KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Probate Weekly: The Attorney's Perspective with Joshua Ramirez

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

SummaryThis episode provides a unique, attorney-focused perspective on the complex world of probate and estate planning. Guest Joshua Ramirez, a specialist in estate planning and litigation, demystifies the legal processes that often occur alongside real estate transactions. He shares crucial insights on what agents need to know when dealing with probate cases, how to work with legal professionals, and the difference between estate planning and probate litigation.Key TakeawaysEstate Planning vs. Litigation: Gain a clear understanding of the difference between proactive estate planning (creating wills and trusts) and the reactive process of litigation, which occurs when disputes arise.The Role of the Attorney: Learn how a probate attorney works with real estate agents. The episode highlights the importance of clear communication and mutual understanding to ensure a smooth and efficient sale of a probate property.Avoiding Common Probate Pitfalls: Discover the red flags and common mistakes that can delay a probate sale, and how agents can help their clients navigate these issues by working closely with a legal expert.Building a Professional Network: Understand why building a relationship with a trusted probate attorney is a game-changer for real estate agents who want to specialize in this niche, providing a valuable resource for their clients.Topics:Probate real estateJoshua RamirezEstate planningProbate litigationWorking with attorneysCall-to-ActionListen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform to learn how to master the probate real estate niche!

Welcome to Probate Weekly on Bill Gross at Bill Gross Probate on social media. We get together every week and talk about both probate, which is if things aren't done properly, and avoiding probate through proper estate planning. I'm excited today, have somebody we've interviewed before on the channel, and first time on our episode, Your Belinda, California, which is North O.C. Josh Ramirez, thanks so much for coming back to us. Thanks for having me, Bill. You know, I know particularly one of the hot topics because we both are here in California

and in Southern California where real estate is so expensive, recent changes, Prop 13, 19 have really gotten people's attention as far as the tax strategies, as far as selling, not selling, if you plan it right, we won't get stuck with the big bill. Talk a little bit about the changes

and what smart people are doing to avoid a big tax bill or what the consequences are if you don't. Yeah, thanks, Bill. So in our consultations, everybody calls us each other to trust. Let's do a trust, you know, equal to my kids. And we bring up Proposition 13 and Proposition 19, and people are shocked by what this is.

So let's start with Proposition 13. We've all heard it. We have a general idea of what it is. But just to kind of educate the listeners here, since the 70s, we've had Prop 13. Prop 13 says whatever you bought your house at in the 1970 value is the earliest. We're going to keep your property tax bill the same. It goes up a couple percent a year just with inflation, but your person who's living in the house for 50 years isn't going to be paying 15 grand a year. They're going to be keeping their $2,000 a year bill.

Prop 13 is amazing because it keeps people in their house. You know, as you retire and you go on Social Security, you're not paying these exorbitant bills. And it was applicable to secondary properties too. your rentals, any commercial buildings you have. It was, it's pretty, it was a pretty neat thing. Now, the neatest thing about Proposition 13 was you could have left assets to your kids and not get reassessed. You could be your primary residence and you could have left up to a million dollars of assessed value of other properties to your children, which is a lot of property. Assessed value is a fraction of what the real value is. So a lot of your list.

today might be saying, well, how would this affect me? My parents died, you know, back in the 90s, and we got all their properties and it didn't get reassessed. We had Prop 13 then. So what happened was 2020 election rolls around. Proposition 19 is on the ballot in California. And essentially Proposition 19, for lack of better terminology, extremely edited Proposition 13. It was kind of a poor marketing on how it got passed. And if it was all truthful and laid out transparently, I'm not sure it had passed today. Here's what Proposition 19 does, Bill. So now let's start with the secondary properties.

If anybody's listening has a rental property, two, three, four rentals, if you have a commercial building, those automatically get reassessed when you die. Now, not for spouses. I'm talking when mom and dad both passed, but for children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, whoever you want to leave it to, they will get reassessed with no planning. That's just the default. So if you have your trust and you've said, well, everything goes equal to my kids and I've been square for 20 years, I'm good. You're not good.

And I'm going to talk about the consequences at a second. So that's a big major shift. All those properties get reassessed. And let's just off one second. Put a little context on this as a real estate agent. So sometimes when we look at public records, it has the payment of the tax amount, like in my neighborhood,

somebody who bought a house brand new for $2 million is going to pay about $20,000 a year in property taxes here to the city and county of Los Angeles, about 1% of the purchase price. The next door neighbor who bought the house in 1970, their elderly couple, because their house was bought back when houses were cheaper and only rose by inflation because real estate has outstripped inflation. Real estate has been a great preservation of equity in the face of inflation.

The same neighbor in the same house might be paying $600 a year instead of $20,000. If you get reassessed, you're going to start paying the $20,000 number because it's as though you bought the property new again. So that's why when you see those discrepancies, you know, how do these people avoid those tax? That's what Josh is talking about is when it comes time to pass on the property, when we're doing a way that minimizes the taxes to the family. Yeah. Okay, absolutely. Jump in on. No, I love it, Bill.

And a real world example is myself and my neighbor. My neighbor, his grandparents originally own the house. He's now the third generation owner. He's paying a couple of grand tops with exact same floor plans next door to each other. And we're paying $8,500 a year. So reassessment or new owners, it's a significant jump. And if these jumps bill were only one-time property tax, not the end of the world. We're talking about an extra $6,000, $10, $15,000 every year forever until you die.

We're talking about six figures, maybe in some cases even seven figures down the drain. So the big problem is for all these secondary properties. and commercial properties are going to get reassessed. And I'll tell you, in almost every consultation I have after somebody's death, and they have secondary properties, though, the children start crying because they thought these were our retirement plans. We thought we were going to do everything mom and dad did, have a similar income stream. And now when I tell them, look it at the math, you really can't afford this,

or it's right at that cusp of whether you should keep it. Right. Almost. And I would even be so boldest to say we're at about 100%, but almost 100% of clients after death are now selling because they have to. Just mathematically, it does not make sense. Yeah. So let me talk about the primary resident. That's going to affect almost every listener here. So the law does allow for the primary resident to not get reassessed. So how does that work? That only works. if it was the primary house of mom or dad and we're leaving that primary house to a child, and a child moves into that primary house and keeps it as their primary house within one year of mom or dad's death. So if you thought, well, you know, mom's primary residence, I'm going to convert that to a rental. No dice.

That will get reassessed because it's not going to be your primary residence. Now, if you think, well, that's good. I was expecting to move into Mom's house, so I'm going to save Prop 13. We have one more problem. What about your siblings? So if Mom's trust, which is more than 80% of the trust out there, mom or dad will say, hey, I'm going to leave it to my three kids equally and let them figure it out, you know.

Child one decides I want to keep this as the primary resident. We can save Prop 13. But uh-oh, where does child two to three get there one-third to prop? We have an issue, Bill, because the law says it has to be from a parent to a child. So if that child who moves into the house says, well, I'll just buy my siblings out. That's not a parent-child transaction. That's a sibling-siblings, sibling transaction. That gets reassessed, two-thirds.

If that child says, well, I'll get a loan on the property. That's how I'm going to solve it. Well, to get a loan, it has to be in your name as an individual. And you know what happens when we do that transfer? The assessor is going to say, hey, child, one, good. You said it's your primary residence. Let me say the trust. Wait a minute.

You guys didn't do it three ways. Where's the rest of the money? And so that's not going to work. So traditional loans calling Wells Fargo or B of A never going to happen. That's not going to work. The only way to avoid that transaction or to help that transaction is you get an expensive, what we call hard money loan to that trust after mom dies. And, you know, we can talk about those problems, Bill, but real briefly,

when you get a hard money loan to a trust, they expect you to pay back within about six months. So you're going to be paying 10, 12, 15% interest to get a loan to the trust, to pay off your siblings, avoid reassessment. you think, great. Six months later, now you're stressing because you better pay them off and you better find a traditional mortgage and qualify. There are a lot of moving parts and things can blow up in your face. You probably can pay about eight points to get that loan as well, right? So if you're borrowing a half million dollars, you're going to pay about $40,000 in loan fees, not to mention other costs. It's expensive. You know, in L.A., I know you're based in Orange County.

I'm sure you do business in L.A. and other counties as well. It seems to me that L.A. County assessor automatically recesses every property and it makes you defend the case. Is that your experience? And you see the same thing in other counties. Is that just an L.A. County thing? Yeah, that's a good point, Bill. So it depends on the paperwork you're filing and if you get ahead of it. So for example, if we just say, hey, mom died, we tell the county that's it. And then we say, I will deal with the primary residence thing later. You bet you're going to get a reassessment in medium.

And then we're going to have to deal with it, which dealing with it means paying a lawyer like myself, filing an appeal with the assessor, going through the motions, us winning, and then you get a reimbursement. Imagine getting a reimbursement from the government. It takes some time to do that. Imagine that. And meanwhile, you had to pay the bill.

And it don't put you interest on your money, by the way. So you're right, Bill. It depends on the paperwork, though. So if we get ahead of things and we write to the assessor, don't reassess us, here's all the paperwork, we might be able to skip that automatic supplementary assessment. Now, a quick note I'll mention Bill for your listeners is if they're in the situation where mom or dad passed and they're getting letters from the assessor, when you get a letter from the assessor that even mentions a supplemental or it's going to be called a notice of supplemental assessment. or notice of reassessment. Anything where it's essentially, our bill's going to go up.

If you want to appeal it, you need to appeal it and call a lawyer immediately. We generally only have 60 days to file the appeal from that letter. That's not a long time, a lot of time to find a lawyer, interview them, pay a retainer, and the lawyer to do their job. That's not much time.

And I think that people are mistaken. They'll say, well, I don't want to get an attorney involved. You know, on the regular part of the transaction is a real estate agent, the escrow sends the preliminary change of ownership form. I think it's a state form, but certainly in LA, I think it's the same of all the counties. But anyhow, and they'll call me and say, well, how should you fill it out? And say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. A, that's legal advice. B, this has big consequences potentially.

It shouldn't. You should be able to fill out correctly. But the problem is, and I know I've customers who fill out correctly, and they still get, it's almost so as the county just, ignores the form and just sees the transaction and assumes there's a reassessment due is my that's my suspicion now I might be wrong don't mean disparage anybody but I've had customers and I had attorneys call me and say hey why this happened we sent the form and did your escrow send it incorrectly yeah all we had was a form he gave us I believe the county just automatically and think about from the kind of perspective what a great cash flow tool right they get the new assessment and then they

maybe later have to refund your money. They don't give you any penalty money. They don't send you a Starbucks card in a thank you letter. Give you back the money they stole for six months after you paid your attorney's fees. So it's really important. And I always urge customers. Yeah, your attorney might charge you for an hour to view this. And I don't know, $300, $600, whatever the fee is.

It's burden $20,000 reassessment fee and bailing that for six months. And believe me, attorneys got charged more than that to hire him to fight the reassessment fee. You're absolutely right, Bill. And so often I do notice because we hire clients for what is called a trust administration or in the probate. They are, we have our clients. And then they'll go and sell a property and tell us after the fact, by the way, we closed in the monies in the account. Why didn't you tell us? So I would encourage your listeners, if they have an attorney, keep them in the loop, tell them what's going on with that.

I don't know if they have worked. You're paying the attorney good money. excuse me Bill so you're paying the attorney good money use them you're absolutely right an extra couple hours of review or even you know if you didn't even take that long

heck of a lot better than a pound of cure is definitely let me just take a quick minute here to kind of do some quick housekeeping this is probate weekly we do this every week every new episodes that come out we also have a Facebook group to continue the conversation as well as where we post the content

if you have probate related or state planning related content, love to have you post it there. We have our past episodes, but also friends of the program post their episodes as well and their content. Love to have you do that if remember. Probably weekly.com is where you find it. You can send it for email reminders. If you want text reminders, feel free for your phone number in. You don't have to. We don't require that. You can scroll down and find us another audio format, Spotify and Apple Podcasts and all that stuff. Then past episodes are on YouTube right there. Our guest, they're really excited to have again A friend of the program, Joshua Ramirez, who's an attorney in your, oh, your belinda.

I grew up in La Habra, which is near Yerba, Placentia, and Brea. To me, they're all kind of the same. They're not La Habra, but the La Habra-ish. So I'm sorry, from your, you're in Yerba Linda, correct? Correct. Yeah. So Yerba Linda, California, and by the way, my high school girlfriend is living in Yerbalinda, so I know they heard pretty well, who's a state playing attorney.

And you can go to California estateplaying Services.com is a website. on there there's a phone number. You also can scroll down and get more information about him as a company and hit the contact button to contact him as well. So a really great guy and focused, based in Orange County, but also familiar with Southern California as a whole. Let's talk about, you know, this is a new phenomenon coming up at us, I think, that we're going to see a lot of, which is a state planning as it relates to fires.

Now, I know Orange County, you had your share of fires a couple years ago, but I know I'm sure you have clients who are also in the, in Hills Fires as well as West L.A. With people who, you know, passed, they had the property. They didn't really probate it. And all of a sudden now they have an insurance claim. It seems to me it's really important to jump on that insurance claim right away on behalf of the state. You might have said, well, we're not in a hurry to sell the house. But it seems to me that if you don't get the front line of insurance payouts,

you might, you might miss out your opportunity. What do you advise in clients? Are you getting much, do you service that area and do you get much questions as far as insurance claims? Yeah, I do. And we've had a couple clients whose house unfortunately burned in Altadena. So what I'll start with is the insurance. Let me start with insurance and mortgage issues. So a lot of the times clients say, well, Josh, mom passed, dad passed, or I inherited it from my brother, sister.

I don't want to tell the mortgage company. I don't want to get the new rates. I totally get it. I don't want you to jump from 2.8% to 6.2% either. Totally get it. But when you don't take care of that, you know, it is absolutely possible to take care of your other insurances, but it's generally all in one basket. You need to take care of everything because it's your mortgage company sometimes is paying for the homework insurance and is requiring it. So sometimes the answer is do it right.

Be careful for the listeners who are basically still have it in a deceased person's name. Be very, very cautious because you can get burned, no pun intended. Very, very easily. So now with homeowners insurance, I have not, here's the concern bill. The concern is you moved your property into a trust. This is the number one concern I hear. And the house burns down, but you never called your homeowners insurance and told them. So it's still in John and Jane Doe as individuals.

Yeah. Not in the John and Jane Doe living trust. I've never heard of an insurance company denying the claim. But the concern is that they could. In order to truly evaluate it to deny your claim. We have to do you make your homeowner insurance policy. But let's go down that path, that the insurance company is big, bad, evil, and they want to try to deny it because you have a trust.

So for my entire practice, I've always told my clients when we sign a trust, call your homeowner's insurance or your insurance broker, let them know what they're doing. eight out of 10 times they'll say thank you mrs smith for calling us we typed it out it's now an additional insured we're all done two out of 10 times do they say oh we got to get you a new policy very very rare and i think maybe once or twice my career have they have they absolutely said oh thanks you wouldn't have been covered i can recall maybe once so so i've always advised my clients at the beginning of my career cal your homework insurance policy it's funny because

these fires have started a debate amongst lawyers. And for people who already have estate planning attorneys, you might see their newsletters coming out and email telling you to do this. I'm quite frankly shocked that this has not been common practice. Can you somebody there? Because I think, again, because you're deep in this and I think I deal already with people who are caught unaware, I think you're 100% right that why would you not contact insurance company?

What does it cost you? nothing. Maybe they change the policy. Now my experience never. My experience is it's just an additional insured. There's a piece of paper that they need to generate. You have it. You're done with it. I've never personally seen a person pay a premium or deny coverage because of the trust, because they look at it as a person who really owns it and such. But why would you give them the chance to raise the issue by not doing the paperwork? And I think that when attorneys give you this advice in the estate planning, that's the difference between self-help and listening to professional. All Josh is saying is it doesn't cost anything to take that complaint off the table.

And I'm going to say to you not as an attorney, but as a businessman, I believe some of these insurance companies are going to go broke. And before they go broke, they'll do anything to stay in business. I saw this in the mortgage business. I saw the B of A and Wells Fargo. You should know that today the B of A we have is not BFA. it was a company that bought the name because Bank America went broke.

Wells Fargo went broke. They were bought by Wachovia. Chase is not really Chase. They were bought by one of those companies. Before you go broke, they're going to deny everything. And they're going to make you fight them. They're going to make you hire an attorney. You're going to make you pay.

And when your attorney like Josh says something, you might go, well, what's the big deal? It says my name on there. Okay, it's not a big deal unless it's a big deal. And if it's your insurance company is going broke and they delay things for six months, and then they run out of money. and you like to get a penny from them,

that's why you hired the insurance. Okay, the attorney. Okay, Josh, sorry about that, but I just want to advise my customers. Pay attention to the attorney. Just do what the attorney says and shut up. I'm sorry, did I say that? You know, and I'll tell you, Bill.

So one thing I'll comment, and I'll tread carefully when I say this, but if you went through your trust attorney and you never heard that advice, that concerns me. Yes. Now, if your attorney gave you the advice and you just didn't do it, can't help you.

Yes. Well, hold on. I'm going to admire you. You're an idiot. You hire the attorney. You paid him good money. If you don't trust him, get another one. If you trust him or her, do what they tell you to do.

There's one quarterback on the team. They call the play, run the play. If you don't trust them, fire them, get somebody else and do what they say. So I would say, no, it's not okay not to do what the jury says. And you're 100% right. If they did not tell you to do this, who that concerns me. What else they have to do but try to limit it. I'm sorry. I'm just on a soapbox in the sushi.

I love it, Bill. And, you know, you don't pay, you know, clients don't pay us. And you might think, well, I'm hiring the attorney and getting my trust book together, great. You're not paying us for those pieces of paper and to transfer real estate. That's, that's easy. Most attorneys can do that. Yeah, and there's even self-help ways you can do that. You're paying us for what's in here and the advice and everything that you don't know.

Very easy, you know. The reason there's a lot of older estate planning attorneys out there is they think it's easy. I've been doing corporate work for 20 years. I can put down that it goes to the kids equally on a sheet of paper. That's easy. And it is. That part is extremely simple. It's all the tax things and the insurance things surrounding it that why you need

experience the state planning attorney. Yeah. Yeah. It's never a problem until it's a problem. Then it's a problem. So one of the things that, you know, in the state, if we, you know, go to estate planning a little bit, we talked about, you know, no-fying insurance and how to work with the mortgage companies.

And all these are really customized answers. I mean, I appreciate Josh, you're giving us some great general overview advice. But the reality is, if you have these questions, you should be talking to your attorney as applies to you specifically. One of the things, one of the challenges, on one hand, I want to encourage all my customers who buy property or own property to get a proper plan, get an appropriate plan, review it, implement it, follow up on it. As professional, I encourage people, refer people to attorney. This is why you do this podcast. Sometimes I feel like I want to push them to get the job done. Like, I want to follow up and say, hey, did you, did you, you know, transfer the titles of your bank counts into the trust?

I can check online and see if the real estate was done. That's always a clue if the real estate's not transferred. Some attorneys do it. Some don't do it, but it's got to get done one way or the other. What are the best practices for professionals that refer you business, whether be a real estate agent or some other financials? professional. What are some of the best practices that help us work together to get our customers to take the actions and follow through and get things done? Yeah, I think first and foremost is sharing and understanding the client's goals. Make sure we all know what is the purpose of Bill and

Josh being involved with Mrs. Smith. What are we doing here? Are we selling? Are we buying? Is she passing away soon? Are we worried about a lawsuit? What is our number one goal? Once we understand the client goal, then it's an exchange of information. That's how we protect our client work together. Instead of an email, hey, Bill, by the way, I did her trust and I moved all the real estate. Hey, Bill, this is what I'm going to do for this. What do you think before I proceed? And vice versa, before you sell the property or take it out of her trust to help her get a loan. Hey, Josh, is that great at her? Her Prop 13 or her kids or what are we doing here? So that exchange information bill is.

So were you on following up with customers at a come, they meet with you, you put the plan together. Do you follow up with them as far as the transfer of real estate? Do you follow up with it? Do you provide them with electronic versions of it as I won't keep a copy? Or do you expect them to keep copy? Talk about the post, the end and the post process a little bit. Yeah.

So let me talk about you've signed your trust and now what. And I'll preface this bill with not tooting my own horn. We're not special. So if your experience and we're listening is below this, what we do is the very good standard of care. I have concerns if this is all new to people. So after you sign your big book, your nice, empty book with your lawyer, you got to move assets into it. So the lawyer should be taking care of real estate. So the lawyer should be able to transfer your real estate.

estate into your trust in any state they're licensed in. So for example, you're licensed in California and Washington, we can take care of those states. You have Florida property. We're not licensed in Florida. So we need to do that. So then the next step is your lawyer should take points on making sure the rest gets transferred, the rest of the people. So what does that mean? Well, it means either make, you know, how many you, making sure you called the lawyer in Florida and transferred and paid them an extra four or five hundred bucks and did the deed. Or we found a company that does it,

that there are non-lawyer companies that transfer real estate nationwide. But it's making sure that real estate gets transferred. And to be honest, though, sometimes it's a matter of cost. Clients don't want to pay us to find a lawyer out of state and make sure it's done right. And I get it.

So in that case, I tell the client, well, then you better make sure you're on it. It's very good time. Now, I don't think other states are as honorous as California in general. There are other states that take certificates and affidavits and different processes. But why would you play around with a piece of real estate? They hired you. Why would they not just do what you don't do?

You know, it's mind-boggling sometimes. I have a client that I'm thinking in my mind right now that it's been a couple of years. and if you fund your Georgia property. Well, not yet. I'm getting around to it. You paid good money for 90% of the plan now. Finish it off. So that's real estate.

Pretty cut and dry. Somebody's got to fund it, preferably a lawyer. And I'll also preface this. Sorry to throw all my lawyer friends under the bus nationwide here. But when you have your Florida property, and you said, okay, let me move it to my California trust. which is okay to do. You go through a lawyer or you go through a company.

Company might be $100 bucks cheaper, to be very honest. But if that company messes anything up, your kids have to go have a probate issue, they're paying for it. Right. You got malpractice. So hire a local law firm to do your deed in any state you're going to do in the general county where you have your property. Yeah, that's good advice.

You know, I'm the broker for a state that left $40 million of assets. He met with estate planner. He had the book at his house for about two years. And they were talking about from time of time. And I get, you know, the attorney, you can't make the customer execute the plan. The customer paid for most of the money, right? Whatever the fee was, I think 80% of it he paid for. The attorney is heartbroken because she says,

call every 90 days and push him and push them. And, you know, I get it. Now, you know, we're all in a result, we're all in a results oriented businesses if you're a business owner. And to some degree, it is kind of her responsibility that he didn't. And she should say, what could you do next time to get the customer to execute? And those are you watching, you know, if you're a consumer who needs to do a state plan, get it done. And if you're a professional, what can we do to help our customers execute that plan and get it done? Because it's no good just sitting in the notebook. you actually have to put the assets in. It's the number one plan. So you also do trust litigation. Is that litigation that you do to defend clients that you've done plans for, or do you do

a litigation for clients that maybe didn't get it done properly and need some help after the fact? How does the mix of your litigation work? Yeah. In fact, one of my largest practice areas, I would say if there's three, it's the trust in estate litigation, estate planning, and property tax planning, which is why I like talking about Prop 13, which we might touch upon in a few minutes here again. How do we avoid the reassessment? But in trust litigation bill, the cases really come down to two major cases. One is somebody changed in a state plan when it shouldn't have been changed. Mrs. Smith did not have capacity.

The son who had seen it for 20 years all of a sudden got everything. So those typically surround claims of undue influence. lack of capacity, elder abuse. So those cases are something we pursue very, very often. Occasionally, we'll defend them. You know, if it was a legitimate plan and a son who hadn't seen it for 20 years is saying I should have inherited, we'll defend plans also. So that elder abuse arena is one major case.

The second and most common case is surround sibling disputes. generally a bad trustee. So we're either suing a bad trustee because they're not doing what they're supposed to do. Generally, they're living in the house. They haven't told Mom's house. They're living there rent-free. They haven't provided an accounting.

We have a year since mom died. We need to get on. Suving trustees. And then the flip-light of the coin, sometimes we're trustee just to know the lawfully. And so we're defending trustees to try to try to try to, either make things right or explain why what the trustee did was right. So those are the big major disputes, elder abuse and trustee sibling disputes.

So let's talk about, I think the one you mentioned is certainly a classic that I deal with as a real estate agent, which is a sister calls me and says, hey, there's three of us and the brothers moved to the house when mom and dad were at the tail end. He's been living there for free. Just like you said, three years. That's kind of a standard number, not paying rent. maybe he's paying a mortgage of $40,000 on an $800,000 house, maybe he's paying the property taxes and insurance, nominal costs compared to what a lease would be, certainly not helping the other siblings who are entitled to the property.

How do you get them out? You know, sometimes you have to evict them. The truth is, I think, that any eviction costs would come out there airship, if you can get down to that point with it. It just seems to me that you can talk and talk and talk to that sibling. They're never going to leave ever. until they're forced out. They'll tell you,

okay, another month, another six months, well, just another six months. But if you've been living a whole life for free, most of those people

don't have the physical ability to pay the rent if they had to move out. There's no alternative for them. So how do those, when you have the sister, let's say, and the brothers living in the house,

what's that, how does that end up? What's that litigation? Obviously, most litigation ends up settled. How does that scenario plays itself out? Yeah.

two big cases so if we're in charge you know the the client who hires us as the trustee and the brother just hadn't moved that's very simple you just call it we refer you to an eviction attorney we start the eviction process and then usually if we get attorney's fees in that case and we'll just deduct it from that that sibling share when we do an accounting after the house helps um so in some respects it's a little bit easier legally when we're in charge. Not a little bit, a lot of bit easier when we're in charge or our clients in charge is trustee or executor. But it's the emotions that stop us from going full steam ahead. Sistice says, but he's been down on his luck or but he just got released out of prison

two years ago. But, but there's always excuses until there's a big flood that cost $30,000 in the house because he was negligent and he had his buddies parting with him. Until his girlfriend came into the house and slipped and fell and is now suing the estate because the floor was negligently maintained until until so um i i unfortunately have to tell my clients we have to take emotions out of it he'll get his portion when everything sells but we're not his mom we're not his dad he's made his life choices he's got to figure out how to be an adult from here that's a tough one that's a tough one to tell very tough and and some some clients are like gunhole about it let's kick him out and Some are still wishy-washy.

And a lot of clients call me and say, I don't really want to do this because I have a house and I'm secure, but my siblings are making me. Well, you know, sometimes then don't be the trustee. If you can't, if you can't follow through on the documents, resign. If you don't have the heart to do what's right, resign. And clients don't like to resign. They like to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be in charge and call the shots, but not really call any shots. And that's not how to work.

Now, the flip side, the other kind of case, Bill, is when the brother who's living in the house who's not living, he's the trustee. That's hard because now we can't just go and evict because he's in control. So first, before we go to eviction, we have to remove him as trustee. That's called a breach of fiduciary duty. So we have to convince a judge why he's a bad trustee to kick him out. Once we get control of trustee, then we start that process. unfortunately kicking him out as trustee, that could take a year and a half to two years of litigation. He's not resigned easily.

He's going to go kicking and screaming all the way to a trial. And the clients come to you assume, well, he's a bad guy. He should happen right away. And the answer is you say he's a bad guy, and he might be. But the court needs to prove he's a bad guy because the decedent thought he was a good enough guy to make him the trustee. And the judge is always going to give that decedent's written instructions a lot of weight. before they throw somebody off the case, so to speak. And so I think sometimes the expectations are on that just because you're right,

doesn't mean you win in court or it might mean you win, but it might take you years in a lot of money. There's no true statement on the wheels of justice turn slowly. I mean, right now in L.A. County, Orange County, Riverside, and San Bernardino are slightly faster, but L.A. Orange County, from the time you hire us to the time we get to trial, is going to be somewhere around a year and a half to two years. So if you're thinking, well, my brother's never going to get out and he's in charge, don't wait a year and see what happens.

Couldn't then start the clock. That's just a third clock. And when you mentioned settlement bill, we're going to try to settle. My goal is not to take your family to trial and break you up forever. I don't want your family broken up. My goal is maybe we offer him an extra 10 grand, not morally right, but it might be financially wise. Offer him 10 grand to move out, resign, help him. them get a new place so we can sell it and then the rest.

That's kind of called the cash for keys. It's done very often in real estate transactions. So we look for ways that, you know, what's going to be cheaper than paying that a little bit more, better than paying a lawyer for two years ago. I tell customers, you know, I'm going to legal advice, but from a business perspective, if you go to trial on a, to remove a trustee, you bear to be prepared to spend about $100,000. Now, that can come out of the equity of the house. There's different ways to finance it, but you better have enough equity where it's clear. Your share, if there's three of you,

but actually three or $400,000, you have to have like a million dollar property that we're talking about to make sense. And if you don't have that much, and if he puts up a fight and he has money, it's going to cost more and take longer. And that's just unfortunately how that process works. It's very wise, Bill, and in my initial consultations, which, by the way, are always free. So anybody wants to call me. We talk on the phone for free or via Zoom. I'll just chat. But in our initial consultation for any litigated matter, I go straight to money towards the end of that call.

And what is it going to cost? What's the reward? So if your brother stole 20 grand from you, I'm going to tell you, let it go. I'm guarantee you going to tell you to let it go. And that sucks. Now, another lawyer might say, screw him, let's go. go, let's go all the way, which legally is right. That's fine.

But again, not just legal answers. There's the legal side, the financial side, the moral side, your stress, heartache, and overarching all this is family dynamics. Because once you file that lawsuit, your family will never be the same. I give business advice. I'll say you can call an attorney and litigate it for $20,000. I would also advise people to let it go. And then I'll send them a link to the theme song from ICE, let it go.

And I said, just play the song and sing it a few times, and it'll help you let it go because it's just, you're not going to get $20,000 back legally. It's just, you know, it's just not going to happen. It's just not, it's too difficult. It's not a small claims matter. It's a probate matter. And so it causes too much difficulty to get what you want, unfortunately. Yeah.

So, Bill, if you don't mind what I'd like to kind of towards the end of this, this cast right now, is kind of talk about what do we do about property? In the beginning, I kind of mentioned about the problem. So I like to shift for a couple minutes. So we mentioned the problems. You're going to get reassessed. Your bill's going from $2,000 to $20,000. It's just not practical for rentals anymore.

There is a way to avoid reassessment. So I'm going to start with even in lawyer circles. I'm on an email chain where there's dozens and dozens, if not 100 lawyers. And even lawyers disagree if you can do it or not. But I'm going to tell your listeners right now, Bill, we can avoid reassessments for families before mom and dad die. It's the key. Once mom or dad dies, we're stuck.

Before mom and dad die, we can't avoid reassessment. Our firm has a 100% success rate in avoiding the reassessment. Oh, wow. So I'm not saying this is a guaranteed result, but I am saying I've never lost this kind of case since Prop 13 or Prop 19 happened in 2020. So from 2021 to current 100% success rate. If we wanted to avoid reassessment, some of the, I guess, conditions. The first thing is the parent has to be fully cognizant, aware of what they're doing,

or have a power of attorney in place. If your parent is now incapacitated, we're not taking property rights away from them. It's too late. So you have to know what you're doing. Second thing is your parent has to survive for two years. These kinds of plans to avoid reassessment can take a couple of years to complete. So you can't call me when dad's on his deathbed. That's probably not going to work.

Now, still call me. There's some things we can do to save some of the time. the bill but we won't save it all so two years surviving your parent or if you're living or if you're listening right now and it's your property you want to get your kids you have to be willing to give up control that means and it's not this simple so don't do a deed please that's not what i'm saying but that means you're going to give up rights to your property you're going to give up the income for your property what if you have rentals to be willing to give up control in favor of your kids And I also need to know from the children that they do intend to keep this property for years and years and years to come.

If we're just being coy about it and don't want to tell mom, but we're selling this house after the year after she dies, we do not do a Proposition 19 plan to avoid reassessment. You just inherit it because there's property taxes, there's capital gains taxes, there's different taxes we need to balance. So, but if a client fits into those categories, I'm willing to go up control. My kids are going to keep this forever. I'm pretty healthy. Let's talk. And then the answer is let's talk because, like I say, I will avoid property tax

reassessment for your family. And I've done this in L.A. Orange, Riverside, San Bernardadino. So anywhere in Southern California, you have this issue, even in Northern California, we can help. It's particularly big now in the city of L.A. where we have a 5% surcharge in a house, there's over 5 million to change, and I think 10% for over

10 million or whatever the numbers are. So there are many families in those categories that have found ways to hold those properties for a long time, keep them in the family, keep them multi-generational, maybe put multiple families in a large house and keep and avoid the taxes. And others have turned them into rental

and come down the road. And so there's, you have to be able to keep the property and then be able to transfer it into rental. So that's again, part of the plan and talk to Josh, if that's something you're interested in doing. But I just see more and more, that proper planning is becoming more and more important as the city and the county and state are trying to get more of that equity. And the more you can hold on to, the more valuable it is.

So, you know, I chuckle now, you know, Howard and new associate says I've been trading her. One of the things we talk about is, well, you know, before Prop 19, somebody would call for an estate plan, it's not easy. What do you need to do? What are your kids' names here at the cost? And nine times out of 10 people move forward because we don't price couch people and we're pretty easy to deal with. Nowadays, when people call me for an estate plan and they have no clue about Proposition 19 and I educate them, our initial retainer rate is almost at zero.

Because in that initial meeting, people say, I'm part of my French, but shoot, gosh, I did not know this. I do need to talk to my kids and let's let's let's let's follow up in a few weeks. They're very, very grateful. And some people coming back and say they're just going to inherit it and they'll sell it. And some people say, let's talk how to avoid it. The people who have hired us to avoid reassessment are all happy. We've avoided it quite often. The people who don't, I think if you wanted to keep the property after your parent dies,

you're going to regret not going on this path. But not up to us who was inherited. So I want to make that very clear. It is up to my dad. Their word goes. Right. Very good. Well, look, Josh, I know there's a whole world we can continue to talk about.

And I appreciate, and we're going to have you back, I think, on our other podcast of State Playing. But more than that, for anybody who's watching, we're listening to this, you can reach out to him. A local attorney in your blending, California. California State Planning Services.com is the website. And the phone number 714-584-509. call there. Step, as he mentioned, free consultation, and a focus on estate planning, trust litigation, the conservations, probate, and related entities. Josh, always great to have you on the call. Thanks for all your information today. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Bill.

And for the rest of you, this is probateweekly.com. We get together every week and talk about probate related issues and estate planning issues. You go to probateweekly.com. You can register for reminders, for protection reminders. You don't need to, but you can also do that. And then scroll down you can get us on audio formats past episodes on youtube as well i'm at bill gross probate or probate weekly dot com thank you for your support and we'll talk to you soon bye