Trusts, Special Needs Planning and Capacity, with Attorney Elijah Keyes

0:01 How to share business I'm Bill gr I'm a real estate broker based Los Angeles California I also have a team nationally of real estate professionals across country I'm always looking for more people in different markets where we work with National Vendors and have referrals we distribute out and also have inbound referrals that we Service as well now just kind of little housekeeping this podcast we've been doing this for about five years now we got through different iterations we're actually making a big change starting next week we're no longer going to be live on Zoom but we're going be doing using live streaming streamyard to multiple platforms at once and so you'll be able to when it's live put comments in I'll be able to watch them but we won't have the video side just because it seems like less people are doing that at any time slot and more people watch it you know off time and put comments in as well as it gives us a chance to get more guests and varied guests and guests across the country rather than those where this time's not work so that's something to watch for hopefully be even more convenient for you and we live stream this to YouTube Facebook LinkedIn X Rumble twitch any place else I can find it for free and I wanted to kind of you know with the Fairly you know launch of the New Year wanted to kind of cover new a few things here actually we're waiting on our guest I know he's working his way in here so I thought I just kind of cover what the purpose of this podcast is for those you in the business to how this should help you build your business and so I want to share a couple principles that I built this podcast on number one is the key of success in business is not finding the right partner is being the right partner and I think too much when I talk to people about probate real estate and they say well I want to build a business like you Bill how do I do it in their mind the solution sounds like buying some sort of list of data and there are such companies across the country and then a cold calling or cold texting or cold voicemail or cold emailing or mailing those people and they percentage of them

2:06 Coming back to them and I will say that you know there people do that and in some areas that works particularly smaller markets it's not so effective in large markets like Los Angeles where I'm at but I don't think it really creates a long-term business I think that if your business is based on I used to be a Mike Ferry agent three hours a day of coold calling well how do you ever get out of that business how do you know business the goal is to build it and exit sell it turn over somebody and collect Revenue how do you ever get out of that it doesn't it doesn't grow and so my Approach has always been to try to build referral partners and to leverage relationships to get more business that way and have people calling me and the other big advantage of that is that I get people who call me who are looking to do business with me rather than me trying to sell them on how good I am it just changes the whole dynamic and as a real estate agent I found that when I coold call I would have consumers who maybe sold one house in 5 years tell me what they that they knew they're right and I was wrong versus today I'll tell people hey if you think you know more than me then go find another agent that's fine no hard feelings I'm entitled of my opinion I'm a professional I'm not going to change my opinion because we disagree but I respect your right to disagree and good luck and often they those people call me back and say hey I talk to these other agents and you're right there's more to it and you seem to understand it and I want customers who want me because I'm the expert and that changes how business is done during the course of the transaction and so that's the basis of the relationship is being the right partner rather than finding the right leads or the right prospects number one number two obviously there's a difference between if what's your strength what's the value proposition that you create for people and again as micery agent my strength was I was a great coal caller I was a great sales person a great closer but that's not necessarily the key that makes me a great real estate agent or a great Pro real estate agent to my clients versus being an expert is viable people want to work with me because my expertise they basically want to hire my

4:09 Expertise and so I think that the opportunity you have is to make that choice and if you decide to make the decision like me to really work on your knowledge and to be an expert for customers then you have the opportunity to be an expert and get business from people who want to do business with you the same way and then the last thing I want to say is it's a constant effort that real estate is a business that I think like any business development is requires some constant effort to grow your business and that's why I do this podcast I do it weekly we're actually launching a couple new podcasts I'm launching estate planning weekly stay tuned for details on that we're launching Reverse Mortgage Podcast because those areas overlap some of the same people at our niches that we do business in so that's kind of the principles of one of the things along the way I've met some great attorneys and one that I've met had a great conversation with them my a few months ago and we talked a couple times in a video and he agreed to be a guest here on my podcast today is Elijah Keys Elijah is Keys Law Group PC he's the founding partner and Elijah thanks for joining us I really appreciate you your time thanks so much sorry for sorry for being a little bit late we had staffing issues at the firm and I realized now that my hair is ridiculous so I'm glad that it's live yeah this is good I hope I hope so many people aren't watching it live and if they are my apologies well as far as the staffing issues look for what I'm paying you I'll just get a discount on my fee from you and as absolutely yeah and as far as you hear I'm not complaining about anybody's hair okay I'm just glad to have what I have and I'm not here to make any judgments so we'll let that comment pass as well so I'm my services today are free so you know just you get what you pay for oh yeah exactly that's the value that it is so you know I think that for the people are listening which is primarily more Realtors® professionals and some attorne across the country understanding that there's different attorneys that

6:11 Focus in different areas some just do estate planning some just do administration of trust or probate some just do litigation explain where and I notice looking at your website you also go into fairly deep estate planning issues like Special Needs Trust and some other ones we'll talk about a little bit how would you describe your focus as far as your firm on kind of spectrum of things covered in Probate and Trust real estate sure thanks so first of all thanks for having me today really appreciate that you have a great podcast and I'm glad to be a guest so about my firm's offerings a lot of people say that they do estate planning estate planning basically means that someone plans ahead for an in between process between someone's death and another person's ownership okay it's really what it means you're planning ahead for one person when they can't control it for another person to control it and there's a transition period and that transition period is very complicated and difficult that's why estate planners are here okay but the tools that we use for estate planning are the same for people who have $50 million or for people that have a disabled child there are additional tools that I use for those two segments but the basic tools for everyone are the same so what my firm does is we have kind of unique position we do a crossover we focus on a crossover between two different types of people number one are individuals who are protecting someone else someone who has an elderly parent or a disabled child so that's number one number two is that we focus on individuals sometimes not everybody but we can help people who have a certain amount of assets that mean that they need more assistance that generally is somewhere between 20 and $40 million so we focus on the crossover between those two people now we help people who have anywhere between about a million up to about 50 the majority of our clients is somewhere between 1 and 12 that's just where they are we help people who have more but the majority of our work is people who have maybe somewhere between five and 10 million and that's totally okay there's nothing wrong with having more there's nothing wrong with having less but our firm

8:14 Focuses on a crossover of those two issues now that means that we have to know our tools really well and so we can help basic estate planning a little bit better than someone that just does regular trusts that also means they're a little we're a little bit more expensive just because we dive deeper and then just to understand the breadth of your service some estate plan companies write the plan prepare the plan and there's any litigation step aside and refer out others also are there to litigate do you guys do litigation if there is and there is I think my experience is there always some litigation if there's a lot of money involved somebody's going to see you about it but do you handle that yourself or is that something you refer out to a different firm so at my last firm I was a partner we didn't refer out we had an internal litigation group here I've been in talks with several attorneys to be an inside litigation group historically what we've done is we have referred out the litigation portion so for example if we have five fundamental tasks that we have to take care of in the trust Administration and one of them is this litigation piece then oftentimes we bring a litigator in rather than referring out we bring the litigator in to handle that litigation piece and the rest of it we handle in house we've been in discussions about bringing people in but that's not that's not coming to fruition within the next year or so we still refer litigation if something is solely litigation and that's the concern now we send the whole case out but if something develops in our work and we're helping the client we simply brly bringly litigator in we're very happy to do that's a key distinction for those listening I've done I've interviewed probate and Trust litigators who that's all they do they don't do any planning they're do Administration they're the people that like Elijah might call when a customer calls in and says hey I just need litigation I'm suing my brother sister Aunt uncle whatever as a whole different business and requires some specialization as well but I always am encouraged when I see people say they support their own plans because there's nothing from a customer point of view nothing more disheartening than the person that you trust I haven't had it legally I had it with accounting where I had an accountant and then I got

10:16 Audited and said I don't represent you with IRS like what you did all this work I paid you upon my own what do you mean I'm on my own well you can find somebody else to offend you and I think that with estate planning same thing it's one thing to say you know we're not litigators we'll coordinate with your litigators we'll support the litigation or we'll bring them in as a contractor that's different than good luck here's a business card and let me know how works out at the end yeah I it's so frustrating I mean I have cases where we start a case we work it about halfway through and then the C and then somebody files some sort of a lawsuit in court and if I can keep on any portion of the case I will I these people these people trust me say Elijah can't you can you please help me can't you I mean they're begging us they're saying we'll pay you more and the answer is look it is as you said bill it is a different skill set there are two different fundamental types of attorneys and a lot of people don't know this they think a lawyer is a lawyer but a doctor is not a doctor you don't want to go to a podiatrist who deals with feet to deal with your nose it's they're completely different structures and so there are fundamentally in my field there are fundamentally two types there's someone who plans and there's someone who fights right and planners and Fighters are oftentimes not the same person if they are they tend to be a very small firm one to two people because they are fundamentally different skills and the reason why I save it tends to be small is that in general the best of the best of the best are going to focus they're going to hyperfocus on one or two things yes people are generally really good at one thing and they can do other stuff yes but they're not so good we hyperfocus on one type of client someone who has a taxable tax issues and who is protecting another person disability or Elder that's what we focus on everything else we're not so good at so that's really what we hyperfocus on there are attorneys out there who focus on state taxation issues regarding property taxes in Los Angeles that's all that they do but they're really good at it right so we're really good at what we do but we hyper Focus that means that we choose not to do more than what we do

12:19 Out of every client that calls we reject 75% of them wow not because we don't want to help them but because they're asking for something that we just don't do so there's a lot to unpack for those watching I just want to point out one is and it's my experience too that the attorneys who do litigation only and are great litigators are a whole different personality style oh yeah Elijah does not come across as that guy the ones that do come across as tough and hard and they can smile and they can be nice but those litigators they are tough as Nails that's the nature of litigation they have to have very strong I think emotions keep them in check and such and second talk about the hyperfocus and for everybody on this call I think is RO State agents our biggest mistake is we want to tell people I do everything I work with first-time home buyers investors multi family industrial I sell the Golden Gate Bridge versus the more narrow you are the more expertise you have I think the more value you can bring to your customers yeah it also is easier from a marketing standpoint right I mean if I say I do estate planning you're going to think of 10,000 estate planners right there's a lot of estate planners Out There Our firm as you know is one of the top 1% of the state but why is that right because when I advertise when we do marketing we focus on a very narrow segment so that when someone comes in maybe they have 20 issues that they're dealing maybe they have 20 problems but the one problem that focused on today is this one problem regarding capacity of a parent my mother needs an estate plan but all the other planners say she has demension they won't help her can you help her great I need an estate plan too great my father passed away we need to administer his plan great we're selling this house great they have a thousand issues but the one issue that they're focused on here and so if you're if you're if you're a Realtor® and you're looking for issues there's just a there's a marketing there's a fantastic marketing book that I've read twice now called Blue Ocean strategy yes and it just says do what everybody else is not doing so my firm does what everybody else is not doing we focus on the children of Aging parents who have money no one else is doing that yeah that book is fantastic Blue Ocean strategy I read

14:21 That's where I launched my probate business because I went really hyperfocus LA County Court confirmation sales and from there I took on other business that kind of appropriate but 100% so I had an article this week I came across I do a weekly podcast on real estate and article I came across on kinger they had there's so much misinformation in real estate news that I talk about all the time but I thought it was a pretty good article and I thought I' Ed the opportunity with you to kind of review they said the seven best practices for Estate Planning and I just wanted to run by you and see what you thought of these if you have comments as far as are the best practices or how would you approach them for example one of them was have backups for different roles yeah definitely yeah so when clients come in to see us we want them to follow the Trinity principle doesn't mean like a religious thing it means you need you need a representative for your health care during your life you need a representative for your Finance during your life you need a representative for your trust in the state after death and you want to choose three people one two three in order because if the first person can't do it then you're in the position of the emergency procedures for California has an emergency plan for you which involves a judge and judges aren't bad they just they need to watch it's the watching of the judge's process that's bad probate isn't bad it's just a process to transfer assets from one person to another that's all it is but it's the judges watching that causes problems so if you have backups in your documents then you don't go to probe it if you don't have backups in your documents and your documents become ineffective they no longer work which means the judge is involved and now you might as well have not written him now Elijah has to be has to be polite because he's an attorney in front of judges but I'll tell you probate court is bad it's like the DMV it's just not as service oriented as the DMV is as how I would say no it is not and the problem with probate is not the problem with the court problem with probate is that the thinking of the probate court is backwards and it needs to be backwards and this is what I mean by that when you have a bank account bill you have your own bank account you

16:23 Go to the bank you open your bank account the bank does things for you ask the bank to serve you take your money out you put your money and totally cool nobody cares right but if you're managing someone else's money the bank now has a requirement to treat you as if you're a thief yeah and the backward thinking is you don't own the money but you're controlling the money the bank doesn't serve you the bank serves the owner so the court is in the same process if you are the person in court you aren't the owner you're the person who's managing the owner's money therefore the court treats you as if you're a thief so it's almost like it's almost a completely thanless job where you have some super big brother over your shoulder telling you to do things that you don't know how to do and you did it wrong it's really frustrating second best practice in this article was communicate with your loved ones now I think that when you have a attorney obviously question is who does the communication is it the administrator or is it the attorney but from where I sit the lack of communication always comes back with increased litigation or stress or pain of some sort and you can solve so many problems with one extra phone call what are your thoughts as far as communication with the other I think I think most litigation comes because of unmet expectations most arguments most divorces happen because people resent each other and why do they resent each other because they don't feel that they're receiving what they expect right so I expect something from you expect something from me if we don't have an understanding of what we expect then there's a disconnect and now there's fighting in legal in law means Court it means litigation and so if parents tell their children what to expect then there's no unmet expectations and the children can either disagree with their parents but there's no way that child thinks I deserve this therefore I should sue there might be a situation where they say I don't like what Mom said therefore I'm going to disagree that's different that's different from saying I feel entitled therefore I sue so yeah I agree with that there are two different ways to do that family members parents can speak to

18:25 Their children because I speak to people I've known them for maybe two months they've known their children for 20 30 40 50 years maybe the parents should talk to the kids second way to do that is that I can invite the families to a training so for example in about a week and a half I'm holding a training I've rented out the community center in my city I'm hosting probably about 200 former clients and their family members I'm going to teach the family members what it means to be a trustee we do this every year we're going to start increasing it to do it every two months I teach my clients what is a trustee what do you need to do what need to know where do you need to look and so I just do trainings I teach them that's a second way to teach people what to do that's the difference between a really good firm and a kind of mediocre firm the mediocre firm says here's your documents go away the good firm says how can I add value how can I make your life better that's our entire Focus how do I make your life better I never heard of that before it makes so much sense and I also feel like even if people don't go to training the fact you offer it sometimes that's the beauty of the podcast is I have you know referral Partners attorneys vendors who go well I don't even listen to the content but the fact you're out there trying to train people how to operate better means you care about your customer more than the average guy who's just waiting you know co- calling for business so on the I don't want to characterize anybody as good or bad I just that's what we do we try to improve people's lives I think it's amazing I'd love to show I know you're in Northern California I'd love to show up for some like that I think it's amazing resource for customers I encourage anybody who's your customer to I can't I can't pay for your travel but a couch if you want to stay on it I think I little past the couch thing my thing is very sweet very nice as far as the best practices the other one I don't know if this is the best practice or this is the worst practice most commonly done is don't forget to put your assets in your trust oh yeah it's a big deal yeah California has this really weird system where the judge can put stuff in your trust after you die but there's a whole bunch of limitations and it's really complicated a trust is a bucket it only governs what's in the

20:28 Bucket the thing about the that people say I have a trust I'm done no the trust is a tool Apple Computer was formed on a one-page document called Articles of Incorporation Apple Computer is one of the most valuable companies in the world how did they do that they kept putting stuff in they sold products and collected money they hired employees and provided marketing but they did it inside the company same thing with trust you have to put stuff into the trust how do you do that you fund it what do you fund it that's a whole conversation it's so but you do have to put things into your trust in each set of documents that we put out that we provide a funding instructions and we also offer a service so customers that say Hey like I don't want to do this can you do it for me sure we just charge a certain amount for each piece of property would charge a certain amount for each for each bank account happy to do it but if you do not put things in your trust then your trust is ineffective and it's an empty shell it's wasted I tell people like if you bought a safe like the world greatest steel safe and you had lights and cameras and electric things touch pads all around it and was the world's greatest sa ever made in a house to keep all your valuables safe and you install it you walk out go I'm done I got a great safe if you don't put the money in the safe or your gold or your jewelry or your guns or collectibles in the safe you have the world's greatest safe it just doesn't save your assets it just kind of sucks up space and time and money so now there have been two questions here I don't know I don't know if you want to take those or not somebody asked a legal question just you know I'm a California attorney but I'm not going to provide legal advice on podcast if you have questions call The Firm happy to set a meeting with you but we do charge for consultations most of the time second question is someone asked about our trustee training that's an off service how do you sign up for the trustee training you become our customer and then we send you an invite it is only for customers it's not for anybody else families can bring family members and we have lots of people who are coming but you can't just say hey Elijah can I just sign up no it's only for clients very nice so sorry ch no I like I like it but you're not a customer so to the point of

22:33 The legal questions you know I know that because I have a pretty big Facebook page I have a Probate Weekly about 4,000 people and I again all these people will post their legal questions and then people who you know real estate agents non attorneys will answer these legal questions and I don't now sometimes if it's a business answer like I'll say things like you know pull the Deeds s the D I'll look at it you know how you how is title held that doesn't sound right take a look at the actual document that's more business advice but when somebody starts to get illegal advice I see people answering it I think yeah no you need to find a resource and so we'll talk a little bit about for people who have you know planning issues what it to do is to go back a little bit though I think the most common thing that I get involved with is not putting real estate in the trust either in the trust or back in the trust and as you mentioned California we have a special procedure and it's commonly called a hexad petition because there's a court case called hexad that allowed the judge in certain cases the discretion to put something in the trust that was meant to be and that's a whole legal question what that means right but as real estate agents one of the services we can provide when we refer somebody to Elijah or another firm is we can get a customer permission to check did they put the real estate in the trust it's public record information and so what I try to do is pull the deed before they meet with the attorney so they can give the attorney the deed with the legal description all the information on it and then afterwards I schedule 3 days later to check and see if it was recorded or not and let tell the customer a it's been recorded congratulations you're done or B hey I noticed it's not done yet and maybe the answer is it's in process it's in the mail but the job's not done until the assets are in the trust and as real estate agents we have two opportunities to help our customers I think one is referring customers introducing our customers to Great assets like Keys Law Group and the second is they help be partners in the process and maybe follow up and make sure the work gets done and that's where I think we as sales people tend to be a little more aggressive with that and we don't want to step on the

24:35 Attorney's toes but we want to be of service to our customers I think that's important can I can I can I add just a point to that yeah just point a point of point of reference here is that the best attorneys who have done this for long time are not going to record the instrument they're going to hand it to the escro officer or the real estate agent because I don't want to cause that delay and uncertainty yeah how my office records documents as we do it electronically same thing as a title office just because it's fast and it's efficient yeah some counties don't do electronic recording I don't know why but they're very rare but in the cases where there's some sort of escro isssue most common time that I'm contacted by a Realtor® or an escro office because we need to clear title right you need to clear title youve you've listed things something on the MLS you're under contract you have promised that you have possession and title of this asset and you don't and it's a big kurur fuffle real estate agents if that's you then there was no prelim report prepared and that's a bad thing but I can fix it how do we fix it we fix it by doing Court actions by doing non-c actions by getting the asset in the trust is it overnight no it doesn't happen overnight and if you call my office 10 times you're not going to get faster service we're simply going to fire the client not because we don't like you yes but because my staff's good feeling is more important than your emergency and I want to be really clear with that I have I have a lot of people working for me and they need to be happy and you making them unhappy makes me unhappy so please just work with us don't call 10 times screaming and I've had real estate agents do that and when that happens the choice is the client the C the staff member says I'm not working for this person anymore I have too many other things to do the answer is okay we'll refer it out right yeah and I think oftentimes because we as real stents we don't know what's right or wrong we assume by bullying people we're going to get something done and it that's just not professional right we're supposed to know what we're supposed to do and I think 9% of the time when I hear agents you know yelling at me about something it's they didn't plan properly you know a buyer buying property they can do an estate plan during the escrow and they you know the truth is they can even record the document without the whole thing

26:39 Being finalized they can they go back and amend the whole trust they have to set up a Trust basically get things started and that can be done at the close of escrow so that it's insured title I think that's much better than saying to them M let just close title your name and then we'll do the state plan afterwards it's just missing the opportunity to do it right the first time but it requires pre plan and that's why I do this podcast is to encourage agents talk to customers find out while they're shopping you don't have an estate plan let's get started on that so that when you find the house you want we can buy it properly and have not just a deed in the trust but deeded with an assured transaction with tile Insurance which is going to ensure that transition was made properly so there's there actually this really cool thing that can be done if the if the legal services are done in connection with the purchase of a house and the attorney can be paid out of escra so if the house needs to be deed into a trust then the preparation of the trust can be can be put through escro as long as that as long as the bank approves that sort of transaction in the in the in the es instructions yeah for sure and again I think these are things that when you think ahead time you can do these things when it's two days for closing it's just too late and nobody wants to run through all those Hoops you know one we want to help customers and we all want to do Miracles but at the same time looking like you do a miracle because you didn't plan isn't really doing a miracle it's really just a lack of planning I think yeah clients love Miracles when you plan ahead and you do good work and then suddenly things magically happen but it's just how you if you if that's how you always do things then the customers love you and then you get so many referrals so I thought your website was particularly informative about not just your firm which is obviously the goal of the whole thing but also as a you know student to kind of learn of the different service and kind of perspectives of business and so I just want to kind of cover a couple topics you list on there one wealth planning and family transfers so as real estate agents we're all aware of the value of an estate plan as far as avoiding probate talk a bit about the value of estate planning as it

28:43 Relates to wealth planning and family transfers sure so first of all thanks for showing my website it's really nice we worked really hard on it's being redone right now but really appreciate that about wealth planning wealth planning and family transfers the thing about an estate planning attorney is that they prepare documents but the documents are intended to do one thing and that is transfer control and ownership when someone loses control so a person losing control either at death or they lose control at mental incapacity or mental you know incompetence if they're if they're they have an illness or something they can't do it anymore and so my job the only person in the entire world who protects assets passing from one person to another is either a judge or an estate planning attorney that's it that's their role so people think well it's boilerplate isn't it no what it what the documents are is documents are simply are simply tools that courts and the society recognizes as valid ways to Direct Control that's all that they are the real magic is being able to understand what tools do what and what types of actions need to be done and then designing them correctly because when you're dead no one can say what your opinion is anymore the opinion is done it's over it needs to be designed correctly that's what we do and I have to say I feel like I'm pretty sophisticated comes to finance I deal with these things all the time but when I talk to an estate planner about some of these sophisticated tools I get lost that's why I don't do it that's why use of insurance is an example there's so many different ways to use life insurance as a planning tool so also on your website just kind of scroll down a little bit you have Dynasty trust which is a ter not with what can you explain what a dynasty trust is s so Dynasty trust was designed for people who are super wealthy so the dynasty means that they're designed to keep Assets in a family for many generations without paying a lot of tax and so they were designed to operate in States like South Dakota and Texas and Alaska and

30:46 Nevada where you can hold assets for hundreds and hundreds of years in a trust California you can't do that you can only hold assets in a trust for about 100 years but the dynasty trust what it does is it says that the person who is the beneficiary the ultimate recipient of the money is not the owner of the money they have access and control but they don't have ownership so what we use n trust very often I put them in trust every single day is basically to Pro to provide a lifetime trust for pil and a cleanup and asset protection for that child at the same time so we're going to give money to the child but the child is going to be in control they'll be the trustee the manager the child will have the benefit they'll be the beneficiary they can take money but if they don't and stays in the trust they don't own it and you can't lose what you don't own so the most important thing there is I give the example all the time let's say that you give a million dollars to a child in a dynasty trust which is a lifetime trust for the benefit of that child let's name the daughter Deborah is the trustee she's the manager she's in control Deborah is the beneficiary she's the one that can take the money out but Deborah doesn't want to Debra wants to buy the house the trust buys the house Deborah gets married her husband's name is Harry husband Harry H Harry the husband Harry as long as he's nice to Deborah the daughter he gets to live in the house if he doesn't he hits the road and the money in that trust never belonged to Deborah so Harry can't take it in the divorce she cannot lose what she does not own wow it's a very powerful tool in California other states you can but in California you cannot protect your own assets people call me every day and they say Elijah can you help me protect my assets I can help you hide them I can't stop creditors from taking them but if you want protect them for your kids put them in a dynasty trust creditors cannot take them wow know that I have a dynasty trust myself my mother I set up a trust for my mother my brother I had to set up the same thing for him because although he doesn't own a business and he's not a lawyer I have to I have to be fair with him but I have a dining so that when I inherit things if someone sues my company someone sues me it's always a

32:49 Risk they can't take my inheritance I don't own it doesn't belong to me wow I've seen that and funny you see it movies sometimes they mention that they don't own any of the assets well how devious but the other hand in a litigious society like we're in today what a great tool for protecting Family Assets and keeping them in the family now there are tax benefits and tax we can talk about that later it's too complicated really what it is it's a it's a it's a prenuptual agreement for a child and an asset protection agreement for a child one of the other products that you offer is limited conservers ships I think as real you know increasingly more important there more you know more of a business or older adults and people living longer physically but have mental issues and so you have limited conservative ships can you talk a little bit about what that is and how you're involved sure limited conservative ships three types of conservative shs in California now I don't want to go too far over this but there's one for people who are severely mentally disabled like someone who has major schizophrenia and lights things on fire that type of conserv only the county can start it there's a second type of conservatorship which is for people who are like really super old and they can't take care of themselves and you need someone to take over everything that's called a probate conservers we used to do those we don't anymore because of a new law regarding Britney spars but a limited conservatorship is different it's for children who are what's called developmentally disabled development of disability means like autism or cerebral poliy or down syndrome they can learn but they learn slower and the goal of a limited conservatorship is to allow someone to become independent in the future can you become independent in the future after you have received additional training for example kid who is kid who is a typical normal kid let's take Deborah's son Sam right Deborah and Harry they have a son named Sam so Sam goes to school and Sam be when he turns 18 or 19 he goes to college and he has a regular normal life but Sam has a sister named Sarah has Down syndrome she can become

34:56 Independent in the future but she's going to become independent at 30 cuz it takes a lot more time for her to learn a limited conservatorship is appropriate for her when she's 18 cuz when she's 18 the parents can no longer take her to the dentist anymore they can't take her she can't sign documents she has Down syndrome she doesn't understand but when she goes to the doctor when she goes to the dentist she bites she's a biter they put something in her mouth she bites the dentist they won't touch her anymore how do you allow her to go to the dentist they have to give her they have to give her medicine so that she will allow them to do it they can't give her medicine so you need a court permission it's called a limited conservation they won't give her medicine because she can't give permission she can't give permission she does not have the mental understanding to give permission and she will not allow them to touch her and she hurts the medical staff when they touch her happens all the time especially people who are very sensitive to other stimuli which happens a lot with people who have de developmental disabilities happens a lot with people who have autism or down syndrome they're just very sensitive to outside noise that's why some kids with autism they hear something and they just go kind of ballistic CU for them it's like a bass drum pounding inside their heads because they're so sensitive to that one input autism and autism just means that someone has a different way that they process information and they can be very good at things but one thing that they're not so good at is filtering and so a dentist having some sort of they have a hand in the mouth and they're using this drill it they just they can't do it and you look at the statistics on autism we have so many more children than when I was young that are going to become adult Young adults and adults that this is an area becoming more and more significant so let's go back a little bit though and talk about conserva ships when somebody doesn't have capacity not because they're going to grow out of it or be able to learn out of it but because they're the opposite they're getting older and declining in memory declining in mental capacity you know I think often obviously you want to plan before that so that when that happens or if that happens God forbid you have the plan in place famously Leno really sad story

36:59 Here's a guy one of the nicest people in the world I actually saw him in a Show recently and had a chance to chat with him with all the trines he has his wife he literally had to go to the county to get a conservatorship because for medical Authority and you think well didn't somebody plan ahead and have that and the answer is no they had done planning before in the documents they had were dated so let's talk about what can be done as somebody's declining what's the a threshold it's too late and then if it's too late what are your options besides or is are there no options besides going to the county yeah hardest thing about a conservatorship is that most people think that being married is enough but it's not being married is not enough I have City bank accounts on my name if I went unconscious and I didn't have the right documents my wife couldn't access them she just can't the bank is not allowed to do that in our we use Kaiser for healthcare I know Kaiser Northern California Southern California they're different but they're related I have shared my healthy information with my wife my wife has not yet shared her health information with me that means that if we didn't have the right documents I could not make medical decisions for her she hasn't signed anything right she of course has signed because I'm the estate guy so what do you do well of course let's be clear now sometimes with the cobbler's kids don't have the right shoes I'm one of those I was guilty for years so for those of you listening just because you get the podcast doesn't mean you took care of your estate plan you tell I'm not Elijah but for the rest of us you still got to your planning so I'm sorry to cut you off but that's all right I can't tell you the number of estate planners that I know where they have no plan for what happens to their business people come in every day and they say my estate planner died or retired or something they have no plan for me there's no succession plan for the estate planner it's kind of ridiculous but anyway you in order to make sure that someone else can make decisions for you while you were living about your personal issues you need to sign two documents one is called the power of attorney for finances the other is called a power of attorney for healthcare in California we call this an advanced Healthcare directive which

39:01 Contains a power of attorney for healthcare if you open up an advanced Healthcare directive section one power of attorney for healthcare so what those documents do is they name a series of individuals one two three in my office you know choice one choice two choice three to make decisions for you but if you don't sign them then California's emergency plan for you comes into place and remember the judge the judge is the Watcher so the judge watches the person who is going to make decisions for you and it's just very burdensome they have to they have to they have to tell the judge every dollar that they spent and every major decision that they made can they move out your house no they have to ask the judge can they sell your house no they have to ask the judge can they allow someone to rent your house no they have to ask the judge can they give you an experimental medical treatment no they have to ask the judge can they can you terminate the conservatorship no you have to ask the judge so all these things just avoid the judge now your question here let's catch your question bill which is which is capacity is waning what do you do and what you want to do is you want to find an attorney who understands mental health issues a lot of attorneys don't a lot of attorneys say hey I come from a bankruptcy background I'm going to do estate planning I'm going to tell people I've been an attorney for 20 years they're going to trust me that's it well it doesn't work somebody referenced the movie I care a lot the movie is pretty misleading but it provides a very good foundation for understanding what happens when someone what happens when someone's losing capacity there's a really good movie about losing capacity called still Susan it's about a neuroscientist or a neurologist at Stanford who lost who lost who be who got ear early Al Alzheimer's but let's go back to the question I got diverted what do you do you find an attorney who understands those senior mental health issues and then is willing to meet with the customer with the patient with the client and help them sign because when if doctors say you have dementia it doesn't mean you can't sign what that means is that you have been diagnosed with a series of symptoms that categorize or similar to the symptoms of dementia and dementia being an ongoing downward medical issue a

41:07 Progressive mental medical issue they now have a prognosis which means likely outcome and they have a potential treatment plan meaning medications that might work and so from a diagnosis perspective you have dementia you have dementia forever until someone confirms that it was misdiagnosis but in the law it's not the same thing in the law you can sign a document if you can understand the nature of that document the nature of Your Action the consequences of your action and the Alternatives if you understand those four things you can sign so there have been people who come into my office who have early alet ontimer and they don't know where they are and the next day they come in and they've eaten well they had a good night's sleep and they're not stressed out and they can understand for 15 minutes and they can sign a basic document so the question is can you find someone who understands that issue well and if you can then they can sign there's times a day I know that typically the later in the day the typical dementia patient has more trouble where typically in the morning they're a little more alert maybe they get up they're physically more active and so yeah there's different part so what you're saying is the fact that somebody is incapable for a portion of the day doesn't mean that they are precluded and to me that sounds like alarms were set hey if they're if they're incapable for part of the day let's get what we can while we can to protect them otherwise it's just not going to be pretty yeah there's weird thing that happens when people are older when people when if anybody has kids and they've watched their children learn how to walk they there's certain benchmarks that the children reach first they can crawl then they can start pulling them up on furniture themselves on furniture then they can walk along the furniture then they can take two or three tottering steps and then suddenly they're sprinting across the house and you say how did that happen there were a thousand things that needed to happen in that person's mind and nervous system and body that allowed them to do each of those actions and we just have no idea what those actions are we can only observe the result we base growth we categorize growth based upon a scientific observation of people's abilities which means you can now do a certain action and we don't know what actually leads up to that when you get older the reverse occurs right my

43:11 Father-in-law can't walk on his own anymore he walks with a walker well why I don't know it's because there were a thousand things that allowed him to walk independently without a walker but he lost that ability so now he can crawl and he can pull himself on things and he can walk along things but he can't walk without the Walker well he's worked backwards same thing happens with your mind over time children learn how to read they learn how to speak they learn how to talk they learn how to write they learn how to do all these things but the thing that works backwards too so at some point the CH the parent or the Elder will lose the ability to make that decision you don't know when it occurs and here's the weird thing it works until it doesn't there's I saw a podcast the other day from a business leader and it was a fantastic statement he said that every time that a young man brings a girl home to meet his family and the family says this girl is wrong for you they are right 100% of the time until they're wrong 100% they are right 100% of the time the first eight girls that he brings home they are horrible and so from the family's perspective the boy is always wrong but finally he brings one girl home who is fantastic who has the same values who supports him who is a wonderful person and then they have been wrong from that point forward and the same thing works here as long as someone has the ability to get on the phone and tell City Bank you can talk to my wife he's fine but one day he won't be able to do that so there's this there's this there's false prophecy right where you say Hey look it's always worked therefore it didn't absolutely heartbreaking thing happened to me on December 23rd I was going on vacation December 24th I was leaving I was out of town December 23rd 12m someone calls and says I have APS adult protection services investigating me I don't want this anymore my son's willing to help can you assist and I saides this is dangerous you need to do this and I just gave a list of things that they need to do and they said they've investigated twice it's never been a big deal we're not going to do this we're going to wait until you get back full I got back on December on January 4th January 3rd the

45:14 County filed and got a conservatorship they were right until they were wrong everything works until it doesn't everything works until it doesn't so my only recommendation is don't think that things will always be the same because there's only two three constants in life only three number one things will change number two you'll pay taxes number three you'll die yeah my office deals with all three of those things just goes call Nice yeah the thing I always feel like saying is it's never a problem until it's a problem then it's a problem right and when it when it becomes a problem then the problem goes 10 to 20 times more expensive and I can't change satisfy the Watcher is just so expensive it just is yeah there you go K continue down your website again I just I just want to you know say I think it's a great resource for anybody want to learn more about the breath of Estate Planning and the issues of all Special Needs Trust is one that I get involved with I a I have a friend here locally who's really one of the experts in Southern California on Special Needs Trust a shout out to Terry Maggy and he's one of those people got involved because he had to scratches on the it he had a daughter that needed special needs and as a result he's really become a Pioneer in this field and they built a huge beautiful project for living and first floor is on paa Boulevard is retail and really exciting anyhow talk about Special Needs Trust how do you take care of you know from where I said sounds very expensive sounds very complicated obviously you have an attorney to help take away the complication but what's the process like so there's one thing that people need to know I was a former Professor I taught for a long time and so when I explain something I try to explain it in a way that's easily understood that doesn't mean that it's easy okay so Special Needs Trust is a trust just like any other trust you might create except that it's created only for someone who's disabled so why do you create a Special Needs Trust if someone needs government benefits medical or Medicaid in other states SSI meaning supplemental security income other governmental benefits a lot of those benefits have monetary limitations if I have too much money the government either limits my benefits or

47:17 Charges me money special needs trust is a barrier provides a barrier between the money and the person who needs it and if the money is held in the Special Needs Trust then the person who needs it isn't seen as the owner that's it that's all it is there's a lot of restrictions a lot of requirements but Special Needs Trust you're thinking government benefits disabled person money isn't owned that's all it is those are the those are the three things I think oftentimes people put down they say well special needs trusts are something that wealthy people do to get benefits intended for poor people the rally is wealthy people pay all the taxes and so all they're really doing is using a system to help leverage the tax benefits of their children in this case adult children are entitled to and so it's a way to provide some additional money for them to have a different quality of life as long in addition to the government benefits they're entitled to so it's a part of planning Sim there were two questions I don't want to cut you off too long can I answer those two questions here simp can a parent appoint one of their children as a conservator yes but you can't appoint when you need a conservator because you're out of it so you have to appoint beforehand you need a document called nomination you can't appoint you can nominate the judge is in control the judge is watching so you can choose but you can't select so you can choose a child as conservator we do it every day and second does a dynasty trust for a child need to be set up before they get married or can it be set up after they get married will it have the same benefit same benefits before or after exactly the same no difference nice so and then just to kind of continue down your website again when a topic that we've talked about in the past this podcast kind of briefly is medical benefits and planning now that's obviously a California issue Medical California is Medicaid nationally but it's branded in California of course as medic House State program from federal funds talk a little bit about how people plan to be able to leverage again those public Assets Now medical planning we used to do it a lot and now we don't do it that much because medical benefits have changed everybody in the state from Elon Musk down to the

49:21 Very he left I know but he's in Texas yeah he left yeah he's in Texas now but any anybody who lives in California is eligible for Medi-Cal which is Medicaid's free version of healthcare the question is no longer whether you're eligible the question is how much do you have to pay so if you earn income the Medi-Cal says that you can afford some of your benefits sometimes you are required to pay every single one of your health expenses and Medi-Cal will cover nothing so my job oftentimes is to use the tools that I have to allow us to control assets in a different way so that income is not owned by the person who needs the benefits that's it so my job is to move income between people he might say that's easy why don't they just get the money and give it away uhuh it doesn't work that way a gift doesn't move income a gift moves money income is who earns it if the ill person owns the money earned the money then the ill person owes the money to Med account but if the ill person didn't earn the money if someone else earned the money through some transaction control whatever it was then the ill person doesn't actually have to spend the money on medic account we do it all the time it's much more rare we used to do it probably two or three times a week now I might do it twice a month it's rare now all these different areas are really I think you know I guess I'd like to have you kind of give us come a wrap up in all of them but to me they look like different tools in the toolbox that a different customer may need one or two or three or all five or six of these tools depending on their particular situation is that kind of how to look at these are different pieces of the puzzle that's exactly right so what we have done is we've identified our Avatar so that's a marketing term right Avatar is our Avatar is someone who's between the ages of 55 and 75 who wants to protect other people either children or parents that's our Avatar they are generally married not always they generally have real estate not always but they're very concerned about a number of things and this is who we target those individuals have these specific needs so if those people had other needs that were similar to this then we'd add them in there are attorneys who specialize in as I said tax transactions based upon County re

51:27 Assessment we don't do that's not a concern of our Avatar there are attorneys who deal with sales and purchases of airplanes there's airplane law out of Oklahoma do we do that no our Avatar doesn't own airplanes I have had clients who own airplanes therefore I can do it but I'm not very good at so we don't focus on and so again this is the power of having a kind a comprehensive plan and attorney who both you know has a few tools in the toolbox but also knows the limits and brings other people in my guess is if you had your right Avatar and they happen to own an airplane you would probably consult with that attorney for that piece of the plan absolutely what I would do is that I would prepare the revocable trust I would prepare the entire estate plan I would prepare whatever tools that we need to do and then I would call the airplane lawyers and I would say hey I prepared a basic estate plan do you want to fit something in or do you want to prepare your own thing they would probably want to prepare their own thing because air an airplane is valuable enough to want to control it somewhere else so those lawyers would work on the airplane I would work on everything else is completely fine to have two people work on two different things related to the same person same thing that if someone owns a piece of commercial real estate and a person a piece of residential real estate need two different Realtors® totally fine it doesn't mean that one is less important doesn't mean that one is more important it just means that they do different jobs I like airpl an airplane trust that's a lot of fun I need to find the guy who does that inter I haven't had a customer who owns an airplane so if I would love to how else do you do that find the attorney that does those so we'll see you know it's interesting airplanes are interesting also I also have a lot of clients who have firearms so we do gun TR for example a lot of our clients who have firearms aren't necessarily in our area we're in the San Francisco Bay area that tends to be very liberal most of our clients who have guns are in kind of outlying areas very happy to do a gun trust why do you do a gun trust because the inheritance rules are different and the way that you transfer is different and the way you put things into a trust is different and the way you transfer guns is different the way you transfer them to Children is different the way you transfer them to non-child is different it's just different requirements so we create a separate trust for the firearms because there's separate requirements for distribution we just don't want the truste get in trouble and those rules change so much I

53:30 I both have firearms and I've been involved with as a as a fiduciary U I'm not licensed so I can do up to two a year at a time or two at a time but I've done them and also helped a States that had guns and often times there family members who know well Dad passed and there's four guns and I don't want to touch them I'm scared of them which I understand if you don't know how to handle it don't call somebody who does and I'm comfortable coming in and removing the ammunition making sure it's safe and then what do you do with it you know and there's different options and if it's you know you donate it to the local police or you know just get rid of it do you sell it because if there's an economic value you have an obligation at least to investigate and those are all very special people who deal with that and they the paperwork with as well let me let me let me tack on two points to that and that is if someone's a trustee almost every single trust allows them if it doesn't have it's not a very good trust but almost every single trust that I write has the authority of the trustee to hire someone special to do something that they're not comfortable doing so you could hire Bill you could hire me you could hire a different trustee you could hire whoever you want as long as they know what guns are that's number one and number two with guns if you're not comfortable with them and you don't want them just have the police pick them up and they'll decommission them they will they'll melt them down or they'll sell them at auction or whatever it is it's fine yeah I do find that again if there's an economic value there's always a question are you obligated to try to sell it and you're not obligated to do anything that's not safe right you don't need to risk killing yourself if you don't know how to handle it but you certainly have the option to call the police and they're always glad to get guns off this particular Los Angeles they went all over G in Los Angeles that's a whole another political discussion they're fun tools I have them myself but it's just a question of you know whenever you have a dangerous tool you have to treat it especially right you need to be careful so the trust that we prepare just allow people to be careful and safe nice well look Elijah I'm coming up the end of the time here I gu for your fee I don't get charged extra just kidding everybody he's been very generous with his time look I've always enjoyed talking to you for

55:33 Somebody who has an appropriate trust that fits in your or estate plan or requirements that fit kind of in your avatar what's the next step they're interested in talking to you or someone in your team about seeing for the right fit for their estate plan how would they reach out to you sure three ways you can do that first way you can go to our website where you saw the website itself and you can click on a little button at the top right it says schedule a consultation that will schedule a consultation with our intake team doesn't talk to me talks our intake Specialists number two they can call the call the phone number there 48766 7668 that gets to our specialist well if you scroll down to the very bottom there's a contact us now link that goes that sends things into an automation we have an automated Tool you fill out that information you'll start getting emails from us so that you can go ahead and check us out main thing to understand is that I'm only going to meet with you if you actually have an issue and want a solution have some questions I have hundreds of hours of video and blogs I have thousands of words on the website I have I have V social media posts I have YouTube channel I have all this stuff to give you as much information as want but if you want me to curate it and filter it specifically for you then I'm going to chargeing so that works yeah I think that's a fair statement I feel the same way I do I do this podcast and many other you know interviews and people call me want me to kind of go through their whole real estate transaction without s the house for them and it's like there's a point where I say look I do lot of information for free but there's a limit to my time and I hopefully they'll respect your time anybody from this call should obviously call they will if they have to State with some issues and looking for a plan I think you're a great resource great tool really proud to have you on the call today Al thank you so much for your time today I really appreciate it thank you thanks so much good to see you Gill thank you and for the rest of you this is Probate Weekly we get together every Thursday now we've been doing this on a live you Zoom basis and we're actually going to be stopping doing that and do doing more of a broadcast version and the reason we do that is we get more audience that way but if you have questions or comments if you're watching this on the replay as well feel fre free put your questions in and comments

57:37 I'm glad to respond to them or pass on to Elijah or the guest if appropriate you can continue the conversation on our Facebook page Probate Weekly is the name of the page and we have over 4,000 members 4,100 a couple things I would say you can post your probate related content on the website now this is mine but here's Kevin is a friend of mine he does a podcast he on trust and he puts that there's a couple other people who've done well as well glad to have you guys put any of your own content to promote your business if you want to get the reminders for this you go to Probate Weekly.com just put your email address in if you want to put your phone number in you don't need to not required but that way when we send text reminders you'll get those as well that's to register to get the reminders and then if you want to see the past episodes you can go down here on the YouTube link or on the audio versions Spotify Apple all that is there as well and again I want to thank Our Guest today Elijah keys from Keys log group and the website and the phone number will be in the description as well thank you everybody for being on the call today and if I can help I'm at Bill Gross probate or Bill Gross probate. Thanks so much everybody