Title Problems in Probate and Trust Sales, with Kevin Sayles

0:01 Now, I'll first confess I started calling myself the LA Probate Expert long before I was the expert. And there are a lot of people call themselves experts in title, a lot of title executives as well. Yeah. But in my mind there's a big difference between somebody who wants to be and somebody who has extensive experience in title, in particular extensive experience in probate title. And that guy in the title business, in my opinion, is Kevin Sayles, Lawyers Title. Kevin, thank you for joining us again today. Oh, no problem. Glad to be here. Kevin's one of the responsible for me kind of making the decision to focus in the probate niche in that before I left management consulting I brought in Kevin and to speak to my real estate office on the topic of probate. And I watched it and listened to it. I thought, that's really interesting. And then when I when I left management and went back to production I was looking for a niche to focus in and the one that made sense to me that fit me for a lot of reasons, personal reasons, was probate. So, Kevin, let's talk about I know you've helped a number of real estate agents launch their business or pivot their regular residential business into a probate focused business. Talk about what that transition looks like and what it takes to make that successful. That's a very good question. You know, I would say the first thing is understanding it's kind of a double-edged sword, right? The first thing is understanding probate and how probate transactions work, how trust and estate transactions work, and how that whole world works with real estate.

1:32 The problem is you don't really get the real experience on that till you do some. So, I would say getting digging in, whether that means assisting someone else on some transactions or just going out there and calling people until you get them to list their probate properties with you. That's the start because you have to get some you got to get some notches on your belt. Yeah. Once you start knowing that business, the big one of the big values you can bring to someone, one of the big values I bring to a client is the same thing an agent would bring to their client is the knowledge and understanding of the process because that goes a long way. It goes a long way in helping the parties involved understand what's going on, not worry about things they shouldn't worry about, understand when it's just time to wait for the court to do what they do or whatever the case may be. So, really understanding the process is a big part of getting yourself off the ground when it comes to probate real estate. You know, I tell real estate agents step one print out the two forms in probate. There's a listing agreement form and a purchase agreement form and read them so you know the process. There's nothing in there you shouldn't know. And then second, I think, you know, along the way I met you how I met you in person or reacquainted with you in person was I went to court. I was on a training class. They said you should go to court, just check it out. And I went once. It was fascinating.

2:50 And I went a second time. And it's not as much now because 75% or 80% of the appearances are on video but you can go to the courtroom and watch the video because the judges are live and learn quite a bit about the process. And I think that's one of the things that you always talked about that I got from the beginning was there were a lot of real estate agents spend a lot of time looking like an expert in probate. They have pictures and their team and all the they hire a bunch of models and they have a great website that talks about probate. They don't know any of it. Right. But if you know the process, you know what judges will approve or won't approve, and you that information is gold to attorneys, and that's what they want in a real estate agent to work with. Yeah. And I agree wholeheartedly with you. I mean, going down to court is such a good thing. It like you said, it's not as good now as it used to be because so much of it is video calls, but I can tell you I've been down there for a different reason and the leads, the prospects for business that you get just from being in the game, just from being there is amazing. I was in line one day waiting to purchase a court order that we needed for a transaction. I'm in the line, the public line that anyone can go in to buy a court document, and two people in front of me I hear a person talking and what they were talking about was related to title. And so, I said, you know, I can help you with that and I started to hand her my business card. Turns out the attorney that was standing between me and that person talking is a very well-known attorney that does a lot of very well-known law firm. This attorney does quite a bit of probate business. I mean, just I just happened to be standing in line behind someone that can give me business, you know? If I hadn't been standing in line, never would've met him.

4:21 I've done the same. I mean, I bumped into Paul Horn. He's got to be one of the busiest attorneys in LA probate court waiting in line to get a court order. He's like and he says, "Hey, Bill, how you doing?" We start chatting and a lot of real estate agents say, "Well, you go to the offices and they're not there. They don't take the phone calls. There's the gatekeeper." But they walk around the courthouse. They don't have security guards say "They're all sheriffs. You can't attack them." But I'm saying you can talk to me. You can meet people there. And you also what you said that is so true in the room you hear leads like you can door knock a neighborhood. Nobody in one of the houses yells out loud, "Well, maybe we should sell our house." But when you're in probate court, they're talking out loud about houses they have to sell. It's right there in front of you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, again and I know that in one of my favorite podcasts I was find one of the unique positions that very few title reps can do is you're just almost like you're a sales coach because you've seen people start with you. You've done the classes to Realtors® to get them started and then they come back to you. I know so many have mentioned your name as their resource. So, what do you see besides knowing the process, what's the character trait of the agent that makes it who's successful where again where they start from scratch or they're pivoting in this field? Obviously they have to know the process, but they need to be willing to put the time and effort and energy into do that. Absolutely. There's no in a market like today, there's no deals that I can't just sit here and the deals just fall in my lap. Those days are gone.

5:40 That doesn't happen. So, no matter what, if you're doing business, you are out there shaking the trees, right? You're out there making whatever calls, door knocks, etc. Same thing for me as a rep. I have to prospect people. I have to call people. I have to get out there and get business. So, the trait that's so important for all of us in this business is someone has to be a person that is going to do the reps. You have to fall in love with the process. I have to be there calling, knocking on doors, going after business over and over and over and over for from now till eternity. You know, that's how business goes. Obviously there's other ways to get business too, but you have to be willing to do the work. And some people are not. And I don't blame them, but those are not the folks that tend to be, you know, so successful in our business. When I hear you say that, it sounds like I hear a great football coach say "Fall in love with the process, of the practices, of the weights, of the running." it's not everybody loves to play football on Sunday if you're a pro, but you don't get to play on Sundays unless you play on Saturdays in college, unless you play on Fridays in high school, unless you do the workouts all summer long and lift the weights and run the run the stadium and all that. And in so in our in my business, the equivalent of running weights running and weights would be doing CMAs, what's this property worth? Or evaluating in my case probate cases, what status is it in, who are the parties? Can I help?

7:00 Is there a problem? I know that you look at this as well that you spend a good part of your day, I think looking at old deeds and chains of title and try to help people understand do you need a probate? Do you need an attorney? Is there a clear path to this title? I know I work with you on that regularly. Talk a bit about what your process is and then equate that to what a real estate agent might do. Yeah, I do I spend all day every day looking at deeds and chains and court orders and probate distribution orders and trusts. I always say I read a trust today just about, you know, every day I'm reading a trust or court. And I have to be able you know, a lot of this stuff people can be afraid of it because oh, it's a court order. I've never read one. It's, you know, but when you get down to it's written in plain English. If you can Yeah, say it again. Say it again, please. It's written in plain English. If I give my clients all the time who you are you an attorney? Like, well, no, but it's funny the documents are written in English and I read English. Yeah. Imagine that, right? You know, so and so many times people don't read them. And so I'm pretty meticulous on detail and sometimes where I can sometimes recognize what makes me successful because I see things and I go, "Oh, the average person doesn't see this bit of detail. Oh, the average person read this document, but they didn't understand what this part meant." You know, and that makes a big difference. So, I'll go back to what you said earlier.

8:22 So powerful. You said, "Print out the two probate documents that are in your zipForm and read them so you know what they say." Man, that is amazing. I had a transaction not long ago and it was a full authority sale. So, as we all know, full authority means you don't have to go through court confirmation, but in this case one of the heirs objected. They couldn't resolve the objection. And so, the move was, "Okay, we're going to go to court confirmation. That's the only way we're going to get this property sold." And the agent was concerned about the buyer you know, not wanting to go through that, etc. Etc. And I said

8:54 Two months or so it might take. Yeah. So, I said, "Well, you got I you know, with my assumptions I said, you guys used the probate forms, right? And the probate forms kind of allude to that. So, you should be covered. You don't feel like you're out of a disclosure or that you disclosed wrong when you said it didn't have to have court confirmation because the probate forms were written by attorneys, were made for that purpose. And that's why you use those forms. So, knowing your doc how much could someone learn if they just read the documents? If they read the documents and knew those things? Those of us watching, he's referring to and what I refer to are only California. To my knowledge, and I ask the question all the time. Maybe it's changed. But in 50 states in America, there's only one that has a probate addendum for a listing that protects the customer and the agent and has a probate addendum on the purchase agreement to protect the buyer and the seller and the agents involved can so disclose. Every other state, I don't know how you operate. I guess they sue each other in other states or something because but at least if you read that, you know the process and you can explain the process to your customer at least that much. And rather than panicking, you should know ahead of time, "Hey, we're covered. That's why we did this." I will say, one of the things I do is, cuz I know the process, I can call the other party and say, "Look, you can object, but here's what's going to happen. We might lose the buyer. Then we have to publicize. That comes out of your estate. You're paying for your share of that. Then we have to go to file a petition. You're paying for attorney's fees. Comes out of your estate. Then we hope they close. Then we have to follow up and get the court order. That takes time and effort and energy. Or we can sell the house and agree. What's your concern and how can we resolve it? And I got to tell you, most time when I've had objections, when the attorneys give me permission to call the party, or I should say, "Don't stop me." Cuz they can't give me permission, but I'm allowed to contact whoever I want to in that sense. They're not represented by a real estate agent. I can help resolve that. So, that's one of the things, if you know the process, you can say to the attorney, "Hey, I can call the heir and explain to him in a way that you can't call that cuz they have an attorney. The attorney wants the objection cuz they're going to get paid

10:55 With the objection. They're not going to get paid if I talk them out of the objection. Anyhow, that's a little bit of a detour in the process. But the great that's really good because if you look at that, what do properties that sell with full authority, same property, same situation, if that property sells with full authority, what price do you get for that property as opposed to if you go for court confirmation? About 3 to 5% less based on my calculations. Yeah. I asked you about properties, 30 to 50,000 dollars less. I knew you knew the answer to that. That's why I wanted to ask that because it's it makes sense, right? They're buying no contingencies, you know, no after court, you're just closing. So, it's a very different process.

11:32 Cashier's check on the spot, no contingencies. Yeah, it's a whole Just show up with a 10% cashier's check. That's just to get people just to get people who say they want to buy the property and give me cashier's check the day before to show up for the hearing at 8:30, let's say it starts late, 9:00 downtown LA. That's hard to do for most people. Yeah. So, why would a buyer not buy a property court confirmation? Because it's hard. It's not simple. Right. Yeah, I often have a question from a buyer. Like they'll ask, "Well, how does this court confirmation process work?" You know, I'll tell them how it works. And they'll say, "So, wait a minute. You mean I can make this offer, it gets accepted, and then I'm not guaranteed that I get the property? Or I could go down to court and someone can outbid So, then what happens to my money? I've given a deposit." And then that And then someone outbid You know, all those questions come up. Yeah.

12:20 You get it back, but you paid for your appraisal, probably. You paid for your inspection. Yeah. Your money's been sitting in escrow for however long without getting interest. You'll get it back within a couple days, probably. I mean, you're not you're not going to get cheated out of your deposit money. That doesn't happen, but it's not the no buyer likes that process at all. Right. Right. Okay. So, let's talk a bit about your business. What percentage is LA County? What percentage is other parts of California? So, I've never added that up. I will say this though, my best lender client, who I think was recently on your show, has been in up north. What The people in Santa Clara. Yeah, Monterey County. Yeah. One of those counties up there. So, I because of that, I do a lot of business in northern California. I don't do a ton in central California. I do some I think I have two files in Bakersfield right now. But I do I do a lot in the northern California areas, and then a lot in southern California. So, I've never calculated percentage I To be honest, I don't even look at that. I look at I look at transactions. I don't really pay much attention. I was looking at my closings the other day and I had two closings in LA County, one closing in Moreno Valley, what's that? Riverside County, and I had three other transactions. I don't even know where those were. So, I just because I was looking at some of these addresses, I just noticed that two were in LA. So, I couldn't give a percentage. I would probably say, if I had to guess, I would say 50% of my business is in LA County and maybe the other 50 is in other counties if I were guessing.

13:51 Now, you mentioned that you look at deeds and trusts. What percentage of your day is looking at deals like that? What How do you quantify too much? Too much. You know,

14:04 I can't just tell you. So, a lot a lot I mean, because of what I do and because where my expertise is and what I get a lot of attorneys, agents, escrow, different people that will say, "Hey, I have this scenario. Can you let us know what we need to do?" For example, have a client recently listed a property. What he knows is there was some litigation or some arguing or some fighting going on over the ownership a few years ago. Kevin, I need you to look at it and tell me, "What are we going to need to close the transaction?" Very broad. I had no idea what I'm going to find. I'm like, "Okay." And I know the guy, so I know I'm probably not going to get any more information. Let me just dig in and see what I find. So, I pulled 36 pages of documents going back to I think it was the earliest document was in 1981, something like that. So, I'm looking at all these documents and I see deeds going all over. And this one took a while because of the errors and different challenging things they did on these deeds, you know, I kept having to go back and go and then all some of the names were similar. So, I was like, "Okay, was that John or was that Jane on that deed?" You know, I'm you know, so I spend I couldn't tell you what percentage of my day cuz I don't really chart my time that way, but a large portion. I mean, that I'll tell you just today I had I dealt with that. I dealt with two cases where we have court orders court order sales. One is a bankruptcy estate with a court ordered sale as it's coming and I review the draft before they finalize it and get the central district court to sign off on it. And then the other one is another bankruptcy file where problems with the vesting and the ownership and they need to get the prop the property out of the trust into the bankruptcy trustee's name and there's problems with that because one of the parties doesn't want to sign. They had done a deed. The deed was done wrong.

15:51 The notary did it wrong. Like the notary put the wrong name. It looks like the person who was the signer, the grantor on the deed, was the notary cuz she put the names on the wrong line. So, you know, we have to look at these type of things and see what has to be done to correct the situation and finalize. So, just off the top of my head, those are the probably the last three things I was working on before I got on the call with you. But so, I would say a large portion of my day I you know, I would probably say somewhere around half or more of my time is spent Yeah, probably around half of my time is spent dealing with court orders or reading a trust or reading through a scenario to determine, "Okay, what's going to be required here in this situation?" Now, I'm the beneficiary of your support in that you give me access to a tool I use I want to say every single day Title Pro 24/7 where people ask me about a property and I can pull up not just information about the property, but I can pull the most recent deeds in most cases. In some cases, if there's really old, it is a customer service request form and you get it through that. Yeah. But it's amazing how you've empowered me to, you know, pull those deeds, answer questions, send to my customer right away. And then that it leads to business for you. I recent case where I have three different properties that are fractional interests and another title company read the document and gave the other party kind of a favorable percentage on the on the prelim.

17:20 And when I sent to you came back and said, "No, we would deed it as cuz there's several uninsured deeds after the most recent insured deed." And that is a long description of this problem. But at the end of the day, you gave back an answer that said, "Okay, well, that will be adjudicated in court basically." What you were really saying to me was you're going to take all this stuff, give it to a judge, and they're going to tell you what the answer is. Whereas the other party is trying to prejudge it based on title company being inaccurate and being maybe over aggressive. And so, that's where, you know, you come in with real value cuz I sent you these deeds and you went through them and came back with an answer that I can then forward to attorneys. And people Attorneys always say, "Well, I'd be glad to have called Kevin directly." No, don't do that cuz then you won't need me anymore. But the reality is that's the service you provide. You really help dig through these in detail and say, "Here's what title company will do or not." So, talk a little bit about it's not just I think what I'm trying to ask is or to confirm, different title companies will look at the same thing and come to different conclusions. That's correct. And I nothing against any other title company or anyone else looking at something, but I do see a lot of scenarios that one title company may look at it and have a certain opinion and we might have a different opinion. And look, I'll tell you this, too. The reason I'm a title rep, there's countless title reps in California that do what I do. Other states, they do different things than what we do here in California. But there's countless other ones in California.

18:50 One of the things that I do differently, like when I go on vacation, the person who will back me up is a very experienced, very successful, top producer at our company. But he'll say, "Man, the stuff that you do I like I don't even I don't even come close to doing that. Like I don't know I don't do half of the stuff you do." And the reason I do it is because, you know, the there's that saying, "The devil is in the details." The details can be so intricate and you can change one or two words on a document and that changes the entire meaning of the document. So, I have to dig in and get involved in those things. And one of the in the defense of the way a title company is formed, you have a title unit. And for a one title officer title unit with maybe two assistants, they're probably opening 350 files every month. There's not a There's not a lot of time in a day to that the hours that I spent today going over these files that I've just been talking about, the a title officer doesn't have the time to do all that. And sometimes these are, you know, sometimes you're reading old documents so they're hard to read. Sometimes, you know, I read 36 pages of deeds on this one just to figure out who is the owner and how do they own, you know, and so sometimes the time for a title officer to do that, they don't have a lot of time to do it and they end up, you know, going too quick or missing a certain detail or something. That's why I took it on myself years ago to say, you know what, I'm Before I go to the title officer or their boss, the chief advisory title officer who has to sign off on something. Before I go to that person, I want to know what the answer is. That way all they have to do is validate what I what I what I already read and what I already know.

20:30 So that sometimes is the reason. You know, another thing another I'll give you another reason cuz I've had this happen within my own company where the title officer takes the file to management and then I take it and get a different answer. Right. I understand underwriting. I was a I worked at a bank when I got out of college. So when I was 23, I was given underwriting authority. Like if you came in and wanted a $5,000 loan, I could just sign my name on it and you get the loan. Of course as a bank manager, you don't ever do that, but I had that power. The reason I had that power is cuz I had been trained I'm sorry, I said 23, I was 24. I'd been trained on underwriting and how to underwrite risk. Right. It's Underwriting is a transferable skill. It's different in title insurance than it is in lending, but it's a lot of the same core concepts. And so because of that, I understand how to underwrite the risk and how to look at What are the risks here? What are the challenges? What are the problems? So when I go to our underwriter or our chief advisory title officer, I understand how to say, "Yeah, here's the risk, but here's what we have that covers that risk." Or here's the problem. Here's where we don't have the round peg or the Here's where we have a round peg for this square hole, but here's how we make it fit. And that's really crucial. It's got to the point where I love the team that I work with the title officer I work with because there's a couple of them that will be like, "You know what? Let me call Kevin because I know he knows his file and let me call him before I give the answer to escrow that's asking me when you would expect the title officer to give that answer, but he knows a lot of times I've read more of the documents, I've read the court case or I've talked with the attorney involved or whatever background work that I've done to get more information than he may have at that time. And so it ends up It ends up working out well, but that can be why too is sometimes all of the information or the right information is not provided to get an answer. And that's, you know, these are just things that I've noticed over time that help me do what I do and help me be successful at what I'm working on. And this is the resource you are to me in my business and to other agents. You know, I had a

22:32 Case where I just seen in the past and he had a relationship with a title He was a commercial property manager and investor. And he had a He had a close personal relationship with a probably one of the most successful title reps in Los Angeles. I mean, the guy does huge buildings, huge businesses, huge portfolios. I called him. And it actually turns out he knows my brother-in-law who's a industrial a REIT president. And I said, "Look, I know you're great. I know you do big business. I'm, you know, I'm the little the little mouse in the jungle and you're the elephant. I get that. But my cases need work." And I said, "I'm going to send it to you, but, you know, it needs to be worked through. It's not just, you know, I'm going to open an order and you're going to close it." And we had this case. It was It was a It was interesting. It was a probate, but in It was title was held by a LLC. And it turns out very obscurely known fact that the LLC can sell the property. It's just you can't sell the shares of the LLC cuz they're owned by the estate. So we didn't need probate because it wasn't going through probate. And we didn't want to go through probate cuz it would just complicate the process. And the But this title rep, unlike you, even though I emailed him and his assistant several times as we're having problems, never replied. So you know, with my customer, they had unfortunately they picked another title company cuz they had a relationship.

23:52 And so we But I walked through that title company and they agreed with us and said, "Yeah, we'll insure that." They sent me the prelim. "We'll do that." The first guy called me back really upset and he wanted to have a conference call with me and his team. He said, "Why is it you didn't close with us?" And I said, "Well, here's the reasoning." He said, "Well, that company is wrong for insuring it." I said, "Well, I don't really care. My job is to get it insured, number one. Number two, I'm not fooling the insurance company. I give them all the facts. They're big boys, you know, they put their pants on too. And that was their decision. And my job is to service my customer." And so my The point about that is to say is I go to you ahead of time to get these things resolved. Most title reps, they're just going to glad-hand you or they're just going to email to the title officer. And the title officer is very busy cuz yeah, looks good to me or this is the answer. But that may not be the answer when you're ready to close. And that's where everybody gets egg on their face. And with you really kind of pre-underwritten it. So if I have a lot of work to do before we close, I can start on it day one. And I have time to get it done. And to anybody listening who's trying to build their business, whether you're an attorney or a real estate agent, that's why Kevin is such a valuable resource. It's hard to explain. It's not easy. It's not sexy. I don't think he gives out websites or free leads or I don't know, Dodger tickets. I don't need any of that stuff. I can buy all that on my own. But when I have a deal, if I want to know if it's going to go through or not, I can go work with Kevin ahead of time and know it's going to go through. That's the value of the relationship that you have with your attorneys and that you have with real estate agents and your lenders like me.

25:15 Yeah. So still though at the end of the day, I mean, you have a great business. You have to do some business development. You mentioned you do speaking events at What is Do you actively reach out to get invited? I know I saw you give CLE classes to attorneys in the old days at the courthouse. They were packed. Yeah. People loved those CLE classes, not just for the CLE, but for the continuing legal education or licensing education, but also because the information given was so good. Do you still do those? Are Is there demand for that kind of I do still do those and I actually love to do those type of classes. So There are a few bar associations that consistently reach out to me and they're like, "Hey Kevin, you know, you came last year, can you come again this year?" And they'll do that. And then there's a lot of one-offs where maybe I do the San Fernando group and one of the attorneys there is also in the Los Angeles one and so they'll invite me. So it kind of spreads that way a little bit. But I love doing those educational events and workshops. And part of the reason So what I do to build my content is throughout the year I capture different cases and different scenarios. And if I see something that Maybe there was a mistake made by someone or maybe there's an error in the chain or anything else that may be common or that I see regularly or that could easily be made by any person in any situation, I'll put a note and I'll add that to my presentation file for the next year. So each year I'm giving like, "Hey, these were the common things that happened in the last year." And I love to do that because you know, the first time I did it, Bill, I was so nervous doing the pre- This was literally like 2010 or something like that. I was so nervous cuz I'm thinking, "These are They're attorneys. They're going to know all this stuff. It's like I'm going to be talking It's like I'm going to be giving kindergarten problems to a person with a doctorate. I'm like, "They're going to laugh me out of there." And literally like 2 minutes into it, they're sitting there with like with their eyes wide open like jaws dropped. They're like, "Oh, really?" And I And I realized right there during, you know, again, more than 15 years ago, I realized, "Oh, this information is not common for everyone out there. The

27:18 Attorneys don't learn this stuff in law school. No. And then in practice and everyone doesn't, you know, teach it. So long story short is I started realizing, "Okay, there's a lot of things that they don't understand how, you know, what they're doing is correct from a legal aspect, but when it comes to the documents being reviewed by the tax assessor, by the county recorder's office, by a title company, there could be some challenges." And I said, "Okay, so I'm kind of bridging that gap to help them make things easier." And I love doing it and it actually makes my job easier cuz down the road I've had attorneys come to me and say, "Hey Kevin, I remembered what you trained in that class and so I did this." And I'm like, "Yep, works beautifully. It's all set up. You wrapped it up and tied it with a bow." So I really love doing that and you know, I every opportunity I have to do that, I take advantage of it. I've even had some larger firms that have invited me in to do a training for their group of attorneys and paralegals. I've done a couple of those this year. I'm even going to have a conference call later this week with another group of people in that are trust and estate like fiduciary type of folks. And to do training for them. I love doing it because the more they know about it, the more they know that I can teach them that helps us on the title side, Yeah. The easier the deals are when they come in. Yeah, I having been in court with a roomful of attorneys A big room, like the big room at LA County Courthouse.

28:40 I saw the best attorneys were there with their eyes open, taking notes, paying attention. And I think the answer is because, you know, great attorneys will be great on a lot of areas. They might be great on litigation and hearings and notices and pleadings and this and that. But you're really speaking of a particular funnel or a particular piece of that pie, going really deep. And the great attorneys want to be great on those pieces. And there's no place else to get that information. You the case the classes I saw you were like going through prelims and pointing out problems or orders and showing problems why they get declined and what can be done to fix them. It was phenomenal. And I know I learned a lot and I would go again if you ever offered it again. So Can I tell you a funny story about the last workshop I did live in room 100 there at the courthouse in courtroom 100 there it was called. So I sprained my ankle that morning at the gym. I was running just like an old man thing. I wasn't doing anything crazy. I was running and turned around and rolled my ankle. And you know, you're in you're in a workout and adrenaline and all that, you don't really feel it that much. So I get over there, I'm doing this presentation. And while I'm talking and doing this presentation, my ankle is literally swelling and throbbing and like getting worse and worse. So, I was I was horrible. So, I kind of half limped out of the room and because I was going to be down at the courthouse, I had a meeting with someone at the Starbucks behind the courthouse there afterwards. After that meeting, I couldn't walk back to my car. Wow. The person I met with actually goes and gets you know those little scooters that are on the street. He gets a scooter so that I can ride the scooter around to my car.

30:14 I was dying and so I always remember that presentation cuz I remember it was pre-COVID. I remember sitting in there, you know, talking and I'm staying at the front of the room. I couldn't walk, you know, I like to walk when I present. I think that one I stayed right behind the podium partly because that's the way the room was arranged but partly because my ankle was throbbing and killing me. So, it's just a just a funny story that I remember thinking I just got to get through this presentation and I'll be okay, you know. I must have been there cuz you did it you only did it like once a year for a couple years before COVID. I would be there cuz I would learn. I and I and I knew you and wanted to see you do well but more importantly I would learn a lot. And also put me in a room full of probate attorneys. I mean that was those are people trying to get in front of. So, phenomenal. And I think that speaks to really, you know, you've always encouraged me to learn the process and learn the business and make that my You've never asked me about my marketing. Yeah, I have a podcast but really my podcast is really just the form I use Full disclosure. I do this cuz I need to learn. I have you on this not to broadcast. We'll get a thousand people to watch this which is great. But I learn through our conversation. I'm just recording it to get some extra value out of it that justifies my time. But the reality is if I'm not going to learn from somebody, I'm not going to have them on the podcast cuz I my time's too valuable and people watch my particular podcast. We're into a pretty deep most people have dropped off by now. But most people watching my content is cuz they want to learn about the process. And I think that's what you've really focused on and I know there are other people who focus on being the experts but they don't really learn the material like that.

31:46 So, let's talk a little bit real quick. Two things. One is you mentioned before we started ex parte Heggstad petition. Now, anybody who watches this, if you learn the term Heggstad, commonly people say, "Well, it's only Heggstad petition, right?" They created a trust. They forgot to put the property in the trust. And there is a court case called Heggstad where which allows the judges to with proper petitions take property and it wasn't in the trust but it should have been. So, they put it in the trust. Yeah. In practice, you follow to get the Heggstad petition hearing. It's a in LA County today it's 6 months out. So, it's not so simple and you hire attorney it can be expensive. But if you're in a hurry, you mentioned that there's Heggstad petitions being done via ex parte which means like within a couple days in other counties? Yeah, so it's funny cuz I attorney that I work with is doing it and then maybe a month after I found out that he was doing it, another law firm contacted our company our title company and came and did a presentation talking about they do it as well. So, essentially there are counties in Northern California that they will hear a Heggstad petition on an ex parte. So, essentially you file ex parte it means you're in court, you know, within it's like about a five or six day process something like that. You can talk to attorney. Five or seven day process to actually get into court. But they'll hear the matter on that five or seven ex parte and that means you're like a week and a half, two weeks, maybe three weeks away from having an order putting the property in the trust rather than waiting like you said in LA County whatever six four six months before you have the hearing and then a couple weeks after that for the signed order. So, that's pretty amazing.

33:27 It's a couple of counties in Northern California that do it. I've had a few I think three scenarios or so in the last few months where they did take advantage of doing that. So, it's pretty cool. The one of the attorneys that I know is in has an office in Southern California and also has an office in that county in Northern California and that's what allows them to do that is because they administer trusts out of that office. So, it's really cool stuff when you have you know, when you have a situation where everybody thought the property is in the trust property is always in the trust. Maybe they took it out to do a refinance or maybe they just never recorded the deed. They thought they had and never recorded the deed. It's a good way to get out of that problem when you're in that situation. I can't hear you, Bill. I think it's on mute. Yeah, I'm sorry. And if you can do it quicker than the other than the other attorney or you can do it quicker than the other real estate agent, that's a big advantage. So, knowing that as a possibility is phenomenal. The other thing I wanted to make sure I asked you about was there's this new form that came out last year, the petition to determine succession to primary residence. And this is a case where it's a limited I think to $750,000 property. It has to be a personal residence but it's more of a shorter term probate process. It side steps some of that. Have you done any Have you been able to insure title on sales of any of those properties yet? I have not insured one on that yet. You know, it's funny because

34:52 Surprised because it's a it's not a very determined process. I don't know how a title company would feel comfortable with doing those. It Yeah, it's funny cuz I first heard about this I think I want to say September of last year. Maybe a little earlier than September of last year. I heard about it earlier than September but I think it would I knew it was for sure and it was signed by the governor or whatever or whatever went through for approval in September of last year. And I just kept waiting for our the title industry to have their overlays. Like, "Yeah, we'll do it but we have to have this and we have to have that." And I didn't hear any and then you know, our attorneys our statewide counsels and stuff hadn't really reviewed it or hadn't really put anything forward on it yet. Time went on. I kept asking and basically we didn't have any overlays. So, what that law took effect for people that died as of I think it Don't quote me on it. I think it's April 1st of this year. April 1st, 2025. So, it's only people put that then or later. Yeah. Primary residence. $750,000 Yeah. I'm just anxious to see if that becomes a thing or not because I the way the process works, there's all kinds of opportunities for fraud that I see. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And so, the April 1st time period but then you have they have like for certain things you have to file after 6 months. So, I'm thinking, "Okay, April 1st." I'm thinking October 2nd we're going to start seeing these being filed and they're going to be knocking at you know, they're going to be waiting to knock on our door and it hasn't happened that way. So, Yeah. I've had a couple people that were talking about it. I have an attorney that about 2 weeks ago told me he has one but I haven't seen anything on it. It hasn't come across my desk yet. So, I think they're going to start coming but you know, there's it's funny. So, in one of the presentations that I did with the I think it's called the San Fernando Valley Estate Planning Council. Don't quote me on the name but it was it was an estate planning council a small group though. One of the presentations that I did, we talked about that and in the discussion there came out a lot of reasons not to do it.

36:45 For instance, one example would be heirs. If you if there's a lot of heirs that are fighting and that sort of thing, that would be a reason. I'm not an attorney. You know, you can talk to an attorney about it but that would be a reason I think an attorney is going to say, "You know what? We're not going to use that documentation to transfer this property to the family. We're going to do an actual probate case instead." So, we ended up I think I think I came up with five or six different reason not to use that process. But if you have a situation I had a call today. It's an only child. I don't know if it was the person's primary residence or not they died. But only there's only one child only one heir that's going to get everything and the situation and if they're going to keep the property and stuff like that in a situation like that, then I could see it might be the best way to go. So, it really depends on the circumstances of the family. It's there for those folks who don't have the money to do a probate but time timing wise, I don't think it's going to get you to a sale faster than a regular filed probate, you know, 45 to 60 days to get a an administrator or executor appointed. I don't think it's going to be faster than that in my opinion. Well, I'm anxious if you tell customers you've done a couple of them. I'd love to interview one and find out what the reality is cuz it sounded when it was the law was passed it sounded great but you went through the details and realized you know, it's going to be limited in scope. So, When I get one I'll come back to you. I'll let you know cuz like I said, literally this month earlier this month an attorney told me that they had one of those that was going to be coming. So, if I if I see that soon I'll come back on your show. How about that if you'll have me? I would love to have you any time. Any time you want to come back on. Kevin Sayles, you are a wealth of knowledge. You're why I do this podcast. I love talking to you and it's funny. We're both busy and I circle back, you know, and think about you all the time and I would love to have you on more often.

38:23 So, we'll just have to I'll have to be a little more proactive on that. But that all said, if you want more Kevin Sayles in your business, Kevin's actually let me put the actual link there is Kevin Sayles.LATC for Title Insurance Company. LA Lawyers Title Insurance Company.com. And there's his phone number and email address. And of course, if you need help reaching out to him, he's a fantastic resource. I think every attorney and every real estate agent who's going to be serious about this business will be well served have a relationship with Kevin. Kevin, thank you so much for my business. Thank you for educating people on our podcast today. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. And for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week. Usually interview attorneys but often vendors. In this case, I think a wealth of knowledge for any attorney as well as real estate agent on how to be more effective in your business. If I can help in any way, reach out at Bill Gross Probate. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.