When Is the Best Time to Consider Mediation in a Probate Conflict? With Lee Jay Berman

0:03 One of the hard One of the heartbreaking realities of going to probate court every day like I used to is you would see families fighting over an estate so much that at the end of the day they use up all the resources fighting each other and nothing the decedent had worked his whole life or her whole life to provide for the family was remaining. And often times you say, "Well, they tried mediation, it didn't work." Well, yeah, there is mediation once both sides have lawyered up, got their guns, dug their holes, and standing behind you know you know, ready for gunfight. But, there's also the idea that you might want to mediate before you go down through all that, before you spend all the time and money. We're really excited to have you today, returning to our program, Lee Jay Berman, who is a mediation mediator, I guess, if that's the if that's the term. The mediation office of Lee Jay Berman. Lee Jay, thanks for coming back to us.

0:53 It's great to be here. Thanks for having me back, Bill. And so, I think, you know, there's an old Chinese proverb about when's the best time to grow to plant a tree, and one was 20 years ago, and the other one is today. When's the best time to get into mediation? It seems to me the answer is always right away right away rather than too late.

1:08 Yeah, it's exactly the same thing as the planting a tree analogy. It's mediation's a process where people come together to talk about how to fix a problem, and the sooner in the process that they can bring me in or me you know, one of my colleagues, the better. Because it Permit me, like you said, when they've lawyered up and the guns are blazing, and everybody is ratcheting upward their hatred for each other, and the anger, and all of that stuff, the harder it is to break through that, to sit down and go, "Can we focus for a minute on how to fix this?" there's always a lot of competition when families are fighting. And the sooner we can intervene, the less competition we have to deal with, and the better we can shift to collaborating. And that may sound odd if people are in a dispute as they're listening to this, but it's absolutely true.

2:03 It's hard to change your mind that your brother was bad, but it's harder to admit that you might have been wrong for exaggerating how bad they were, and that seems to me the by definition then the longer the process goes in a in a dispute, like you say, the harder it can be to unwind. The earlier you get to it, there's always going to be some rocks and rubble to pick through, but there might be less.

2:25 Yeah. I think human nature with our siblings, with our cousins, you know, with the with the family members, especially at our generational level, it's really easy to have competing be the fallback. Yeah, he did this to me, and that's not as bad as the thing he says I did to him, and you know, it's always competing, and it's it that's not a remedy, that's not a path for a conversation to a future. That's one of the things is and family arguments are the same in that they both focus on the past tense. What was done, what was written, what was said, what was intended, who's responsible for it, and we have that same argument over the dinner table every day in some families. The problem is it's all forensic, it's all looking backwards at a problem and trying to affix blame and decide right or wrong. None of that has anything to do with solving a problem. Not one ounce. It's actually the opposite. So, in mediation, what we do is we say, "All right, now that we have this problem, we understand how we got here. Now our task is to talk about where do we go from here? How do we make this different going forward, or at least create some rules that we're all going to agree to operate under going forward?"

3:44 So, there's different types and different stages of mediation. You talked a little bit about what is mediation. What are some of the various types? Obviously, within the context of probate, let's kind of limit it to that cuz there's all kinds of other kinds of mediation.

3:57 Of course. And what are the different stages that mediator might get involved with the case? So, at the very earliest stages, what we're trying to figure out is what about the things they're fighting over are specifically important to different people. The age-old story is two children fighting over the same orange. The parent walks into the room, takes the orange, and says, "Tell me what's going on here." And the little kids start with, "Well, he got the last one. Well, I Yeah, but I got it first." And you know, they go back and forth and they argue and fight over entitlement. Who deserves to have it? And they plead their case to the parent. "Yeah, but he got the last one." And you know, and they fight over who deserves it. Which is sort of like going in front of a jury and trying to say, "I should win this because" and making your case. But that's not problem solving. Problem solving is when the parent takes it and says, "Okay, I hold in my hand this orange. We've got apples, we have grapes, we have this. Would anybody rather have that than an orange?" And you know, because we know that it's not really the orange they're fighting over. It's, you know, prevailing over their sibling and it's this ongoing competition.

5:14 So, a lot of the parents will split it in half and give them both half an orange. But what happens is they both walk away looking at the orange, grumbling under their breath, "My sister got the other half of my orange." cuz they thought they deserved all of it.

5:29 Right. So, that's compromise. That's sort of a settlement conference that judges will do on the steps of the courthouse at the 11th hour after both sides have been bled dry fighting with each other.

5:43 Right. And you know, by that point they're worn out and exhausted. What we do as mediator early in the stage with a family dispute like this or a probate dispute is we say, "What about this piano, this China, this real estate, this ranch is so important to you?" And one will say, "It's the childhood memories and I don't want it to change cuz that's where I grew up." The other one will say, "It's return on investment. The ranch isn't returning the kind of investment we need. We need to put that money somewhere where it's going to grow faster." And we start to break down and learn what about the things they're interested in. Because sometimes we can give one the rest of the orange story, the famous orange story is one of them when the parent asks, says, "I was outside playing soccer and it's hot and I'm sweaty and I'm thirsty and I wanted some orange juice." The other one says, "I'm baking these muffins for a bake sale tomorrow school and it says I have to use the peel of one whole orange in the recipe." Well, so you can make the juice, but I'm juice every last drop out of it they want to and that one gets the full glass of juice and you can give the full orange peel to the other for the recipe and basically get 100% for each of them out of the one orange if you can figure out what about it they're interested in.

7:07 So, we spend a lot of time early in the mediation process figuring out what about those things people that really matter to people so we can try and get each one of them what matters to them the most rather than focusing on who's going to get the house, who's going to get the investment accounts or whatever.

7:26 Seems to me like one of the problems is in litigation and when the mediation is too late, really it just becomes a pro forma step in litigation. I think they're the after the mediation they do it, they hate each other. But the problem that I've seen is that neither party feels anybody's heard their point of view through the legal process, right? You can be in litigation for years, and you have depositions, but the other side asks you the questions. You don't get to tell them your story. When should I tell them the story? They cut you off. And in court, you don't really talk unless you're a witness to something, and your side will ask you about it. And then when you're cross-examined, they'll let you talk about any more than they want you to talk about. So, it seems like one of the real problems in the litigation formula is that neither party ever feels like my side got heard, even at the end of a long process. Whereas mediation, I imagine you build it in at some point where you're going to get just get it out of their system, so they're not so hung up on it.

8:24 It's so true. It People need to feel heard, and that's something that mediators can do. We have the luxury of time. Judges don't listen to people. They don't get time to. They want to hear the evidence that's perfect that's right on point, and they want to hear did they or didn't they do this by this certain you know, that kind of thing. There's almost not a probate case I've ever mediated that didn't have some element of Billy got a new bike when he turned six, and I didn't get a new bike when I turned six. I had to get his old one, and Mom always liked him better, and blah. And that's the stuff that's at the core of this, and nobody's ever really listened to them say it.

9:04 Yeah. The family's usually tired of hearing it and mocks them. Oh, you're going to tell the bicycle story again, or you know, whatever. But a fresh set of ears that can hear that and say, "So, you really feel like you were always second."

9:18 Yeah. And have them say, "Finally, somebody understands." Right. So, then if we were to go through and figure out how to divide these assets in this probate mediation, sounds like it'd be really important to you if you got to go first. And that may be all they need. In fact, it may be all they need to hear. They may not even need to actually go first. I've had people in this situation say, "No, Bill is the oldest, he can go first. I just needed him to hear that and needed someone to understand it for me." And then we figure out how to figure out how to divide the assets from that point. But, like you said, just articulating it and just feeling understood, experiencing themselves as having really been heard and listened to is really the thing that has to be accomplished before cuz we study neurology and everything else in mediation. So, neuroscience-wise, the amygdala gets triggered, the limbic section of the brain that processes all the emotion get kind of tied up, and they can't get to the prefrontal cortex to make logical, rational decisions

10:26 Till they get the emotional piece out first. So, exactly to the point that you were saying, Bill, they have to be heard first, and then we can start to negotiate with them. But, if you sit two people down at the table and go, "Okay, let's figure out who's entitled to the house." You know, no one's going to feel heard, they're just going to fight for survival against each other like it's life or death.

10:48 The other thing this strikes me in the format advantage of a mediator versus a judge is as you said, the judge has a lot of procedures to deal with before he can consider the facts and listening. Meaning, which facts are pretty and which ones aren't, what the order is, how they're to be presented, objections, discovery,

11:06 Objections, discovery, and so they're evaluating each little piece of the puzzle as a separate piece. And then only when it goes to trial are they really able to try to put the puzzle together.

11:18 Exactly. By then, that's the end of the line. Like, at that point your trial is the damage has been done in terms of the cost and the time and the emotional part. Versus the mediator, at what point do you kind of kind of get both sides and have a chance to at least evaluate it. I imagine within the first day or two or three or so, whatever it is, depending on how big a case it is, that at least you at least you get both sides together and can evaluate them.

11:42 Yes. So, there's the process we just talked about listening to people and helping them feel heard. That can be done all together, that can be done separately just with me with them. Sometimes I'm the surrogate sort of listener if their sibling or opposing counsel doesn't have the patience to hear or there isn't willing to or isn't responding to it appropriately, which happens sometimes, too. But then once we've heard all of that, we start to talk about what a court might do with this case based on the evidence. And I'm frequently looking at the clients, the family members, and saying, "Your lawyer's going to go fight this case for you to the best of his or her ability. She's going to get in front of that judge, she's going to make the case for you, and I guarantee you if I asked her about the hand of cards that you've given her to go play, the facts that she has to go and represent you with, I guarantee you she's going to tell me if I had this card and this card, I'd have a much better hand, but we don't have those things. So, everybody feels like their case is the best and they're going to win and they should and, you know, the other person's a bad person and all of that stuff. But really it comes down to the facts, as you were saying, Bill, that the judge is going to hear. They have to hold to precedent case law. They have They really have their hands tied in a lot of different ways. Their jury instructions about what the jury can and can't consider and all those sorts of things. But in mediation, I can say to the brother, "Look, your sister is almost certainly going to end up getting this because of this note your mother left that says that she should and things like that." So, I can manage their expectations. I can work with the possibilities. And again, I can figure out what's most important to them that's going to make them feel like they got what they wanted out of this.

13:34 You know, to your point, if it's done on the eve of trial, it tends to be just compromise. If your sister says she wants a million out of the estate, you think she deserves 200 out of the estate, let's just split the orange, and let's just give, you know, let's just say she probably gets 600, and that you should pay her that today and save the risk of going through trial. Because we talked about the cost, emotionally, financially, time investment, all of those things. But then there's also, all that does is it gets you up to the side of the crap table to take the dice in your hand and roll them.

14:11 Right. The outcome is completely out of your hands at that point of trial. Know. You never know how it's going to turn You get to say, "I wouldn't do that, but I would be willing to do this."

14:22 And a little bit of that back and forth, we can usually find a this and a that people are willing to do that they can live with and own the decision themselves and have certainty.

14:34 You know, I have the privilege of working with a lot of attorneys, a lot of good ones, and not so good, cuz they need some help from me. One thing I notice is the best attorneys, they're fine if it settles. They're fine if mediation resolves it. They're fine avoiding even trial prep, you know, if the if the litigators, they're fine with the customer getting a better outcome. At the end of the day, that's how they built their practice. And yet, the ones who aren't as successful, to me, it seems like they almost set the mediation up to fail because they've given their client such unreasonable expectations that you have to kind of talk them off the ledge. Can you do that in front of an attorney? Or, and also, the attorneys kind of bring you into the case agreeing to you, I imagine there's some challenges on how open and honest can you be? Yet, you have to be open and honest. How do you tightrope that?

15:24 So, let's I don't want to lose my job. No, this is great. I let's start with the last piece first, the open honest communication. Mediation, hear this clearly, mediation is the only place that people can come together and say whatever they want to if it'll help us get through a resolution and not worry about it being used against them later. You can go into a settlement conference with a judge. You can have settlement discussions back and forth between counsel. All of those are admissible. If the judge wants to know what was said, the judge gets to hear it. So, it can be used against you later if you lose your cool or say something you didn't mean or you're trying to bend over backwards and you make an offer that's overly generous and you go home that night and think, "Thank goodness she didn't accept that. That would that would be terrible for me." all of that's admissible except in a mediation where the judge can't ask and we, the parties, the lawyers, the mediator, can't answer. So, it's a confidential place and I can say whatever I want to in front of lawyers and clients and they can to me and they do. And we keep it confidential. So, that's one piece of it. The second piece and

16:38 They can say things that we don't tell the other side during the mediation. You know, the brother can say, "My sister's not the problem. My sister's husband is the problem. He's the one that you know" and we can have those conversations if it'll help us get to a better resolution and understanding what's going on in both of the rooms, but the judge doesn't care about that and doesn't want to hear it. So the next thing is when it comes to having those discussions, we're able to brainstorm in private. I can say to the brother, "Would you be willing to do this, and this for your sister if she did not have that for you? And he might say, "Maybe at the end of the day today, but for right now, let's only offer this and see what she says."

17:27 I go in the other room and offer that to the sister and say, "Would you be willing to do this for him?" And she might say, "Not ever, but I would do that for him, and maybe he's interested in that more cuz I know him and I think he might be, you know." And so, we have confidential discussions that help them tell me what I need to know so that I can help them the most.

17:51 It's got to be difficult when you if you think that maybe one of the parents is one of the attorneys. Yes. So, let's talk about the attorneys. I like the way you've framed the discussion about them so far. We have

18:07 [cough and clears throat] Pardon me, I'm not even going to call them good or bad. We have some attorneys who love to fight. Sorry. They know that they love to fight, and the people who hire them hire them cuz they're good at fighting.

18:20 Correct. And what their money's worth. Yes, exactly, and they want to win, right? The clients want to win, so they hire the bulldog to go out there and devour the other side. We also have attorneys who understand the value of a good settlement and want referrals from these clients to send them more business because they leave very happy. And it always works this way, I find, when you've got a really good, realistic attorney who's turning to their client and saying, "Today is the best opportunity you're ever going to have to resolve this in a favorable way where you have control. I want you to really consider the offer that your brother just made to you because this is something that you and I talked about before we came here today, that this would be a good outcome if you got this, and he's just offered you like 90% of that. And we have often that wise big picture seeing attorney is the one who has the client who says, "No, I want to crush him. I want to kill him." And the lawyer is looking at me like, "Help me out of this." Right? Then we have the other lawyers, the ones who have to win at all costs, and the client is looking at me going, "Get me out of this. This is killing me. It's like I want to I can't sleep, and my new marriage is, you know, on the rocks because of it, and I'm getting these huge bills from my lawyer. Help me out of this." So, every pairing of attorney and client is unique. And part of my job as mediator, and again, something else the judge never gets line of sight into, but that I do in every case, is getting to see the relationship between the attorney and the client, and what each of them wants, cuz the attorneys have an agenda. They want something, too. Whether they want the client to feel good, or they want to look good, or they want to be the smartest attorney in the mediation. Like they all have their own agenda,

20:22 Good, bad, and indifferent. And so do the clients. You know, some clients just want it over. Other clients, I'm calling them clients, but they're real parties of interest, the siblings who are fighting, let's say, over the, you know, family's net worth. And some of them want to crush their sibling after 40 years of verbal abuse, and others just want it done and don't care, and money's not the most important thing. So, it really is about assessing and diagnosing, and figuring out what every single person, not just each side, needs out of an agreement, because that's when you have one where everybody walks away happy. You and I talked about this before, Bill. I've got colleagues, many of whom have come off of the bench as retired judges, who love to say, "A good settlement is one where everybody walks away equally unhappy." And I think that's about the low Yeah, I know, right? What kind of goal is that to go into a mediation with, right? I it breaks my heart because what they're saying is, "Let's just ram down a compromise, make everybody hate the whole thing, and just be done and walk away." And it's like putting people through a trash compactor, like a you know, a garbage disposal. Why would you do that to people? Like I want to help people find what they came there for, and help them get as much of that as they can, and still keep the relationship solid. I see a lot of these where they're like, "VJ, Thanksgiving is 2 months away.

21:58 We've never not spent a Thanksgiving all together as a family. This is our first one without our parents, and I don't know that we're going to be able to sit down together the way things are right now. So, yes, having a financial agreement is the most important thing, but not a far second is being able to still sit down around a Thanksgiving or Christmas table or Hanukkah or whatever, and spend time together. And do less damage.

22:26 I think that's kind of you know, like doctors have the Hippocratic oath. Like for me, it really is do no harm. It's help people come out of this as whole as possible cuz there's no reason to chew them up and spit them out. I You know, there's some mediators who are like, "Oh, you got to grind them down all day long till it's the end of the day and they're exhausted and they give in." And I'm like, that's borderline unethical in my mind.

22:53 Right. You're using their physical limitations and emotional against them in a sense. You know, I think in defense, I've interviewed so many mediators, you being the first two-time but

23:04 So can you say your favorite? I didn't Not my favorite but I've also interviewed you twice, so that makes you my favorite. You're the only one who's been twice. I've also interviewed a couple that were former judges. And I think the reason why the former judges tend to have that attitude is that's all they saw as judges because all they ever had was before the trial date, the last pre-trial conference is there a way we can work this thing out? Well, at that point, you're basically just going to beat both of them up till there's enough blood on the table they agree to stop hitting each other.

23:30 Yeah. And yet that's so that's all they'd seen whereas it seems to me like I in a sense I mediate probably what I'm interested in what you do

23:38 Yeah. Is I mediate between multiple beneficiaries or multiple parties on a sale property and the solution often times is as creative solution. Well, you went this, he wants that. If I do this, you can get this and you can get that kind of like your orange analogy that's the goal as much as possible or talk up the value of what the person wants so they feel like they got more as a result. Feel better about it. Yeah, so it's it is you say about retired judges which I have great respect for. They know they do know the law and I think their advantage is with their position of authority, they can have more authority when they assess the likelihood of victory to either party.

24:17 Yeah. Yeah, that's It's not an absolute. Yeah, but that's what people turn to them for, right? They want their legal experience and they want to know what would this likely outcome be and you know, try and settle around that. But to me, one of my favorite expressions that we've all heard before is if the only tool you have is a hammer

24:39 Yes. You tend to see most problems as nails. Yes. And I've been doing this 32 years. I've seen 3,000 cases. All kinds of families and all kinds of situations with family businesses and commonly owned real estate and you know, lots of investment property at times or lots of acreage and all that sort of thing. I mean, I've seen it all, and I feel like I walk into these rooms not with a hammer, but with this gigantic sort of Santa Claus bag over my shoulder of tools from everything that I've seen and how much I've talked before and all that sort of thing. And I sit down and listen to them and see what they need, and I pull out the tool or tools that will help them get where they need to go. And sometimes it's saving face, and sometimes it's you know, preserving relationships, and sometimes it's winning over their sibling who always won when they were little. They always have different agendas, and you can't walk in with one tool and bludgeon people and think that's going to solve their problem for them. It may solve yours. You know, you get to put a notch on the belt, "Hey, I got another settlement today as the mediator." And you know, I get to check it off on my win-loss ratio and all of that, but I settle between 95% of 97% of all the cases I mediate, and the reason I think is because I can adapt to what the people in front of me need, and I've got the tools and the experience to call upon that.

26:06 One of my slogans is there's no substitute for experience, and that's what I think is important. And you're right, the judges have wonderful experience just at something different than this.

26:21 Correct. Correct. Cuz they don't really talk to people all day long. They're more ordering them and you know, making decisions. And so they don't really have to communicate and win over as often in this part of it. They have staff and such. But for the most part, they don't have to cooperate and collaborate and serve other people in the same way. So yeah, but on the other hand, they do have the expertise sometimes that's wow, if you if you've if you've sat as a probate judge and made, you know, thousands of decisions on how something would go, then your opinion's is worth something that somebody should pay for. We can say that, too. So, one of the things just I know got a little bit over time, but I had this question set aside for the beginning and I really wanted to get the answer to this myself cuz I love You have a class on this and I and I it's so true. It seems so simple. Impasse is a fallacy. I love that.

27:12 Yes. Now, I you know, I came from sales training where, you know, a no is just a no for now. Right? And so, you have to find out what's the reason, can I solve that reason, and if so, then you get a sale. Talk about an impasse as a fallacy, what does that mean to you as a mediator?

27:27 It's exactly what you just said. So, when someone says no, I also have some sales background training. I sold educational books door to door during college and things like that. And what I always heard was when someone says no, what they're really saying is, "Knowing what I know now,

27:45 Yes. I can't see my way to saying yes." Yes. Right? And so, in mediation, it's the same thing. When two sides will go all day long in a negotiation and they may start at I'm just making numbers up, right? And it's not always just numbers, but they may start at, you know, "I want 3 million." And the other one says, "I'll give you 200,000, but no more than that." And we can mediate and negotiate all day long and they might get to like a million dollars and a million eight and both say, "I'm not moving anymore ever." And I'll call them together and I'll say to the one who's offering to pay the money or the larger share to the other. The one who's at a million, who's come up from 200,000, and I'll say to them, "What would change your mind about this case? If you had it in your file." And I say this to the lawyers cuz they're the ones who are experienced at doing this. "What in your mind would make this look more like a two or three million dollar case than a one million-dollar case. And they say, "Well, if I had this or this or this, then I would give this a different consideration."

28:54 Right. And almost always the other lawyer reaches around into her briefcase and pulls it out and slides it across the table and says, "I sent this to your associate two months ago." And they go, "Oh, I've never seen this before." And so, it What they're saying is we think we're at an impasse

29:11 Right. Based on what we know now. Right. [cough] Pardon me. So, I come back to the information and making sure they have everything they need. And if it doesn't exist yet, if they say, "We don't feel comfortable offering her more money until we depose her and see what she says sworn in under oath." And at that point, if depending on how she answers those questions, we might be willing to offer more than the million that we have on the table right now. And the other side might say, "We're not coming down less than a million eight cuz we don't think that they have any claim on this. They told us today that they have an unrecorded deed or something. We've never seen it. So, we need to see the paperwork they say they have." The other side says, "We need to go and do this deposition and see what she says under oath." I look at them and I say, "So, how long do you think it'll take to do just those two things?" And they say, "Give us 30 days." And I'll say, "All right, let's look at our calendars. Today is this date. Let's look 30 days down the road. How's that Tuesday in the second week of September?" And they both say, "We're available then." So, we'll agree to come back and continue the conversation on that Tuesday after they go do just these two simple things. Like, they're going to go do full-blown discovery and document production and all of that.

30:32 They're just going to get this one set of documents about the deed and the one deposition. And it The point that I'm trying to make in this and I love that you said the phrase before we tried mediation, it didn't work.

30:44 Yeah. Mediation's not a date. It isn't It's a process, right? It's a discussion that starts, sometimes we hit a roadblock where we need more information, or somebody needs to go talk with their, you know, adult child or, you know, parent or whoever they have to go talk to, and then come back and continue the conversation. So, it a really important lesson for folks to take away from this is that mediation's not an appointment. It's a process that we go through. And it and it will almost always get us to that finish line, short of some crazy person who just absolutely has to litigate because that's the only way they can see their way out of this. And even then, working with their lawyer, their spouses, or whoever, to help them try and I can talk to them about what I've seen in 30 years of experience of people who have gone and done that, and then lost everything. Wish that they'd taken the offer that was on the table at the mediation. So, it's a process that needs a chance to work its way all the way through. So, normally I say impasse is a fallacy because normally when we think we're at an impasse, we really just need to get over a hurdle and continue going until we can get to the yes if it's a sales analogy.

32:02 You know, the sales analogy I would use on that one is when I was dating my wife, we first met, and she said to me, "I'm not interested in a serious relationship. I'm coming off a bad breakup." And that's what she told me, and I heard, "I'm desperate to get married. I think you're the man of my dreams." And here we are 39

32:21 39 years, 8 months later. So, sometimes people say something, and I think in sales or business, you have to kind of listen to the tone and the, you know, the emotion, not just the words. The words are important, but they're not all-inclusive.

32:33 Absolutely. I listen so much differently than a judge, sitting or retired. They're trained to listen for facts and evidence. They're trained in black and white. Something's right or it's wrong. And I I get the benefit of saying until you know which side of the bed your judge got up on that morning, you don't know which way they're going to rule on this. So, let's consider the risk that they rule in your favor and the risk that they don't, and let's figure out what makes you feel safe today making a decision about it so that you don't have to go incur that risk and roll that dice and have that anxiety between now and that day 9 months from now.

33:12 Well, Lee Jay Berman, you're obviously a wealth of information this topic. I really appreciate you making yourself available today for us to learn about mediation. I think whether you're an attorney who needs mediation services for your clients or you're a family who's in dispute with your maybe other heirs need some help on that. Lee Jay Berman Mediation offices of Lee Jay Berman, [phone number]. And the website is mediationtools.com. If you're driving, can't write that down, reach out to me. I'd be honored to put you guys together. Again, Lee J, thank you so much for coming on and educating us about mediation and how to limit our losses perhaps and also have a better outcome overall.

33:50 Bill, always a pleasure. The time always flies by and thank you so much. You're a great interviewer. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thanks so much. And for those on Probate on the call, this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week with usually Probate attorneys, but in this case a mediator, which is important process in the almost every litigation goes through mediation in the Probate Court. There's mandatory mediation and there's limited, but I think it was a good insight today on how perhaps problems can be resolved without going through the full process of litigation. Hope you find it interesting. Please like, subscribe, send me a comment if you're interested. If I can help in any way, reach out @billgrossprobate. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.