KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Probate Weekly - Probate Cash with Marc Harris

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Hey, it's Bill Gross. Welcome back to Probate Weekly, and we issue these episodes every week on your favorite channels, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I'm at Bill Gross Probate on social media or Bill, Bill Gross Probate.com. You know, one of the challenges of probate for families is where's the money come from to hire an attorney, filing fees, maybe fixing up the property, maybe evicting a tenant. Sometimes you're inheriting stuff, but you don't have the money yet. And one of the tools, and I think one of the most unduelly utilize tools, and my experience as a practitioner, is advancing inheritance money to errors, whether it be the only error or multiple errors. Oftentimes, you're able to get money and get started and move into action. Also, get the tourney you want by taking off the table if they'll advance the fees or if they'll take it that way. So the advanced inheritance is a critical tool for professionals as well as a grant attorney for errors. I'm excited to have today the CEO of one of the leading companies in that space, probate cash, who have Mark Harris.

Mark, thanks for rejoining us. Thank you, Bill, for having me. And Probate Cash is always excited to be on your show. And, you know, we've been on before, and I know that we really have, we've done some business together, and I think because we're aligned, probate cash is the website, and it has a lot of the information there.

But I do think it is a personal business that people should trust who they work with, I know when I talk to customers, sometimes it sounds too good to be true. Talk about the concept of advanced inheritance and how probate cash goes at need for people. Sure. So as you mentioned, people have an inheritance, money usually cash or soon to be liquid property, they'll be liquidated in terms of cash, but they can't access it for various reasons. One property may not have sold yet.

Two is the probate process in general. Most people don't realize somebody even exists, let alone how long it is. So my background has always looked at future cash that's due to somebody and seeing if we could make a payment today to somebody who needs to access their future cash that's obligated to them and fill that void. And then we wait to get paid back once the money is to support.

supposed to be released pursuant to the terms of whatever it is. Probate is a little bit different because there are no terms usually to say, here's when you get paid. And that's one of the difficulties of the difficulties, as you know and most of your listeners I'm sure know, is the probate case begins and you're at the mercy of the courts. You're at the mercy of claims against the estate and third parties potentially objecting, all sorts of those challenges. and then at the end of the day, when is property going to sell?

And then is property going to sell for the market value for people in a hurry just to get what they can, and so they take a significant haircut and maybe not get the fair market value for the assets. So probate cash saw that void in the marketplace, and I'm an attorney with a lot of friends who do probate law, and they have those same issues where their client, or their beneficiaries of their clients,

the estate, are always asking for money, or they're asking for the lawyers to do more work, and the lawyers aren't getting paid. So we looked and said, well, what if we advance money to the beneficiaries of the estate, provide them with the cash today based on what we believe they will receive when they ultimately the assets are ordered to be distributed by the probate court, and we will then wait to get paid at that time.

But in the meantime now, the beneficiaries who need money today for whatever purposes, just to pay bills, have that money today. And that gives them the opportunity to take a deep breath and wait for fair market value to be paid for the real property that may be sold. It helps them hold on for the time the probate case takes, which isn't in their control. And the added benefit is the person representative of the estate now has a little bit of breathing room because they're usually getting pressure from the benefit issues. So I think the thing that you said that to me most resonates is relieving pressure, right? Sometimes people feel, you know, they have a problem. The problem is they have an inheritance, but they can't access the value of it. And maybe there's multiple errors putting pressure on them.

Maybe they have their own financial needs that are creating pressure. maybe the property is being foreclosed on, which is a common case. It creates pressure. And oftentimes cash can do things, empower you to relieve that pressure. And I think credit cash covers a lot of those. So let's talk about a couple different scenarios that I've worked with, that I've worked with you guys before.

One is, you know, customers will call me and say, you know, we're shopping for an attorney. And there's attorney A who's great, but he wants to deposit. The filing fees in L.A. County are about $375. You have a publication you have to do, which might cost $900, $900 of the probate. So you might have $1,000 in actual costs out of pocket, though sometimes they can be waived or reduced. You have the attorney who might want an initial deposit to cover their fees, not that they're charging up front, but some attorneys will ask for a $2,000, $4,000 deposit. And the customer is making the choice of the attorney based on that number versus I'll say to them, hey, what if we could remove that consideration from you?

We can get you in advance to cover all that. And maybe even another couple thousand dollars for pocket money or more, maybe to bring the mortgage current or more to secure the property. It really eliminates the shopping returny question based on money because now you can use advance to get the attorney that you want. And we know that people, I mean, everybody just about me included, we make four decisions when we're strapped for money. When money becomes an issue, we don't choose well.

We often choose because we have to. We have either let an attorney who's going to take the ride, may charge more because that attorney is doing that. So, yeah, we help the personal representative or the person applying to the letters is now shopping for an attorney who open up the probate. And I am willing to wager that that person is applying for to become the personal representative. There didn't even know probate existed until just recently. So now that person is looking for a lawyer, learning the cost involved in opening up in the state.

And what we can do is we will go ahead and enter into a transaction with that person and have that person direct us to pay their attorney directly. and for the purpose of opening up the probate, any kind of retainer, anything else that needs to be done. I mean, a lot of people, of course, know that they're going to have to sell real property. And you don't want to do that without an attorney also. It goes back to the poor decisions. Are you going to sell the estate property without benefit of an attorney? Because it costs more money now to do the closing.

Well, if you don't have the resources, you may say, oh, I don't need a lawyer. and we all know the football's involved with that. And I was finding that the attorneys that would offer to do it for free who were using probity advance or probate cash as a vendor or equivalent, they were usually inferior attorneys who were only getting the business by discounting their service versus the best attorneys needed deposit. They use that to weed out people and to verify those who are committed. and I think they use probate cash the way to kind of vet the case as well, right?

If you guys are looking at the case, so rather than get a bad attorney, just because they'll take the case for free, now you can get the best attorney for you, regardless of the money at front. You're going to pay the same probably at the end. It's somewhat limited in California. There's statutory fees in California and some other states. So it's not that you're going to get charged more, perhaps.

It might be that you'll get a better attorney to actually handle the case and get it done properly. So that's one scenario. The other scenario I find is I'm constantly mentioning probate cash to attorneys because there's some attorneys to say, well, I'd love to do more probate cases, but I don't get paid for a year or a year and a half. And I would say, well, it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to get the fees.

That money you can get your customer to advance. Extraordinary fees, sometimes you can get those approved by the court and paid ahead of time. And at least the money is sitting in your trust account, you know you're going to get paid if there's an advanced ball versus hoping there's money at the end because oftentimes attorneys can take a probate case and find out there's another relative and they're caught short,

but the estate will end up having to pay them one way or the other. So talk a little bit about your relations with attorneys as far as getting advances and them using you as a way to help their customers do business with them. Yeah, so we do work with lawyers from all over the country.

I know you're based in Southern California at my office. I'm sitting in South Florida, but we do business in both states and all the states in between. The attorneys that we work with, they know that they're able to get enough money to properly handle the probate case. And the attorneys are happy to have that money, not just because they have another case, but you mentioned that the probate's uncertain. And if you're waiting for the statutory fees at the end, they may not be there. Or the amount that you thought it was going to be in the estate has been reduced.

And so your statutory fee will be one of it. One of the things that, one of the important aspects of the advances that probate cash provides to beneficiaries, and by the way, when we provide advances to lawyers, we're only doing so pursuant to the beneficiaries instructions, the person applying for the letter. And so we're in contract privity with the beneficiary, the beneficiary is directing us to pay the attorneys. So we're not actually in contract privity with the probate attorneys themselves. But going down that road, one aspect of our advances is that they are non-recourse. So what does that mean?

So we advance somebody $10,000. And we've advanced as little as $5,000. We advance as high as a half million dollars to send him on that. the case. But as a non-recourse advance, what probate cash does is takes a risk that the inheritance or the beneficiary who is taking the advance, that inheritance will be there at the end of the debt. So what could go wrong, right? What could go wrong in probate courts? Right. What could go wrong with this advance? All right. So that's the old hypothetical question that everybody laughs out because we know everything

first off is the probate case is just about to be open we don't know what creditors are out there and so if a creditor Medicaid Medicare in California comes can wipe a claim can wipe out all of the assets of the estate and if a claim does do that because our advances are non-recourse we have no recourse against our customer or the beneficiary to get repaid. So what does that mean? Well, if we gave a $10,000 advance to that beneficiary, which 5,000 went to the lawyer and 5,000 went to the beneficiary, that beneficiary is the only one who got money out of the estate. They get to keep the $10,000 and we do not have any recourse to sue them. That's just the same thing is if there's a challenge to the

case, if it turns out of the person is, the airship is reduced, something that that means. or as long as there's no fraud. If there's fraud, you can't defraud us and then say, oh, we don't have to pay it back. That's different, of course. But the normal risk that you have in a probate case, that is the risk that we assume is transactions. And I've had cases where customers got advances

and it turned out out of the blue came some sibling they didn't know about. And they were afraid that they owed the money. And I assure them no. You know, you had nothing to do with it. It turned out the sibling was not legitimate, and we're able with the probate advance to have an attorney to help us prove it, and it all worked out. But it did take away some of the stress to say, you're not liable, as long as you didn't lie about this, as long as you didn't defraud. It's one of the benefits. Not that that's when the probate cash wants to advertise, send us your deals to fall apart.

I think as a professional, then the flip side is also true. And this is where I try to get involved with the advanced companies. I've always reached out to them, which is when I look at a probate case and see an advanced company, I want to evaluate their risk and their liability and see if I can help them. And I've had cases where the advanced company made an assessment of the property, and it turned out the property was burned down. And so they thought they went to Zillow and thought it was worth $400,000 and reality was worth about $60 because it was burned down.

I told them bad news and they didn't like it, but help them. And at the same time also, I had a case recently where not public cash but another company there was a bad guy. There was an heir who was living the house for free and holding up to sell the property. And here they're giving him an advance. And meanwhile, he's the one who's stopping us from being able to sell the property. And I just point out to them, hey, you're really kind of financing your own problem. You don't get paid until the house is sold.

And so I think sometimes as a professional, for those you're watching, whether you be an attorney or maybe an attorney for one of the errors or a real estate broker like me, looking at the case, reaching out, seeing where you can work together is really important. And that's kind of my goal on these is to stay in contact with the key professionals as well. So anyhow, just kind of an opportunity, I would say always anytime you've got to do in advance, call local realtor and have them drive the property, make sure the property is still there. That's what we do. And professionals know that we, you know, the advantage to have a client, even if it starts as what may seem to be just a simple probate to open up, now you have a client. And that client is

going to have needs, could be future needs, they're totally unrelated to the probate, but now they have a lawyer, and they've probably never had a lawyer before. That's why they're contacting you to open up the probate. And what comes out to the probate is what we discussed earlier, the sale of real property. They need the lawyer to represent them in that sale. And then sometimes what happens is we're talking about somebody who doesn't move out of the house, and eviction has to be done. That costs money. So, and then on top of the eviction, you want to crawl back the inheritance of the person who has been staying in the real property, in the estate property, and not paying rent. And that costs money. So it all

like continues and continues and continues. And suddenly as a lawyer, it's not a simple program. Now you're representing an estate where the fees are going to go into the healthy five figures. One of the other cases I see regularly is somebody who already is in probate, has an attorney, but for some other reason, needs money. I've had cases where customers call me and said, you know, my aunt died, and I'd love to help out for the funeral cost of $10,000. I'm going to get this $500,000 house in a year. There's no way I get some of the money now.

And the answer is, yeah, that's a perfect scenario. In that particular case, they had the letters of approval. It was just a matter of time. It was just a matter of it. I think in their case, about six months before they got the money. But rather than wait six months, you can say an advance is expensive, but that's not for you to decide. In this case, this was an aunt who's like a mother to my client.

And she thanked me so profusely for making that connection because for $10,000, she was able to be here with your family and honor somebody who's important to her. She had $5,000 coming. What is she going to do with it, right? What do we do with money? Well, one thing is to take care of her families in some cases. So you do work with cases that already filed.

Now, do you contact the attorney or how do you, what do those look like when customers come to you? They're already in probate. They're having an attorney. They're just looking to speed up the process of their payment. How does that look to you guys? Well, I sure hope one of the things that I've done is try to go really network with probate attorneys. So probate attorneys know that our service exists because they are getting the phone calls from the personal representative but the other beneficiary is saying, I really need my inheritance.

Just like that example. My aunt passed away. I need to pay for the funeral. I've got imminent needs. Or it could be something that just my kids tuition is due. My car broke down. Like real life. Real life happens while the probate is taking over a year.

That's if there's no adverse issues in the probate. And so I find it incredibly important that if you're an attorney, you need to know that know how best to counsel your client. That's why you're a counselor. And part of being a good counselor is to know all the options that are available to you as the attorney, but also to your clients. And so if you have people who desperately need money or just don't want to wait a year or however long it's going to take, then you need to know as an attorney that probate cash can provide money within hours, really. I mean, we can provide money right away. For real. No, he's seeing this just so he's listening, for real. Like, that's not, the holdup is always the customer signed the paper. It's another of them wiring the money. They're ready to wire within hours, for sure. Yeah. And why is that? Because there's no loan. There's no credit check. There's none of the attributes, characteristics of a loan apply with what we're doing with advances.

We are purchasing a portion of your inheritance. And as long as we can see that you are indeed beneficiary, you're an heir to the a state and we know what percentage of an area you're going to be and there's a house that's going to be sold and that house is not underwater. We can identify how much of an inheritance you're going to be entitled to receive, give or take, and we can make that decision very quickly. All that information is ascertainable in moments, and that's how we can make payments so quickly. And so it's a lifesaver to beneficiaries to be able to get that money now. And it's really crucial that the probate attorneys know that that is there and can provide, you know, probate cash's information to those beneficiaries or contact us themselves and at least

let them understand that option exist. You know, the sad reality, at least in Los Angeles, you know, I have a saying, which is, you know, the average attorney is by definition average. The problem with probate is that 9% of the cases are done by attorneys who've done one or less in the last 12 months. Because they're licensed as an attorney, so many attorneys will take the case, not knowing what they're getting into and not knowing how to service their customer, including not knowing about probate cash or equivalence.

And so my experience is over half the time, I don't know the exact number, but at least half the time, when I tell attorneys that there's such a service available, even though you're working as hard as you can to network with attorneys, even though your whole industry is trying to reach out to them. In my experience, because they're not paying attention until they have the case, most attorneys don't know they're such an advance. And number one, and number two, they assume because of the pricing, it's unworthy of their customers, not appreciating that that's really their customer's decision to make, not theirs. Meaning, like I said, the case of the woman with a funeral, you might say that paying a 20 or 30% premium, so instead of

$10,000, she'd be back 12 or $13,000, six months later when she got her inheritance, you could say that that's ridiculously expensive. She didn't say that. She said it was life-changing and positive. She cried on the phone thanking me. But it's amazing to me, Mark, how few attorneys know about your industry. And when I bring it up, we'll argue with me about it. rather than say, hey, my client's an adult, they chose to work with me.

Let me see what their thoughts on this as a possible solution. Well, most lawyers, fortunately for them, either they have the resources, they have good credit, and they're not necessarily people who are going to require in advance at our terms like probate cash. But I would argue that our fees, while they're high, completely. compared to a traditional loan, they're high because they're non-recourse, they're high because claims that could still occur against the estate. All the risk, I mean, you're in Southern California where it's a horrible tragedy where

so many houses have been lost in the fires. Those are the state asset profit is that, you know, may be insured and may not be insured. So anyway, the risk are real. What I have found in this business and other businesses I've been in is there are a lot more people in the United States who really need cash, who don't have good credit, and when there's a company like probate cash that can provide that advance, providing the money when they need it and for serious needs, that is incredibly important. And I think it's just an issue of attorneys and others, having empathy for

your client's your client and your client's financial situation, understanding that not everybody has a law degree in use and is able to have a comfortable living, not just a comfortable living, but to have money in the bank for when problems occur. And so, you know, when a lawyer's car breaks down, they charge it, and they fix it, they give a credit card, and it's all good. When a lot of people's cars break down they don't have credit cards they have no car unless they can get cash to to fix it and that's that's why and you're right it is it's not for everybody but it's for everybody's decision to make on their own for what's best for it yeah and i think oftentimes the attorneys you know again the below average ones they're not aware of the products when you bring it up

they're going to poo put it because that justifies them not knowing about it rather than really evaluating it and saying, well, who would this be right for? I mean, they're in business that's legal. You're not a mafia organization. You're not, you know, you're under the laws of California. In fact, California actually regulates this to some degree. And there's been research and there was some discussions. We ban this business.

And they said, no, actually, there are people who need this. And when used properly, it's a great tool that people can take advantage of the tool. So I think it's very important that sometimes attorneys in their attempts to, protect their customers or protect their reputation will poop with something that really could be for the benefit of the customer. I'm not giving them legal advice. But when I talk to a customer, and I hear the importance of some of these systems, getting money to move out of the house, getting money to buy a car. I had a client who was, she didn't have a car, a car broke down. And for $5,000, you know, we got her advances. She got a car and was able to help out. So, you know, one of the

questions, you know, about this type of product, oftentimes we're talking about, lower income people or people with financial problems. Maybe your mom and dad are leaving a million to our house, but oftentimes the error has next to nothing or little. There are bank products for people like that, but oftentimes you have to put money in a bank account in order to open it to get the credit. On appropriate advance, does a customer have to put deposit money down

or start with some money in before they get the advance? I know the answer, but I'm going to give you an easy one here. Yeah, appropriate cash can make the payment, make the advance payment by check, ACH, by wire to a bank account. Most of our customers do have at least a bank account. If not, we can provide a check. So we understand that a lot of our customers don't have a bunch of resources, and that's why they're coming to us in the first place.

I did want to take a step back. We're talking about the legalities of the probate cash business of giving advances. Where you are in California actually has a statute right on point. And so when I do talk to attorneys, especially in California, who are, have a negative attitude for the business or, yeah, whatever your attitude is, is your attitude. But different is, how can you do this? We say, if there's a law right on point on how one assigns their inheritance. And so in California, we assign, we purchase a portion of that

inheritance. By the way, we do purchase portion. We always want the beneficiaries to have skin in the game, we want them to still receive money when the probate case closes. And so we never purchased the entire inheritance due to the beneficiary. So the law, how it works is we're very transparent in every state. We will advance money to our beneficiary, who is in exchange for that advance, is getting, who is signing an assignment of their inheritance. We filed that assignment of the inheritance with the probate court. So the judge sees it or the lawyers see it.

It's right there. It's public record. It knows to pay us. And in fact, but then when it is time for the order to distribute the assets at the end of the probate case, probate cash will be in the final order as a recipient of the person's inheritance. So also, because there could be personal representatives listening and other probate, attorneys who say, well, what happens if there is a shortfall of the beneficiary, how does it affect the other beneficiaries? How does an assignment affect the probate case in general? So the short

answer is it does not affect the case in any way. When a beneficiary, let's say there are five beneficiaries of an estate and one beneficiary is, we believe, is going to receive $100,000. And we advanced that person $25,000. File that assignment. But then in court, and then as the case progresses through the probate courts, we learned that there is a huge claim that's been approved. And now the, instead of $500,000, we thought was going to be in the estate, $100,000 for each five beneficiaries, each of the five beneficiaries.

now there's only going to be $10,000. And so what would have? That would be enough money to pay us back for all the estate assets. However, remember, we are only in contract privity with the beneficiary who's receiving the advance. And so we would get that beneficiary is $10,000, well short of even what we provided them. But none of the other beneficiaries of the estate are affected. The private attorney, not effective. The length of the case, not effective.

So everything is done as easy as well. possible, as transparent as possible, and before the eyes of the courts as well. Yeah, literally the judge is going to sign the order with the exact amount of being paid back for the advanced to advance company or else nothing happens at the end of the day. So it is being approved specifically signed off by the judge in the entire process. You know, when I started on this path, I don't know if I ever told you this, but I actually did a lot of research. there was an article that had negative about it. I think politically it was kind of lumped in with

payday loans and some similar type of products. And I did research and there actually were four different law review articles in the subject. And they're all written by the same professor of law at UC Davis. And I actually reached out to him and interviewed him under my channel. And fascinating where he said the same thing you mentioned, which was, you know, there was this kind of controversy and then the state passed the law. And he said, be honest, I'm not really involved in that space anymore because the law really solved the problem, that there are people who need it and there are people who don't, and the process kind of weeds out those two, and it kind of stop the abuses. And so there's really nothing else for me as a researcher to talk about. The

system is kind of moving on its own. So it is interesting how that legislation in California, I do think, I believe we're the only state that has those requirements, and I believe you guys comply with that same regulation in the other state you operate in, even though you're not required to just because it's good practice to file. I think that it just makes sense for everybody. Yeah, we follow the California statute and spirit and basically letter in every state we do business for it. So we file the assignments. And first of all, you want everybody to know what's happening. You don't want the probate attorney to be surprised at the end of the day. You want to, you want everybody on the same page because that's how problems are averted. So that's important.

And it works. And we do a significant volume of business, and almost all of that business solicits probate cash, not the other way around. So people are finding us who need money. And that's how big a problem it is, is that they are, you have beneficiaries who need money. They call their probate attorney. The probate attorney sometimes won't even speak to them because it's not their client. and only the personal representative was their client. Or the attorney has just says, look, I can't do anything.

You just have to wait until this ends because they're either don't know if probate cash or unwilling to give advice to call us. But to what happens? The people find us through a Google search term or other way. And that's how we do the majority of our business. So let's talk a little bit about somebody who's interested in getting in advance. Imagine somebody who's inheriting maybe mom and dad passed left them a house and they have terrible credit. So in their mind, they can't get a credit card, they can't get a car loan or if they can't get a car loan, it's a ridiculous price.

Does a credit affect them as far as getting appropriate cash advance? No, it does not. So we do not do a credit check because it's not alone. We're not depending upon the credit. So stop for a second. You even do a credit check. We don't even do it. I don't even conduct a credit check.

There's no need for me to. If your credit is wonderful, then actually if your credit is really good, I encourage you to contact the bank, you know, a traditional lender. Unless you need the money immediately, we do have situations where the estate or county is going to take the home away because tax bills haven't been paid. The tax bill has to be paid immediately. And the people have excellent credit. But guess what? It takes time to get a traditional loan. We can make payment immediately.

So that's even people with good credit. Folks with bad credit are more likely to contact us. But we don't run the credit report because it really has no effect on us. We're not saying a low credit score. We can't give you money. We're advancing money. And we're relying. We're buying an inheritance.

You actually, these people have something of value, just like it was a car or some other asset, they have something of value, their inheritance, which they can sell. Now, we don't know exactly what that inheritance will turn out to be at the end of the day. It depends on what is paid for the property, but we do know that it's real, and we then will give them the advance, and then we take all the risks that we said, the claims all the risks in the probate court, not just the risk of the probate court that are normal, but also the time, the time frame. So it's easy to say, well, those are high fees if you get paid back within nine months or so.

What happens in the probate cases that linger on for years? And you're in L.A. County. We do a lot of business in New York, also with the courts are flogged. Well, it's amazing. The courts are flogged almost everywhere. And if you have our money for two years, three years, we actually cap our fees. At the end of the day, in those situations,

the argument that the fees are high becomes a little disingenuous. Well, I hear that from, for example, from attorneys who require customers to pay them a deposit for their legal fees. I think, well, if that's so cheap, why don't you lend the money or you do the answer to price? And the answer is they would never,

because the uncertainty, it's not even just that it takes a year or two years or three years or four years. It's not knowing that makes it more expensive as a lender and you have to factor in those risks. And then the fact that there's possible risks that you may not get paid back because something happens as well. I don't mean to bury you with possible bad scenarios, but I'm sure it happens. Like I said, there's a case where a house burned down. There's cases where houses burned down later and who knows what that means. In those cases where other airs pop up. So how about for the-

Quite a few situations where we didn't get paid back for a myriad of different reasons like that. The house has burned down. Claims have wiped us out. It turned out the airship was incorrect or it was challenged. Or what happens? Could we do deals, advances with the states or beneficiaries of a state where there are wills

that lay out who the beneficiaries are and what their percentage is, and assuming that will is not challenged or through now, we can rely on that. But we have a whole bunch of estates that we work with where the decedent passed away and tested without a win. And in that situation, you have a good idea of who is in the family tree that's going to get paid and paid what, but not always. And in a whole other world of earfinders out there.

And the more we find on the estate, the less of an inheritance that the person we get into advance of money is money to is going to be able to pay us back. I had a case once where a attorney showed up and an error finder had found they claimed to see it in and they were, you know, objecting to the petition and later they ended up just being an error. But it was an air finder and they brought in an advanced company to uncover their advances. Interesting. the advanced company still has not filed their assignment form as required to get paid back.

So I think it's one of those smaller companies that doesn't know that they need to do that to protect their interest as well. But things happen, while things happen in this space for sure. So on the same kind of token, again, I think I know the answer, but imagine, you know, an heir, a child is believing in the house, take care of the parents, mom and dad passed, now they're inheriting a million dollar house, but they don't have a job. Are they going to qualify or not qualify for a probate advance? Is having a job or other source of documentable income? Is that going to get in the way of them getting in advance? No, that won't either.

Similar to the credit check, these aren't loans. I'm not looking for income verification. I'm not calling an employer or their last employer to confirm whether they were indeed employed. Again, those kind of situations, if you are applying for a loan, from a traditional lender, that's very important lender. Right. For us, it's irrelevant.

We are looking at the assets in the estate and what you beneficiary are entitled to receive as your inheritance from those assets. And based on that information, we make a decision on whether or not to make that advance. And if we even do call the attorney, the probate attorney in advance or the middle of doing this. And most of them are actually cooperative and help us out. Because at the end of the way, nobody wants a problem. You always want, in life, you always want to identify a problem right off the bat.

Hopefully, before money is even exchanged, because it just benefits of it. So, but, yeah, no job, no problem, no credit, no problem. Again, we're not even looking at that as a factor. In fact, how does somebody find us? Why does somebody find us? is because after mom or dad has passed away, the usual situation is the kids go to the bank because there's money in the bank account, there's no beneficiary on the bank account, and they go there and say, hey, my mom passed away, can I please get the money out of the bank account?

And, of course, the bank says, can I see proof that you have authority to act on behalf of the estate? Where are your letter is testamentary? And these people have never heard of letters testamentary. They don't know what the banker is talking about. Or they're looking to quickly flip the estate property and sell it. So they run to the realtor and he's given a listing agreement, the realtor says the same thing. Can I see evidence that you have the legal authority to sell this house? What are you talking about?

You need to get letters. That's when they first called the probate attorney. That's when they first learned that probate attorneys usually want money up front. That's when they also learn that this whole probate process is going to take a year or more. So here they thought they were getting money out of the account, which they need because they have poor credit. They have no job, but life is still going on. They were counting on this. And that's where we come in and say we, with an advance from probate cash, it relieves that financial pressure.

So once the probate is open, they don't do anything that would hurt the value of the estate, such as selling real property or other assets, for far below market value. And I think also there's a good opportunity to talk to, if you're talking to a professional and probate, like a real estate professional like me, I'll marshal you through the probate cash process as well. So we get the right attorney because one of the things I've seen happen is people kind of fixate on an attorney and, you know, which is great.

But for example, Los Angeles, if you don't get full authority, you have limited authority, your probate case can take two or three, four years longer just because the attorney may not really know what they're doing fully or may be risk adverse where they don't need to be. And so again, that's why I do these interviews with professionals as part of a team to say, we work together

and you get two or three people working on your team with you. Like anything else in life, you're going to have better results by working together. So just like Mark said, they call the attorneys and work with them as well as a real estate agent. I would urge you to work with the attorney, work with the probate cash so that you can figure out what's the best solution for the customer and package your property to get the best result. That's the main thing. So, but one thing, our team is so experienced in underwriting and reviewing the probate cases that a lot of our customers, once they've received in advance, and they may come back for another advance, but a lot of the times they call their representative here at probate cash

just to ask what's going on with the case. The attorney is not calling me back. I don't know what's going on. We will sit with our customers and say, okay, here's what's of the probate cases, here's what the docket says. And, you know, it's still going to be a long time. It's going to be a long. And those conversations are often had because the personal representative is not getting back to the beneficiaries or they don't know or the attorney isn't getting back to the personal representative.

Usually what happens, as you can imagine with probate and family, there's often family scrimmishes and so not all the beneficiaries communicate well with one another so the personal representative of the estate may not be on the best terms with their siblings who are also entitled to the inheritance but then that leaves some of the beneficiaries out so they contact us directly but what it really does because I know a lot of professionals most of the professionals are watching your this podcast it helps attorneys keep the volume down. If you don't want beneficiaries constantly calling your office updates, but why are they calling?

Money, right? We know they're calling because they need money. They need their inheritance. When am I going to get my money? Well, if you want to make the phone stop ringing at your office, then you give those folks our contact information of probate cash and then see if it's right for those beneficiaries to take an advance in for their time. Well, and there's two parts that. One is they want the money. The other parts of the communication you mentioned where you fill that role. And again, as realtors on this call, you should be filling that role as well. I regularly check online the status of a case, what the hearing was, what the outcome was, when the rescheduled date was, what the status is.

And so I think that customers more relate to, for example, real estate professionals because we deal more with customer time. Attorney time is so funny. You call an attorney on a Monday, leave a message. They'll call you back like the next Tuesday and say, hey, Bill, I'm returning your phone call. I'm like, I called you? Oh, I was like a week ago. And attorneys are like the only professionals who, that's kind of acceptable, whereas realtors, we normally call customers back within an hour or we text them, certainly by the

end of the day. And customers don't understand that. And I don't think attorneys understand, you know, they want to be attorneys. They don't want to be small business people servicing consumers. And so I think we can fill the role, both probate cash fills a role and I as a realtor fill that role with customers so that we can relieve the calls about money and also relieve the service calls. You can delegate that. You're hiring us as a team. And while probate cash is services money and mine as a realtor is selling the house, we also

play the role of working with your customers. So for those your attorneys listening, I think that's another reason why you should be looking to work with a team. This can help you be more effective. And so with realtors, Bill, we work with realtors every day. We help realtors, we believe, actually obtain the listing in a probate situation. One of the things that realtors can offer to potential new clients to get a listing, they say, hey, if you let me list the property, I also could probably get you some cash right up front.

Yes. You know, I have a source that will give you $5,000 right now. Yes. Yes. For you, tend that, whatever may be. And so that's a resource that realtor should also know exist. And also similarly, if you're getting pressure from the personal representative to take, to list the property and below market value to hopefully get a quick sale or to sell to the first person that comes around,

they're doing that again because they don't have or they don't want to renovate the property, put a little bit of money in it for sale to get fair market value. So I would challenge anybody talking about, you know, whether our fees are high or not, imagine, I mean, you guys are all realtors. If you put $20,000, $30,000 of repairs in a house to prepare it for sale, how much more are you going to receive as a purchase price for that home once it's fixed up as opposed to selling it in a four condition? I mean, it's going to be significantly higher than our, than our, fees could ever be. And that's going to help you as a realtor, get a higher commission. It's going to help the personal representative, who's usually a beneficiary, and it's going to help the other beneficiaries receive more money than the thought they were going to receive. Yeah, and I think, you know, the way I found you guys, to be honest, was all that sounded great. I was working with another company, local company, and they just weren't servicing the customer. You know, the, that, the, the,

I guess there's different ways to run a business, but my customers were applying for advanced. They're working in answer within a couple of days. The company was sent to paperwork. The paperwork wasn't, the customer didn't know how to get it signed. They didn't have access to a notary. You know, we're real estate agents. We're used to solving those problems.

And so, you know, we can get involved and be the oil between the gears to make things move more smoothly. And that's why I came to ProBic Cash after going through several others was that the other companies just weren't giving me and my client. the service that we need, even though they could have, in some cases did, you know, I feel like some companies, if they have happy customers at 80% of the time, that's good enough. That doesn't work for me.

When an attorney gives me a client, I have to make them happy 100% of the time, and my reputation is on the line. And like I said, I work with probate cash, and you guys have always come through when I've sent people to you, and I almost apologize for not sending you more business. So, Mark, I know I've gone for quite a while. I'm going up against the hour here. I know you're busy as well. So I should have to thank you for coming on today.

and sharing with our professionals and with attorneys and with families who are looking for probate advance. I know probatecash.com is a really easy website to remember probatecash.com. I don't know you have a toll-free number as well for people who want to call and they call in. They don't get you, fortunately, they get some of your great staff members who will take those calls right away. Thank you so much, being on the call, I really appreciate your time. Yeah, Bill, I appreciate it as well. I just wanted to add, just to piggyback in your last statement,

that because I'm an attorney and I appreciate the relationship that professionals, realtors have with their clients, attorneys have with their clients, I encourage you to check out the reviews of probate cash as well. We have incredibly fantastic positive reviews, naming or funding executives, our underwriters, all for that customer care that we're talking about. And so that's very important to us and should be important to you because I wouldn't even be here if I thought we were going and were Bill, entertain me, if they're going to be referring to folks that we're going to have just issues of even good communication customer service. And for the record, I don't have any affiliate relationship.

I know that there are different services that have been on, different podcasts and different services you can sign up and get some of the commission. I have anything to do with that here. This is just purely marking this team. It's been great. I did have another company that I was affiliate with and just did not give this level of service I needed consistently. So my recommendation to them is pure and based on service for Mark.

Again, thanks for your time. I appreciate. Always a pleasure in chatting with you. Thanks, Bill. And for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week to talk about probate issues. We innovate leaders in the business. We're going to Probate Weekly.com.

You want email reminders, put that in. If you want text reminders, put that in. Either one's fine. We don't need either one. You can scroll down and see us on diverse audio format, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all that stuff. And then past episodes are on YouTube, the video. there and you'll get their information. You can continue the conversation at probateweekly.com and our Facebook group, we have over 4,000 members, and you can post your probate related

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