Professional Fiduciary Services, with Attorney and Fiduciary Kevin Mein

0:01 Increasingly, one of the roles in a probate administration and also true in trust administration is the role of the fiduciary and as a real estate agent dealing with probate all the time. I just learn a lot by dealing with people professionals in this field and I find that my job is a lot easier when I work with professionals. Really excited to have met Kevin mine Lion Pride fiduciary who is a licensed professional fiduciary in the state of California. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us today.

0:28 Thank you so much, Bill, for having me. I'm honored to be here and I think your podcast is phenomenal and so I just I really appreciate it.

0:37 Thanks. And by licensing you are an attorney but for purposes of our discussion today really the focus of your business isn't the legal advice. It's the attorney you know gives you the experience education but you're really acting as a fiduciary on behalf of a client often in legal cases with attorneys. Correct.

0:56 A thousand percent. So in California for to be a professional fiduciary you either there's two ways either a or actually there's three ways either one you can be a have a license through the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau which is California fiduciary license two you can be a licensed attorney or three you can be a licensed CPA in California and that's really to manage they really focus on trust administration and so you can manage I think it is three unrelated trusts without a license and any more than that you need to be licensed in by the state

1:36 And so really this position to me as a Realtor® answers the question I get from customers I can't manage this what do I do and the answer is you don't have to manage it you can appoint somebody to manage it on your behalf that would be a fiduciary either an administrator or an executor if it's from the will but administrator of a probate estate or administrator of a of a trust. And so you really fill that role. So what are the what's the most common case that you get involved? What's that look like in terms of the types of assets you're talking about?

2:07 I mean, they really come from all over the place. And I mean backing up really what a fiduciary is really a legally appointed person that is there to manage really whether it's in a trust or a probate or really for somebody who's lost capacity and which is something that's happening more and more as medical technology gets better but dementia is on the rise. But you're legally appointed to really deal with those people's financial, legal, and personal matters. And so it comes up as a trustee, as a conservator, as you pointed out, executive, or even as a agent under a power of attorney. And so it's about how I it's probably not the best way to explain it, but how I explain it to folks is either a I'm really I get paid to really be a good, you know, what you would have as your brother, your son, your uncle, your cousin. I mean, they're really playing that role. The part that you and it's phenomenal working with folks like you because you understand it is it's really a job. And so when you ask your nephew, your cousin, your brother to be the trustee of your trust, I don't know if everybody appreciates the level of you know, you're really managing a business. And so it is there's a lot of parts and pieces to it.

3:34 I probably like to make it sound sexier than it is, but I'm really just a project manager. The legal side and having a legal background super helpful because you got to deal with probate code and the different courts and then it's just there's a lot of stuff that's counterintuitive in there and so it's not hard and you've probably dealt with this both from the your probate work and your trust administration work on where you can get you can get sideways a little bit and it's hard and then when you're a family member you've got your other family members coming at you. And so what I bring is, you know, no different than if I was you think of your probate estate or your trust as a company. I'm just outside management. And so I don't have an emotional attachment to it. I do it for a living and I, you know, there's repeatability and I get economies of scale and I, this is what I do every day. As I told you, before off camerara, you know, I'm good at seven things. They just happen to be the seven things you need to be good at to be a professional fiduciary. And so, and I love it because you can actually help people at a time they need help.

4:47 You know, I recommend it more often than customers accept it because there's a fee involved and people often feel they can save the money by doing it themselves. And the analogy I always use, the one that you point out a while ago, which is it really is like a business, right? Right? If you have $4 million of assets, you imagine you have, you know, two or three properties worth $2 million and $2 million of various collectibles and cars and stocks or whatever, and you're going to liquidate it. You have a business which is liquidating $4 million worth of stuff and getting the best price, the best execution, not getting sued, not getting not losing it, not having it stolen, all the things you expect a business person to do. And would you hire your aunt Bertha to do that for you? Probably not. You probably say at $4 million we can afford some money to get somebody to help us and do this properly.

5:33 And it's not You bring up a great point and it's not even that like I can when I people call me all the time to interview me. Do I want this guy as my successor trustee? Is he and I get most my business, you know, real time cases right now from attorneys. But you can go to any of the 58 counties in California on any day you want in a probate court in any of those counties. And I'll show you, don't believe me, you'll see why if you go why you don't want to have your cousin, your uncle, your brother. And so the cost is really dimminimous on this deal. Now, I'm speaking out of self-interest. And you know, if you had told me five years ago, hey Kevin, you know, let's have some guy named Kevin manage Bill Gross's trust because he's got dementia, I would tell you're crazy. Now that I live in this world and have for several years, I just I see the value in it. And you know, not a lot of different people think selling a home, you know, I don't want to pay a real estate commission for this, right? And really, it's pennywise and pound foolish. Now, you and I have maybe biased on that deal a little bit, but you've seen the horror stories. I've seen the horror stories that go with it.

6:52 And the last thing you want, and this is a big one, when you're when whether you pass away or you have diminished capacity, just let your kids be your kids. Don't make them be your kids and your stock broker and your investment advisor and trying to make decisions on what's best for everybody. Really, people want their families to get along after they pass away. Yet, they behave in ways that are diametrically opposed to that ever happening. And one of them is they have either they make their kids co-rustees, which is just virtually guaranteed to have be problematic. Even the best of families or they elevate one of the kids over the others and there's animosity between it and so just let the kids be kids and frankly what I see in my practice is it's a unifying effect because everyone's mad at Kevin mine because he's a big jerk and he won't do what we want him to do.

7:52 Yeah. Yeah. But at the end of the day just like outside management on a company I work for the beneficiaries. I work just as I if I work for the shareholders of a company. And so I answer to them and really what you'll see as a professional versus bringing in Aunt Bertha as you talked about is really Kevin M knows that he's got to do annual accounting and he's got you know outside folks that he works with on all his stuff and he's going to do it exactly the way that you said that the trust would do. When I was transitioning into my starting up my firm, I did a period of time where I did trust administration on a contract basis and I can't tell you the number of times that we I was working with lay trustee people and they would say, "Yeah, you know, I think my brother, he doesn't really need the money. My sister really needs this money. I don't think my parents really understood that. I'm going to give it to my sister, not my brother." and trying to explain, "No. You don't have that discretion. That's not that's not your role as a decision maker. You really just carry out what the settler wanted to have happen." And it sounds silly to say out loud.

9:13 I'll tell you, it happens a lot more than you would hope. And again, that's why people are fighting in probate court. Anyway, it's not all doom and gloom over here, but that is definitely as they say in wilderness survival, the number one rule of wilderness survival is don't get yourself into trouble. And so that you know, you want to set yourself up for success and frankly it's a stressful time because usually it comes at a time that someone's passed away and that's a really difficult time. So anyway, enough on that.

9:46 I do think the advice you gave was great. Anybody who's considering taking this on who's not a professional, go to probate court in your county once and just watch what it looks like. And there's some routine matters and you know there, you know, there are some judges are easier to work with than others. They're harder. In LA County, we have nine divisions. We have nine different judges. And so I was in a courtroom today with a judge is very efficient, productive, moves quickly, very nice, very polite. Have another case with the same attorney where it's the opposite and it's just brutal and I feel like they're torturing my customer. For whatever reasons and but even in the one that today was easy you see one person fighting and it's just the emotions and the time involved and the process it just drags on and I think the other thing is that when individuals do it and they don't communicate effectively in a quote professional manner the other error is you're just it's just like you lit a fuse and at some point it's going to go off at some point they're going to say you're cheating me you're not doing your job, you're self-deing. If you communicate effectively, you at least reduce the temperature a bit. You increase the odds of success. And I think that's where people who try to do on their own just to me always it's rarely the right solution for most people. So,

11:06 No, selfishly agree with you a thousand percent. I mean in my I outside of that we provide the service, but I tell the same thing with people on the real estate stuff all the time where say, "Hey, I'm want to save money. I'm going to go to one of these bargain deals. They'll do the paperwork for me." I'm thinking that it's not the paperwork that's a big deal. Anybody can fill out paperwork. It's really having the experience to know. And that you know and the other piece to this is and there's more latitude as a lay trustee person but not a lot which is you are personally liable for any misdeeds that you do and if you don't hit the standard of care and again it's counter intuitive. And so, you know, example are you'll have a $5 million estate and they don't put it in an interestbearing account and this thing will be dragging on for a couple years and all of a sudden you'll get beneficiaries that say, "Wait a minute, we could have earned $100,000. They didn't do it and they're going to win."

12:15 Well, and it's because you planned it not to go past 30 days. And then something happens in 30 days. Well, who cares about the interest? And then five years later that decision comes back to haunt you. Whereas professional doesn't work that way. That's the problem. It's it seems like a reasonable decision on the day, right? Well, how long how much interest could 30 days be? But five years later, you go back and look at it.

12:39 Well, I mean, again, you're a real estate guy, so I always laugh when people talk about building a house. My dad was a construction guy and he always joked that when he'd hear about someone building a house, that's really practice for building your second house.

12:54 And again, think about it. Yeah. How many trusts are you going to manage in your lifetime? How many probate estates are you going to manage in your lifetime? One, two, three. Like, there's just not going to be that much. And so, you don't you have to learn. And you're learning on somebody's nickel when you're doing it. So that's why I laugh on the cost deal. But again, people feel duty bound. I totally get it. And so I mean, if there's nothing else, you don't have to hire Kevin M. You don't have to hire a professional fiduciary, but for sure don't go it alone. Hire a good trust administration, probate administration attorney on that stuff. You work with attorneys all the time, so you know the value that they add.

13:43 Well, you know, it I will say this. Maybe it's more LA, but the population of fiduciaries is nowhere near the need. It's one of the few industries that I can say in California is way underpopulated and in my opinion, it's growing. The need for more fiduciaries, not less. And like other businesses seem to be having the opposite direction and actually when I first discovered this problem, a client of mine asked me to take on a case as a producer. He said, "Look, all we're doing is selling the real estate. How much work can it be? I'll walk you through it." He was an attorney. I'll walk you through I do those myself. The attorney said, "I'll walk you through what to do." And I did it and it wasn't terrible, but it was more than I bargain for. I'm glad I did it. I learned. It was a good experience for me. I did a good job for this stand. I made sure they I didn't do anything that cost them any money or time. But and I've done a couple since I realized I don't want to do them because it's like anything else. If you're not doing that all day long, you're not in the headsp space of doing that properly. And I really sought out other fiduciaryies. That's how I got to you today was through an attorney saying, "Look, I always need this. I have this problem all the time where I get families will call me or an attorney will call me and say, you know, I have a probate case in this area and do you know somebody who can act as a fiduciary? And the answer is, well, it's not me today. It's that's the new answer for the last six months.

15:08 And I've been looking to meet other people like you and I appreciate, you know, the time that we're spending here today to both me to meet you, but more and we've met before, but also to share with you my platform of people who might use your service. So, let's talk a little bit. You mentioned that most your referrals come from attorneys. I think the reason why is the business from an attorney for you is almost always better business. Not just because it's referral business and repeat business. But my experience is they know what you need. They know what you need to do. Whereas with consumers unfortunat we have to educate them and sometimes their expectations are unrealistic. Like I could do this myself. Why do I need you? Why am I paying you? So, is that your f why your focus is from attorneys or is it just because you are an attorney and it's natural for you?

15:52 I think no. I think you're right in terms of one, you don't know what you don't know when you're out in the consumer deal. I mean, again, I think it's such an amazing service that you provide with this podcast. My dad passed away a couple years ago. I didn't have a super deep knowledge base in terms of there's a whole subculture out there in terms of care management, how you find a rest home for somebody, how do you deal with the Medicare piece, how I mean I could go on. I'll bore you. The point being is if any of your folks are interested whether they call me or you know you can go to the professional fiduciary association of California and call any fiduciary as a group of people I think and you're 100% right I think the total number of fiduciaries licensed fiduciaries in California is 1,800 they're in excess of 400,000 licensed attorney you know bar numbers I think there are only you know around 2002 250 that really do it full-time.

17:01 Think you're right. And so there's a major need for it, but as a group of human beings, I have never met a nicer group of people that genuinely want to help. And I, as we talked about before, I had worked in commercial real estate where you try to separate people from their money. I just, this job is spectacular. And as I said earlier, you can generally help people at a time they need help. I'm not looking for a thank you. I love doing what I do in a given day. I just I get to Yeah. Do I one I get to interact with a lot of different folks. It's super, you know, we're trying to Everybody's pushing on the wheel on the same side. And we're just trying to get through the process. And I didn't make the rules. I didn't make the trust administration, you know, the trust distribution plan. I'm just trying to make it better. And so yeah, I there are certain f I just enjoy the in terms of where I get the business. I think you know sometimes the cases matter in terms of I'm good on the on the finance side. If you have 50 apartment buildings and you need a managed I that's my background. I've been around the business stuff for 30 plus years. If you need your mom taken to the doctor every Tuesday, I'm probably not the best guy for that. But there's a million fiduciaries that are spectacular at that

18:33 At that at that. And that's the part where again, if you've ever had a parent that's gone down with a health issue.

18:42 Yeah. You're trying to figure out, you know, they're dealing with their health. They're not advocating for themselves. You're tr you're trying to go you can't go to doctor's appointment. I didn't know that there were, you know, really these health care managers that will go to your parents' doctor's appointments that under that are, you know, former nurses that understand and talk that language and will be advocates

19:05 For really the bigger issue. You know, this is maybe a little crude, but you know, people are so focused on when they pass away, who's going to be in charge of this, where's the money going to go? How's this all going to work? That's fine. But really, as I've told people, you're dead. Like that's the least of your concerns.

19:24 The bigger issue is really what happens if you have incapacity today, right? Who have you set up your estate plan? Is it in a trust? If you s, you know, something if I get in a car accident tomorrow, can people access those funds? Is there a plan? Do they know what's going to happen? And if there's not, you know, an ounce of planning is worth a pound of cure. And so really, that's where all the conflict comes in because all of a sudden now, no, mom wanted me to be in charge. No, I know what's going on. And that's where it's just it's terrible when you see these families that and when you come down to it, that's all that matters. You know, I'm in my mid50s. I it's taken me a long time to learn this. The only thing that matters are people, right? Personal connection, your family, the house, the car, the socket count, that's just stuff.

20:22 Yeah. So, anyway, I'll put my soap box away, but No, not at all. So, you talk about real estate. I think one of the things that isn't understood about fiduciaries is there are cases where you're brought in and there are very valuable assets but they're they have a shelf life or their value has a is affected by the shelfing of it. You have a business the business has to run or in real estate you know rents have to be collected and mortgages have to be paid and things like that. I was involved with a large estate recently where they have about $4 million in real estate and we had to get our arms around all of it and there's a property management company involved and there's a business and then the bank they were working with was bought by Chase and that was a whole nightmare to deal with First Republic before they went out of business. So, talk about, you know, I think you probably I know you have some background with commercial real estate yourself as a in the sales side. I think also in property management talk about the asset that is when somebody is looking for fiduciary one thing fill out the forms accounting working with attorneys court dates those are important things but being able to step into a larger business maybe a 40 $50 million business and really be like a temporary CEO either you know disposing the assets or repositioning them or remanaging them talk a little bit about the importance of that in your particular practice

21:43 Yeah I mean that's the part that's fun for me because you just that's a world I come from and so you're really as a fiduciary I have a legal obligation to maximize the return on these assets and more times than not they're they've been mismanaged or you've got you know for a multitude of reason but ultimately as I said earlier really when you're picking a fiduciary you want somebody who can make the hard decision and is going to stand behind that decision and this isn't management by committee I mean the you as you point out you are running this trust and 4 million bucks is 4 million bucks and so making sure that rents are being collected that the maintenance is being taken care of that you know that's what gets managed gets done and so really paying attention to who the managers are what's going on and there's just you know I don't want to overplay our importance but you know people as you know there's been more than one trust trustee or administrator of an account who didn't understand that when someone dies, the property's reassessed and they don't reserve the funds to pay the reassessment, escape assessment piece. And so all of a sudden, they got a big problem on their hands. And you've got folks that buy a house for, you know, 40 30,000 and all of a sudden it's in the Silicon Valley. It's now worth two and a half to$4 million. That's a pretty good reassessment event. And the counties are dying for money and they go after that.

23:20 Yeah. And so, yeah, it's again, it's I wish I was a brain surgeon. I wish I knew computer scent.

23:35 And so, and really doing it, you know, again, it's not my stuff. I am just a steward for it. And so it's really this person, you know, you really you spend your whole lifetime accumulating these assets, you just want to make sure that they go in the direction you want them to go. It doesn't need to be keen mine. It doesn't there's, you know, if I took a hundred fiduciaries and put them in a room and gave them a fact pattern, it's all going to land somewhere in the fat part of the bell curve. But yeah, it's I think the biggest thing that I see is just letting you know, a lot of times in these family businesses, the apple rolls away from the family tree a little bit and parents sometimes have unrealistic expectations of what their kids either a want to do, are interested in, and you know, it's it is an interesting process. I think really for the estate planning piece when people ask me and they do often on you know what should I put into my trust? How do you what's the best way to manage a trust once I'm gone? The answer is really to allow the fiduciary, the trustee, whoever is taking over to give them the flexibility to deal with whatever the situation is they're dealing with at that point. There's a lot of folks in, you know, in downtown San Francisco or there's buildings in downtown San Francisco that are in trust.

25:04 There are prohibitions on selling those assets in the trust for an extended period of time. And now you've got trustees with their hands tied really trying to deal with these issues sitting on massive vacancy and they can't move these assets. They just don't have the flexibility and it is a challenge and so you just don't know what the future holds and so really spend your time trying to find just like real estate stuff find you can't make a market right Bill I mean you the assets gonna but there are definitely things you can do to mess it up

25:39 And so there's really finding the right person is I think the most important piece and then ultimately you got to take a step back and let Bill do thing of selling the property or let Kevin run the trust. And ultimately your clients answer to you, the beneficiary. I answer to the beneficiaries. I said that wrong. That you answer to the client. I mean, that's really the process. But just like when I go to the dentist, I don't tell him how to give me a crown. I trust that they're going to do it the right way. I get on an airplane because the pilot is certified and that's what they're supposed to do.

26:18 Having faith in the process is what I've seen to be the most effective thing to do. Now, there's an interesting switch though in your business in that a you know client goes to an attorney. They have a trust. They need a fiduciary or it's a probate. There's a state. They need a fiduciary. The attorney recommends you. You go to the court, get appointed or the trust successor trustee nominates you or whoever the process is. Now you're the customer. And the attorney really who referred you is really serving you in a sense, right? In that you know you're responsible for the attorney to provide the service in a cost-effective manner to give proper legal advice to give you the right strategy and if not so how does that work when sometimes the attorney they're smart enough to hire you but they may make a mistake along the way that you or they may have a path that you disagree with

27:15 And the end of the day it's your decision right on what to do. So ultimately I'm as I tell people if you want me you know all folks say hey you need to use this real estate agent you need to use this investment advisor you're supposed to use this attorney my deal is hey you want me to cook dinner I got to buy the groceries I am personally liable for all this stuff whether it's on a trust administration or state administration so ultimately I pay attention to the real estate folks I work with and the investment advisors I work with the attorneys I work with. But at the end of the day, and this is what's hard as when you get lay trustee or people that are not business people, which is the decision, the buck stops here with me. And so being comfortable and as I said earlier, making the easy decisions is easy, right? I get, you know, a house worth $4 million and we get offered six million. It's the only we're going to do it. I mean, that one's easy. What do you do when you think it's worth four million and you're getting offers at two and a half million and you do you pull it on the market? Do you not pull it? What I mean it's a hard do we put money into it? Will we get that money back?

28:32 Ultimately, one person's got to make that decision and you've got to be comfortable being unpopular with the group. But you're really doing what is in the best interest or you'll get a back pattern where you've got divergent interests of the beneficiaries and so really and making sure you don't have a conflict of interest in that mix and so but no you're a thousand percent right you know all with professionalism but the attorneys know that ultimately we are I am the client but interestingly enough if I am whether I'm the probate administrator, you know, executive or administrator or I am the trustee, the connection goes with the office, not Kevin mine personally. So when there's attorney client privilege, it goes with the office of the trustee, not with Kevin Mein. So if Kevin mine then gets removed or resigns or whatever that does not does that carry forward with Kevin Mai and so you that privilege suddenly ceases as it relates to what we talked about does if that makes sense.

29:55 Yeah. And so, but no, I mean that again that and you work a ton in the probate world. So, you know, I love this the in where I live up in Northern California in the East Bay particularly, but I do stuff all over California. I just I love the members of the bar in the probate estate planning section. I mean, they're just

30:20 They generally you have seasoned folks. They have a lot of empathy for their clients. They're trying to do the right thing. It's a friendly bar. You know, LA is a big area. So, you're not the folks I work with generally are going to run into each other,

30:37 Right? More and more. So, really, they have civility towards one another. Not all of them. It's not all puppies and lollipops, but it's you know, you're not doing insurance defense litigation on a federal level where you'll never see another one of these people ever again. And slash and burn.

30:57 Well, I think the top 10% see each other all the time. And the reputations are important with the judges. The reputations are important with each other because the good ones know you can't just be adversarial. You have to at times find ways to cooperate and find common ground, work together. And at the end of the day, your reputation is so important. The problem is that, you know, I just a study in LA County, 90% of the cases are done by attorneys in probate who've done one case or zero in the last 12 months,

31:26 Right? So, the problem is you get oftentimes attorneys who, you know, there might be great DUI attorneys or great divorce attorneys and they've just haven't done a probate in a year. And while there may not be any major constitutional issues, there's a lot of little procedures that will catch them and cause a bad a bad experience if they can't get help. And I think that's where leaning on a fiduciary that you know is so important. Having those relationships and that rolodex is so important particularly for the bar and networking I think is a great way to do that. So Okay. So I see in this business like you say increasing demand. I mean present come excluded it skews older like attorneys but you don't have unlike attorneys I don't see the influx of new talent coming in like I see a lot of new young attorneys in estate planning or new young attorneys that get probate cases because you can you can get I think pay-per-click ads and get business that way. I don't see new fiduciaries. In fact, almost every fiduciary I meet is coming from another field and they discover this field works with their skill set, works with experience, maybe a license, and they participate in it. So, step outside of your business for a second and take a look at the industry. Where does it where does this head like to me it doesn't seem good? You have increasing demand and decreasing supply. You know, that's why that's why I'm interviewing you to try to get the word out. Both for using fiduciaries and also for people who are you know of a mind to consider that as a career. What do you think about encouraging people from a professional point of view to get into being a professional fiduciary?

33:05 I tell anybody that'll listen to me. I mean it you're thousand percent correct. I don't think you'll find it is you know I don't think you're going to become a multi-billionaire become a professional fiduciary. I think you're gonna, and this is what I've discovered, as a older person, you're really gonna have a satisfying career. And so I will tell any young person that'll listen to me, and frankly, you're right. I don't the estate planning world, the trust administration, trust litigation world is really got an exodus going on and it's not being backfilled by young people. Similar to the CPA world, the fiduciary deal is a little, you know, not different. Again, you know, you get out in corporate America, having gray hair is a problem. Whether it's my real estate folks or my estate planning attorney or my fiduciary, having a little gray hair is beneficial.

34:02 Yes. Just like having, you know, a therapist, you want to have somebody with some scars on their back and some battle scars that really knows what they're talking about. And you don't want people learning on their nick on your nickel.

34:15 This the neat thing about this though I think to your point the need you know this silver tsunami is coming through the system. It just is. And the amount of you know in California they just passed this and it's a wonky law in my opinion in terms of you don't have to go through full probate if the real estate's worth $750,000 or less. And but the I mean the hoops they make you jump through to do that is kind of unrealistic. In the area I live in I think the median home price is $1.5 million and so it's just not a realistic deal. That being said it's I think it's something like $750 trillion dollars will trade hands in the next in terms of real estate in the next 25 years. I mean just the wealth transfer that is going on is going to be incredible. So that is a really long way of saying supply and demand will ultimately happen. But no, I think it's a great thing and if anybody's has any interest in it at all, I'd really encourage them to go to the Professional Fiduciary Association of California, which has a great program and is amazing education program, amazing people. You know, my contact information is on here. Reach out to me. I'm happy to point you in the right direction. Call any estate planning attorney and they'll point you in the right direction. It is really a need I think really to be good at it your biggest thing is you know again not disser dis you can learn real estate right to do what you do it's really to help people it sounds cheesy but really if your motivation is to help people and earn a living doing it's an amazing business but yeah there is there's a massive need for more of them

36:17 As you said in the beginning there's a wide variety of types there's fiduciary areas who are more health centered more senior housing centered and then in your case real estate you know one of the things that's common in you talk about the silver tsunami passing of real estate is kind of the mismatch between the deedent and the heirs as far as their involvement real estate you know most of the time when I see this you know rarely is it the father prepared the child by them running the business and being involved in it intimately and being able to step into the shoes to manage the portfol of property more common. There's examples Jameson realy in LA is a famous example Korean family where the father brought the daughter in and now she's just running this massive organization but she was prepared for it and she was an attorney as well got prepared for it and it's just taken it to a whole another level but very rare more commonly you know dad had a bunch of property and the son had a nice life or whatever but when dad passed there's this portfolio of very sophisticated property and the heir or heirs have no idea what to do they I mean yeah they know to walk in the door and sit in an office, but they don't know how to handle the insurance requirements, negotiations, and tenant, you know, renegotiations. And I inherited one where I have a

37:33 Sorry, go on. I was have a case where the properties specifically were cannabis related. That's a whole another ball of wax with a lot of cash rants. That's a whole another ball of wax. And while the seed was an expert in those two fields, the son had never even seen the property. So, it's a case where sometimes there's a mismatch. Which I think is where you bring a unique set of skills to handle the transaction, but that's the nature of food shares. You bring perhaps a couple different skills together to manage that process.

38:00 Well, yeah. I mean, as I say, I gray hair and then I've always said, I'm a jack of all trades expert of none, which normally you get shown the door during the job interview. For this job, it really I mean, it's amazing the things that I have run across in the time that I've done this. And you know, again, it's rewarding. It's not my money. I'm just I'm providing a service and it you feel good about it. And really the importance of feeling good about what you're doing. I think that's really the neat thing about it. And what I didn't know, you know, previously, which is there is this whole group of folks out there that if you do have, whether it's real estate or your plumbing company or whatever, there are people that can step in and play this role and manage that process for you, whether it's permanently or on an interim basis until everybody gets their feet underneath them,

39:00 Right? And they want to do it and there's really it is an incredible network of folks through the professional fiduciary association. I'm on these different email lists and again these are incredible giving people and every day they hey I have this problem does anybody know a gun collector. Does anybody I have a Camaro 1972 does anybody and nobody is CL you know sometimes in the I keep coming back to real estate because that's your world. Sometimes the real estate community is not as integrative as you would like and as helpful with one another. There's a lot of competition between them. This doesn't have it. They you know hey here share my CPA. Let me share my oh I had that problem over here. Here's what you should do. It is just such a neat group of people. And again, that's relevant because they're interacting with the with the consumer, their client, and trying to and I think the best part is when you have an older person who really, you know, I named my firm Lion Pride Fiduciary really because we are we protect our own. We protect I mean the ability to protect whether it's the assets or the people the beneficiaries I it sounds cheesy but we take our role very seriously in doing this and it's just it's important and when I read the horror stories with elder abuse

40:32 With you know the old saying the best way to make $2 million start with $4 million you know it happens it really happens And it just breaks my heart and it's not necessary and this stuff is sufficiently complicated. You know, I had an interview this morning to be a successor trustee and I told them a lot of stuff and you hit on this early very you get it because you've been around this stuff, but I was telling these stories of what we've run across and they just they were not buying it. They, you know, and whether they do, whether they don't, I said the same thing I said to you, which is you don't need to believe me. Go down to the any probate court you want on any day of the week, and I'll you'll see why you don't want to do this.

41:23 100%. I used to go every day. Pre-COVID, I went to court every day in LA. Again, we had nine departments and so I could find an interesting court sale daily. And so I went in the morning for about an hour and a half every day. And I the things I would see fighting over, you know, career took, somebody to McDonald's and do they include her hamburger, fries, and coke or not? You know, you know, there's two hamburg there's three hamburgers. Who did they buy two for them, two for you? It's just amazing the process that people go through. Unfortunately, and that's why, like anything else, I think a professional, sometimes you can spend some money and as a result of that, you can save quite a bit of money and time and health and life. And so, no, Kevin, it's a pleasure. It's always been a pleasure to talk to you. I know we go really deep on this. I appreciate your time with us. I went a little bit over because I thought it was so interesting. Best way to reach you, I guess, on your website is lionpridetrustee.com.

42:18 Lionpridetrustee.com. And there's some resources on there as well that you can look into. And Kevin Mein and the phone number on mine [phone number] or Kevinustrustee.com. If for some reason you missed this, it'll be in the description below or reach out or call me. We're more than glad to make induction. Kevin, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate the chance to catch up again with you again on the process and thank you for educating us today.

42:42 Well, Bill, I really I applaud the service you provide is amazing. And just I just think it's so neat that you're able to get this information out to folks and so I hope you keep doing what you're doing. It's a major service for all of us. So benefit from it.

43:00 That's great. Well, thanks again. Thanks so much. And then and for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week and we talk to professionals the business, often attorneys, in this case a fiduciary to learn how to better help our customers, to learn ourselves, be more effective. We talk to vendors. If you are somebody or you know somebody who I should interview, feel free to get me that information. Please like this, give me your comments, thumbs up if you like it, subscribe. If I can help any way, reach out at Bill Gross Probate on social media. And as always, make today your best day ever. Thank you so much.