KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Proactive Estate Planning: Funding Trusts and Protecting Family Wealth Through Education

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Summary:In this episode, host Bill interviews attorney Scott Schomer from Schomer Estate and Wealth Advisors to discuss the critical importance of proactive estate planning and trust funding. Schomer highlights how the traditional probate system operates like a costly, time-consuming lawsuit that real estate agents and clients can easily avoid with the right tools. Listeners will learn the common pitfalls of unfunded living trusts, how to structure educational public seminars without using aggressive sales tactics, and why integrating institutional asset management preserves family legacies across generations.

The process of inheriting can be a roller coaster, the excitement to find out, or disappointment to lose a loved one, the excitement to find out perhaps that you're coming into a large chunk of money. And then the frustration that comes from seeing how much the money goes to attorneys fees, legal fees, court costs, and perhaps even battling with other people who shouldn't get any more of the money or as much as they do. And that's why we want to avoid probate when can. I'm really excited to talk today with an attorney who I met in court pre-COVID, one of the

leading probated attorneys, does litigation, as well as estate planning, and really has really pivoted his firm to Schumer, estate and wealth advisors, really focused on helping prevent probate and help people keep as much of the wealth as possible. Attorney Scott Schumer, Scott, thank you so much for joining us today. Well, Bill, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. One of the things that put you on my radar early on was pre-COVID. You were really committed to doing estate planning events to the public.

And I went to one in El Segundo. I want to say about five, six years ago. COVID obviously made live events for all of us much more difficult. I know you do both some online as well as live events on a state plan. Talk a bit about as an attorney how you offer that to the public, how that works for you and how that works for them. Thanks for thanks for bringing that up, Bill. You know, I spend so much my time in my day educating people on what we do,

how you want to protect yourself, how you want to protect yourself, how you want to protect your assets, how you want to grow and develop your assets. To me, seminars and the webinars and my teaching at Loyal Law School are really just sort of a growth and an extension of all of that. Even the most experienced people in this field need to be learning, need to be keeping up with the latest laws, need to make sure they're doing things correctly. And I really look at education as sort of a communal event. Let's all get together and talk about the things that are impacting us that could impact us. And let's figure out the best way cooperatively to find a way through and to make it easy with the least amount of stress for your family and for your loved ones. That's the most important thing.

So I probably started doing what I call long form. seminars to the public about 15 years ago. And it's not unusual that I'll do upwards of 25 to 50 a year. What we typically do will, we will reserve a space. Sometimes we do them in our conference room. Those are smaller crowds, usually about 8 to 10 people. Or we'll go to a larger hotel facility or sometimes a realtor's organization. And we might have upwards of 60 to 60 to 60.

70 people in a room that size. And I have lots of PowerPoints. I have lots of what I affectionately refer to as dad humor, where I try to basically educate you, entertain. I try to comment the material in several different ways, including describing it as a series of stories that you might relate to. So stories such as, okay, here's Bill and Mary. Here's a typical client for us.

to show you when they do it wrong let's show you how we do it right and how it all turns out and the hope is that you see some of yourself in there realize gosh you know i haven't really thought about this gosh i put i put more time into thinking my thinking about my vacation this year that i did protect my estate maybe i'd have spent a little bit of time thinking about my estate to protect my family um but it's uh it's a delight to do them there's nothing that makes me happier than watching somebody's eyes light up when I explain to them how some of these concepts work and love the ability to take really arcane stuff, stuff that really we inherited in part from jolly old England and the game back, way back when, and bring it into the modern day

and make it current and interesting and relevant you, right? That's the most important thing. I've been to a NUMBY's events over my last six years in particular, and I would say there's a spectrum of on one end, it's just purely a lead generation, hard close. You're in the room, and they're going to close, they want to close you for a contract right then and there. I would say yours are more at the other end of the spectrum, which are more educational. And for those people's appropriate, they're there. They can ask questions. They can step forward. And those who aren't, no, they're not, it's not for them. are going to move on somewhere else. Talk a little bit about how you structure the events and how you try to use that both to, you know,

on one hand, help people interested. And I think also give people space to make a decision on their timetable. Great question, Bill. I mean, this is the old adage about you can bring a horse to water, but you can't force them to break, right? So I don't hot and well to hard sales pitches. I never have.

And I'd much rather empower you and educate you so that you understand what you're doing and let you let the choice be yours. When a client comes to this naturally because they see it's in their own best's interest, that's where we develop what I affectionately refer to as raving fans. And nothing makes me happier. So the way we basically structure our seminars is we invite people in the room. We'll have some light refreshments, try to mingle with them. We try to take a little survey, just sort of one-on-one. I'll call somebody like you and say, hey, Bill, what brought you here today?

And is there anything in particular that you'd like to hear about or like to discuss? And I'll gather some of that information. But the seminar itself is structured is I start with the basic idea. of spend a few minutes in my chair. See carnage that comes through my office on a daily and a weekly basis. Let me give you a flavor for some of the things that are bad, right, including the fact that, you know, L.A. County has the single largest, busiest probate court system in the world

with an estimated 85,000 annual filings, if you can get your head around that, all of which are essentially lots of. So let's start with, let's talk about what the problem is. Let's talk about who we are and what we bring to the table. But talking in sort of those 10,000 foot view statistics and numbers and problem doesn't really sort of give you sort of, well, what does that really look like? How does it translate it in my life? That's where I shift to the story telling part of the story. Okay.

Bill and Mary have a choice. Here are the couple. They have a choice. They can do nothing. They could just leave their state as it is of hope all for the best or they can plan. So let's see what it looks like if some things go wrong. If they do nothing, if they rely on the government's plan, on the government's system, which is the law of intestacy and probate court.

What could go wrong with? How could that, how can the Stiff, California possibly cause a problem with that? Yeah. And again, I come back to my simplest saw of all, and that is, most of us would like to leave our assets to our loved ones when we're not hearing. And when you do it through the probate system, when all you do is a will or you do nothing, probate is a lawsuit. Why do you want to sue yourself? Why do you want to file a lawsuit and get your kids involved in a lawsuit just so they can receive. your legacy and your wealth and your wisdom and ends up being just a colossal mess. So I try to show folks, here's what that looks like. Here's the long at pace. Here's what it costs. Here are the 15 ways that it can go wrong. Here's what a mess it is. And then I basically just posit the question to them, how do you feel about the government system? You like the government system. You want to leave your wealth in the hands of the government.

to make sure that it gets handled correct. Now let me show you what it looks like if we do it in a different way. So we talk about the alternatives. We talk about especially if you own real estate of living trust, we talk about powers of attorney, health care directors, all these things,

how they avoid all this stuff, how it saves you money, saves you time and effort, how especially if you are blessed with, I was just at a fabulous fundraiser that we can for the autistic community, You're blessed with an autistic child or a special needs child or maybe a child that is just challenged and not good with their money. And we set up an amazing structure to protect that child to make sure that the money is being supervised and they always have a place to live.

You have so much more freedom when you just sit and do a little planning at a man. So here I contrast. Again, I start with here's the chaos I start with. Let me show you what it looks like through the government system. and let me show you what it looks like better, and then I lay it on the line. Our preference when we do planning for people is one of the worst things in the world,

the hardest things that we struggle with, is at the end of the day, a lawyer only, besides his expertise or her expertise, only can sell his or her time. And that usually translates to the billable hour. What we do with planning is we try to do it almost always on a flat fee basis. We go to a fee.

We tell you what it is coming up front. If you look at our fee and you say to yourself, no, no, no, I think I can do this by legal assume. Well, God bless you. I've told your things you need to think about, but God bless you, you think you could do it. As I like to say,

I'm a shade tree mechanic. As I like to say, I'm really good at taking my car. I'm so good at my car back together. If you want to do it, I'm glad to give you some free education. but if you would rather handle it correctly, here's what our fee is,

it's going to be a flat fee, and we do that because we want you to come to us as much as possible. We want to be your first phone call when there's a problem. When you walk at my office in four years from now, you buy a place in Palm Springs and you go, oh, was I supposed to put that in the trust?

Call us up. Call us up. We'll talk to you. We'll take your call. We're not going to send you a bill. We're going to bring you back in. we're going to review your tribe. So we very wanted, we think of our planning clients in particular as our family, as our protectorate tribe. We want to be there for them. We want to make sure the

client works correctly. So we lay out sort of our whole ecosystem. Here it is, and we would like to help you be your protectorate. We would like to help make all this work smoothly. We would like you to have the confidence that's going to work. We would like to meet your children. We'd like to educate your children how to run this drop. Do seminars on that as well, trustee school we call it. And if nobody understands financial investing or advising, we'd like to educate you in the academic fiduciary system we use. Protect and preserve and grow. You're well.

We can basically be a whole spectrum and really be one of the first calls that you think about. It's a really lovely place to be when we have clients and we have to come back, which most of them do, with updates or when somebody dies and we're able to pass this along. Absolutely nothing makes me happier. We've basically taken care of your family. By the way, one of the things that I did not discover as a sort of a random little side until later in my life, not be religious. but I was raised Catholic and I served as a deacon in the Presbyterian Church to belong to now. But I discovered about 25, 30 years ago that my last name in Hebrew means guardian of the realm. For sure.

Shomer is the card. Showmer is a guardian. That's exactly right. And so that's really a big part of what we see is sort of baked into my soul is I'm here to protect you and your family and help things. go better. You know, I love probate court, but I wouldn't wish it on my worst at it. I mean, I love seeing somebody like you,

a professional that's there to help other people, saying hello to people and working with the judges and all those folks, but it's not a journey that I want most people to go. Again, why do you want a law to do? Well, it's just silly if you think about it. I agree. Clear up for me because I can't make the statement because I'm not an attorney. if I was a law professor and you are a law professor at Lurala, I put this like first question, first quiz, and it's past or fail, the whole class, we get it wrong.

Because customers all the time say to me, oh, I don't have to go to probate court. I have a will. So, true or false, a will keeps you out of probate court. True or false. Primary purpose of a will is that it is a set of instructions to the probate judge about how do it. administer your estate in probate. By definition, if you have a will and you have assets, in excess of the small estate range, you are going to visit probate check. And so I think that's the most common. I see this all the time. People don't worry, I did a will. Well, I mean,

it's better than not having one, I guess, if you do it properly. You know, it could also open other problems, but let's assume most times better than nothing. But, So the part about the estate planning and the reason why, again, I feel privileged to have a chance to talk to you is I feel so passionately that, you know, we all do like 80% of the preparation. We don't close the deal. And I can talk to customers and say, hey, look, I see you have this property. It's not an in a trust. Ergo, your name is I'm going to probate court. I don't really mind that.

I mean, as a real estate agent, I'm better at that than most other agents are. but and really if it's in a trust properly, it's not much than a regular sale, you know, in terms of what you have to do. But, you know, let's talk to a tree. Let's get involved. Let's get educated on that. And it just seems that the gap from,

okay, I need to do something to actually doing it and executing it is so great. And you're obviously in the business of closing that gap, right? You put on seminars and get people there. Is it just really you let people kind of self-process when they're ready or is there some encouragement? I feel like if I was in the back of your room with a stick and I hit the ones that didn't go forward,

we help people protect their wealth in the long run would be their heroes, but I don't think that's legal in the legal world to hit people who don't sign up. So how do you see yourself as that, on one hand, you want to encourage people. You're a father, I think a grandfather as well, I think you shared.

So you want to see people do the right thing. We're used to having to push people to do the right thing. How do you see that at the same time, though, you're an attorney. you don't be sales, you don't have quest out line. Yeah, I mean, that's a hard one in the struggle. And I get, I get frustrated with folks just like you do, Bill. Again, I've never been a big fan of the hard sell.

I've always been, let's meet the client where they are. Let's find out what's weighing on them. I mean, most people, if they spend a little bit time reflecting on this stuff, know they need to do something. They know they need to protect their family. And they want to do the right thing. They want to protect the family. So sort of the way that we try to break that procrastination lock, for lack of a better description,

is, first of all, again, making the education easy and free. So come, come have a cup of coffee, come have a cookie or a snack with us. and hopefully you'll find, I mean, I've spent a lot of time speaking and talking. I try to be entertaining. I try to people of educational and funny. If I don't have an audience laugh at least a couple times during the seminar, I don't feel like I've done my job well. So turn off the boob tube, let me entertain you for an hour and a half.

So that's the first start. The second start is a little bit of a carrot is if you come to one of my seminars, we will open up our door and give you a private. a consultation. So, you know, we have attorneys in our firm. They're billing from, you know, $400 an hour to I'm at $850 an hour. This is what we sell, but we will waive that fee if you're serious about wanting to do something. Come on in, sit down, we'll serve you coffee again. Chocolate's on the table. Let's have a deep conversation that's all about you, not about us. Let's find out what's going on in your life and how I can be of a system.

So those are our big things. And then, you know, the other thing I try to sort of boil it down statistically, I mean, you're in this business. When you look at probate fees in California, California not only has, besides the busiest court system, Los Angeles does, also one of the slowest. It usually takes a year to a year and a half, but also one of the costliest. So the average cost to run a simple residence through probate court is about 4 to 8% of the gross value of the asset. So a simple math calculation is you look around the South Bay, most houses are around about a million dollars of gross value. We'll come up on Zillow on your basic report. Well, to run that house through probate court for a year and a half, you're going to spend about $52,000 to $55,000.

right i can do an estate plan or a fraction of that cost right far away from the probate court so and that's a that's a million dollar house you have a two and a half a million dollar house you know you're looking more like 75 to 80 000 so why do you want to why do you want to subject your family to a lawsuit and you know i've had some families that have literally gone through multiple probates where you leave leaves the house to one person. And I've had cases where the beneficiary has died in the middle of the probate. Having to open up multiple probates, just to process all the assets,

it can get absolutely absurd and ridiculous. So that's, you know, your question was carried stick. How do we get people to do this by being kind, by educating them, by encouraging them come. Last point is,

when you come in for your first consultator, One of the things that we find that really kills that drive to come see us is that a lot of my colleagues will give clients giant piles of homework. Yes. I want all this. I want all this. Not my attitude. My attitude is come sit down. Let's talk about what you're going to do.

Now, we're still going to have to do some work together. And in fact, one of the things we pride ourselves on is we will spend to do. an average state plan about five meetings to make sure that we have every detail correct we have every outfit so it'll take time but for step one just come in and sit down with right you don't need to run into your house or gather everything just come to see it that i think for those i'm sorry i think for those real estate agents watching this and who want to help encourage our customers participate one of the roles we can play is helping the gathering information that we know through public records. I've had clients who have, you know, a house, they might have three or four

rental properties, a second home. There's no reason why they should be pulling that together. We can pull the public record information and send the attorney, you know, the APN, the public record, I mean, the legal description of the property, we know an estimate of the value of the properties for them. These are things that we can help our customers just to speed up the process and be of assistance. And I also feel like we can kind of ride in the sidecar to I encourage them to go back to that second and third meeting and get the work done. Maybe sometimes when that enthusiasm wears down a little bit, but we should be encouraging and helping people to see this through the finish line.

Because if we care about customers, we want to see them get the result they want, not just the paperwork done. You know, one of the things I've seen as a religion, I know you've seen as an attorney because you see this as a head petition work that comes to you, I'm sure, as an attorney where you see in court from other firms that didn't finish the job, is our cases where somebody's created a trust and they haven't put the properties in the trust. They didn't finance it.

So they didn't maybe transfer the deed of property into the trust initially. I see it very commonly where a client will show me a package of a beautiful trust with a beautiful binder and on top of the letter from the attorney, oh, don't forget to notify this. The letter's right there and the blank forms there, it doesn't happen.

Or they buy a property later, as you mentioned, or they refinance property, take out of the trust, and they'll put it back in. And so one of those things is, you know, how do we make sure that customers execute that initial package and follow up? You mentioned five meetings or so. And as a real estate agent, I'll call people and say, well, how's it going with Scott?

How's he taking care of you? Is he moving forward? Your question is going to help in some way. You must have a system as well. Again, you don't want to drag people in, but you want to nudge them a little bit. You want to encourage them. What does that look like if staff members, emails,

reminders process. What's that look like to help people finish? Because it's a lot of work. It's not, it's not, you know, it's not without doing some of the paperwork to get an effective plan. You asked an absolutely perfect question, Bill. And really, I think this is one of the biggest problems, even in my profession. It's what I shorthand, I affectionate, I affectionate to, is funding. So you made the comment about, you know, maybe you've seen or you've other seen other professionals that, you know, send you all with a beautiful set of buying documents and they say, make sure you get that notarized and recorded. No, no, no. We record right here in our office, right?

We are notaries. I'm a notary. My wife's a notary. Half of my staff are all notaries. We think our notary licenses up. We are going to notarize all the document. We're going to pull the title. We're going to make sure you have all your assets.

says we're going to make sure all of that stuff gets funded in transit. We don't feel like we've done our job until that, certainly with the real estate. Second big thing is that this is part of what led us about a decade ago to add and move into the area of financial wealth management. So I can't tell you how many times I have seen people come in like a child, a son will bring me. my mom just died here's her trust they'll drop the trust down and i'll look at the trust and i'll say so what's in the trust and he'll go i don't know her property and i'll and i'll say but there's nothing listed here right there's nothing described in the trust and this is the essence of hegsted right is you have to have a you have to have the asset titled in the trust and you thinkstead says you

have to have some type of description pointing to the asset or one of my other favorite once. I'll get a trots and it'll say, oh, I got three accounts of Washington Mutual. Well, Bill, you and I have been walking up to know that Washington Mutual to memory, there aren't any accounts of Washington. What happened to these assets? And so we end up with nothing and then we end up having to look at doing a probate, lots of trust administration, and it makes it just all that answer. So what's our system? How do we attack this? How do we deal with it? So first of all, we start with really a five-step meeting process.

It's really a six-step process. So start with just come in and see if we're going to work together, right? If you know you, see if you like us, see if we like you, if we can put the plan together. That makes sense. You're going to come back for a second meeting, which can happen by phone or zoom in person. We're going to make sure we're going to hand you a redwell. We're going to make sure we have an account statement for every single one of your financial assets.

Third step is we're going to come back and we're going to give you an outline. Okay. Meeting three. Here's what we see is the schematic of your plan. We have everybody's name spelled correctly. Is this everything you want? Here is a complete list of your assets. And I can't tell you how many times one of my team members will sit in one of those meetings

and go, oh, you spell Billy's name wrong because I gave it to you. wrong or I forgot Susie got married or oh I forgot about those pre annuities I have over here or or you didn't mean the place in North Carolina did you that's what's be part of this yes all of those things so look it's you know we all do it but that's part of why we build the system right meeting four we're going to come back and we're going to take a hard look at your assets I'm going to give you my two cents as a financial professor of what I think And then the beautiful thing is, is if you choose to work with us, we are essentially the bank. We can open Schwab accounts.

I custodied my client's money, the custodian that we use is Charles Schwab. So we can literally open up accounts and initiate transfers. And the beautiful thing is that brings it all together. We're a one-stop shop. So if you ever have any issues, you need money, any transfers. One phone call. We've got a whole team here that's ready to help. you we can be with all of it. Last step, when we sign and you walk out the door with that

beautiful binder and everything seems to be up to date, we don't quit there. At a minimum, we're going to reach out to you, Bill, in three years and say, hey, Bill, we'd really like to see you back. We don't charge you for that meeting. Just come on in, bring your binder. Let's see how you're doing. Tell me, you talked about your grandchildren last time we were Bill. Do they still live a couple of blocks down the street. You don't get to see them as much. How are they doing? What's going on? By the way, last time we got together, you had this account, you had these real estate.

There are any changes? You need to update. Let's make sure that we do this correctly. The only reason we would charge you in these later meeting is if you say to me, oh, Scott, you know, last time I was here, I left everything to my brother, but we have a fight. I hate him. I don't want to give me any money. And you don't plan.

okay that's an amendment we'll talk about that generally we want to stay connected to you we want to have a full picture of everything that's gone on we want to help guide you to minimize your taxes we give you tax advice to think about best asset strategies make sure if all of this stuff works together with the goal here of first and foremost we want to preserve protect your wealth more importantly we want to grow it so that it's there protect you in your old age, but also to leave a legacy of folks that you love and care for, get them the education they need, to make sure their health care is provided for, whatever's important to you.

Just to go back a little bit on what you said about the handling the wealth, which I think is great, because one of the toughest people to get to retitle assets are wealth managers who aren't involved in that process, because to them it's just a small. small administrative action that they don't get paid for. And unless you have, you know, if you have your money split amongst numerous institutions, I find, you're like a small fish in three or four different ponds where you're treated as a big fish in the one pond where you really have most your assets, it's almost always a problem.

And I've been guilt to myself of discovering, hey, I never got to retitle. Why did I not do that? Well, because I talked to the guy, I told me we had to do it. I just, I never followed up and he never saw it through. So when you talk about Charles Schwab, I think that people need understand that you talk about the money is being institutionally held by Schwab or often LPL or there's like two or three major companies are like the banks to the big banks. It doesn't mean you're getting all Charles Schwab assets or Charles Schwab mutual funds. It means that the other ones who hold the securities and bank the securities and then you can make decisions as what's best for you where you went to money to buy in essence. But Charles Schwab is acting as the holder of those securities from a bank of.

banking point of view. Talk a bit about your service. How deep do you get involved with people as as far as asset allocation, types of investments, mutual funds, stocks, EFTs. How detailed do you get involved? Did you refer somebody who does that plan and you administer it or how does that, what's that look like? Yeah, so let me, let me start with that. It's sort of the easiest price of it. Even though I've been a licensed real estate agent and broker, I don't advise on real estate investments other than tideling and helping you coordinate buy and sell. So somebody comes to me and says I want to invest in apartment complexes. That's the type of thing that I would reach out to somebody like you.

I'll refer it that way. I focus on securities, bond, and stock. So I have a very, it would be no surprise to you that I have a very systematic way to guide clients investing. And it is a system that arises out of the academic side of the world, out of the University of Chicago. And it's based on a series of academic articles and principles that resulted in Nobel Prize winning research. Some of it you sort of know instinctually, but it involves modern portfolio theory. It involves a rational market hypothesis.

it involves rebalancing and something called the factor model. So all these things have resulted in Nobel Prizes. What it means from a practical standpoint is that what I do is I build broad-based portfolios that are custom tailored to my clients. On average, we invest in 13,000 different equity holdings, both in the United States and internationally. It's really, it's close to an index style investing, but it's much more sophisticated. And on average, about 5,000 different bond holdings.

So on a modern portfolio, we get the basic premise that diversification is your friend. We have 100 years of history. We can go back and show you, if you build a portfolio like this over the last 100 years, this is what it's done and here's how we can protect you. So, but all of it is designed and tuned to the individual person and their risk tolerance and their station in life. So, for instance, I get somebody that comes in and said, well, I have $100,000 to invest and I'm going to use them to buy a house in six months. Well, I'm not putting into equity because equities are too volatile, right? That's something for a much more stable money market or maybe a diversified bond fund.

But this is the approach. And by the way, when a court of law evaluates whether or not a trustee or fiduciary is handling investments correctly, the approach that we advocate and that we use, the academic approach that I sort of generally described is exactly the standard that they apply. They're looking for broad exposure, broad diversification, exposure to the proper factors, including some small taps and U.S. and international and whole nine guard. So I sleep very well at night, and maybe the easiest way I can tell you this bill is the way that I guide my clients on how to invest is exactly the way that I invest. I've got my family's money and essentially everybody that worked here, we follow the same system because I truly believe that it works based on the vast amount of data that's available. And just to clarify, because I enjoy learning about that topic with you, but that's not necessarily part of the estate plan.

That's maybe something that they can get the plan done with the assets they have currently through other institutions. And I imagine it gives you an opportunity to look at that and say, either A, it's close enough for now, let's put that on the back burner, or B, hey, we have some problems who we should talk about and make sure you understand that. Maybe today is not the day to deal with it, but at least let's get on your radar and we can follow up and we're done. Is that a fair assessment of how it works or is something's required to do the state plan with you? No, Bill, you put your fingers on it exactly.

That's exactly what our approach is. And a couple things to point out is that some of our referrals come from existing financial advisors. Sure. and we play, as I like to say, we play nice in the sandbox. So if you got somebody you like, they're not doing something reckless or crazy. We'll support that and we'll make sure your financial advisor gets the thing funded correctly. But one of some of the proudest moments I've had is I've had some very serious. I've had some economic PhDs in my office.

I had a senior vice president at a very large financial institution. And we spent part of meeting foreign going through and saying, Here's what I like about your portfolio. Here's what I don't like about portfolio. Here's what you've done correctly. Here's a few tweaks I would make. And I've gotten incredible feedback on how impressed they are with our approach. They decided they're fine carrying on their own, but they listened to me.

Took a few tips. And that's okay. We don't have to work together. But the beauty of this approach is, again, you're not familiar with either planning or good investing and you're worried about being sold on stuff. We bring these things together. We make sure they all work together. And we make it as smooth as sell for your family and your love.

And I think it's important to have me take a second look at things, almost everything. I know I've had clients give me assets to buy a house or I look at the statements like curiosity or when I was doing mortgage loans. I would get people's assets. And I would say, you know, I know nothing about financial planning, you know, other than my own assets. But I know this isn't right. I know you need to get somebody to look at this because there's just too much commission and churning for some of your circumstance.

I don't understand why there's all these pages of activity for what you have. And so I think it's important that you have that knowledge and the inability. And then as I said, you know, most people will find that if you have your money at several, you know, financial institutions, it's difficult. If all you're doing is asking to change the title, they're not easy to work with. then I think that either you can paint an attorney or paralegal to do that. It's expensive or do it yourself. It's mind-numbing.

Or sometimes having it a place that can handle it for you like Scott offers is helpful. So again, thanks for walking through it. I appreciate that. I'll give you a couple of quick examples before we leave. So two clients that came to mine recently, I had a lovely lady came in. And she was about 75, 78 years old. And I looked at her and I said, you know, do you know, do you know, know what you're invested in. What do you think of your portfolio? And she goes, oh, I'm very

conservative. I'm almost all in bonds. And you look at your statement because you're about 90% in stocks. And by the way, you realize that a portfolio of this structure historically could drop as much as 50 to 60% in a given year. Well, that's when she turned pale and went, holy crap and nobody told me this. I had another couple in their 70s that came into my office recently. And they had all of the retirement money in 11 stock. That's my $13,000, $13,000 stock portfolio. I mean, and of course they were all the high flyers, the tech stock. So they're getting some good performance. But you know, you just need some bad news to come out of one of these stocks and your portfolio can make a major hit. So if nothing else, you're going to get my two cents on what

I think. You can take that advice. We can work better together. But if you want to do it yourself or you have somebody you love, we play nice, and we will help support that relationship. The most important thing, as you started this conversation with, you know, is making sure these things work together, the funding are the assets inside the front. We don't want to do Hegsteads. You don't want you in probate. You want to make sure that the trust you wrote actually works. That's what we're all about. Well, obviously, you guys, you cover a wide range of this space. We could obviously go in for a long time. I've kind of gone over time with your time.

I appreciate so much your time. For anybody who wants more information, the website is shomerlawgroup.com, S-C-H-O-M-E-R-Log Group.com. And if you want more information, contact is down below. Phone number 310-337-76-9-6. And if you're driving and can't write that down,

feel free reach out to me. I'd be honored to make the introduction and make that work for you. And then last, before we go, on your website, you have attend a free event. Talk a bit about somebody who does it. What does the rhythm of events? I know you offer some online,

you offer some in your office. What does that look like? Some of who attends a free event, what's that look like for them to participate? Yeah, we have an on-demand webinar that's there now. It doesn't cost anything. You just click and you can watch me give a presentation. In addition, on a regular basis,

we will post live events. So we'll go to a hotel, we'll go to a conference room, and, you know, you can register there right online. You can also call us. We're old school. We'll pick up the phone and it does not cost anything to attend. And like I said, we'll serve you some coffee and refreshments.

We'd love to have you. So come get educated. Well, I guess I met your firm or initially introduced after meeting you to when you your advance locally. It was very interesting when your associates ran it, very informative. I think anybody would benefit from it, whether you need to redo a plan or do a plan for the first time. the more you learn, I think, the more effective you can be.

So, Scott, thanks again for sharing and really appreciate your time today and we'll continue the conversation in the future. Well, Bill, I can't thank you enough and, you know, the service you provide getting education on a wide variety of tops out of the community. And for you to reach out and invite me as an honor and it was, we had fun. I had a good time. Thanks so much. Thank you.

And for the rest of you, this was probate weekly. We get together every week with a new episode, most usually from probate trainings, though, not as often with attorneys as accomplished and I think wide-ranging skills as Scott has, both in terms of probate and estate planning avoiding probate and wealth management, which is part of that package as well. But we do an episode regularly. Please let me know your feedback. Like it, dislike it.

Send me a note. If I can help in any way, please reach out, call text your email, or see me on social media at Bill Gross Probate. As always, make today your best ever. Thanks so much.