What is a Professional Fiduciary? With Dawn Mills

0:02 So what is a fiduciary maybe that lives have heard about fiduciary relationships maybe you're a bank or investor but they're people who are fiduciaries that's their business and how does that work in the world of elder care and seniors and probate and trusts and such I'm really excited to have today Dawn Mills who's a professional fiduciary in the West LA Culver City area Dawn thank you so much for joining us today it's a pleasure to be here thank you very much Bill if you look backward how'd you end up being a fiduciary when you were young did you play with dolls and say someday I'm going to be a professional fiduciary it's something that I morphed into my background I have a degree in gerontology and at one point in my career I ran assisted living communities and got a good groundwork for business and at one point I learned about fiduciaries in my senior care management profession and thought you know this would be a good fit for me I would be very good at this so I sought out my the education that is required to become a licensed professional fiduciary took the test passed it the first time and established myself as a fiduciary since 2009 I've been a fiduciary and there's a lot of misunderstanding about what a fiduciary is most people just sort of go blank when I tell them I am a fiduciary sort of like the deer the headlights and a licensed professional fiduciary what they do is they manage conservatorships of the estate and the person they manage private trusts or court-supervised trusts and also conduct estate administration probates and they also do [unclear] also do power of attorney of finance and health care so we are professionals who are entrusted with the management of individuals and assets and also people's personal affairs their health care Affairs as conservator of the person or

2:06 Power of attorney for health care so it's a position that requires a lot of commitment High ethics a lot of caring and in a nutshell that's what I do so there's a term that we use as in business called having a fiduciary responsibility to your client right I think Realtors say that and people think well that doesn't mean anything because I think unfortunately we'll see you just set a contract with the seller and then turn around and set a contract with a buyer to buy the property and it seems to be inherent conflict but the world fiduciary really is that you have to act in the best interest of your client whether it be a person or an estate of conservator correct that's correct the fiduciary must have the highest of ethics and consider the client or the entity in which they're managing before themselves for example I have a trust and their the beneficiary of the trust gets a distribution each month and at one point for five years there was not enough income for me to take to take payment I knew eventually there would be but my priority was to make sure that the trust directives were followed and the beneficiary was taken care of so I actually forwent my own fees to take care of the beneficiary so and that's a standard right your job is to take care of the client even if it means more work for you or less compensation your decision making has to be work on what's best for my client yes and it's a role where there can be no self-serving for instance if you have a husband who is an attorney you really can't use your husband as your attorney to represent a matter because you're really still self-dealing ultimately you would benefit so you have to be very careful

4:09 And look at a situation and circumstances and make sure that there is no self-dealing that you are the neutral party that is putting the client first period now I know a little bit about the your preparation on the senior side when I was in college my senior year at USC they just opened the USC School of gerontology that's my school yeah I saw that in your bio and I know when I learned the word I know what it meant and I've never heard it used other than in context of USC School of gerontology so how does that play in your understanding and knowledge and you said your experience of adult living care how does that play into your business this role today of being a fiduciary for those I imagine you could be easier for any wide range of customers do you focus in on Senior Care Elder Care is that an area that you have a question I consider myself an expert in the field of Aging I studied it I have a degree in it and I've worked with the Aging population for over 30 years so that really does serve me well when I am appointed conservator on matters because I don't hire other people to manage the care of the conservatee I am hands-on evaluating the situation myself and putting the right services in myself and overseeing that person's life myself because and I know what is needed it's a role where there's a lot of creativity to come up with the right solution or whatever the issue is and it also helps me because I know how to deal with people it's a sort of a people business working with the older population and that transfers over to beneficiaries of trust or difficult family members of clients I feel I have good skills to help to work with those people I think I know a lot by aging because I'm old

6:11 That's my experience there so no you're not an attorney no I'm not I'm a professional licensed fiduciary there are also a certified care manager with the National Association of Certified Care Managers now do you see a lot of fiduciaries who are attorneys as well is that just because you regularly interact with attorneys and that knowledge then becomes more viable what's what is there a connection between the two or how do you connect those two worlds well since I'm not an attorney I can't speak to as to why an attorney would become a fiduciary so I really can't answer to that but in my world as a fiduciary I do heavily rely on my relationships with attorneys who are experts in the probate world as there are very specific [unclear] probate codes and laws that I have to abide by and I cannot be an expert in that but my lawyer the lawyers that I use certainly are experts and they help guide me to stay within the law of how I conduct my business and deal with matters So In Your Capacity as a fiduciary you hire an attorney at times [unclear] yourself in your capacity and you also will have to I guess hire attorneys on behalf of your clients whether it be a conservatorship or a probate case or those kinds of things right I have a lot of court-supervised matters and the attorney is the one that drafts the petition for whatever is happening for the hearing for the accounting for the appointment and oversees that process this very complex process that the an attorney needs to do as a real estate broker I know that we have basically two types of probate cases full and limited authority with limited authority the court has to supervise the sale every detailed process of the [unclear] any sale of property pretty much has to go through a court supervised process doesn't it yes so it's like the words like probably

8:15 It's only 10 percent have that worse process or I should say more cumbersome process in conservatorships it's almost all so describe kind of how you operate in a world that's so regularly and restricted you have you I'm sure you have times urgency is for your client you need the money for care or for moving or for something moving them out of a bad situation so you have urgency at the same time you have procedures to follow how do you kind of manage that or what's that like well there are there is such an entity known as an ex parte petition when something is urgent you have your attorney file with the court which gets you an earlier hearing date otherwise you might wait months or a matter to be heard by the court but if you're already on a matter there if you're managing things properly there shouldn't be an ex parte petition because you're evaluating that case all along and you know what's coming up and you know what the future needs are when I'm assigned to a case especially when there is a human being involved in the case I put together a step-down chart of what are the clients needs how much does it cost how many assets does this person have how long is the money going to last so I put together a plan and when I get to this point you know I know okay it's time to petition the court to sell the house so it doesn't have to be ex parte I have the prior knowing of what I need to do and if it's a private matter I have a trust currently there was about a hundred thousand dollars in the trust and there is a property and I always conduct an assessment of the property especially if there are tenants in the property to make sure that everything is safe and sound to reduce the liability to the trust and to myself and of course it always opens up a can of worms so this assessment found lots and lots of

10:18 Problems that this duplex was built in the 1930s and basically it was original everything the piping the wiring they had cloth wiring so it was a huge mess and there was no there's no money to fix the place so we sent out notice to the beneficiaries that we wanted to get a hard money loan and they had when we send out notice they are notified that they can object to that process in this particular matter the beneficiaries did not object so I was able to get a loan which just funded last week and now I'll be able to repair the property and to keep the tenants safe nice there are the two processes the petitioning the court or if it's a private matter sending out notice it seemed to me that so much of conservatorships are the result of lack of planning maybe I'm wrong but it seems that certainly in Probate almost every probate could have been avoided had somebody planned ahead on how the title property or you know the entire asset or the entire estate having a plan some sort of estate plan to avoid that and so obviously one of the ways people can avoid conservatorships would be planning ahead with an estate plan once you have a conservatee though are you able at that time to represent the conservatee and create an estate plan and then move it out of conservatorship is that part of the process or to prevent in case they pass no once you're in a conservatorship you are in a conservatorship and from the beginning I've always said it's sort of like a marriage it's still till death do us part because it's a it's a big responsibility and not one that I take lightly and for example I have one gentleman he has been at a conservatorship for 10 years and I have made his money last all of this time by seeing what a situation was seeing what his needs were and then

12:23 Stepping him down to in different situations that where the cost was less until finally he's now down and I haven't taken fees for the past year he's down to twenty thousand dollars and I'm able he's in skilled nursing and I'm able to put him on long-term Medi-Cal so he's going to be okay and I'm still his conservator so to me that's death until death do we part either me or the conservatee if there are substantial assets can a conservatee have their assets put into a trust for upon death that they avoid probate or [unclear] the regular probate process well I've well to answer that it might be not be a direct answer but as an example I have a lady who was conserved and who is my conservatee and she had some substantial assets and we had the court assign a guardian ad litem and create a trust for her something that she had not done before so that when she passes probate will be avoided and her assets will be protected there you go so it seems to me you also see I think the downside of people don't plan ahead you know I think you know failing to plan is planning to fail and I always tell people you know if you don't have an estate plan the state of California has one for you it looks a lot like the DMV it's just not that customer service oriented and I don't mean to knock the court employees or staff or judges they all seem to want to help people as best they can but the process of going through probate as a conservatorship or as a probate case after the fact is just so cumbersome that you can at all avoid that do you must talk to people ahead of time to say let's avoid this process and doing [unclear] do you do you described discuss that with you know

14:25 People You Meet I mean that customers are not clients but do you discuss importance of like I don't discuss that with clients because that's not my role I usually come in after the fact when help is needed but I talk to friends and acquaintances and tell them a lot of the horror stories you know that I'm appointed to make things better when someone has not done their estate plan especially Health Care you know if something happens to you and you don't have a plan there's no one to watch out for your wishes and be your Advocate and your voice for what you want and really horrible things can happen if you don't have that power of attorney for health care and your advance directives set up spelling out what do you want in this situation or that situation so we've talked we talked a little bit before we started recording and previously about how not to go about generating business from a fiduciary thinking about the industry that you personally but in general if you were speaking to real estate agents about who are interested in working in senior care working in the elder law Marketplace looking at Value and service to professionals like yourself what would be the best way for a real estate agent to create value so that they'd have a chance to work with you when the time comes when you need some real estate services so to really understand that you are my Advocate selling this property that you are not just out for the sale that you are going to watch my back and help me through the process because I'm not an expert in real estate so I can always send all of the documents and confer with my attorney but I want a broker who is really watching my back and who is going to get the best deal with the least liability for the property or the matter the conservatorship or the trust to know how to really vet a potential

16:32 Buyer you know I've I've gotten before from different people financial documents from potential buyers where the financial documents aren't even in their name it might be in an LLC and then the offer of the sale is in the person's name well no that doesn't work they have to match up Apples to Apples and so to for someone to go through that with a fine-tooth comb so I don't have to saves me a lot of time incurs a lot of trust and respect and the professional I'm working with and also to help me to do my job if there's something wrong with the property before it gets listed or as it gets listed before it's shown or photographed you know to have the resources to help me clean out the property to fix the gate to mow the lawn and then send me the bill I'm going to pay it but help me take care of those things and be of service to me I really value those people who do that and I think it's always interesting how people spend so much time on marketing themselves as experts not spending time on learning those details to be to be of value to their customers I think that in the long run it's more important everybody well those people who do all that who vet who vet the deals and also create spreadsheets so I can see okay this here's the offer the finances have been vetted on one spreadsheet so I can see all of the offers that's also very helpful nice very nice well it's nice to have multiple offers and may have to make a spreadsheet is a real estate brokerage smaller and smaller right now I had one recently and it was interesting because it was a probate where we went from limited authority to full authority that create a lot of interest and then but we ended up getting about eight offers on it and I did create a spreadsheet I thought this is what I've

18:35 Done this in about six months right it spreadsheet with all the multiple offers the last few months has been more like one offer at a time and you deal with it [unclear] talk about the unique part of dealing with elder Services you talk about the conservatee and those emotions you have family members maybe multiple family members that are working out the relationship through you or through the client unfortunately in that situation how do you advise you know say professional fiduciaries getting into business or looking to build their business I would advise them to kind of learn and to grow in the area of just the soft part of doing one of those relationships well number one is the client and confident confidentiality is is key and also transparency if the because you can create a lot of havoc for the client if you are divulging information that is going to come back to the client so protect the client but be transparent and honest about everything you do it doesn't mean that you have to tell everybody everything you can share everything with your conservatee out of respect and it's the right thing to do but be careful what you divulge to family members because really it's none of their business they're not your clients looks like sometimes you know and there's a way and there's a way to and it's hard for a lot of family members I had one conservatorship of the person there were two daughters who really loved their mother and wanted to be involved with her care but I was appointed the conservators so they couldn't be so I gave them as much information as I could and was very kind and transparent to them but in the end I always respectfully reminded them that I was I was the

20:38 Conservator and it was my responsibility my duty that I had to do this to take care of their mother it was my decision it's challenging because you're people who really care and want to do the best but oftentimes they start getting involved in the details it gets to be very uncomfortable I've got to that recently my wife had some medical issues and it just interested me how her friends would get involved into what talk about things and pass information around and I was like that's not really appropriate to discuss you know but and it came from a loving place it wasn't that they were trying to hurt my wife it was they care about her a little too much to exercise restraint and that's the challenge is in the circumstances I think to exercise that restraint last topic I guess or last question area the business of professional fiduciary is it I have a friend who recently got licensed not so much to do it congratulations to your friend yeah he's a great guy and I don't know necessarily that he is going to be doing it as a full-time business but I think it's more of a [unclear] thing what he's working on Lucky in the details but you know I decided it's interesting that whenever I had a case to refer it seemed like almost all the fiduciaries are so busy and he said to me that he thought it was a matter of that business is just continuing to grow faster than the number of new people entering that is there is there something to that is that is the field that you're in it just seems that on one hand you need so much experience and knowledge to be effective what you do on the other hand it would seem to me we have one more elderly people more assets in the hands of elderly people that need proper Administration how we describe kind of the industry of professional fiduciaries today well the Baby Boomers are aging it's called the silver tsunami at one point is going correct and

22:41 Services need to be in place so there is a growing need for the fiduciary to act as trustee successor trustee when a settlor is no longer capable or to act as conservator or power of attorney for health care or estate when that person is no longer able if your friend is looking for advice on how to start one downside of this business is that it's not a cash flow friendly business especially if you have a lot of court-supervised cases because you can wait a year sometimes two years to for the court to approve for you to pay yourself so it's a long waiting game so to look for business outside of court-supervised matters private trusts or to act as power of attorney for health care or Finance to offer that service to the public and if your friend has a special talent or Niche they should use that in order to help their cash flow for example I am a gerontologist and a certified care manager so I use that to do private Care Management which sort of morphs into a pseudo-fiduciary role sometimes to assist family members who are in another state to take care of their elderly parent or sister in California so and that helps with the cash flow or finding a niche is really important in this business I think I think all businesses stand out I think all businesses you know I think every industry to me it seems like my father was an attorney he was a more of a generalist you know 30 40 years ago made a good living today it seems like those attorneys are always struggling but the ones who are Specialists and I'm sure you know some of the ones in Elder Law or probate litigation who specialize in that have really big practices because they're there's they're very valuable

24:44 Because of that Niche and real estate that's why I only do probate I don't do a lot of things other agents do because you know I'm busy with what I have and I and I want to build my business but it's interesting to say that as a fiduciary my friend happens to be ex-military and so he sees it as a particular niche of whatever family military families people get you know injured or whatever and so he that's kind of why he had that service to his portfolio but I think you're right on that having a specialization that you could value in any industry is become more valuable so very good well look Dawn [unclear] I appreciate your time I know you're busy I really appreciate the chance to chat with you today as well as when we don't record things thank you so much for I really enjoyed this thank you so much Bill I'll enjoy speaking to you again soon if somebody's interested in learning more about your company I know I have your website is carefiduciary.com is that the best way to reach us you have a contact button is that the best way to reach you they have questions about regarding using you as a could you share or bring somebody to you that the best way to get in touch with you yes in my email my phone number or on the website thanks so much thanks so much all the best be well all the best bye-bye