The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Rachel (The Lawyer King) King, Owner of King Law Firm, Attorney at Law Inc. on Best Practices in Life and Legal Issues

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Rachel (The Lawyer King) King, Owner of King Law Firm, Attorney at Law Inc. on Best Practices in Life and Legal Issues Rachelkingattorney.com

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We have an amazing mind on the show and it's clearly not me because I'm just fumbling about here at the beginning of the show with the new intro. And we're going to be talking to her about her entrepreneurial experience, what she's done with her business, some of the arc of her life that's quite extraordinary and what she's been able to accomplish. And we're going to be talking about some of the things that she can give you the best advice on as well. Today, we're joined with Rachel King, and she is of the King Law Firm. She's a lawyer, entrepreneur, veteran, wife, and mother. She's also known as the Lawyer King. Do I have that right, Rachel? That is it.

The Lawyer King. Do we need to have like some processions or like some trumpets? The Lawyer King has entered the room. Yes, please. I'll bow. I'll bow. I'll bow. I'll curse you and do all the thingies, whatever those are.

Rachel King joins us on the show. She's a serial entrepreneur starting at the age of 12. Honest, she started sooner than me, damn it. I started at 18. I must have been slacking for six years. She started at the age of 12. She has a work ethic and drive that in early age led to seven years of military service utilizing the discipline skills she moved forward owning multiple businesses and acquired the desire to continue

expanding her talents her passion for law was instilled in her from birth from her father's law career so she followed in his footsteps and opened her law firm in 2014. the combination of entrepreneurship discipline training and understanding of law firm in 2014. The combination of entrepreneurship, discipline training, and understanding of law allows her to be the rising leader for California, Arizona, Texas, and Kentucky with her firm focusing on strategic litigation in family law, probate, trust, elder law, elder abuse, conservatorships, and guardianships. Along with her impressive career, she's a proud wife and mother and loved by her community for her continued service and outreach. Welcome to the show, Rachel. How are you?

I'm doing great. That was a mouthful, huh? There you go. There you go. And I'm glad you're loved by your community because we're hated by my community, at least I am personally. The Chris Foss Show people seem to enjoy, but whatever. They drive by the house and throw eggs. So give us a dot com and uh give us a dot com and tell us where people can find you on the interwebs please uh you can find me at the lawyerking.com on all the socials at the lawyer king i would love a you know just like everybody follow subscribe i don't even know what the rest of them are uh all of the likes all the likes follow the likes and and all that good stuff.

So give us a 30,000 overview of what you do and how you do it. Oh, well, I'm a business owner first and foremost, but that's not quite as cool. I'm a lawyer. I own a law firm. I practice in California, Arizona, Kentucky, and Texas. And like you just said, I specifically focus on strategic litigation in these areas of law. I somehow ended up in like all of the very, very emotional areas of law. That must say something about me. But my goal is really to work with my clients in a way that we can get them through their legal case as quickly, cost-effectively as we can, given the facts and the laws that are in place to reach their goal. And that is kind of the boiler. If you boil it all down, that is how I practice law. And that is what I do with every single case that I take.

There you go. It sounds like something in what you cared about or passionate about drew you to the segment of law that dealt with family law and different family aspects. Is that correct? Well, when you first become a lawyer, here's a little insider information. Sometimes it's really hard to get cases, but you can always find family law clients. So that's where I started is I started with family law clients. And as I continued to practice and get more experience, I realized, I noticed actually that a lot of attorneys burn out on family law or on these very, very contested family issues. But I was able to keep, put up really strong personal boundaries.

I was able to handle these highly emotional situations in a way that didn't affect me personally. And so no matter how much I fought against doing them, I realized I'm really good at them. And because of that, I have continued to grow. And once you know you're good at something, it makes it a whole lot easier to do. Oh, definitely. Definitely. And family law is pretty good. There's always people getting us like divorces and all that sort of good stuff. Well, yeah, but it's not just divorces. Now we've got all the people that aren't getting married and man, you talk about family law issues. They have more than the married couples getting divorced. Do they really? Like, yeah, no one's

getting married anymore. I remember in Vegas, I can't remember what it was 10, 15 years ago, Vegas just quit having a 24-hour office for marriage licenses. I was like, wow, marriage must really be in decline if the place everyone really comes to get married, or at least shotgun married or whatever. The drive-thru.

Yeah, the drive-thru. Elvis and stuff. I'm like, wow. They're like, yeah, we're not going to be open 24 hours a day anymore. I'm like, this. They're like, yeah, we're not going to be open 24 hours a day anymore. And I'm like, this is the city that's open 24 hours a day. But, I mean, it's not really the right city to get married in, for that matter, when it comes down to it. It's got all the evils and ills that you can possibly imagine. Yeah, but funny thing about Vegas, if you get married in Vegas, but you live in California or Arizona or something,

typically you end up having to get divorced in the state that you actually live in you can't just go in spoil alert you cannot in most cases annul you know a drive-through wedding in vegas it doesn't it doesn't work like that in divorce wow so i know that there's certain states that are uh that are uh oh what do they call them there's certain states that are, oh, what do they call them? There are certain states where if I marry somebody, they instantly own like 50% of everything, including my companies and stuff. I don't know if that's exactly how it works, but there are community property laws. Community property laws. That's the one I'm looking for. And, you know, you got to get a prenup and stuff. And so if you get married in Vegas, Vegas, I think Vegas is community property too.

So I don't practice in Nevada, but if you get married, we'll use California. If you get married in Vegas, you live in California, you are in a community, you live in a community property state, so you would fall under the community property laws,

but you don't just get married and then your spouse takes half of everything. Anything you came into the marriage with is typically considered separate property so note to self when i get married in zimbabwe stay there damn it right look at all the laws actually in all of the states and if you're going to get divorced go and move there six to filing and then you fall under their lot. Oh, is that how it works? All right. For divorces.

I'm still waiting on my first divorce. I've got a few gals of mine. I got about two or three divorces lined up. I just got to time them right. So give us a bit of your history, your background. How were you raised and what got you down this path? It sounds like you started your company early too when you were 12. I did. So I actually, I'm from divorced parents. I lived the very typical, I don't want to say typical, you're not supposed to say that anymore, but a child visitation where

I stayed with my mom during the school year and went to my dad's during breaks and holidays. But the households were quite different. So I lived in two very different households. I had great parents on both sides, but I would not. And while we were comfortable financially, I did not grow up getting everything I wanted. So anytime I wanted something, basically it was no or, well, I think the answer was mostly no, honestly, Chris. And then I at one point that well, he was probably when I was about 12. I thought, well, if I pay for it, you don't get to say no. I paid for it.

And so that's what I think started my idea of wanting to own a business. Also, in both families, they were self-employed. So my stepdad was self-employed and my dad was self-employed. So I kind of the, everything that goes with owning a company, I was very, very fluent and I saw the struggles. I saw the benefits. I saw the flexibilities. I saw all of it. And so when I got to 12 and I thought, well, I really, I don't even know. I think I wanted a pager or something, right? If go, go look that up. If you don't know what it means, I think I wanted a pager and I couldn't get one.

And I went to my mom and my stepdad and I said, well, if I pay for it, what's the problem? And they were pretty cool. There was lots of problems with it, especially contracts, but they said, okay. And so I started a babysitting company. And that was, I guess, the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. There you go. And once you get the drug, man, you're kind of screwed for life with the entrepreneurial thing, huh? Honestly, they teach it to you too. Way back when you read Tom Sawyer, right? So my mom always says that whole whitewashing of the fence thing really stuck with you, Rachel. And I thought, it to you too they way back when you read tom sawyer right so my mom always says like that whole white washing of the fence thing really stuck with you rachel and i thought

yes if i can make money off of other people i don't know why i would ever do the work myself that's brilliant i never thought of the tom sawyer thing uh like that the uh such a great book um and in such a great musical a song from Rush. So you go along this journey. Where do you go from there? After I started my babysitting company, obviously, I was still in school. I opened during my high school years. I became a swim instructor at the YMCA. During the summertime, I would do private in-home lessons. And again, when that got to be where my calendar was full, then I brought on some other people on the side, some of my friends and, you know, paid them to do the swimming lessons. From there, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer,

probably since I was early high school. And so I knew the trajectory that you had to go to college. But when I was 18, I tried going to college, and that was a massive failure. So I quickly found myself without parental financial support, with all the realizing I was not nearly as employable as I thought I was. And the life is very expensive. And that kind of forced me into the army. I remember thinking, oh, my mom had kicked me out of my house or out of her house, not my house. And I remember thinking, okay, if I can join the military, and I can get a ship date, right to basic training, within like two weeks, I can probably go beg to my mom and be like, please let me crash on your couch for two more weeks.

And it actually worked. And that's kind of how I landed myself in the army, which was a great experience, but it was not planned. I don't come from a military family and it was kind of my, oh goodness, what am I going to do with my life? Well, they'll feed me at least. There you go. Well, our military teaches incredible amounts of leadership and self-reliance and stuff. I mean, I've been totally impressed by everything that we do. And you see the difference in the quality of what we teach and the individual leadership and the ability to individually team, even if you're above command is, is, uh, is lost or non-communicative, um, you know, the individual team can still rock. And so it's, it's really cool

what, what, uh, what we teach our military. You see, you can see the difference between our military in performance, uh, as opposed to like the Russian military, which is like the second best military in Ukraine right now. I like how you slipped that in there. Yeah. I stole that from the, I think the secretary of state. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting to see the difference in leadership and it teaches people a lot of stuff. Maybe we should just force everyone to go in the military.

You know, now that I know I'm too old to go but you know it's hard to do college and stuff when you own your own company I was supposed to go to college and then I started my own company and I was like no I want to see where this goes I want to see where my own sort of journey goes so what got you steered towards well I think it was your father right but what made you decide hey I'm going to go into law? Well, yes, my dad is an attorney. So I was around law a lot. I really liked, again, I came from two very different households growing up.

So I liked what I saw. I always saw very limited time with my dad and the practice because I was only with him over the holidays. But, for example, when I was there over Christmas break, he had to work. And so he would spend the evenings and we would go over his cases and he would pretend that I had a say in how he practiced, asking my opinion.

And that really, I think, resonated with me a lot. I have a really sexy answer and I have a really real answer as to why I wanted to become a lawyer. And the sexy answer is I wanted to become a lawyer. And the sexy answer is I wanted to help and make everybody's lives better and do all of the things and improve the world. The real answer as to why I actually wanted to become a lawyer at that age. And I'd like to just preface this with, I was like 18 to 20 when I actually started on my journey to become

a lawyer was I really liked the money that could be made. I really liked the power that you got, you know, and the people, when you said you're a lawyer, they all kind of, Oh my gosh. So, um, I said, and now you're a king. I was really attracted to that idea. You're after the power. Now you're the king. You got all the power. She's the lawyer king, ladies and gentlemen. Um what was the hardest thing about starting your business and getting it going? I know the attorney business can be competitive. I had history growing a business, actually. My husband was deployed when I was in law school.

And when he got out, we started a different company. Now he runs it called DIY Barbecue. So not only did I have experience running of running companies during my teen years, we'd also started this company, it's now a seven figure company. And I think it actually hit seven figures maybe before I opened my firm. So I had a lot of trial and error, right. And I'd like to emphasize the error in that statement before we made it. So when I opened my law firm, it was kind of a, you know, I'm at a different place in my life. I was married. I had three children. I didn't want to go and work for somebody else and have

them profit. I already fell in love with the idea of making money off of other people and the delegation role. I'm a supreme delegator. So I took all of the skills I had as an entrepreneur and I started my firm as a business. And I think that's one of the deciphering factors is many attorneys start their own law firms and they focus on the practice of law. But really you have to remember that it's a business. And so as a new attorney, the practice I was still learning, cause you don't really learn how to practice in law school. And I think I was successful because I, I started it as a business and I learned how to practice by relying on my dad and my other attorney family members. There you go. I know one of the

issues, right? My understanding is one of the issues, or my understanding is one of the issues with the attorney school is they don't really teach you the business end of it, right? And you kind of knew that coming from your previous business experience. They don't teach it at all. Now, I went to law school quite a while ago, and I've heard that they've tried to make changes and have classes to show kind of the business side of running a law firm. I think they're electives. I don't think they're required. And here's the thing, I truly, after owning companies,

I really think there's natural entrepreneurs and there's people that are not meant to be entrepreneurs. And knowing that as a human, knowing that about yourself, it doesn't matter which side you fall on, but really understanding it and then going after and becoming the best that you can be, whether that's an entrepreneur or, you know, an employee, I think is, is awesome, but they don't teach you, they don't teach you how to run a law firm, let alone really the real life practice of law in law school. There you go. You know, it's,

it's interesting to me if, if I. I tell people, if I could go back to when I was young, even when I started my own business, I would have told myself, go finish school and become an attorney. The wonderful thing about attorney and the law is so important. I mean, you read the constitution, you read what our country's about. I mean, we're a nation of laws. And it's so, I find it so intriguing in my age, all the different laws that we have and how they work and how they build a system that's, you know, is a nation of laws. It gives us a rule of law sort of basis, how things are litigated.

You know, when you become successful uh you know you find out that the war that used to go on between medieval clans of you know battle of blood and and uh sword uh are really done from between rich people in the courts now so it's just rich suing rich people yeah you know for everybody that doesn't know if they want to be a lawyer first of all it's a lot of work so you have to want to but one of the things that I think is amazing about being a lawyer is that you don't have to practice law. I actually just yesterday, somebody said, oh, but you're a real lawyer, Rachel, because you go into court and litigate. And I thought, well, that's cool to be called a real lawyer. But gosh, as a lawyer, you know, you could go and be the CEO of major corporations.

You can go into politics the CEO of major corporations. You can go into politics. You can go teach. Talk about job security. It's probably one of the most secure forms of education that you can have. You can use it for just about anything. I mean, that's why I like the skill of being able to start companies and own companies and run companies is because I can use it for just about any sort of field.

But so can you do with law and understanding the laws and stuff just gives you so much knowledge it's it's such a great thing to have so if i would go back i would become a lawyer and i've worked with some pretty savvy um probably semi-evil lawyers um and uh learn learn some stuff uh and so uh it's just always interesting to me how it works. What would you advise people that maybe are thinking about being, you know, they're young or maybe they're old. I don't know. I think my aunt got her law degree when she was in her 40s or 50s. What would you think about,

what would your advice be to people who are thinking about getting into law? Man, I get asked this question a lot, and I feel like I'm always like the Debbie Downer with my answer. I think it is so much work that you have to really be dedicated to the educational journey. It's not like going and getting a sociology degree just so you can check that box.

It requires such a huge amount of emotional and mental investment that I think before you decide that you want to be a lawyer or that you're going to go to law school, really decide that that is what you're going to do and what you're going to commit to from an education standpoint. It's also super expensive. So I can't imagine getting through one year of law school, still having to pay for it and being like, oh, I just really don't like this. That's like the worst, right? So be sure you like it, commit to it, and then understand that it's going to be really hard, but it is so awesome on the other side. It is truly, I mean, I'm still kind of in awe that I get to say I'm a lawyer and that I still get that power response from people. And I get to help people, which at this point in my career, actually, I like to do, right? I really love being able to help people. So

make sure it's what you want to do. Know that it's going to be a grind. It's going to be expensive. It's going to be really hard. But if you can get through to the other side, it's so incredibly powerful and you can do almost anything you want as a lawyer, except maybe practice medicine. That's not going to happen. There you go. And sometimes lawyers get a lot of jokes. I have a lot of lawyer friends and sometimes they're the one telling the lawyer jokes. But what's the old line? No one likes attorneys until they need to call one or something like that. When's the best time to call an attorney when you really need one? If you're stressing over a legal issue or something that you think is going to be a legal issue, I think you call an attorney right then.

If you call a good attorney, right, they will tell, you don't need to stress and you don't need a lawyer right now. Or they'll tell you, Hey, yes, this is what you should be concerned about. This is what we can do. But if you don't make that call, you're going to continue to stress because you're not going to know and it's going to weigh on you. It's going to affect other areas of your life. So reach out to an attorney, have an attorney that you know, a relationship with an attorney in case you need to make that call and call as soon as you start to lose sleep or think about it in the shower, right? I always tell people, if you're thinking about it in the shower, it is occupying an awful

lot of space and we should go talk about it so that we can free up some of that stress. There you go. I'm always thinking in the shower about, I should sue the person who made this damn loofah. It's too hard. This shampoo sucks. I have to use it three times to get all my dirt out of my hair. I'm a guy, it's that way. So yeah, I mean, the law is so important. I think a lot of Americans take the law for granted. You know, recently I've been reading the Federalist Papers and, you know, talking about the laying of the foundation of the Constitution. You look at how the shapers of our country, you know, we're a nation of laws.

People don't realize that a lot of the freedoms you have every day come from a lot of the things that are out there. And so it's really important to have. So you delve into family law, probate, trust, elder law, elder abuse, conservatorships, and guardianships. One of the things you talked about recently is the Britney Spears conservatorship case. This will get us some SEO hits, I guess. And there's also, I was kind of surprised that the conservative ship ran for so long. And then there's the recent football player. Who's the football player recently that he thought he was adopted?

And it was a big movie everyone cried about. I think I went and cried to it. And it turns out the whole thing was maybe a fraud. I don't know. Well, so one thing that's interesting about these is the conservatorship or the conservatorship issues, if you will, have been going on for a very long time. This is not news. became newsworthy when it involved Britney Spears and Michael, both two celebrity status individuals, which on one hand is really great because when you look at what happened to them, it's pretty shocking and it caused the laws to change and the laws to really protect the rights of the individual. And I think that's super important. So when we think about conservatorships,

in other states, they're called adult guardianships. We're basically taking an adult and giving them maybe less rights or the same amount of rights that they had when they were minor children. That's a huge infringement, your fundamental rights as an individual. And it was able to happen. And because somebody had been deemed incapacitated, right, they can't make any decisions, we're going to treat them like a child. They didn't even have the ability to go say, well, I want to hire my own lawyer, because I think everybody's in on this together. And they weren't even allowed to do that so pretty shocking and kind of amazing that it's caused such huge change within the legislative laws and the courts and how everything

is being handled and i think for the better yeah i i think so too i mean i mean there was a time where britney seemed a little bit out of control i mean uh might have been some drugs involved and when you're attacking uh ford Broncos with umbrellas and stuff in the middle of the night shaving your head, you know, maybe you needed some help for a little while. But, I mean, it was like 20, 25 years or something. It was like 13 years, and the thing that's interesting is she was still able to perform, right?

She was amazing. She was working, and you oftentimes don't see that if somebody is unable to make their own decisions, they typically have some kind of inability to work as much as she was. The controls that were going on in her case, I heard, I was never involved in representation, but I heard that, you know, how she performed dictated whether she could see her children at the visitation. Those kinds of controls are really kind of an abuse of power. And I think when it all came to light, it was really where not only us as citizens or individuals, but the politicians and the legislators and all of these couldn't turn a blind eye anymore.

And they had to say, well, she may need help or somebody may need help, but we're going to let them still participate in their life. And we're going to restrict the control to the least restrictive means and we'll revisit it as we need to, you know? Yeah. I mean, we definitely always have to be looking at our laws and seeing how they can be approved. How do I get a conservatorship over a billionaire? Is there a way I can get that done? Because it always seems like only... We've had

a few on the show. It always seems like the people that want conservatorships are the people that are making money, like Brittany and that Michael NFL guy. Well, there's a lot of money that could be made with Brittany when you're controlling somebody's life. No one's trying to get a conservatorship of the Chris Voss. No one's trying to get conservatorship of the Chris Voss Show. Actually, I sold my conservatorship.

The Chris Voss Show owns me. And so I am enslaved. So there you go. That's why I'm stuck in the chair all day long. Tape to it. Duct tape to it, folks. Please help me. I'm winking.

Winking. No, I'm just kidding. SOS. So another thing you focus on that I think is important to talk about is elder abuse. Um, this is a big deal. I'm in a mortgage company for 20 years. And one of the things that I used to really just used to grind my, uh, whatever is I would see people that would come in and they'd be seizing the home of their parent or loved one who's an elder. And they would be doing it for the money aspect of it. Sometimes they'd be really

honest about it. They were just like, hey, she's got a lot of equity and she's kind of old. So throwing her home and take the home. And I'd see, you know, sometimes I'd be working with the elder mother or father and, you know, they'd be talking to me and asking, you know, for some sort of counsel on what their kids are trying to do. Like sometimes we'd be trying to refinance their home so they could save, you know, I think there was one case where we're going to save a little old lady 1200 bucks a month in her credit card, paying off our credit cards with her equity. And she'd somehow given access to the title through a couple of her kids said, Hey, we want that title, you know, in case she passed away.

And so we're trying to refinance her to save her this money that, you know, she was on a fixed income and, uh, and the kids won't let me do it because they're like, that's our equity. And you're like, holy shit, what's going on with you? So are these types of things you see with elder abuse, financial abuse? Is it physical abuse too as well? There's a lot of physical abuse. That typically comes when we're talking about, I mean, sometimes it's just straight physical abuse like you would get in any situation.

But oftentimes it ends up resulting from somebody that has like dementia or some kind of cognitive impairment and the physical abuse ends up kind of manifesting as a result of frustrations in caregiving. But financial abuse, man, sometimes, you know, seniors fall victim to the prince of Egypt that's going to make them a billionaire if they just send all of their money over. But most of the financial abuse ends up coming from children or caregivers, people that are very close. And the house, hands down, hands down is the first thing that people go to, especially in California, because there's so much, houses are worth so much in California. And so we see, you know, I had one

situation where the child had taken ownership of the house and was evicting the parent. And it's like, where is this person supposed to go? You know, and it's really, really devastating. The money that goes, the house that goes, especially when you're talking about fixed income and they don't have the ability to kind of repair it. But we're seeing not we're seeing more involvement from the district attorneys. We're seeing more involvement from the FBI to really get a handle on financial elder abuse.

But it is devastating. If you know about it, then the faster we can get a hold of it. It's always easier to stop or prevent rather than to go and try and collect money that's already been spent. So there you go. What do you, what's your advice to people? Like if there's families out there that they have that, that one sibling who's up to that sort of thing, trying to seize homes and assets and, you know, throw the mom into the, or the dad into,

into the, the rest home and all that stuff. What's your advice to them? Do they need to call an attorney like yourself? Is it a criminal sort of thing they need to report to the police? What's the process out there for that? Well, definitely report it to the police. There's adult protective services that you can report to. As a lawyer, I always say, like, call a lawyer.

We can help, right? We can go and get the courts to intervene. But I also realize that there's a huge family component to this that needs to be recognized. If sibling is doing, I mean, I can't tell you, Chris, how many times I've had the sibling call and say, but I don't want to upset mom or dad. So I don't want to file in court because they're going to be upset that we're all fighting. And so I think't want to upset mom or dad. So I don't want to file in court because they're going to be upset that we're all fighting. And so I think you need to understand what's going on and then see, you know, one of the things that I do with my clients is see how this family dynamic fits into what is happening

and how can we restore or maintain or restore a family without, you know, causing somebody to be abused financially. But reach out to law enforcement, reach out to APS, reach out to any of the senior centers that you've got. Call an elder abuse attorney, and there are things that can be done. The things to look for, though, are if you've noticed whether you are the senior or it's a family member, are names being added to bank accounts? Are titles of houses being changed? Is there one person that is, you know, are new wills or trusts that are being made?

Are they being isolated? Are they able to make phone calls when they want and see who they want to see. All of those are huge triggers that we have the same, you know, they're very common when we see financial elder abuse is this pattern of behavior. So if you see any one of them, you know, sooner, the better. There you go. I remember early in social media, I saw one of the top Twitter people when it was fairly new and he was like huge and everyone loved him and he seemed like a really nice guy. And then someone sent me something one day and they go hey that guy got busted for uh elder abuse and i'm like really what did what happened and turns out he'd always been posting these pictures these big

screen tvs he would buy and all these gaming systems and you know and you're like god he's he's doing well he's living the life turns out he was he'd moved into his mother's house and i imagine she had some sort of dementia and she was literally living in her bed with bed sores and uh well he was cashing her social security checks and living up the life on on her money and uh i guess some i don't know relative or neighbor somebody finally called it in and and the cop showed up and went you know know, she's covered in bed sores. You know, you're not taking care of her and yada, yada, yada. He was arrested and charged.

And so it's a really big deal. Let me ask you this because my sister has been in a lot of care centers. She has MS and dementia now as well and long code too. And so with the, you know, there's a lot of this sort of, I imagine you call it abuse in some of these arrest homes and care centers. Have you, you guys, is there anybody that specializes that for attorneys and stuff? Yeah, there, there is. And I think that you, you know, one of the best preventative measures is to go in and make contact. They, that whole squeaky wheel, what is this? The squeaky wheel gets the grease or something that can be applied in so many situations, but it even applies in like these nursing home or care centers, because

if you're always there, they're going to make sure that they're more on their P's and Q's. So, you know, have them know who they are, have them know you call, make sure that they see that you're a presence and that you care. If they're nursing home abuse is, you know, again, very common, whether it's just, you know, not providing the, not moving somebody who is in their bed all the time, not providing food, leaving them to not get their care. There's also financial abuse, right? You have somebody in a very vulnerable situation and you provide the care and the companionship. And now you kind of hint to them like, well, why don't you give me a kickback or change your will? I love you and your kids don't. So I would suggest the same thing. Law enforcement uh any regulatory boards are a really good idea adult protective services uh an attorney probably that does elder law would be able to help i help with

things like that and so we can see the primary you know well my goal in those kind of situations is to get the care that is necessary i think that means when we're dealing with a situation like that it's less about recovering money that's helpful, but it's more about in the immediate, how do we make sure that this person that's in one of these facilities is getting the care that they need? There you go. And it's kind of interesting if you complain at these facilities or file grievances, they can literally just kick you out. And, and they're, it's not that easy to play somebody, especially if they're, you know, in deep into Medicare and two, you know, they need two or three people to help them out. I mean, my sister has been moved

through, I think about seven different homes and there's been issues between, you know, bad employees and stuff. And I, I think a lot of it, you know, she's very young, she's seven years younger than me, but most of the people in the homes that we see that there are abuse going on, they're older. You know, they fall under elder abuse and elder care. And it's really interesting because sadly people seem to throw their elders away and never visit them. That's the thing, right? They don't visit and then they become more susceptible. And I do agree with you.

I get many people that when I say, this is what we need to do, here's the plan. It's like, well, as soon as I complain to the manager, then they're not going to treat my mom as nice or they're not going to treat my dad as nice. And that's a very, very valid concern. How many times is your family member going to have to push that call button before somebody comes in if you're the one that's complained, even if it's a legitimate gripe. Yeah. Or if they can even get the call button thing, we had things where it's been kept away from them on purpose.

So there you go. What are some advice you give to clients that are in stressful litigation cases? Cause you know, these get highly emotional. I've, I've gone to four family court with some friends that were fighting over child custody and whatever, all that bullshit they did in their relationship. And I've gone to family court with some friends that were fighting over child custody and whatever all that bullshit they did in their relationship.

And I've seen family law court. And fortunately, I've never been on the plaintiff defendant side of it. But I see the stress. I guess that's my point. I agree. I joke with my husband sometimes that the reason that we're still married is because I see what a disaster family law court is. I'm just kidding. I really love him. That's true love right there. So with every case, whether you are in family law, probate court, probably even criminal,

except that we have different laws over criminal, the legal process is a hurry up and wait situation. I'm very comfortable in that because I was in the army. So I understand the hurry up and wait philosophy. But I think that's probably the most stressful part, aside from the emotions, right? Is, well, I need child support right now. I don't have a place to live and I have to move out because the house is selling and I need all of these things. And they come to me, they're like, so make it happen. I'm like, well, so that's not an emergency from the court's perspective. So we'll get on calendar five months and the court will make a decision. Now that's really, really hard for people to understand. And that is so

above my pay grade, like go talk to your Congressman and some other people about how to sort that whole thing out. But I think if people go in knowing that this is there, you're probably not going to get immediate results in any court system. And then having an attorney that you if you're going to have an attorney. Right. Not that you don't need your own attorney of a constitutional right to represent yourself. You also have a constitutional right to have an attorney present with you. But if you're going to have an attorney, you really need to trust that attorney. And people always think that's so obvious. And I'm like, even if you have the crappiest, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that on your show, but you're the worst attorney

in the world, right? You have better call Saul as your counsel. It doesn't matter if you trust him, right? He was pretty good in the show though. I don't know if he was ethical or moral, but you're going to, you need to trust what your attorney tells you and their guidance in your case. Otherwise you're going to be stressed at every level. If you have the best attorney in the world and you don't trust anything they say, you're also going to be very unhappy. So make sure you trust your attorney. Know that, you know, the rules of evidence make it so that every little thing isn't going to come in. And I know in today's age, because I get told this all the time on my social media, people want to be accepted and don't like that there's rules. I think it's really important if you're in court to kind of concede that you need to represent yourself in a particular

light. And it doesn't really matter if you have to fake it till you make it in court. You have to do that. You have to posture because the court is getting this much evidence and they're making a decision that's going to affect your whole life there. It's not going to affect their life. They don't care, but it is going to affect yours. So,

you know, be polite in court, wear the right shoes, don't interrupt all of the things. Yeah. Don't, don't yell at the judge. That sounds bad. I love watching the court cases. I'll see them on TikTok or something or Cops TV or whatever, Court TV, and I'll see the things where people go off on the judge and the judge is like, really?

Okay, I have another six months there. Right. But, you know. It's part of their own hearing right i've been in court when the judge was like yeah so they let's take them out and they don't get to say anything anymore i'm like well that was no time your voice was taken yeah there was that there was that one gal who killed somebody recently and they had like a bag over her face so she couldn't spit or talk or something and she just sit there in the courtroom i thought it was funny to just watch

her eyes and her her facial language and it's like yeah that's a note to self i'm one of those people that and if i ever get like depressed or whatever i'll go watch cops for a while or court tv and then after like two hours of watching the shit show car crash and people like i'm like awesome man i haven't been to jail today i don't have cops kicking down my door i'm not wearing a white beater on the couch or i'm shirtless on the couch that clearly is me that at the trailer home is going to the prison tonight i'm doing pretty damn good i should be really grateful about yeah you set that bar way down here and Yeah, yeah. You feel great. You're like, my problems don't mean anything compared to what

these people are doing. So there you go. You know, the one thing about divorce court is, as I see the amount of money that people spend in divorce court, and a lot of them just don't seem to realize that half the stuff they want to fight over in divorce court, divorce court doesn't care about,

you know, like nonsense. I don't take those cases anymore. I used to, you know, when I had to pay my rent and stuff, but now I tell people, if you're fighting over the silverware and not the attorney for you,

because I'm just going to tell you to go buy new silverware and let's just move on. And then, you know, you look at, I'll be honest. I haven't followed the, I didn't follow the Bezos divorce very, very much. But I also, you didn't hear about it too much, right?

And I think that could just be a really good lesson for a lot of people is these are two incredibly wealthy people. Well, I think they were both vested in Amazon. I'll take a lesson. Yeah. I think it was because they were both vested in Amazon and they knew if they turn into a shit show, their value of Amazon stock would go in the toilet. And I guess if I was walking away with a divorce with, you know,

$35 billion or something, I would have less to bitch about. You think you would, I don't know that, that one divorce with, uh, who is it? Uh,

Brad Pitt and his wife has been going on 16 freaking years like yeah i've been single and dated all my life and the one thing that's always been interesting about uh ex-married divorced people i've never been divorced i i'm still saving up a few million dollars for my first one it's a good idea and uh and my second one too i'm gonna do i'm gonna do three back to back so i can catch up to everyone. One thing I've noticed is they're more about each other and think about each other, and they're more engaged with each

other, well, usually in anger and bitterness, than they were when they were married. I'm like, you guys divorced to get the fuck away from each other. I call that being married to the divorce you know and i like i had one friend uh that i went to family court for uh they they each spent 50 grand each and they put it all in credit cards too which is even more insane they spent 50 grand

each just to get the same thing the judge offered them at the beginning because they wanted to fight over you know how many times he left the toilet seat up and you said the silverware and stuff and they want to fight all about that so they did that so they spent a hundred grand and afterwards they finally ran out of money and settled and i told them i go you know you have two children you could put a hundred grand into a, you know, passbook savings account, or, you know, maybe a IRA is some sort of investment vehicles, T-bills or something that was safe. And those kids, you'd have their college paid for it, but no, you blew it out.

Cause you want to argue about the toilet seat and I don't know which way to put the toilet paper on the, on the roll. So there's that. Yeah. And there's definitely people that like to do that. But I also think that the attorneys, you know, they could have potentially had an attorney that would counsel them on how that was maybe not the best money spent. I'm not here, you know, I, I support myself with people paying attorneys, but at the same time, like I'll be very candid with my clients. You're like, so I, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I had one where it was a settlement offer of like 200 grand. And they were like, I'd rather give you the 200 grand than pay them.

And I'm like, well, I really appreciate that. But that's stupid. Yeah. It's interesting. You're willing to pay me the 200 grand. Why don't you just pay them and we can have this all go away. If I ever get divorced or if I ever get bored, like I'm just bored in life and I got nothing better to do,

I'm going to get married and then get divorced really quick. Just so I can experience what everyone else has in this world. One last thing I wanted to squeeze in here, probate and trust. How important is it for people to put their assets and trusts and build trusts and probate stuff? Well, it depends where you live because every state is quite a bit different. I think, so one of the big takeaways that I tell people is if you don't do a will or a trust, and we won't get into the differences and what you should have, but if you just don't

do any estate planning, you are falling to the laws that legislators have created with regard to who's going to be in charge, where the money, who's going to inherit, what is going to be paid and taxes and all of the things. So if you want any say, then it's really important to get some kind of estate plan done. Not everybody needs a trust. Not everybody wants a trust, but at least having the opportunity. Again, we have all of these rights and your failure to do a will or a trust, or at least look into it really is impeding your own rights to make the decisions about how you're going to be cared for, who's going to be in charge and where your money is going to go. And so, you know, look out for your own self and make your decisions. Don't

leave it to the government. There you go. Don't leave it to the government. There you go. Don't leave it to the government because I think they take half or whatever, if not more. There's a lot of taxes out there. And I'm not going to sit here and say you can get out of taxes. I don't do taxes. But at least know, right? Know what is going to happen and make the decisions that you can for what you want to happen. Yeah.

It's tough to think about, you know, what would happen if I die and all that stuff. People don't like to think about it, but it's important because government has. And I tell people because they, oh, I can't, I just, it's so sad. And I'm like, yeah, it's too super sad. Like, I don't want to actually think that my kids are going to have no parents, but you know, when I do my own and everybody laughs at me because I like every time my husband and I travel together without our kids, I like redo the entire thing. And I say, if something were to happen to both of us, now we have minor children. So our situation's a little different, but if something were to happen to both of us, there's no getting around the fact that my children's life has just imploded. Their life will never be the same. They're going to have

huge catastrophic emotional. I mean, it's just going to be a mess. So if I can at least set it up so that they know that they get to go to school tomorrow and how there's somebody there that's going to take them and that they can continue their extracurricular activities or stay in the house that they've been raised in, those little things are the best that I can do so that their world is just a little bit better after it completely implodes. And that's, at least for me, how I can get through kind of the super depressing part of like, well, I could be dead and I wouldn't see my kids anymore. There you go. I'll be interested to see if you change your will and your mind once they turn teenagers. Oh, I have an adult child

and I was all of my money to my adult child. I'm 18, 12 and 10. And I now, you know, I have an adult child and I was giving all of my money to my adult child. I'm 18, 12 and 10. And I now, you know, I have clients where everything's been left to charity and some people get so pissed. And all I can think is, oh my God, if they say anything like this, I'm leaving everything to charity. I don't even care if I write a check to the government. Anything but them. I solved that problem. I sent my kids off right as soon as they were born to military school. They're supposed to call me when they're 18, but we've moved and changed numbers multiple

times. So hopefully Mari won't catch up to me. Well, it's been very insightful and great advice to have you on the show, Rachel. Thank you very much for coming on. My pleasure. It's been super fun. There you go. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. TheLawyerKing.com. It's super easy. I'm TheLawyerKing everywhere, whether it's.com or, again, all of the socials, all of it, you can find me there. And you can even get a phone number to text me on my personal cell phone. There you go. And if you meet another Lawyer King, are you going to have to have a medieval battle to the death, fiefdom fight sort of thing?

I don't know. Maybe. My dad and I have a podcast called The Lawyer Kings. Oh, do you? Get a plug in for that. I didn't know how I felt about it, having to fight with him to be the lawyer king. Fortunately, he's heading into retirement. So that battle will.

And you want to make sure you're in as well. Right right of course yeah you can't you can't muck that up you know it's you're in the probate trust uh business there uh so uh thank you very much rachel for coming on we really appreciate it uh thanks so much for tuning in as always refer the show to your family friends and relatives hey we got to pay for that opera chick who did the uh singing there we're going to put at the beginning of the show from here on out. So support the show, and it's free just for the show. It's that easy, people. We're not asking you to join a cult or, I don't know,

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