But a will is worthless until you go to probate court and go through the same process as if you didn't have a will, pretty much. Right.

19:13 Right. And in California, if you own real estate, you're in probate. I mean, we do have this new law where if you're under 750,000, but most of our cases in this area are over 800. So, they There's a lot of people that can't take advantage of that.

19:27 Right. but the idea that's better than it was, but it's not the best either. It's has to be a principal residence. So, if you have any oddities, you have to have a trust. I think that anyone who owns real estate in California has to have a trust if you don't want to go through a probate. And still, so many people are excluding that detail. And I know it, you know, you procrastinate because you don't want to think about it, but you know, in the end, you probably know who you want your property to go to. At least get probate avoidance.

20:00 At least something. And I know you're not going to agree with this cuz you're an attorney cuz you can't, but I would say as a as a business person, even a bad trust is better than no trust 90% of the time. I mean, at least it's something with a name on it besides go to probate court that potentially could avoid that part of the process. The rest of it may have some holes, may not be up to date, may not be ideal, but it's certainly better than I think nothing most of the time.

20:26 Yes, nothing is usually terrible. [laughter] Yeah, fail Failing to plan is planning to fail. So, if I The first, you know, we've had a nice discussion so far and we're two-thirds in and I haven't got my question in this. My first question was that I know that you initially started working just on estate planning, and then now you also do probate and you know, probate administration, which I think by definition means somebody failed, right? If you go to probate, somebody Well, the attorney didn't do the job or the client didn't do the job. Somewhere along something went wrong. and I would say what are the most common mistakes that drags people into probate? Now, the obvious one we've been talking about is not having a plan, you have to go to probate. So, what besides that one that we I think we beaten that one to death, though we should beat it more until people respond. but what's the most common problem you see that leads to probate disputes or problems or objections besides not having a plan?

21:20 Mhm. Well, yes, I prefer estate planning because it's so much better than going to probate, but I did get one probate that someone convinced me to take on, like I said. And it turns [clears throat] out that that he was disinherited by his mother and everything was going to go to the nephew. I think she didn't like his sexual orientation, but whatever. Lost touch with him for many years. And I think that's part of it is a lot of people don't keep in touch with their family. That's the first thing. So, if you leave an heir out, that's a mess. the other things are people just don't plan ahead and they take whatever they can get, I guess, if you think about it. And I know that's cuz we all procrastinate. We don't think we want to do anything special, but in the end, you know, the rules in probate are Ozzie and Harriet. I know I'm aging myself, but I used to see that show a long time ago. Mhm. And that was white picket fence, married couple, two kids, three dogs. And that's that's how the laws are. And so, if you have any modern family issues in your family, you have to write it down because the court does not have that as one of their main laws. So, if you're a step kid, you may not inherit your property from your family. I have a situation like that where he didn't realize that his One of my clients didn't realize that his father and his wife, who predeceased him by 25 years, were still his beneficiaries on his retirement plan.

22:49 So, you have to update your beneficiaries, especially when someone passes away, but a lot of times when people pass away, they don't do anything. They just think, "Oh, my wife died." He didn't do anything. she was still on all of his bank accounts and they just like, "Oh, it's no big deal." Well, no, that's definitely something you have to fix.

23:07 Well, hold on, what happened there? So, now you have what should have avoided probate, the beneficial interest in retirement account, now goes to somebody who's deceased, which I guess by definition means you need to open probate to resolve that.

23:19 No, you did No, because the what happened was his dad was the first, and I did this too with my when I first got out of school. I wasn't married, so I named my parents, of course. And if you don't remember to change that, then it doesn't ever change. And it And he worked for TRW, so they kept going Northrop Grumman. They Now they're a different company, but many companies were still owned by the same one. So, they kept transferring and transferring and transferring, so he didn't really think he had to do anything. But no, you definitely have to take those two people off. So, all of his beneficiaries were deceased. So, the county or I mean, the company's retirement plan governs the issue.

23:56 Oh. And their retirement plan says you have to send that to probate. So, we had to send it to probate. And they got one transfer, and that transfer had to be probate. So, that case, unfortunately, was very difficult and very sad, because I did ask him that question. And so, you have to remember. And if you don't know, you should check.

24:21 Or double check or triple check. We were working on something, too, where we were trying to pay the taxes early, and I put a kibosh on it, because I thought, you know, you're just saving your kids' money. What's the point? You know, you're going to pay your taxes early. Your kids are both very mature and capable of working. They're younger than you. Why pay all the taxes now? So, at that time, he swore to me that his two kids were on his retirement plan, and they weren't.

24:49 Wow. So, in the end, we would have found it out had we pushed that forward, but I kept thinking, this is a waste of your money. Why are you doing this?

24:58 Literally just a week ago I was updating my one of my stock companies and I always use it on the phone and for some reason I was using my desktop. Oh, I was doing my taxes. And I said I want to benefit and trust and let me just double check cuz I choose like you know I do these interviews a couple of week and I hear this over and over again, double check your beneficiaries. I go online and lo and behold somehow I had nobody. Now I'm married, I have a daughter, son-in-law, so who updated it but it's just interesting how here you know I'm the cobbler with and I and my family needs shoes and I was sworn I had done this correctly two or three times but I think I don't know if it's a technology or the companies change or it doesn't really matter but I did print it out and put it in my records so that at least I can show I did it correctly but all of us need to check these things otherwise our money could potentially go to probate.

25:49 Right. And it's better if you know in advance that way you can solve the problem before you have to do anything. Yeah. I mean before you die obviously. but another thing too is financial advisors are not all that savvy on probate and trust administrations. It's crazy. They should really know much more about that but they don't always know. And you know I had a another business owner who named a friend of his cuz he had no family and she didn't have the power to do anything with his business at the time so we had to deal with a lot of that like recreating the business resolutions that he should have already done even though he handled he handled the circumstance he didn't really do a resolution that the bank would require and the courts require so you have to do those things too. It's very important that you dot your eyes and cross your t's which I know everyone's heard that before but it's so true.

26:45 Well especially as you get into you know higher net worth obviously there's more potential problems. There's more preparation has to get done and I know I deal with some larger estates where, like you say, the decedent didn't need, you know, he had a corporation set up. He didn't need resolutions. He did them years ago when he set it up, but he lost them somewhere, so they're nowhere to be found.

27:04 Mhm. And all of a sudden now we need them because the in this case the administrator stepping into his shoes needs the resolutions to document he has the right to do that. And that's a whole 'nother series of issues.

27:17 Yeah. I think that's funny because the what's true is people don't realize if something happened to you and you have a business, most of it is in your head and in your bailiwick of activities. You know what happens, but if you're not there, what is someone else capable of doing that? Like when you get two-factor authentication, is someone else going to get it? If it's going to go to you, then you got to appoint someone in your business to handle that.

27:46 I have to go further, which is, you know, most of us in our business day are pretty much towards capacity. I mean, we work a full day, and you know, nobody can really take on a lot more work necessary without proper planning. When you pass, somebody's stepping into your shoes, they have to do what you've been doing, plus they have to manage all the transition stuff, changing accounts, resolutions, you know, banks start getting very funny when you try to step in. You know, they say they're protecting themselves and you. I don't know. The whole thing we had a case where the client has money at First Republic Bank, and they were dragging their feet and took forever, and then long enough for Chase bought them out, and then Chase was dragging their feet, and the attorney literally took Chase to probate court and got money penalties against them for not following the court's instructions. And yet this is what you go through, and imagine doing this while you're running a business. And well, you can't. That's why you need sometimes a fiduciary. So, one of the one most common problems I also find, like cuz I know you do estate planning more than the probate side, but it ends up in probate is you meet with a client, you have the great communication, you vibe, you this, you that, you dig, you ask the questions, they give you all the information, they give you all the answers, you create the world's greatest estate plan, but it really doesn't have a lot of value until they execute the plan and they fund the plan. And I know it's not your job to babysit clients, it's not your job to sell them, you're an attorney giving advice, not a salesperson, you don't want to come across as smarmy, but also I know that the effectiveness of your service is only as good as the completion of the client's responsibilities, signing the documents, notarizing if necessary, and transferring the deeds and all that.

29:28 Talk a bit about the fine line you have to walk between seeing yourself as being, you know, inappropriately salesy versus a requirement to get the clients to take the action to protect themselves.

29:39 Yeah. Well, luckily, we didn't talk anything about my background, but I got into this business on a fluke after my father went through a difficult probate.

29:48 Mhm. And I worked downtown at the big firms downtown making banks richer every day. And although it was an adrenaline high, it was not like I wasn't serving society cuz I felt like any smart person could do this really. When I watched my dad go through a difficult probate with his mom, my dad's an only child, no one was complaining and it still took him 2 years and $26,000 to get the house and the small bank account through probate. And it was because it wasn't delivered appropriately to the trust. And I know my mom and parents always said they had a trust, they knew they had a trust, but we couldn't find it at the time. So, you have to know where is it, where are you hiding it? Obviously, it's in your file drawers probably. I make mine big and pretty so that they're on a shelf so you can find them. But we also have a lot of cloud issues now so that we can guarantee that someone can get access to those documents. But in that case, I watched my dad go through something where they had paid for something, and yet they didn't have it when they needed it. And I thought, "Okay, I can write that wrong for society." I wanted to avoid people that went through that process because it was it was hysterical, you know, my dad had to take time off work and go to these court hearings, and it still took 2 years. And that was a long time ago.

31:10 Nowadays, it can take 4 to 7 years, depending on if you know, if you have issues. so, I do my process differently. I make sure that the deeds are filed. I make sure that the funds are set into the trust on purpose cuz it has to be delivered, or it's not effective. Because I don't want to charge someone for something and have it not be there when they need it. That's why I am kind of I sometimes say I'm kind of your worst nightmare, but I'm I'm very part of family because I want to make sure that I know everything. If you leave a savings account out of the of the trust, and it's over $200,000, you're going through probate. So, it's important to make sure that that's in there. And a lot of people forget about small accounts. They have three or four bank accounts. When they all add up to $200,000, you're in probate, too. So, it you One of my doctor actually is one of my clients. She had a hundred grand in her bank account. And I said, "Well, this is too much." And she said, "Well, that's my mom's money." I'm like, "No, it's in your name. It doesn't matter if it's her money.

32:15 Right. It's in your bank account. So, and the two her husband and her did not agree on their power of attorney. So, that was actually a very funny story, too, because as a doctor, she felt like she was going to freeze her head and keep it forever. And he wanted to have them pull the plug if he had any problem. So, you have to work with the family to make sure that they're on the same page because you have to have if you are married obviously you have one trust for two people. And we can only represent you if you're agreeing on something. Obviously once you stop agreeing then we can't we have to pick one of the other family members. So I make a joke out of that. But the idea is you want that that trust do what it's supposed to do.

32:58 Right. And that's why it's better to spend the money and get one that really will work rather than do a legal zoom or something like that where you're not sure if it's going to work. And when you do something online you never have the understanding of knowing that someone's going to stand behind you. That's another problem.

33:13 I think I think I saw a statistic that 9% of online estate plans are not executed and proper and funded. And that's kind of why I got into this space is to correct that and try advise people. And when I talk to attorneys and promote you online like you hear now, I would say to the agents I talk to, you need somebody who's going to make sure it gets executed and funded. And if they're going to push back on letting you know that happen, they're probably not the right attorney because they want your help. You know, I can be a second pusher to say to customer, "Hey, we don't have your property in the deed in the trust yet. This is important for you." And I'm one you know, if I introduce somebody to the attorney then I'm glad to follow up with my client to make sure explain to them how important it is. And so I really admire Grace that you do this. I know we talked about that when we set up. And I know we're also going to get a chance to talk again on my other podcast , [The Estate Planning Podcast]. We'll go a little more depth with what that looks like. So I'm a little over time here with you. I'm so sorry to keep you late, but I do appreciate your time. It just flew by. Thank you so much for your time today. if you want more of Grace St. Clair you can reach her online. qualityestateplanning.com is the website that that that will forward to the St. Clair Law website there and on the page has a phone number as well as if you want to talk to somebody all the information you need.

34:32 And if I can help please feel free to reach out to me and I'll be more than glad to make the introduction. Grace, thank you so much for being on our show today and sharing with us, I think, the important ways to avoid probate and how we can hopefully talk about some steps in the future to make it more efficient for us.

34:46 You're welcome. It's been really fun. Thank you. And for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly, we get together every week, usually with a probate attorney, in this case also one who does estate planning to avoid probate. And hopefully we can help be more effective with our clients. If I can help in any way, I'm on social media at Bill Gross Probate. As always, make it a great day. God bless.