KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Probate Weekly | Sedric Collins

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Welcome to Probate Weekly, where we get together every week on Thursdays at 9 a.m. To talk about all things you're ready to probate, both what to do if you're in probate and how to avoid through estate planning. I'm Bill Gross. I'm at Bill Gross Probate on social media and Probateweekly.com if you want to join us live or register and get notifications and such. And this program we do every week is a interview format. I'm just going to relaunch the YouTube streams here. So let's see if that picks up the way it's supposed to. There we go.

And of course, it makes noise. I've got to stop that. Okay, there we go. So we're also a live stream right now onto YouTube. And so we do this every week. And the goal here is most commonly to interview, you know, professionals in the field, attorneys, vendors, people can help us as professionals buy better service to our customers, learn how to be better.

I think there's a lot of a lot of YouTube content on how to get business but there's not as much on what to do with it when you have it. So I'm really excited to today again have an actual practicing attorney,

a probate attorney, and I know that because I'm working with him on some matter. So I can verify he really is alive. He really has a probate attorney and really does file papers. Cedric from Legacy One Law here in Los Angeles. Senator, thank you for joining us today.

Absolutely, Bill. Thank you so much for having me once again on your show. I'm delighted to be here this morning. And so remind us again, I know you're in the LA area. There's a particular market area. I think you're in West LA, Central City. Yes, our office is based in Century City, you know, not even in a mile away from Beverly Hills, about a block or so away from the Century City Mall. Got it. Okay, good. Well, I appreciate joining us today. So give me a little background, you know, obviously like

real estate, probate is a very wide market, very wide business. We have lots of different choices. Once you get your license, you're really able to practice in a wide area areas. How did you end up in both probate and avoiding probate through a state planning? Well, initially, I'm an attorney who doesn't like court himself, right? Imagine a lawyer who doesn't like court. And so what I, when I, I like to say trust in the states kind of found me, if you will. I speak about this a little bit in my book out several years ago. Several prominent entertainers from the entertainment space passed away, didn't have their

affairs in order. And that's the first thing that really got my attention with regard to the need. in general, not just in the entertainment space, but over 60% of Americans in general don't have any type of plan in place. One thing led to another. I had friends, family members, and colleagues that didn't have their affairs in order.

And then several months later, I was able to start my own practice where I was actually helping those individuals get their affairs in order. Now, how I transitioned into probate because for several years of my practice, I wanted to also keep, my mission was to keep families out of court,

out of conflict, but also keep myself out of court and conflict by doing an area of law that didn't involve me going to court. But I had someone, a colleague that I'd worked with for a number of years who reached out to me to get planning done for a parent. And unfortunately, that parent kind of declined to move forward and passed away. And that gentleman came back to me for help. I was sending I sent them to another firm, another trusted firm in the area. And I was doing this for several clients. I found myself sending several people who I could have helped to other law firms just because I wanted to kind of avoid the whole mess of probate myself.

Then it kind of came to me that these people trust me and they're coming to me for a specific reason. So it only made sense that since I understood the probate process to help these people navigate the process. And so now I am in probate, as you know, and we have certain. couple families and individuals that were representing their estates and helping them navigate the intricacies that is probate. So it went from me from a hesitance and reluctancy on my part to kind of just giving into it and saying, hey, you know, I'm an attorney. This is what I do. And it's a kind of a natural progression to help families on the front end and also those who don't plan on the back end. So there's a lot to unpack there because you're in the business. I think sometimes

we don't realize what's going on. But let's talk a little bit about what you mentioned in passing, which to me is a very common problem. A lot of why we end up a probate court is because even if somebody thinks they want to get a plan together, and even if they spend the time to meet with attorney to prepare a plan, and in many cases, even if they execute the plan but don't move the assets into the trust, they end up back in probate court. What was that about? It's amazing the number of people who don't finish the estate plan that they start with. I'm literally working on a case right now, a $40 million state where he spent a lot of money to prepare such a plan and never executed. So first let's talk about, you know, obviously you don't

want that to happen. I mean, you know, even though you get paid either way, I know, no human being wants to see that go through that. Why do you think people will go through the trouble of writing a check, showing up, doing 80% of the work, and won't just get the papers signed and deeded the assets into the property? What do you think that's about? You know, I'm still kind of perplexed over that. I have several clients that have paid me and never followed through. And we either have to try to issue them a refund. Sometimes we understand that people are going to do this in their own timing. And unfortunately, sometimes it, as mentioned before, it never gets done. And there's a lot of trepidation and concerns about death. And one of the very first things that I had to do and what my mentor shared with me in the beginning is like, you first of all have to get real with your own mortality. right and the fact that so it's an emotional thing for the most part and some of us will just kick the can and then we'll kick the can until unfortunately we kick the bucket and you know if i can you know speak kind of freely with that you go from kicking the can not getting the plan done now you kick

the bucket and it's too late and now you find your family family finds themselves in court having the kind of fix or try to fix what you started and so sometimes it's a that's one instance, then you have those who go through and actually sign the trust, execute it, but they don't take that next important step, which is funding it. That's, you know, funding the trust is when you're actually letting the financial institutions know that you have this trust, assigning certain assets to the trust, retitling certain things such as your real estate to the trust. And many people, it's out of ignorance.

They just don't know that they need to take that step. Perhaps they took the DIY approach. and tried to go this on their own and didn't know they needed to take that step. And others, life just happens or they just, maybe they just don't, they're not great at following through and it never gets done. And yes, despite having a trust, their family can still find themselves in probate. Yeah. And I think that as real estate agents, this is for us the golden opportunity because I think by their nature, attorneys aren't salespeople, no offense. I don't think they like that activity, but we as realtors, that's what we do.

And so we know our clients if they have a trust or not. We also know whether they deed the property to trust or not because we can check public records and how the property is being held. And if we make referral to an attorney, we can go to public records 90 days later and check. And I think our customers should appreciate a phone call saying, hey, Joe, I know you went to meet with Cedric. You got your plan done, but it doesn't look like the property's been deeded in.

it is, you're putting at risk, the protections that you put the time to get. And so that's why one of the main reasons I've launched this podcast is I really have a mission to get real estate agents involved, not legally. We don't give legal advice, but to be maybe the sales arm, the administrative arm, the follow-up arm to help our families, our friends, our clients, protect their assets and protect their legacies and protect their family structures and such. So I know that you also see a lot of people who come to you, but also contemplate doing it on the round, right? They go to an online service, and I've interviewed some of those services, and I do think that getting something like that, you know, is better than nothing in most cases, but yet oftentimes

don't provide for specific family issues. What are some of the most common mistakes or problems that you've seen in plans done that people may bring to you for review? Well, I review trust weekly. And many of those folks, they come because they, some of we have this little inkling like, okay, we want to make sure we do this right. And here's the thing. We're in the information age right now. There's artificial intelligence.

And we're always trying to find a way to do something maybe more quickly, more efficiently. And this is one of the things when it comes to DIY. I say, you know what, leave it to the experts to do this. Hey, you want to try a do-it-yourself project, maybe remodel. your bathroom, right? Or a quick-paint kitchen. If you mess that up, you simply can call a contractor in to get it fixed after the fact, right? Cost you a little bit more money. But if you mess this up, you've already passed away. You've already become perhaps maybe you didn't die, but now you're permanently incapacitated. And then it's also still too late to get it done the right way.

And the trouble with the DIY approach, Bill, is we just don't know what we don't know. right so we go to these online platforms that's really attractive because it's right there we can do it on our computer and it's it's a fraction of the cost of an attorney but i think it was benjamin franklin who said an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and that certainly applies with estate planning and having it done the wrong way the first time because it's going to be exponentially more expensive to fix after you die and can also be more expensive you're going to pay more when you come to me and say hey cedric i'd like you to review what's in place And then once we go through all the errors and all the things that we missed, now all of a sudden you end up kind of paying twice. Maybe you only paid a few hundred dollars in the front end. And so that's just money wasted because we're going to do your entire plan over, but we're going to do it the right way. So you have the peace of mind that it's done correctly. You know, I don't mean to be crass, but oftentimes it comes down to money. And I don't mean to in any way, you'll bring your service down to just cash.

But I often say to customers, look, the difference between a cheap, plan and a really good plan is maybe two, three, four, maybe, unless you're very wealthy, that's different or very special needs. But for most people, you know, south of $10 million, fairly standard family, the difference is maybe between $500 and $5,000. But if there's any defect in the plan when you go to court, you start at tens of thousands. It goes up from there and often there's hundreds of thousands. And number one and number two is the family dynamic that we see. I know we have a case that I think we're just starting to work on with you where you have these family dynamics where, you know, dad had a relationship and the other siblings have resentment.

And because it's not identified clearly in a plan, it now goes to probate court where all these siblings can work out their dysfunctional relationships in public with attorneys, right? So talk a little bit about that and why wouldn't we wouldn't avoid that whole drama situation? Well, and that's one of the shocking things when I, you know, since, you know, we're representing families in probate court now, now I'm seeing firsthand the drama unfold as I'm in court representing a family. And a lot of the drama starts from the jump before the court. See, once you petition for probate, that's basically where typically a family member comes to us and says, you know, someone has passed away and now we need to petition the court. And typically the individual that hires us will want to be the administrator, right? But then there's this, the family dynamics get involved. You know, several cases we've come to court. We think everything's in the clear. We've done notice. We've done all the steps necessary. And then a relative comes from out of the blue. And sometimes the person who hired me, they may or may not even know this relative. And then they come and they openly object in court. And so now what the judge wants to do, the judge doesn't really know

all of these family dynamics. So they're going to give them more time. So we've had to several instances to where now the judge is going to give that person three months to get lawyered up and to put their objection in writing. And now this is just three months. We have one client, well, this happened twice. You know, we came in the first time and there was somebody who objected. And we're thinking we're in the clear and we respond to all of that. And then we go to another hearing. Remember, probate has not officially been awarded to anyone yet. We're still trying to figure out who's going to be in charge. And then another family member comes up out of the blue and objects. So now it's another few months. So this is why probate can take a couple of years

very easily here because the court is going to give certain family members and errors the opportunity to be heard. And so this pushes the timeline back. And we have open, we have open court arguments, the judge having to have someone sit down, the drama, the gloves come off, if you will, when it comes to estates. And there can be a relative who you haven't heard from in 20 years. Best to believe if they know there's money and there's assets and there's real estate especially, they're going to try to get their slice of the pie, if you will, even many times in many cases, they're not entitled to anything. Right. You know, and the classic cases I find are the, the, you know, I would say girlfriend, boyfriend,

other relationship that was never legally codified as a marriage, where that person believes they're entitled to the same legal privileges and financial privileges of a spouse. And, you know, it's not the court's job, and I'm not here to judge people morally on that. That's not the decision. The decision is there's a law in California, and the law says, no, absent, you know, a marriage, you're not.

and as unfair as that may be, and then that person may have children from the decedent. As unfair as that may be, that's the lot. Now, if that decedent had to create a plan, they could give whatever they want, do whoever they want. Absolutely.

And that deceit may have told the significant other if they had a plan. And in fact, they may have written a plan and never executed the plan. That happens quite a bit to you. That does happen quite a bit. Unfortunately, I've been on the phone with a

with the girlfriend of a decedent while she in real time it's digging through boxes with me on the phone saying he told me he had something he told me he had something his mother is on his way down

to put me out of the house yes and actually it's actually unfolding as the person is on the phone with me and this is nothing that I could have done for that person and the decedent may have wanted to take care of the

ex-boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. It may have been in their heart to do that. It may have been in their mind to do that. They may have said it a million times. It may have proclaimed it on national television, but if they don't put it in writing, it's very difficult. That person has next to no chance of getting their rights and

responsibilities, and then they end up, at least my experience, then dragging the legal system as a way of extracting some compensation, and that's where it gets difficult. So real quick, let's do some housekeeping here if I can. This is Probate Weekly. We get to get together every Thursday morning, 9 o'clock is where we do it live.

But we are going to be changing formats here. So stay tuned to that upcoming change. If you're interested, you can sign up at probateweekly.com. Put your email address. If you put your phone number in, you'll get some text reminders as well. You don't have to put the text reminder in. But obviously, email will send you the link to the shows where they go out. And then we also have a Facebook group where you both can see when we post the show

ahead of time as well as past episodes. And you can also post your. own estate planning and probate content there. Love to have you do that. We have 4,000 members also ask questions. And I find referrals, both inbound and outbound for attorneys and realtors across the country. This is a national format. We have, we do about 300 views a week. We do, we have about 4,000 people who've been on the show. We have 4,000 members in the Facebook groups. If you have questions, referrals, feel free to put it in the Facebook group. Love to have to participate there. Our guest to get, again, a

I'm sorry, our guest today, again, is Senator Collins, attorney here in Los Angeles. His firm is Legacy One Law Firm, and he has all kinds of explanation of what he does, estate planning and intellectual property entertainment law, talks about his difference. I had seen him, met through a friend, and just right away, so he was the kind of attorney that I wanted to see my clients working with. And then I see you have a master class as well as a download. So talk a little bit about the master class, if you would. Yeah, so the master class, Bill, I created this a couple of years ago. It's about a 20, 25 minute video.

It's a free master class. You basically put your email address in there, your phone number, and you get pretty much 24-hour on-demand access. And what is, it highlights the most common pitfalls we see from the front end estate planning process. A couple of those who've already spoken about, like not finalizing your plan. the kind of the issues that arise with the DIY approach, not knowing what you don't know. And so we count, I give a couple real life examples of folks who had started on the process and maybe not finished it. I also talk about one, share one story where there was a particular lady who reached out to us, started off the process with us, hadn't hired us yet, passed away a week later, for some reason we wondered like why didn't she show up to the appointment? And her brother called us, saw our packet on the kitchen

table and says, hey, I'm looking like, unfortunately, my sister's passed away and we see your folder here. And that's just, we get those stories often. So that's a masterclass of kind of pitfalls of what to avoid. It gives little highlights and tips to kind of when you're in the shopping process, maybe shopping around for the right firm to serve you. And also, if you are going to do some things yourself, kind of what to avoid, if you will. Got it. And then you also have a prudent planning for Family Legacy free download. Talk a little bit about what that is.

Yes. So we have a, I'm an author of a book called Prudent Planning for Family Legacy. Released that book in June of 2024. It's available on a hardback edition on Amazon. There's also a Kindle version. However, right now we are giving out three copies. of the book, a PDF version of the book, Kendall version where you can have it on your smart

corner computer. And this basically pulls back the curtains, if you will, and demystifies the estate planning process. Most often, when we're giving consultations, many people don't know the differences between a will or a trust. Now, we know many people in your audience may be sophisticated, they may be professionals, but the average person doesn't really know the difference,

regardless of the amount of assets that that person may have. So just because they're cash rich or asset rich doesn't mean that they necessarily understand the basics of estate planning. And so we go over a lot of that in this book, everything from naming guardians for kids, the differences between your health care directives and powers of attorneys, the differences between wills and trust. Also, a very important chapter is choosing your team, your team of professionals. Every family should have a team. And that team, in our opinion, should include your, of course, your attorney, your tax professional, your financial advisor. And if you have own real estate, should be your real estate professional. So these are your team of people who will help you navigate protecting your family legacy.

And I have a chapter devoted directly to that, the key people that you should seek out help from when you embark on this legacy planning venture. So for everybody on here, you know, often I get asked, well, where do I start? I want to, you know, I'm a real estate agent. I know what I'm doing as far as selling houses, but I want to get into the space and do more. You see, this is the consumer-facing piece of an attorney to their client. This is what we need to master so we can introduce our clients effectively to the attorneys. And so I would urge you all to sign up for the master class, watch the video, learn the issues at hand, as well as download the e-book and read it.

And I have to tell you, I've probably downloaded and read 20-30 e-books. And a lot of it's the same, but you know, you get one or two good nuggets. And the other thing is, now you can't post their content. You can't post the PDF. But you can post a link to their PDF. And so I think I urge everybody to find one or two or three attorneys that kind of fit your customer base. Just like I'm promoting Cedric on my podcast, you should be promoting your preferred probate attorneys and estate playing attorneys on your social media. And one way is the link to what I call their front door, their entrance.

And so the front door to working with Cedric could be the masterclass or could be the PDF. And it's also good content for your customers. So I would urge you all to take a look at it, particularly if you're in the Southern California area and learn the material, number one, if you're in California, number one, number two, from the area. And Cedric's the kind of attorney you might want to work with. I would consider reposting the links to his content and explanation, hey, here's a free, great class. If you're thinking about what to do, here's a place you can get some information for free. We all like free, good, quality information, and you should vet it yourself.

You shouldn't just pass on whatever you get. You should make sure you vet it for your customers, and that's important. Okay, so, Adra, thank you for joining us today and your shadow. Glad to have you here with us, and you're sending your information on the website. Very good, Andrew. Well, that's taking action right away. So, and now, for those you on the call, the Zoom, you're welcome to jump in with either questions. You can raise your hand.

Or if you're brave, unmute, jump in with a question. I love to have you participate live. We're kind of moving away from this format in a few weeks just because I don't know if it's the time of it or people no longer seem to participate in Zooms anymore. You look more for more just to receive the content. So, but here's a chance to talk to an attorney. Many times the realtors will say I can't get a hold of attorneys. I can't talk to them.

I have questions for them. Here's a chance to talk to a real life attorney who I know, as I said, I know he really does business because I'm doing business with him. I see that and I crack myself up. Okay, let's move on. So, Senator, you know, part of my way to talk about a little bit is for people who want to work with you. I think that I was introduced to you by a professional fiduciary I work with, and because

we work well together, and he worked well with you as well, and thought I love you, he thought it was a nice connection, and I thought so right away. I'm sure you work with a number of real estate agents you get approached, you know, when you file the case, you get a cold calls, I'm sure. Talk about, first of all, let's talk on the positive. What are the best practices? Somebody, imagine if you had a nephew who wanted to start in real estate, wanted to work and probate, maybe not in your market,

what would you recommend them to do to build their business as a real estate agent and to serve their customers in this particular niche? Well, yes, and that's your referral partners, right? You develop that referral partner network, if you will. And you're right. been approached by several real estate professionals. They'll see the public, the probate listing because it is public. But then some of them go the extra mile. I had a gentleman who went the extra mile and he found me on Facebook, reached out. I had no idea who this person was.

It was very friendly, very endearing, invited me out to lunch. And we had some nice Brazilian barbecue and just kind of learned about, you know, talked about life. And I figured out with this particular real estate professional that we had a lot of things in common and were even neighbors. He lives like within a mile of where I live. And so that just came from a random reach out. He was friendly. He said what he did and he wanted to learn more about what I did. And so sometimes taking that approach just so long of the short, it's just don't be afraid to reach out. Yes, some of us can be very busy. Most of us are. But if you find a way to get a hold of us and provide some value, then that's how you get that relationship going. And as thing you know,

you can be maybe including at a probate matter and a probate sale just by having that sit down coffee or that lunch with that attorney or other financial advisor or other financial services professional. Because if you check out in my book, you want to get a little clue of who these people are, right? Look at my book, the team members. When I have that chapter devoted to your team, your dream team, will, what I call it in the book. And so check out that chapter because those are your referral partners. Those are the people who, who are either managing assets of the deceased, have relationships with the family. And a lot of times we get pulled into the probate picture from a realtor who is a friend of the the decedent or the family. They reach out because

they realize that they have to sell this house. So a lot of times they won't call my firm first. They'll call our realtor first. And the realtor will say, hey, there's a process called probate. And then they'll invite me into the picture. So each of these key people in that dream team, if you will, are potential referral partners for you. And that's a great way to start expanding your professional network and in turn expanding your business.

You know, it's so true. Just to talk about, you know, there's a recent case that you and I are, I guess you have a appointment here and coming up next month. And so we're going to be starting to work on that one. And it's just so funny how that one came to me. because I work with a national service that, among other things, serves attorneys with like paralegal help and some of the administrative work that otherwise they would do. It's ideal for, like, sole proprietors, you know, who one of the struggles of the generate business,

but how do you manage it? And so I brought, I worked with them, and then I introduced them to a professional fiduciary, and they brought him on the deal. And then one day they were for me a lead where the customer is the fiduciary, attorney, Cedric. I'm like, this is funny. Well, because I introduce them all together, and they all kind of got along. And I also think that the thing that's important in referrals is it's not the 100 attorneys on the list of your call calling, is finding the one or two or three that really work with you. And to be frank, the person, the fiduciary that introduced

to Cedric, he and I've probably talked about 20 different people, but you're one of the few people I said to him, you know, I think he's really a fit. And I don't even know why, you know, I don't know what it was about you. I really still kept on my finger on what it was. But I remember Sandy Kevin that exact thing. I don't know why, but I just feel like he's really a really good fit for us to work with the truth. I liked your heart where you came from with it. And whatever.

And here we're doing business together. And I think that's the thing is that when your heart is helping people and wanting to work with good people in your field team, I think you get more business from pure people if you're smart about it. Absolutely. It is about who's going to work with you. you're exactly right. When I was starting my business and trying to grow during the beginning parts of the pandemic, we're handcuffed a little bit, right? Because no one could get outside and, you know, it was Zoom only. But through LinkedIn, I had countless interviews with financial professionals, real estate professionals, but they won't all stick. You'll find your tribe.

The people want to work with you will work with you. And so it starts by reaching out to those people because you may have one relationship that may seem very promising and you never hear from that person again. Right. The one person who you don't expect anything to come from, they send you two or three clients and there you go. There you go. You just never really know.

Like I said, I remember meeting you. I remember saying to Kevin, you know, I don't know what it is by him. I wish I knew what it was because then you could duplicate it, right? It was just there was something about the style or something about the focus and to the state. Now, I do. I will say, I love your voice. I mean, I can listen to you all day long. Appreciate that. Thank you.

You definitely have a voice for radio and I guess a face for television. Question for Adra, what's the maximum commission a realtor can charge to list a probate estate? And the state, decedent. Now, the word is actually decedentent, not descendant. So it's D-E-C-E-D-N-T. They decede from them, which means to pass, as opposed to descend from, has two estates. So I'm going to give an answer. I'm not an attorney, and so I reckon that I'll get you to kind of correct or provide the legal stamp approval on it.

In probate, actually, there's no real limit. There is a limit on the listing time period. You can't list a property for more than 90 days. It's invalid. There's no real limit on the commissions you can charge unless there are local rules the contrary. In Los Angeles County, when properties go before the court for court confirmation, there is a local rule

that limits property, single-family homes, to 5% land to 10%. And it's interesting because with the changes in the real estate commission procedures now, We don't list a full commission, meaning buyer and seller to our client. We only are allowed to list our listing commission, and yet those local rules have been updated. So it's an interesting question. Could you list a property and get 5% as a listing agent and then pay the buyer's agent,

let the buyer's agent get whatever they want or not? I'd be interested to see what a judge would say. I think at some point they have to update the local rules Los Angeles. But again, the answer is there's no real limit other than local rules, and then again, in LA County, court confirmed properties have a limit of 5% for houses and 10% for land. Anything there are that I should, that you want to add on to that, Sedra? That's accurate, you know, Bill. And the thing is, when you have that court confirmation process, it's just an extra safety measure there to make sure that the interest of the estate is being, you know, protected.

So whenever you have either full authority or limited authority, we're going through this with a particular client that we have right now, when you have those limited. authority cases that's it's going to be that extra court involvement that court confirmation process in the sale and that's where yes the judge is now involved and it does kind of delay there is some disadvantages for having that court confirmation process because now it can kind of draw things out a little bit it's a little bit more paperwork from the attorney of paperwork from the real on the realtor side or the fiduciary side but it just basically the court at the end of the day wants to do what's in the best interest if you will of the estate and the in the airs. And so they'll put certain restrictions and limitations on that. But Bill,

since you are the real estate professional, you, many of the states that we deal with, sometimes there's no real estate. So you probably have more direct experience seeing that that's your line of work. But yes, there are limitations to what you can do in those numbers. They sound accurate according to local rules here in L.A. County. Yeah. And again, I think it's interesting that the rules haven't been updated and need to be, if nothing else, just cut in half just because to keep the same percentages, but we'll see how it goes. So I'd asked you about what the things one should do about developing business, you have referrals. What do you see some of the mistakes, if any, that you've seen real estate professionals make in either developing business and or handling

business on behalf of your clients? Well, the first of all, when we talk about developing business with that professional, here's the thing. And I've encountered this with a couple of different referral potential referral partners is you want to limit your expectation with you you want to develop that relationship with that professional without expecting anything in return. Let me be careful with that because first of all, we, no one has to send anyone a referral. And I've had some situations in the past to where I felt like I was being shaken down by a real professional or buy a financial advisor because I say, wait a minute, I sent you this person. Why aren't you sending me? And it was a total turnoff, a total put-off. So you have to be patient

with these referral relationships. You may refer me someone today, right? And then two years later, I send you a deal that puts $30, $40, $50,000 in your pocket. But if you grow sour or grow impatient thinking that, hey, well, I sent you someone, why aren't you sending me anyone? You could be, you know, spoiling the relationship from the beginning. You never know when someone's going to, and this is a piece of advice that might help someone. You never know when someone in your referral network is going to send you someone. You want to reach out. You want to say happy birthday. You want to say Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Can I be of any service, any value to you? But never, ever hold your hand out.

Because you're going to, you know, and that's in the sense that's almost biting the hand that could potentially feed you. And I've gone through this two or three times during my career with not just people from the real estate space, but also from financial advisors that are hungry for business. And so that piece of advice might help someone because I've, you know, almost I've lost some relationships from people maybe expecting that I would, since they sent me someone last month, that this month I would kind of dig into the coffers, if you will, and here you go, here's a house or a listing.

And it just doesn't work that way. It doesn't. You know, and I think one of my first mentors in business was Zig Zigler. And he said, you can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. And I know when I launched this podcast,

people say, well, how are you going to get paid on this? And it's true. I do make a little bit of money from YouTube, but that just covers some of the, cost. It's not business. And I do generate business as a result of it, but I didn't do it to get the business. I just knew if I help people somehow would work itself out. And I didn't really anticipate helping other realtors, but I do help them and I get referrals as a result. And I do help attorneys

who get business as a result of this, which is great. And some don't give me business. And that's okay because probably we're not a fit to work together. I think that's the other thing is the same person who maybe isn't referring you business is also maybe not the right person for you to do deals with. They'd be tough to do. You wouldn't like them. You wouldn't like the way they work. And so I think really the focus is if you just focus on creating more value like you, you have an ebook, you have a master class.

You're creating value for your customer. And as a result, I'm sure some stick and do business with you. And I imagine, you know, if you wanted to do more, you did better work, you did more value to your customers, you would get more business. And that's why I do the podcast. And that's why you're on this podcast is to reach out to your prospective clients and offer them. And so I think you're so right. I think that's one of the things that attracted me right away, which was, you know, I'm not here to necessarily refer you a deal today, though I'd love for people on the call who are appropriate to reach out to you and establish that relationship. But I just know if I help people, it all kind

takes care of itself and I have to worry about too much. Absolutely. And I thought someone in the comments mentioned long game. I saw that pop up in the comments and that's exactly right. It's the long game. Most of us, we're doing this as a profession and if you can be doing this for 15, 20, 25 years, however long is your long game. And you just never know when that person may come in with that deal that could be a game changer for you. And it can lead to other deals. So just play that long game. I foster those relationships. I have a newsletter that I send out to all of my referral partners. I try to send out some type of holiday card or do something to provide value. One of the things that I do to provide value, sometimes I offer free estate plan reviews

for real estate professionals, especially when we're trying to start that relationship, right, and says, okay, hey, look, you have a client that has a trust and that trust, you know that trust that's 15, 20 years old. I'll tell you what, I'll do a complementary estate plan review. We typically charge $1,000, but I've given out so many of those for, free just to start their trust relationship with that professional. And so think about what you can do as a listing agent or a realtor, if that's you or a fiduciary, that might add value to that professional because that giving that something might open the door to start that relationship.

100%. And I know what my first training real estate was for famous coach Mike Ferry and he would discourage anything other than sales. Like, you know, don't solve people's problems. look for people who have to sell their house enlisted. And today it's the opposite. I love when people have a problem. And sometimes it involves research, getting a property profile,

doing a comparative market analysis, estimating what a property is worth, reviewing the title with them. Because if I solve the problem, then they can move forward and they need somebody, and enough times it ends up being me. And so I think as real estate agents, we should be riding to the sound of the gunfire.

If somebody has a problem, we want to show up and help them. If we do that enough, then we'll get business. And if we run away from it, we're probably going to have a problem in the long run. And I'm just sure a statistic with you. When you buy leads, I know in law you can advertise the marketing companies and they send you leads or they advertise for you. In real estate, when you buy leads on average, the timing from the day of the lead starting their search to the close of escrow on average is two years, on average. Which means a couple things.

One is more than two years. If you don't have a system to stay in touch with them forever, you're going to lose, or at least more than two years, you're going to lose half the business. And second, that we give up on leads after 30, 60, 90 days, they're going to germinate in two years. Why should we give them to a competition? I think that's your point about the relationship and the long game. Absolutely. And to add to that, I had a gentleman.

I met at a Christmas party, a holiday party, and he was an entrepreneur. I didn't really get into the details of what he did. he literally watched me for a year before he made a decision to hire me. And how do I know? Because he told me, I've been looking at you for a year, an entire year. And now I'm ready to reach out to you and to start. And, you know, we did a couple of, I helped him form his corporation and some other things I helped him do with his estate. But he was, people are watching. Absolutely. So I'm mindful of that as a kind of professional tip, the content that you put out there, you're exactly right, Bill.

Folks will sit back and they will watch you. They'll look at your post. They'll look at your interest. They'll stalk you on Facebook, if you will, whatever they're doing. Because they want to get a feel for you before they trust their legacy with you, before they trust you with a seller of their home or what have you. So absolutely long game with that matters when it comes to that lead nurturing process because we just don't know where they are in that buying cycle.

if you will, that at some point they're going to hire someone and you want that person to be you. And you, you know, you point out your example is such a perfect example that I find the longer people take, though, the deeper the relationship. You're like, you're like establishing relationship through your content. And so when they choose to work with you, they're already kind of pre-sold and they accept you as the expert. So many times, you know, people who get referred right away to me and don't do that background check, you know, they're arguing with me about, the value of the property. They were arguing about the strategy inappropriate. And I'll say to them,

listen, if I'm not the expert, then you shouldn't hire me to sell your house. I'm okay with that. Like, there's a million realtors in America. Pick one that you're going to, you know, respect. And it was not me. I'm okay with that. But when people who watch my content regularly will call me and say, I can't believe you picked up the phone,

I pick up my phone all the phone. But when people watch the content, it's a different relationship. And I've had attorneys, you know, who, you know, generally speaking, are dismissing. when I call them, but the ones who've seen my videos will go, yeah, I know who you are. I follow you, and I'm thinking, I wonder what that means, but anyhow, it's better than not. Okay, so we've got a long, complex question.

Let me see if I can get this one. The mom's credit claim was rejected by the special administrator and a lawyer. She provided evidence of paying property taxes for 23 years. The lawyer said she put it on the wrong form, which was a credit claim was sent her in MC Thoree, a special form for reimbursement. Her mother passed in 2002. Okay, so Audra has a question about a creditor claim. I don't know if that's something that you want to talk about.

And you really can't give legal advice, I don't think, on a call like this, because you don't have a relationship, just like we as realtors have to have a signed form establishing our relationship. So for those who are asking these kind of questions, in general, I will say this, and I'd love to hear your feedback on this subject. In general, probate is a very particular, specific process. everything has the right form and every county has the right form

and every judge has the right way they want to do it and you have to follow their system there's 90% of stuff is rejected not because of the basis of the claim but because the format that was presented in the judge can't even get to making a decision because it's not presented to them properly without regards to this particular question

is that a fair way to summarize a particular credit claims and errors and airships and things like that exactly it is because probate is in court and litigation in general is very procedural. And there's leads, we mentioned this earlier, Bill, there's local court rules. And so whenever you're embarking on litigation, it's very important for the attorney to know, the judge, the local court rules.

So that way, they can avoid pitfalls filing the wrong forms and documents. In probate, there's a probate attorney that works with the actual judge in the court. we have notes that we have to clear. They have questions for both parties that, you know, you have to have answered many times before it even goes before the judge. Right. And so it could be an easy fix. If something was incorrect, a form, this is where you need that legal counsel.

And if you're working with an attorney, the attorney should know the proper form that the creditor claim needs to be submitted on for that particular court. And if it's a simple fix and error, then it can be easily remedied. And I would say, Audrey, you need to find you the attorney at a minimum, maybe an experienced probate paralegal that knows the right format for that county. That's another big mistake I see regularly is you'll have local paralegals trying to file claims in other counties. And those local counties have their local rules. And things get rejected because they have their own form or their own procedure.

And so definitely I don't have, there's no way that can give you advice here on the call. But I would say other than get an attorney who can help you or at a minimum, a per capita. legal, probate specialist pro-legal, who does probate in that county. I think that's that's overlooked important distinction for most people. Absolutely. And just to add to this, since we're with a lot of many real estate professionals here, you want to liken this to when you're trying to record a deed in a specific county. We help our families record deeds all over the state of California. And there's some recording offices that are sticklers for certain things. And others, are more lax. For example, different counties with the preliminary change of ownership report.

Now, I may be speaking your lingle now, right? When it comes to these properties, some counties, they don't require this. Other counties, they record, I've had deeds rejected because in a certain county in the Bay Area, they don't do it this way. And so now the deed is rejected, and now I have to figure out what their particular PCR form is for that particular recording office. it's the same thing in probate. And like Bill was saying, it may have nothing to do with the merits or the validity, it may have everything to do

that you just didn't follow or that person didn't follow a procedure and use the proper form. Right. And that's the thing that lay people do and understand. I know, like, for example, in politics, there was a lot of talk about how many lawsuits President Trump had that were declined. And without getting regards to whether there was the merit or not,

you know, lots of times they were declined because of format or procedures or jurisdictions, rules that have nothing to do with whether or not he's right or wrong about the crime or the action, the judge doesn't even consider that until all the other things are put together. And in this case, the judge isn't going to consider a creditor claim unless it's put in the right form at the right time, the right procedure, in the right way, then they'll look at it. Everything up until then is going to be sorry, but you haven't formulated it right, and I can't consider it until you format correctly.

That's to protect the judge as well as protect the estate. Absolutely. Another question from Joseph is that SFR is co-owned by four siblings occupied by two of the errors with the entire property being exempted by Prop 19 or 50% be reassessed because the other two errors are non-occupants. That's a good question. I don't know. You have to kind of research that. Of course, there's one trick might be to transfer property one at a time.

I know there's a famous exemption in Prop 19 for country clubs like golf courses. Yeah, the Riviera country clubs, you know, property is probably worth $2 billion, but it's being assessed at, I think, 1978 rates because there's thousands of members, but they only change over one member of time. So they never even change ownership by 1%. Therefore, they never triggers reassessment, which is kind of bogus. So I don't know how familiar you are subject with Prop 19 reassessment, requirements and if you have four, if there's two heirs own to force the property, does that

cause a reassessment or what strategies might you think about there? Well, here's the thing. The Prop 19 is still a new beast, if you will, passed during the pandemic. And for the first couple of years, we like to say, we're still trying to get a feel for strategies to try to help our clients the best that we can. We're still figuring things out because it is so new. okay and but one of the things that we've been seeing happen as people have been dying under this new law right is yes if you have multiple beneficiaries or or who are multiple inheritors of a piece of property we've seen situations where they will prorate the benefit based upon okay there's four people who own this house now maybe there's only one person that's going to move in so now maybe you're going to get a 25% right they'll pro rate it we've seen that happen a lot and so like a say this is still, this law is still new. It's only a few years old now. And so the implementation, we're still figuring out strategies. When we're doing our legacy planning, we do tell them the basic rules regarding Proposition 19 that you have that. If you want to get that full credit,

then whoever the heirs are do need to reside in that primary residence. It's from primary residence to primary residence. And it's unlikely that you're going to get four adults to live in one property, right? And that's the issue. That's the issue. But it's It's much simpler if there is one beneficiary, one child who is going to move into that property after death, then they can get the full privilege of the exemption, right? Because it's only that one heir. But we have seen prorations of the benefit or of the exemption based upon multiple heirs and maybe only one or two of them choosing to live on that particular property. Who knows what the legislation might do to kind of modify that over the years? who knows how long Prop 19 is going to be here,

but we have to just assume it's here to stay for right now. And when we're doing legacy planning with our clients, we just kind of bring up these things. These are some of the issues that your heirs or your beneficiaries of your trust are going to have to deal with. So maybe some of these things can be worked out in the front end with your planning.

Who is actually going to live in this house? Is there one child who that you know is going to want to live here, but the others won't? then a deal can be worked out sometimes on the front end with your planning to how the other beneficiaries are going to get taken care of. This is why planning is so important because you can plan with the distribution that kind of offset some of the setbacks of the laws, if you will. And the proper plan just on that one issue can more than pay for the cost of the planning overall. And that's an annual fee of property taxes you can avoid if you do it properly. So I think the short answer is you need a professional, and the attorney can fight for you on this stuff too.

In my experience, it's not this legally correct, but the assessor almost always reassesses the property. And what I find is that even with a proper plan, the county assessor will send the assessment, then they go back to the attorney. And the attorney then having done the groundwork and having thought about this time, it will go back and effectively fight to get that assessment overturned. you're probably going to get a reassessment just because the county finds it cheaper to reassess and they make you challenge than they do to underestimate and they get more tax dollars out way and that's all they care about. Absolutely. And even on the front end, we see this problem from time to time, it's more rare on the front end.

When we're putting the property into the trust, I always tell the client, look, if you get a letter from the tax assessor, let our office know, we'll go to bat for you. We'll get it remedied. We never had a situation to where someone was, I had to end up paying the, but the tax assessor is definitely going to send you that notice. And when they do, we'll just say, hey, it's a mistake. Their exemption, here's the exemption. We build it out correctly on the preliminary change of ownership report. And then it goes away.

So that's another advantage. Now, if you took the DIY approach, you got no clue. Now you're panicking. You're thinking, oh, my God, what did I do? Did I do something wrong? Now my taxes have gone up this much amount. had you worked with that professional, the professional said, hey, we see this.

You know, send this to our office. We'll communicate with the tax assessor's office for you. We'll show them the proper documentation. This goes away. And you can sleep at night, knowing that it's handled. But if you, like I say, if you go about it yourself, you don't know what you don't know. And it just, this is going to be more stress for you as well.

And if you thought the tax assessor was busy last week with a thousand houses burned down, and every one of those is going to get a reassessment from a house to a smoldering pile of a lot, vacant, and they're going to, you know, as people will properly file to save the taxes on the property that burned down, the kind of texture is going to be overwhelmed with requests and changes and then rules and assessments and verifications and they'll be fraud. So these are the reasons why, you know, if you can avoid problems, you always want to avoid them in the first place and proper planning in every aspect of life is one way to do that. So, Sertrick, I know we've gone for a long time. I always enjoy talking to you. I always feel like we go along when we should.

So forgive me for tying you up so long today. Again, just a quick recap, Senator Collins is our guest today, and he is the proprietor, the attorney of the Legacy One Law firm, and I put into the chat box below the link to his firm. It's Legacy1Law.com. And then on his website, I put the link in the chat box for those as well. If you scroll down, he has a couple free premium items that I think are definitely worth anybody who wants to learn about this business

and also to promote to your customers as a great resource. A masterclass is free that will talk about the major issues on planning how to protect and also a free download and e-book on planning for your family as well. So, Cedric, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate having you on again, as always. Absolutely, Bill. Thank you so much for having me. And please, anyone who has any questions here, we do offer free consultations.

I'll be more than happy to be a resource because I know there are some complex questions here. If I can be a resource, please do reach out. Thanks. Thanks so much. And for everybody else, again, this is probate weekly. You can go on to probateweekly.com. Register there with an email address, and we'll send you out the link when we go live

where new issues are put out, as well as we have some premium materials we send out from time and time as well. Love to have you join us. And then you can join the discussion afterwards at our Facebook group, Probate Weekly, we have 4,000 members. Feel free to post your probate-related

and or estate planning-related content on our channel. I have people who do and they get nice views and it's a way, like Rehn does this, It's a nice way to promote your YouTube channel and your content, get more views, as well as people there ask for referrals for attorneys and look for attorney referrals for real estate agents there all the time. So love to have you join us on the Facebook group as well. I'm Bill Gross at Bill Gross Probate and social media.

Bellgross probate.com is my website. And thank you everybody and have a great weekend. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to all of you. Bye-bye.