Probates Finished, Funded and Faster with Scrivnr, with Byron Batres

0:00 If you're a reg if you're a regular watcher of my podcast weekly over time I've had Byron Batres in the prioration had another company that later got sold and merged in and came back now stronger better than ever a couple years ago and I believe we had them on Scrivnr and I've talked about this as a service that I use but really it's gone from being a service I use to really like the Swiss Army knife of solving probate problems for probate professionals. really excited to have the founder, Byron Batres. Byron, thanks for joining us.

0:34 Bill, happy to be on. I believe this is my fourth time on the show. So, I don't know what the record is, but I hope to eclipse that soon.

0:43 I think you're there. I think I think you're it. I don't know. I have it in my database. I don't have a drop down for a fourth time guest. So, I think I have to add it because of you. So, finish funding faster in the probate space. You know, you and I, we've talked over and over about it. the itch that that started this whole process was your own experience. Talk about where Scrivnr fits in the marketplace. I'm a real estate agent, but you also have customers, I believe, who are attorneys who use your service. You have families who use your service. You have realtors like me who refer business to you. Talk a little bit about how you see Scrivnr fitting into the marketplace.

1:16 Yeah. So, I think first of all, the idea of a Scrivnr was born from my extensive experience in probate. I like I think you said something about solving probate problems. and that that really is what we're trying to do. We're trying to identify, tackle the problems that exist in probate and really provide meaningful, practical, and empathetic solutions for them. and this is for not only the people that go through probate, but also the attorneys, the legal system that essentially facilitates the probate and also the entities that to some degree have a business I hate to say the word problem, but that the death has a effect in their business. That could be the mortgage company obviously that's a creditor. That could be a financial institution where they have assets. So the death causes so many downstream effects that both in my professional experience I was a certified well I am a certified financial planner I used to do wealth management so I've seen that you know directly in that world and then obviously handling now close to probably 7,000 probate cases in my career

2:29 So we definitely have seen everything and we've identified those problems and I think we have really great solutions for them so finished funded faster is our tagline. we had almost a funny internal discussion of I don't know if you remember the u the Seinfeld episode. Of course, we're dating ourselves here. where George Castanza was like trying to do his tagline as he tried to get dates, you know, by men and you remember that episode anyway. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

2:58 Okay. And so, for the longest time, Scrivnr had it was like legal referrals, legal, financing, legal reporting. That was our that was our old kind of like underneath the logo. and so we tried to come up with what are the what's the way that we could describe what we do? And so this is what we came up with. Finished, funded faster. So finish means that we think with our service which is technology and financing we can get to the finish line faster. The finish line means different things for different people. Realators you know that could be escrow mortgage companies the discharge or the resolution of the mortgage and the family member is obviously the ultimate distribution funded is our ability to pay for these things. So, one of the biggest private problems that exists is family members don't have the resource often to pay for the legal action because it typically costs on average about $6,500 upfront. That's assuming you're using an attorney. Even if you don't use an attorney in those jurisdictions that allow for self-representation, you might be coughing up a th000 to $2,000. And so our system allows for us to provide capital to start the legal action, pay for those upfront costs and then most importantly pay for the stopping of the foreclosure. So that's probably the number one problem we've identified is foreclosure in the space. and we have the ability to do the legal action and then obviously pay for the start of the legal action and to stop the foreclosure. How do you stop a foreclosure? Very often you pay the arars. and then faster is our technology. both our people and technology mixed together. you get a real life person start to finish on every case. But most importantly, we are available. I don't want to say 247 because that's not true, but like our technology is available 247 and the goal is to get a case started, so filed in

5:01 Court with a hearing date in as little as two business days from first contact to ultimately finished. We pride ourselves in trying to finish within two months of the creditor claim period, which is the fastest that you could realistically finish. Obviously individual circumstances will come up where that's not possible but so finished funded faster that's what all that means.

5:26 So I'm a real estate agent. My primary you know experience was I would get cases that had already been filed. I found that 90% of families petitioners whether executives administrators love their attorney for the first 30 days or 90 days. 90%. And after about 3 months, 9% hated their attorney.

5:51 Now, part of that was because there's some attorneys who are really good. You know, the top 10% are really good or they handle top 10% of the cases, which is like 1% of the attorneys. and there's a system, there's a process, there's usually trained staff, they have procedures. But my when I did the numbers, I was shocked to find in LA County at least 90% of cases were handled by an attorney who had done one or less in the last 12 months.

6:19 So let's talk about true. So this first off from like the attorney, one of the challenges is petitioners are told you don't need an attorney to do this, which is true technically. You don't need one legally to start the process. It's not like there's a gate that you can't unlock. It's just my experience is very few people can do this productively without attorney. So how so obviously you must be dealing with some families that are calling you before the filing period. Talk about what that discussion looks like. How do you convince somebody, hey, I know you think about doing this on your own and you're going to save $10,000, but you may end up with objector. You may end up with delays of two years, three years. talk a bit that about the discussion of where you can provide this, you know, you'll finish it and more importantly, you'll get done faster.

7:14 Yeah. And I think this is really where my intense and long career in dealing with this has come to play because we've become agnostic. If you remember or actually if you even watch any prior episodes from me prior, you could even say that I was antagonistic to the

7:37 The business as usual model. you know, see what that means. Essentially, I was antagonistic the way things are normally done. EZ-Probate was the do-it-yourself model. and so what we're able to provide now is a real model that allows people to choose how much help they want from this in those jurisdictions that prosay do-it-yourself is allowed. We offer a guided process where our legal information, legal technology provides the forms, the instructions so that people could do it on their own without an attorney. let's just say that's a pretty narrow use case. What I found over the years typically who can do that is no objections. Oftentimes largely people who have a relatively high I'm going to use the word confidence and ability to navigate court and the very bureaucratic process. and so

8:32 Technically detailed procedures there boxes have to be checked properly or else you're going back to zero. Yeah. and even then it's the frustration. I don't want to pick on any counties, but I'll I'll I'll call some out. so San Bernardino right now in California, if you were to efile, good luck for them to process your e-iling with any reasonable amount of time. what we have found is now we have to send court runners because if you don't if the court doesn't process forget receive process your documentation in a timely period you're going to get continued. So many people now get continued because they don't know the bureaucracy if you will behind the system and they will eile and they're just wait and wait and wait and keep going to court. I filed this the court never gets it. So our intimate knowledge of the system really is valuable. So most people can't really navigate that themselves, even if they could fill out the forms correctly, which often they don't. So we provide a guided system where we provide a what we call a client advisor. Think of the client advisor as a probate project manager. again, we don't give legal advice. We're not a law firm. We're not an attorney. We don't replace the attorney. But for those instances, very often because there's very little of any equity in the estate where cost is like the most paramount consideration. people want to save money. and so we can help people guide them through the probate process for a flat fee of $3,000. when an attorney is wanted, needed, or often required by law, we have a nationwide attorney network. So, every state is covered. obviously multiple attorneys in some states like California where we can provide that attorney to help the client then go through the probate process. If that happens, we become free to the client, right? There is no additional charge if we are involved helping the client and attorney you know with our technology, our process. Again, we

10:35 Become same thing the probate project manager. We provide technology. We provide non-legal customer support. And what I mean by that is like calling the clerk, did you get the did you get the filing? When is it going to be processed? calling the bank, hey, when's the how much is owed? how do we get authority to ask questions? All the things that often the family member nor the attorney has the time to call. I think last week, one of our clients advisor spent about 45 minutes on hold just waiting for the 800 number just to get the payoff quote and reinstatement, you know, from the bank. I would say it's rare to have an attorney that would have the time or the ability, nor likely do you want to pay their hourly rate to sit on hold, right? So, we are a flat fee. We provide that as part of our service. So, that's what we're able to do for the attorney. and then we are a

11:30 Homeless. Let me just kind a little perspective, you know, from the from the outside a little bit is and I know that people are going to watch and say, well, you know, I'm an attorney. I'm a smart guy or gal. and customers come to them or customers are happy with the attorney. The problem is you can be an attorney like in Los Angeles area, you can be say in Buena Park and which is technically Orange County and you may have a probate attorney who's great in Orange County,

11:55 But there's little rules that are different in LA than Orange and vice versa that if you don't know them and like one of the common ones is in LA County, they discard any prospective petition or order until the hearing date. Meaning, if you want to get something signed with the judge, you have to get the hearing, get the verbal approval in court, and then submit it. And I often have attorneys from other areas who will say, "Well, I submitted the order a week or two ago, and we're just waiting for the judge." No, you're not waiting for the judge. The judge waiting for you to submit the form. And it sounds counterintuitive. And in other counties, it's the opposite. In some counties, they print the form out and sign it there for you. And the attorney is used to that, and all of a sudden, they have one case in LA because it's a big matter for them, and nothing happens. And so this is where having that expertise is different than just having an attorney who does one a year. You guys are doing a bunch of them. I know you are because I do a bunch with you guys. So again, that's where the expertise I think it's not even just it's not even just knowing what to do. It's know that each court has different rules, procedures, courtrooms, phone numbers, stuff like that.

12:54 Yeah. Let alone sometimes there's different assets in different states. We helped an attorney recently do a case in or I think it was Santa Clara, California, but then there was assets in Oregon which we uncovered that somebody had already filed a false will, allegedly false will. We help the attorney find an attorney. This is the other thing that we do is we find attorneys for attorneys because attorneys have the same problem as everybody else has. If you call an attorney, u it takes usually a fair amount of time for that attorney to give you a call back. And so we had to help this attorney find an attorney in Oregon to do the contest of the will. We had to petition the court to, you know, yeet the prior administrator. Anyways, so we help solve probate problems for attorneys, for the clients themselves. And oftentimes when the family member doesn't want to do anything for lots of reasons, more often emotional, oftentimes there might be a family member who lived with mom or grandma at the house and they're afraid if they become the administrator, well, they're going to have to deal with this person, which often means convincing them to leave gracefully, which is a hard thing to do. so you can sell the house. So we can take on that role as a professional fiduciary. and so yeah, so we offer all those systems. So, when a family member comes to us, it's not just a one-sizefits-all. It's not just do-it-yourself. It's not just an attorney. and it's not just a fiduciary. It's really how much help do you want from us.

14:24 So, now we talk about servicing for attorneys and for families, but I'm a real estate agent and I've really been pretty active in introducing people to you, both families, colleagues, and attorneys. So, talk about your relation with the real estate agents. really across the country. I know that I've been helping kind of meet different people and deal with real estate in other areas. So talk a little bit with real estate agents where your plans are in that.

14:49 Yeah, so I think the real estate agent obviously is motivated I would say not just exclusively but largely by helping the family member do the transaction which is selling the property. And so for the real estate family member perspective, even the attorney, the biggest obstacle is getting somebody with the authority to sell the house.

15:11 And then secondarily, making sure, and I don't want to put the blame on the bank because this is just a legal process that that happens, but making sure the bank doesn't, you know, issue the property via the foreclosure process. So, when there's a deedent who can't pay the mortgage because they're dead, and the family members don't have the means, ability, or even understanding sometimes on how to keep that mortgage alive, if you will. very often people come to us with like a foreclosure tomorrow, next week. we're Yeah, we're able to Yeah, we're able to stop the foreclosure, which is usually the your break class in case of emergency fire alarm drill. and I'm telling you, Phil, banks seemingly are making creative decisions to make stopping the foreclosure harder. There's been several banks who do not accept wires anymore. So, we do what we call the foreclosure Olympics where we physically have to go to the bank, print out a certified check, send them a picture that there's proof that there's money, picture that we're sending the check, all to stop forclosure the next day. So, it's it's a really challenging process unless you've done it so often and you have the tools and resources and staff to do that. Most cases with a foreclosure ends poorly and the bank will sell the property at auction. So, we're able to stop the foreclosure if that exists. and obviously facilitate the filing and getting somebody the authority. So, that's step one is getting the authority to sell.

16:49 Step two is actually selling the property. We don't really do that part. Obviously, we work with our real partners, but very often to get somebody to sell the property in probate. Probates are very unique properties. Number one, they're often there's deferred maintenance. So, you know, there's it's not a typical sale. So, you definitely want somebody who knows what they're doing in the probate sale process. But more often than not, like I mentioned, there are family members who live in the house and can't exit the house, right? And so that it becomes like the Gordian knot where how do you get somebody to leave the house if they're an heir which is often the case without them without them getting their inheritance but they can't get their inheritance until they sell the house. You can't sell the house until they so you're stuck. And so what we're able to do with our financing structure is provide the cash for keys whether it's a squatter, whether it's an air or sometimes just like absolute have to, you know, imagine there's a roof that needs to be put on. We can provide the capital to get the house ready to sell. So we don't do any remodeling, by the way, like we're not we're not going to do that, but the think of the emergency procedure to get the house ready to sell. you can do that to then get the home to escrow as fast as possible as in escrow as in close of escrow and funds being distributed. So that really is our forte.

18:10 So there's really two different types of financing or two different buckets that you work in and I know this I've worked with you on both. one is advancing an heir. Somebody who all research indicates they're going to get money, but they're not get till after the house sells and then after the probate at the very end is closed, the distribution is made. That could be, you know, six months later theoretically

18:34 Or longer if there's objections, a lot longer. as opposed to lending money to the estate where you have an administrator executive who's managing the affairs and the estate has money needs that can help them effectuate closing. Sometimes that includes cash for keys for said squad or air. And so these are two different things that I find there are a lot of companies that do advances. They're expensive. And then there are a few companies that do loans to trust estates, but even there those few don't do that many, so they don't really develop the expertise. So talk a little bit about I'm sure you get phone calls from people who think they want one loan or the other. Talk about kind of the distinction between the two though in some cases I imagine you do both on the same transaction or the same probate.

19:24 Yeah. So, why don't I go over our financing options and kind of what they are, what they're intended for, and I can explain in detail what they are. So, number one, they're not loans. I don't want to be nitpicky, but a loan is there's strict criteria to be qualified as a loan when heavy regulation as they should. We do advances. So, we are able to provide a benefit to somebody who's going to receive something in the future. So technically they sell to us a future benefit that then we are able to capture once the thing happens typically the sale of the house. so we offer four types of financing. first is to start the action. so most probate cases like I think I mentioned this before typically the probate startup cost tend to be about six $6,500. that's traditionally attorney fees, court fees, newspaper announcement. and then if you add a fiduciary bond, if there's fighting or maybe for whatever reason a bond is required, that can go up. so we tend to advance $6,500 to start a case. we have advanced more than that. I think the highest we've ever advanced is is just shy of $20,000 because the person had very bad credit and I think their bond was about $9,000 cost.

20:45 So our system is able to pay for those upfront costs which people typically don't have. So, not so fun fact, 50% of US adults don't have $1,000 at the ready to pay for an unexpected expense. And typically death is at the minimum unexpected. Even if grandma's dying, you don't know when,

21:06 Right? You don't know the day. You can't really plan for. and often grandma might have assets, but me, the grandson or son, might not have those available assets. So, if you can't pay to start the legal case, you're stuck, right? So, we're able to pay to start the legal case by fronting the upfront costs of the illegal action. And our system is nonreourse. So, if for whatever reason you lose, you petition the court. and what I call the mistress will happen. Imagine grandpa dies. Grandpa had a girlfriend that no one ever knew about. And grandpa had a will that no one ever knew about that gave the girlfriend everything. if you were to use our system and we provide the upfront money to start the case and then the girlfriend gets everything, you don't owe us anything. That's the risk that we take. so we're able to unlock the start of probate. I think you're about to ask me a question.

22:00 Yeah. And I think I want I know you mentioned the four types. That's number one. As a real estate agent, that's when I deal most commonly with somebody calls me and says, you know, my uncle died and what do I where do I go? And we talk about the money. Sometimes it's not even just the money. I think there's two parts. One is instead of shopping for who charges the least upfront because attorneys will say, "Well, I don't, you know, charge any fees upfront and then they drop the bomb on the customer later." Oh, by the way, I need the expenses money after they've signed their contingency.

22:29 Or they'll say, "Well, you'll charge anything up front of my legal fees, just expenses." But some will quote the right number, some will won't include everything. And so rather than shopping based on who quotes you the lowest fee, this is like an all-in one solution. And I think the other thing that you said that obviously I don't want to see you guys beat out of any money. You're important vendor for me, but I feel like I can say to the customer, why not let them vet the case for you? Because yes, you are charging a percentage of that $6,500, but to the to the person filing the petition, they don't have to worry about the mistress will or those issues. They're kind of delegating that to you as a business. And I always feel like when you have a partner who's a professional in the transaction, you're going to get a better decision. You're going to get things are move along better because that partner wants to get paid at the end of the day as well. And so I think it's really important to kind of say to the realtors on the call or attorneys. You can eliminate the shopping based on upfront costs as well as assure your customer, hey, I can't guarantee you're going to get your probate. What I can guarantee is you're not going to lose your upfront money if you use this process. I think it's just a way to again don't want to beat you out of it. Don't want to bring you fraudulent cases, the opposite, but I want to give people the security of Front that they don't have to worry about that

23:44 100%. And sometimes it's even not the lack of resources, but it's the you will part away from this money for up to a year. If you're the administrator of the estate and you provide the upfront money, you do not get reimbured typically until the end of probate. You have to ask permission from the judge, the estate to distribute those monies back. So you could be out the money for close to a year which would really stink if you had say vacation money saved up and then you have to use that for probate. Now guess what? You can't take a vacation. So even for those with the means it's a very helpful process. and we charge a flat fee. Typically it's $2,000, you know, regardless of how much we provide. If it's really tiny, obviously we then just charge 20% of the money that we provide. and so that's part one is starting the case. Part two is the estate advance. This is typically reserved for stopping a foreclosure and cash for keys. Like I mentioned, we don't do remodels. You know, I don't want to get into the economics of should I get a new kitchen or not, redo the bathroom. That's not my decision. That's really not what we're for. we're for the emergencies when a foreclosure is in case or we need a specific action to unlock the ability to sell the house. typically cash for keys if there's a squatter, cash for keys or an inheritance advance if there is an heir who lives in the property.

25:02 So, I'll pin that thought for a second about the heir. So, again, this is to stop the emergency. And mind you, we're the only entity that exists that a will do this and b letters don't have to be issued before we do this. More often than not, we will pay for the legal action and stopping the foreclosure while the petition is either pending or you know awaiting signature from the judge or whatever because from our perspective if we can stop the emergency and obviously we vet the case and very often we're involved or we're working with the attorney who giving us a thumbs up. Yep, they approve this. we can save the house from being taken and thus saving the estate assets. so that's our model for stopping foreclosures and cash for keys. We charge a flat fee of 20%. which is a fee not a interest rate regardless of how long it takes to get paid back. So we will get paid back at the sale of the house. So that could be as I think the fastest we've ever got paid back is five days. The longest it's taken us to get paid back is 10 months. And never do we charge more or less for it. We think that's very fair. and it's a way for us obviously to gather investors for the fund that provides the capital for this.

26:26 So again, we provide funds to start probate. We provide funds to save the house. typically the third type of capital that we provide is to the heir. And we don't do this. We don't really advertise this. You'll never see us sending flyers. Everything that we do is always to support the administrator. So, think of as this as like it's almost like a secret. Obviously, not really a secret, but we don't we don't really say this. We don't tell anybody that we're doing this unless the administrator comes to us says, "I have a problem. I need my brother's yelling at me. My whatever." If they come to us with a problem and say, "Hey, we can solve your problem." Remember, we solve probate problems. And one of those problems is either we got to get somebody out of the house who's an heir. Side note, if there's an heir living in the house, you technically can't treat him any better or differently than any other heir. So you really can't just give money away from the estate to this person to leave. You have to it's gets a little tricky. So what we've developed just using tools that we've seen is we can advance the air their own money. And so for this we do charge a little bit more. Why? because there's more risk. we don't get paid back until the heir is allowed to be have a distribution. obviously creditors come into play. There's a net estate asset that comes into play and time comes into play. But we don't charge, this sounds like a lot, but compared to others, we don't charge a lot. We charge 30% fixed fee. So for every 10,000 we provide we get 3,000 in fee back

28:02 [clears throat] obviously plus the principal and compared to the market which is typically 100%. Right? So for every 10,000 that you can advance you're paying back 20,000 to the inheritance advance company. part of me is always surprised they're allowed to do this but you know that's a discussion for another day. So again the idea is to support the administrator not make a business out of you know lend providing capital to people at a very high interest rate or fee structure and then the last capital that we provide

28:36 List up there just because we're running time a little bit so the advance of the year my experiences almost universally turns to oh that's really expensive

28:46 And I always come back to you well this person's an adult and it's their life and so one of the cases I had was a woman was going to inherit a $500,000 property. she was administrator. She wasn't going to get the money till the end, which was at least six, nine months down the road from where we were. Her aunt who had raised her like a mother, she called her like her mother, I forget the term, had died and nobody had money for her funeral expenses and she really wanted to do it nice. She said, "You know, I'd like to do this, and that. I'm coming in at $500,000. Can I just get $10,000?" And the answer was yes. And she paid like a $3,000 premium on $500,000 she was going to get a year later. But I remember she called me in tears. She was so happy that she was able to do this. The rest of her family, nobody had a nickel

29:33 And she's able to do this. It's her money. Like who am I to say it's too expensive, right? She's an adult. She had a job. She was a, you know, a productive member of society. And so I think sometimes these yeah giving money for somebody to buy cocaine and go on a binge for nine months that would be you know reprehensible. But for somebody to make a decision on what they want to do with their life buying a new car reliable transportation to get to work every day so they can live in a more dignified manner those are that's often the case on these errors and I think it's admirable we can do that. Now in your case it's only the administrator. In this case this was the administrator so she was able to get that advance. So, we had a case together where I recall that u it was it was either the sole heir or but there was like a family member that helping her regardless they were selling the house. They couldn't sell the house until they had another place to live because again and so instead of just providing them money because I don't even think they had a bank account at the time we were able to purchase on their behalf, right? Yes. This is their you know advancing them funds but we purchased a trailer.

30:39 Yes. We prefed a lease to put the trailer and then we didn't buy them but again we directly purchased on their behalf a car to then be able to put the trailer on the which then allowed them to get out of the house. Yes.

30:54 Sell the property. Yes. and then obviously we got paid back upon sale of the house. So yeah, these are these are all the problems that they were this woman stuck in a house with like 20 people in various bedrooms and rooms and in the backyard and living in cars and she was able to in her mind in a dignified way live in a trailer and their own land some outside area that out in nature whatever she wanted to live in thrilled to drive her own truck to get there and we could sell the house and get a better price for the house at the end of the day as a result.

31:25 Yeah, for sure. and then the last benefit that we provide from like a capital perspective is to the attorney themselves. And so, u, one of the things that I think I pride myself in is is like listening and trying to solve problems. and often the problem with the attorney from a business perspective that is is their business model. They don't get paid until the very end. And so they're almost a victim of their own speed, the court system. And so if a case takes nine months, even if there imagine you have an attorney that's just super good, likely nine months is a realistic, fastest, best case scenario to close a state. The attorney in those nine months has payroll, has rent, has all these expenses. And so we're able to provide an attorney in advance on their future legal fees. and so for a lot of our attorney partners, they're either being I hate to say save, but they're they're they're having a resource to help them with cash flow or they think about as wait a minute a if I can reinvest some of the funds that I'm getting into getting more clients that just grows the business. So we've been able to successfully fund several attorney to really either just cash flow kind of help or grow their practice which most banks when it comes to a serviceoriented process especially legal it's hard to find a bank that will lend you money.

32:58 And so we're able to provide them a really easy, flexible way to get some capital and obviously grow the practice or you know, fix some cash shortfalls that may occur. Well, it cash flows maker or given the ability to take business they otherwise couldn't afford to finance because if you're going to get a $20,000 fee a year later, it sounds great, but if you have, let's say, $10,000 in costs,

33:24 How many cases can you carry before you run out of cash and maybe you can only carry 10? Well, if you if you can get cashed out or advanced at some point, maybe you can carry 15, 20, 30 cases or the flight will start and you can carry, you know, a scaling up number. And so I think sometimes it's just it's just economics and numbers and business. and I also feel like again, you guys are also going to watch that case closely over their shoulders because you want to get paid and so you're bringing professional into the deal. So that's again for attorneys too often I think they look at as oh I'm I'm falling behind in my business. Maybe not. Maybe you're you're growing so quickly that you don't have the capital to allow you to grow. And I any growing business has those issues. Where do you raise money? You raise money from investors. I know when I started my mortgage company we use credit cards. I at one point I owed like $100,000 in credit cards. My business was growing but I could I didn't want to take the cash out because I wanted to hire more people. I wanted to have more loans and process. So again, that's a one that everybody should make a judicious decision. But again, those are opportunities make sense. So those are four ways you find. Just to recap again, the startup costs, the cost to the administration of the estate, the administrator, cash for keys, primarily security of the property, stopping foreclosures. Third is errors to advances to errors. And the fourth, we advancing legal fees to attorneys and professionals.

34:50 100% 100%. Yeah. So that that's really how the business started. So we started Scrivnr 2023. That's just I started Scrivnr. I was solo operator really was the idea that I thought financing was needed in the space. kind of did that for about a year and a half. and then this year what we discovered is that as we were helping u finance the cases, we were learning that our attorney partners, our clients were wanting more just more from us. and so we have since developed u, oh, I should say redeveloped because if you I'm the OG probate tech person. and so we have now launched our technology platform which I mentioned earlier. and so we can we can help people with probate. we can help attorneys take on more cases or we can be or we can be the fiduciary as well. So we have a tech platform that we can automate the process. what we also found is our attorneys and our partners, our clients want to learn where the case is at. So, we developed a software to be able to provide information. If you're the attorney and we're managing 30, 40, 100 cases for you, how you going to track them all? We have a no code you know easy to in easy to use no installation software system where you're going to be able to have case management that can work alongside your current case management so you don't have to change vendors. and so we're able to provide a really great detail of where cases are at, what's changed, what the deadlines, what have we done on behalf of the attorney or our filing so the attorney can review the work. and so that becomes a really great quite streamlined process and the one area that we found the biggest growth is helping those entities that have the problem with death and so I'm proud to say that I can't say who yet but most of the mortgage companies that we have stopped the foreclosure from have now started to ask

36:53 Us proactively to help them mitigate foreclosure. Yeah. and so we're we're thrilled to think about this as a system solution. and so we're working with reverse mortgages, forward mortgages, asset managers, servicesers, all of them who until we came along thought the only way to solve a foreclosure or solve a defaulted mortgage because of death was foreclosure. We're introducing the concept of, wait a minute, bank, we can get you to the finish line. i.e. resolution faster. Typical foreclosure takes two years typically to process. Some states is five years. Probate typically takes two months to get somebody with the authority, you know, to act, which potentially could be selling the house. and foreclosures typically take about $77,000 in cost total to the bank. some of that is hard dollar cost. There is a legal process attorney fees. much of that is in deterioration of the house. You can imagine someone's dead for two plus years. The house is not maintained, could have squatters, could be damaged. And more importantly, what's also learn is if you evict or foreclose on somebody, the family dynamic, the family attitude changes from this is grandma's house to if I may f the bank and they start to destroy the property because they are upset, they're hurt, they're about to be homeless. and so it can cause damage to the property. Again, it's not the bank is mean. It's this is what the government has set out as the process. So, we're able to introduce a faster process. less expensive. If there's equity in the house, the bank pays nothing, right? The estate pays for everything. If there's no equity in the house, the bank can nominate us as the administrator or we can provide an assistance for the family.

38:49 Oftentimes, the bank will provide an incentive for a family member to cooperate. you know, sign documents, be the administrator. and then we facilitate the process just like we would normally. So, right now we're getting a lot of traction from the mortgage companies, the lenders, the originators, the servicesers because we're providing a I think a better solution and importantly to them is brand reputation. Think about how a what a different reaction from a family if you get contacted by the bank and said, "Hey, we're so sorry your grandma died. So sorry your mom died. We know you're dealing with a lot. We've partnered with a firm that can help you at least answer your questions. Free consultation. Never no requirement to use us, but also we provide the actual path to then solve the problem efficiently, quickly, and empathetically. So really all of a sudden now the mortgage company is seen like the hero as opposed to the villain.

39:49 And we've [clears throat] done some of these cases where I did one with you I think in San Diego where it wasn't even yet for closure. It was just vacant squatter

39:58 And in California not only can a creditor applied minister probate but so can anybody. And so just as anybody in this case use me as fiduciary. We followed the case and we contacted the heirs and say, "Hey, you can take it over and do it if you want, but you know what? This is the process we've laid out. We're ready to go. If you want to file your own, file your own. You want to hire your own attorney, good luck. If you want us to handle for you, we'll be glad to do it for you." And in the end of the day, the property got sold. People got the money distributed. And

40:28 Yeah, that was a really fun case. number one, because the person who contacted us was like the neighbor. They were just concerned because if I remember correctly, the squatters were cooking meth [laughter] in the property. So, it was a It was a problem for the community to have this house kind of unmaintained, uncared for. and even though there wasn't,

40:49 Yeah, it was condo. They were cooking method. So, when you say next door neighbor, it wasn't like a house away. It was like just the next the immediate the immediate neighbor. Yeah. and even though there wasn't a ton of equity, I think, but it's something. And nobody had to fork up any dollars, we're able to minimize time and effort and costs. and ultimately one of the heirs also died. which then we were able to use a faster, more streamlined process because they qualified. I don't even believe we charged anything for that second probate either. So yeah, so that that's really our motto is to really solve these problems which in this case included an eviction, included some kind of I hate to say extra legal work, but like in the sense of police had to get involved and you had to like obviously get rid of the people who were in the house. One of the areas I think that maybe you want to sell it because you're not as working with attorneys that aren't working with you as I am is the vendors that you work with regularly that are available for other people to use particularly a bank that can open account online and bond company. A bank my experience is attorneys will tell the customer oh yeah go open a bank anywhere you want. Well good luck getting account open. I don't want to badmouth any bank in particular like Wells Fargo, but good luck going to Bank America and opening a bank in a trust.

42:13 They're only going to ask you for like a pint of blood, DNA samples. It's just it I've never had and you physically have to go there. Yeah. You have to go there multiple times, right? Versus you have a bank that you use that allows online access, online% online.

42:30 Yeah. So, we develop what we call our à la carte services. So if you think about what we offer is kind of like a soup to nuts concier service where we do everything either to help the attorney to help the individual or become the fiduciary. So that's that's the service side. What we uncovered is a lot of attorneys a lot of cases are let's just say far enough along where they're doing reasonably well without needing a lot of assistance. But the problems that we've uncovered with people is sometimes they're told to open a bank account. they encounter challenges and they don't. So then they start comingling assets estate and personal which is a big no. So now we have we partner with a bank called row rho bank where we open the bank account we act like the branch manager. So one of the things that's really great about this process is twofold. when family members have a fight it's because usually they don't trust each other. And so one of the tech platforms that this bank what's really technically it's not a bank row is more of a tech platform on top of a bank right what row is able to provide is the ability for us to invite family members attorney either for viewing purposes let's see what's happening in the bank account think of the distrust that could dissipate if you're alerted to every transaction if you had the ability to go online what did my brother do Okay. and often the bond company might require the attorney to approve transactions. The technology platform is there where we can obviously the owner the administrator has to authorize this can give the attorney approval status of every transaction. So that way no money can leave the estate without the attorney knowing, the administrator knowing and often the family members at least being you know notified or having the ability to see. So that's that's a great product that we offer. Also, these banks, these platforms aggregate banks.

44:32 So you can get up to 75 million in FDIC insurance because your actual deposits are spread amongst multiple banks.

44:41 Normally that's not a thing, but I remember the day I heard when Silicon Valley Bank was going under and the firm that bought me were my deposits were used them. So there was a moment in time I was like, "Oh, maybe I'm not going to get nothing." So banks do fail and if you don't have FDIC insurance, which is capped at 250,000,

45:04 The average deposit of an estate is typically about 500,000. and so we're able to help the fiduciary liability be less by having higher FDIC insurance. you mentioned we offer fidiciary bonds. Yeah, we work with lots of bonding companies, especially when people are rejected. One of the reasons they're rejected, they may have like a marijuana charge from when they're 18. Maybe they have low credit or no credit. and so we're able to overcome those problems by using some of the facilities that we use. we can do a genealogy study. Obviously, we don't do it. We partner with somebody else. we do accounting, the both the tax as well as the court accounting. All these are one-off services that either attorneys or the administrator can choose without necessarily doing all of our service.

45:55 Yeah, the banking is a big deal I think because like you say the attorney will say go open a bank somewhere. often times people can't get a bond. My experience is anybody get a bond if the attorney is willing to sign on the bond and oversee it. They're hesitant because there have been cases where you know disreputable people took a check went to local Wells Fargo and even though it's said to require two signatures for some reason Wells Fargo approved the check and the way the law is liabilities you know is all on the estate which then falls on the attorney and having a bank where you can check it's all online you can't go to the branch you can only do it online and you can make the rule the attorney sees it gives attorney the ability to do two things I think one protect themselves two offer to customers you're not bondable. I can get it done for you. And that's a big advantage. And I think that's one of those things where again, you don't want to I don't think you want to pass on business just for that. Even if they have a criminal record, if you can control the bank account, there's no reason not to give somebody access to a bank account if you have to approve everyone. And as an attorney, either you do it or you have a parallegal or somebody that you trust these things obviously and how these are big these are little things that I don't think people realize unless you're in the business. So those attorneys are watching definitely should consider reaching out to see about using and starting off with the alocart. That's the other thing I like about your services. They can start alakart. Next thing you know they can delegate the administration to you or hire you as a fiduciary or and then they end up in a referral process where oh you're in Lexon, Kentucky. Turns out we have a case in Lexington. We need an attorney.

47:31 Will you work with us? And so talk a little bit about how you get attorneys kind of coming to you for business but you also have a need to send them business. Yeah. So, there's there's two ways that we work with attorneys. Number one, if an attorney has a case that they want help with, however much help they want, we can take on that case and assist the attorney with legal technology, non-legal customer support, and some of our à la carte stuff. And number two is we're we've created essentially a marketplace. Like I mentioned before, our business model is not necessarily going after the individual customer. not that we don't want to or we'd love for people to hear about us and come to us directly. That's never a reason not to. It's just very expensive to find the person who needs you at the moment in time that they need you because our product is, you know, it's so weird. you know, if you buy a sweater from dicks.com u and sneakers, you're going to likely, you know, every time your sneakers wear out, you might go back. So you know, you can acquire a customer and get some value out of it. You only die once, and most people only go through probate once, right? and so our business model has been predicated about finding the entities, the mortgage company, the insurance company, the financial institution, the funeral home, those that have what I call the concentration of the problem, their customers passing away and then that causes a problem to their core business, mortgage, collecting the mortgage as an example. So then we get introduced to the family from that entity. and so that's what we're able to do. So, obviously, if we're introduced to the family and they want an attorney, well, then we need an attorney on this side to match and make the marriage, so to speak. And so, we're able to provide to the attorney the case, the client.

49:24 So, we vetted the client, we pretal to the client, we have what we call a statement of facts. When we come to an attorney with the case, we've done all the work. We have the petition of probate already filled out. and then the attorney can say yes or no to this case. If they say yes, boom, we then start working with the attorney. We'll finance it if needed. And then we again pro probate project manage it. So this is part marketing, part in-house tech firm and part outsourced non-cuss customer legal support. You know, the talking to the client in a non-legal advice way. all the things that most attorneys, unless they're in a huge law firm, and typically you would only take, you know, estates that are worth millions to be able to then cover the costs for those services. We're able to provide almost like an outsourced in-house probate department to a law firm and also to entities that are in the death care, the legal tech space. In fact, we started work a lot with I'm sure you've seen some of these online wills, online trust companies. Well, guess what? Every time you create a will or a trust, eventually somebody's going to pass. and if you don't have a solution to be like, okay, this is how you do and execute the document, you really haven't really helped anybody because you have a document that's sitting in someone's drawer that then no one knows how to deal with it. So then we're able to take on that case and kind of do that full circle for that entity. Yeah. So that's how we get our clients. So then we're able to then go to an attorney and say, "We have a case. We've done all the work, and if they can't pay you, we can." And so most attorneys are like, "thank you." It's it's like the greatest gift that they've ever gotten because no marketing, no subscription, no annual fees, and then they get a partner that really cares about them, their practice, and their client.

51:19 And the referral is coming from somebody who knows what they're doing in those areas. And often times as a is financially involved, you're you're sending the deal to the attorney, but you're doing the administration or you're doing an advance or you're doing the bond or you're doing the banking or all the above. It's one of those things where you know it, you know, it's good business because you guys want to get paid. If it wasn't good business, you wouldn't be taking it yourselves. So,

51:42 Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Well, I know I've got a little long. I appreciate you being available. This is this for those who are watching this is a service I've used quite a bit from the first I met him at the prior version or for prior company and then when Scrivnr was launched right away I've jumped on it I've watched the iterations I've worked with you guys I even offer a kind of coaching free of charge any realtor wants to work with Scrivnr be glad to talk to you how to use this individually in your business I do talk I do promote this to attorneys that I work with but I would say and if you're an attorney feel free to reach out if I can help you obviously you can reach out to Byron and his team that's what they do but particular if you're real estate agent. I'll be glad to help you understand how to use this product more for your business. Scrivnr.com. And just a little trick, there's no second, there's no e at the end. SR, it's right on his chest. S I vnr.com is the website and the service, the company. and Byron Bus is the founder. Byron, thank you so much for your time today. More than that, thank you for your commitment to the industry. I know I've used you. I've had many

52:40 Great experiences with my customers, and they're not all easy. There's still it's still a tough gig, but you make what is otherwise overwhelming a less tough gig and more profitable and more pleasant for my customers and me. So, thank you so much.

52:53 Absolutely. Very happy to be here. I'm proud to say that I think our foreclosure stop tracker is exceeded 300. and we hope to someday end foreclosures due to death because we're working with the very entities that are initiating the foreclosure. so our dream is to have a world where there is no foreclosure due to death because we are either convincing the mortgage, the serer to do probate, which is the best result for everybody involved. and obviously it's a lot less stressful. it gives the family members the highest opportunity to get their maximum value of their inheritance.

53:30 Well, fantastic. The only downside of Scrivnr is if you talked to Byron, you have to listen to him talk about the Philadelphia Eagles. Other than that, [laughter] it's been a great as a Los Angeles that's been tough the last couple years. So, anyhow,

53:42 We kind of own the Rams, although boy, we've had some we've had some lucky games for sure. I'm a little sad my Eagles have not done well of late, but I think, I think we're going to turn it around for the year. I'll see you at the Super Bowl.

53:54 I think the rest of the city of LA has been beaten up on Philadelphia trying to make up for the for the Rams. So, we'll see how it works out. Byron, thank you so much your time today as always and really appreciate your time.

54:04 All right. Absolutely. Thank you. And for this is probate weekly. We get we get together oops lost my spot there. We get together every week and usually with attorneys but in this case a vendor. I think that's critical both for realtor's business for attorneys business to be more effective for your business. If I can help at all, please reach out at Billgross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks.