 So first, thank you all for coming today. Especially, thank you to the San Francisco Public Library, to our wonderful host, Amna Ali, and to the Business Science and Technology Department of the San Francisco Public Library. This would not be possible without you. So thank you again for all of your efforts. Today's presentation is a state planning and the tagline there is because at least one thing is certain. And I think it was Benjamin Franklin, who was quoting a French Revolutionary who said, there are only two things certain in life and that's death and taxes. And depending on what side of the tax code you're on these days, that last part might not even be true. But we are going to talk about the one certain thing that we know is going to happen and that is that unfortunately none of us get out of life alive. And so we're going to talk a little bit about estate planning to that end. First, a little bit about me. This is my educational pedigree which you guys can review as I'm speaking but the reason why I got into estate planning was because I lost my father. When I was in my, I guess it was my mid 20s, and it was rather unexpected, and I had to watch my mother go through a very unforgiving probate court system with a lawyer that she did not really trust or get along with. And on top of that he died around the beginning of May. And so, on top of burying her husband she didn't know if the taxes have been paid she didn't know if the mortgage has been paid. She didn't know if the utilities bills have been paid there were a lot of things that were up in the air, and watching her go through that more than anything else propelled me to never have to let somebody go through that again if I could help it. And so that's essentially why I got into estate planning. We are going to have some time for question and answers and we'll talk more about what this presentation is going to tell on the next slide but there's a QR code down at the bottom here that if you have any questions that are specific to you that are not appropriate to be asked. During this time please go ahead and scan that QR code here, or perhaps at the very tail ended our last slide, or if you do have questions go ahead and throw those in the chat. And I'm now will be monitoring those for me. So what should you expect for the next 45 minutes. I'm going to do my best to make this as entertaining as possible I know that the subject matter can run into the realm of being a little bit dry and technical but whenever possible I am going to use real world examples to help illustrate the point and to make sure that that things are discussed in a much more clear manner. The next thing that we're really going to be doing though is we're going to be defining the probate process and talking about, you know, what exactly that means what what is probate and what should you expect from a probate procedure. The next set of slides are we're going to talk about common issues with probate and how to avoid them, essentially, and there are quite a few issues with California probate. We're also going to have a discussion about what the components of a well rounded California estate plan should look like. And then with any time that we might have left over, we're going to take questions at that time. Before we move on though I do want to say a little bit of a disclaimer. Nothing in this presentation is geared to be legal advice. Okay, this is going to be 100% purely information, purely informational driven. This is going to be a 30,000 foot view of what the estate plan of an average Californian should look like what the California probate system looks like, and the pitfalls that you may want to try to avoid. Also, and again, I have to say this because the bar association is kind of stickler about this, simply attending this does not create an attorney client relationship. So just by attending please don't expect that that's what this is but if you if you do have questions again, there is a QR code at the tail end of this presentation feel free to contact me through that. And maybe we can have a little bit more of an in depth conversation about your particular situation. So without further ado, let's talk about what is probate. So probate, according to Webster's as I said here is the process of proving in a court competent jurisdiction such as a probate court, that an instrument of document if you will, is the valid last will and testament of a deceased person. And more broadly, it is the process of administering an estate in California that process is pretty much built on nine steps. First, if there is a will you lodge that will with your probate court, and you have to then prove up its authenticity. If the will is proven to be authentic then we admit that will to probate, and we appoint an executor, and that executor's job is to marshal all of the assets in the estate, and to get those assets appraised and submit all of that paperwork to the court. From there we also go about identifying the errors that are listed in the will, or if there is no will, then we identify the errors by doing an investigation of the family and marital history of the deceased person. Okay. Once all of that paperwork has been submitted to the court and the court has approved it. Then we take those assets and we distribute them according to the terms of that will, or if there are no terms to the will then we distribute them in a manner that's according to the California probate code. And that basically means that everything gets liquidated and distributed out in equal shares to the errors outlaw. And so, why should you try to avoid probate like the plague. Okay, and I know that that sounds a little dramatic, but I just want to make sure that I drive home the point. It's not that you can't go through California probate you can absolutely do that. But there are some really big problems with the California probate system as of today, as we know, in 2020, we were hit with coven. And that means that there is a huge backlog of probate cases from people who did not expect to die when they did. And so that means people died without wills that meant that they died with all sorts of property problems, maybe their errors have been quite identified maybe people are fighting over the assets. I can tell you that right now I have colleagues that practice California probate that I've had probates sitting in the California probate system for years, and they are still there. And so it's really important. If you can at all avoid that system as much as possible. And that's why I'm telling you in the first bullet point their time grinds to a halt. So right now the average time it takes to probate an estate in California is 12 months. And that is depending on the county that you're probating in the county that you'll be doing that in is the county where the the dead person resided. And so if it's a very populated county you can expect that that timeline is going to be much longer. Also, it depends on the complexity of the estate. So if there are a lot of assets in that estate and they need to be appraised and a probate referee has to be appointed to do that, that adds to that turnaround time as well. Another thing that can add to that turnaround time is whether or not the errors are readily identifiable. So again, if you die without a will we have to find out where your things go. And if we can't identify or locate those errors that also increases the time it takes to probate an estate. So again, just remember probate takes time. And, and it's something that you're going to want to avoid. The second reason why you're going to want to avoid the probate system like the plague is that there are very expensive probate fees associated with probate. So whether or not you die with a will actually does not matter what matters is your probate fees are determined by statute, and by the size of your estate from a monetary perspective. So in terms of a modest California estate, let's say $1.5 million estate in California, your total fees set by statute are going to be $56,000. So think about that. That's $56,000 that is automatically going to an attorney and to an executor to administer the estate. And I can guarantee you that that is not the low number that you're going to be hitting. That's the minimum. You still have to pay for a probate for referee that's appointed by the court. You still have to pay all of your court fees. And if the estate in any way becomes litigated that number only goes up the hourly rate of your attorney is now going to be factored in to defending any claims against the estate. So again, that $56,000 fee number for a $1.5 million estate is really not very accurate. The other thing I want to say is in terms of those fees again one half of those fees goes to your executor and the other half goes to your attorney. Okay. And so again the expense is something that you want to avoid. The next thing that you're going to want to think about is that the probate process is public. So I talked about before in our previous slide that your executor the administrator of your state has to prove up the inventory in that estate that means that they have to list all of the non cash assets in that estate and a probate referee has to submit that all of that paperwork is then submitted to the court and that becomes part of the public record. So think about it this way for that $1.5 million estate which we all know in the San Francisco Bay area is incredibly modest. Okay, that means that you own, if you own real estate it's a postage stamp, and maybe there's a house on it maybe it's not a house maybe it's a shack, it's probably worth more in land. But we all know that that's really, really undervalued. But all of that information becomes part of the public record. So your heirs, they can get phone calls from people that are trying to scam them out of what they've just inherited. And that's something also that you want to avoid. There is, I should say there are scams running currently where if there is an elderly beneficiary, they will call and pretend to be a grandchild or some other relative looking for money. And they know now that the grandparent has that money because this information is out there in the public sphere. They can get phone calls from fake investors saying I know that you just came into money and I want you to invest in my, my new tech company and it's going to be really, really great and I just need a modest investment of $30,000 to get a startage you can be on the ground floor and once we go public you'll make a fortune. So all of those things can happen. And so again, we really want to avoid that public process and keep that kind of information off the internet. The last reason and probably the most important reason why you want to avoid probate is because, frankly, estate planning is a love letter to your family. What you're saying in that set of documents is that I knew that this was going to happen. I knew that I was going to pass away. I knew that there were going to be issues in terms of this estate or just, I don't want you to have to deal with this in a court system. I just, I just want to take care of this for you and I cared enough about you to think about it ahead of time. And so, you know, just to recap again, it's very important to avoid because of the time, the expense, the publicity and the fact that you care about your family. And let's assume that you do end up going through probate here. And so let's talk about some of the most common issues with the probated estate in California and remember we talked about that $56,000 fee attached to a very modest estate. This is when your probate fee start going up because this is when the court starts rolling up their sleeves and getting involved in the process. The number one reason why probated estates have issues in California is because there's not enough liquid in the estate or beneficiaries can't buy each other out. So what does, what does that mean? What does that terminology mean? When I say that there is not enough liquid in the estate, what I mean to say is that there is not enough cash to divide all of the property evenly without selling off major assets to do it. So think about it this way. Let's go back to that $1.5 million estate. Let's say that we're talking about the estate being in San Francisco. And let's say we have two beneficiaries and that will says everything to my two beneficiaries equally. If there is a piece of real estate involved in that transaction and one of those beneficiaries lives in that piece of real estate, we're going to inadvertently make that beneficiary homeless because we're going to have to sell that house to divide up the estate evenly. And so a really good estate plan should avoid a consequence like that. We all know that this housing crisis in the Bay Area is very real. We know it's very difficult for people to find good affordable housing. If you have a family home and you have a beneficiary living in that home and you have another beneficiary that just needs the cash, something's going to have to give somewhere. And a really good estate planning attorney should be able to walk you through how you mitigate something like that and avoid probate at the same time. Another reason or another issue with probated estates in California is that you may have beneficiaries that don't get along or that are suspicious of each other. And this generally happens when the will names somebody that the family does not like to either be the administrator or administrator of the estate. That can be very, very problematic. And that means that you're going to enter into the land of probate litigation because if a beneficiary feels as though they are not getting their fair share out of an estate. The likelihood of them lodging a complaint with the court lodging a motion to challenge the distribution of these assets is very real. And frankly, it's expensive. It's incredibly expensive. So I have seen wills that named two people as executors that did not get along. That's also another reason to have somebody walk you through the process. But again, when you have beneficiaries that don't get along or they are suspicious of each other, it can be a very expensive problem that your estate is going to have to pay to fix. And again, a really good estate plan should mitigate all of that. And this last bullet point that I want to talk about is actually really important. I actually used to work for a special needs trust planning attorney I know that's a really long set of words. But when we start talking about the distribution of assets and we just say let's say the will says I'm going to give all of my assets to my children and equal shares. That's fine. Provided that your children are not on means based public benefits. So what is a means based public benefit. That's something like social security disability. That's like Medicaid. Okay. In those programs, your available resources are used in a calculation to determine your eligibility for those benefits. And if you are disabled, it's really important that you hang on to those benefits as long as you can. The application process is very long and tedious. And if you get kicked off of that off of those benefits, the application the reapplication process is even worse. And so we want to avoid all of that. When you make a distribution and outright distribution of cash or property to a person who is on those mean means based public benefits, you are running the risk the very real risk of kicking them off of those benefits. And so again, it's really important that your, your estate planning documents have language in there that mitigates that sort of activity so that whoever is administering the estate has the power to set up a special needs trust for that person so that the beneficiary can retain all of the use and benefit of those assets without being knocked off of their public benefit. So again, that's another really big consequence in terms of a probate to say and it's something that can be mitigated. So now that I've, you know, scared you all out of getting out of probate. And I know it is, I'm not trying to scare you but I am trying to bring awareness to again the expense and hostility of this kind of environment. What should a good California estate plan look like. Okay, we're going to be spending a lot of time on these documents I do anticipate questions on this so I'm going to take a minute and I'm going to slow down. And we're just going to go through these documents one at a time. Okay. The mother ship document, the flagship document of your California estate plan should be a revocable living trust sometimes called a grant or trust. This is a document that is actually it's not its own entity what it is is an agreement it's an agreement between one group of people and a trustee to manage property based on the language in that document so what does that mean. That means that if there is property that's being held in trust. When you pass away the trustee manages the transition of that property from you as an individual to your beneficiaries without having to go through probate. The document itself supersedes the probate court system. So anything that's held in trust avoids probate so this is absolutely key in terms of avoiding probate in California. The first document that that trust should name your successor trustees. So you would be initially the initial trustee of that trust. When you pass away somebody steps into your shoes, marshals the assets in the trust and makes the distributions to your beneficiaries, according to the terms in that trust. Completely avoiding probate clear and concise language as to who gets what no infighting between beneficiaries again we're removing the expense from the situation completely. It also has back stops for what ifs right so we talked about, you know how to avoid kicking people off of public benefits, your trust should have language in there that says specifically if there is a beneficiary who is either under age or on public benefits, or suffering from, let's say a drug and alcohol problem. Your trustee should have the power to not claw back I should say claw back those, those distributions. So that way people are not kicked off public benefits. It doesn't go to somebody with a drug or alcohol problem and potentially cause much more harm in the process. It doesn't go into a court registry, which it would if it was a distribution to an underage beneficiary court registries are also incredibly expensive to maintain. So again, your revocable living trust is the flagship document. It contains all of the language that manages your property and avoids probate. And so again that is at its core you should have at least that. There are other ancillary documents that I want to talk to you about as well the first being an advanced healthcare directive. Now, this is a document that is effective during your lifetime. And generally speaking, it can be springing into action meaning that upon your incapacity your inability to communicate your wishes with the medical community. So this document springs into effect and allows the people listed in that document to make medical decisions based on the language in the document. So if you have medical care preferences, let's say that you don't want to be placed on a ventilator you don't want to be treated with certain antibiotics. If you are in a persistent vegetative state, you want your agents to have the power to make a decision about whether or not to terminate life support. So at a minimum you want to have that as well. It also can give direction regarding what kind of in home healthcare you might need if you're incapacitated for a long time. It can have commentary about what happens if you're having a psychotic break. Basically, you're giving your agents the power to make medical decisions again based on the language in the document I highly recommend that everybody has one of these. I shouldn't have to mention this but I'm going to anyway. Some of you may not be old enough to remember this, but there was a woman in Florida probably about 30 years ago and her name was Terry shy bow. And she was in an accident that left her in a persistent vegetative state. And over the course of years, her husband claimed that they had had a conversation about her preference to not live in that kind of situation and how she would have wanted to have the plug pulled essentially, and her parents on the other hand fought that in the court system for 10 years. So for 10 years, she was in this persistent vegetative coma. The medical meals were piling up and the litigation costs were piling up as well. And so all of that could have been avoided simply by filling out that document. Okay, and it's just so important, because again, you really want to have the right people making the right decisions. Another reason why that document is important is because I want to say members of the LGBTQ community, especially if you travel to states where gender affirming care is not necessarily available, or you feel as though your conservative parents will not respect your wishes. The California code system says that your next of kin is going to be the default in terms of who is making your medical care decisions for you. You are in a protected community like the LGBTQ community and you know that your next to kin are not going to be making the kind of medical care decisions that you would want to have made for you. This document is also incredibly important for that reason. Another group of people that this need this document again, soon to be divorced people. So if you and your soon to be ex spouse are separated, and you know that this is going to be a contentious divorce or you just really don't want this person again making those health care decisions. I can't stress enough, the importance of a really well drafted advanced health care directive because again, the California law is going to say your husband or your wife or your spouse your partner is going to be the one making that decision for you unless and until you're divorced. So this document circumvents that. Moving on, HIPAA authorization again, sort of an ancillary document but again it gives the people listed in that document, the ability to handle your medical records to access them in the event that they need to. And that again that's a document that can go live as soon as as soon as it's signed or it can spring into effect upon incapacity just like your advanced health care directive. So this is a really important document to have the documents that we typically dropped in my office, they go live. As soon as you put your pen to paper because again there may be instances where you are incapacitated, but perhaps not necessarily ambulatory and a really great example of that I have a friend of mine who really likes to go to very exotic places on vacation and she has fallen down a mountain and broken her leg once before, and it was really important that somebody had the ability to go and get for medical records for her and take them to a specialist on her behalf. She absolutely had capacity but again was just not ambulatory so again, a really great reason to have that kind of document in place. The physician's directive is sort of a cousin to the advanced health care directive but it states more specifically what your termination of life sustaining care should look like and under those kinds of circumstances what you want that to look like. This document I want to talk to you about is called a durable power of attorney, and instead of making health care decisions like your advanced health care directive. This document allows the people listed in it to make financial decisions on your behalf. And so that includes the management of your real estate, your bank accounts, your investment accounts, your cryptocurrency, NFTs, your stocks bonds, etc. This is a really, really powerful document and I recommend that when you fill this out. You make sure that the people that you choose have really good adulting skills. Okay, they make really good financial decisions for themselves. They're really good about doing the research before they do something. If they don't know how to do something they find another adult who does again, you want to make sure that the person that you're putting in charge of your money and your property knows what they're doing. This document allows you to do that. And again, it is something that soon to be divorcee should absolutely be filling out as soon as you become legally separated that is a document that you're going to want to have waiting in the wings. And also the same thing, again for LGBTQ community members as well and for all of the same reasons. This document that I want to talk to you about is a guardianship nomination for minor children. And this document is the key document for parents with minor children. This document not only nominates the guardians for your minor children if you and your spouse or just you become incapacitated, or if you pass away unexpectedly. I can't tell you how important this document is enough. In fact, it is the number one document that my clients asked me about if they are parents to minor children. Again, I'm not trying to scare anybody here, but the CPS system, the child protective services system is really underfunded and very overwhelmed and there are a lot of children in there that are still cycling through that system. Now, imagine these are your minor children and you've just passed away and now the court is trying to determine where they should go. And they don't have any say from you they don't have any example of who you want to be nominated for that guardianship nomination. I can tell you that that is not a situation that you do not want to find your children in. And this document really helps to eliminate that kind of confusion. Not only does it nominate guardians, but you can also give direction for education for your children. Whether or not you want them to be exposed to social media or if you do at what ages, whether or not you ever want them to be exposed to firearms or any other any other preferences that you may have for your children. You can also express the aspirations that you have for your children. So it's again, it's a part of the love letter that you send to your family and throwing in a personal note to each of your children to say, you know, I'm really sorry that I'm not here to watch you grow up but here are the things that I did to make sure that you're going to be okay. That can also go into that guardianship nomination as well. Essentially what a really good California estate plan should look like those are your flagship documents in your ancillary documents. And I do recommend that each and every one of you look into whether or not those documents are something that you should have for yourself. So let's talk about what a California estate plan should accomplish. First and foremost your California estate plan should absolutely avoid probate. Again, if you're not avoiding probate. You are really spending or I should say your estate is spending a lot of money and time unnecessarily unwinding your affairs basically winding things up and then making that distribution happen. And really the avoidance piece of this cannot be overstated. It costs a lot of money to do this. You can inadvertently make people homeless just by having to sell off a primary asset. It's really it is an avoidable thing and you should really look to do that. You should also have concise language identifying the succession of your trustees. Again, we are looking not to litigate we are looking to make this process of transition of you passing away and your property transitioning on. We are looking to make that as easy and as painless as possible. And again, when you pick the right people, just like in that durable power of attorney scenario you pick the right adult who has good adulting skills and knows how to find another adult if they need help. Again, make those make those identifications known and make sure that you've chosen the right people and have language that allows that succession to have to hand off seamlessly. The other thing that it should accomplish is again clear identification of errors and beneficiaries. I'm not going to tell you that you can't write out your family members you can absolutely do that I have seen people do it. I do recommend though, if you do decide to write out a family member that you mentioned why. Another reason why estate plans regardless of whether their will or trust base go into litigation is because people can test that they weren't placed in the will for a reason they weren't placed in the estate plan for a reason. And so one of the pro tips that a lot of us estate planners use is that we will mention that person's name and give them a nominal amount like maybe five or $6 to say yes, you were included in the will and no you're not getting anything. And then we put a nice robust contest clause in there that says and if you complain about it you get nothing. So, I mean maybe throughout that five or $6 and maybe you get to sort of thumb your nose at them from wherever you are at that moment but it is possible to write in that language, just as a heads up. The other thing that we're looking to do again is that effective transfer of property to reduce conflict, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've seen a will that says, I'm just going to divide up between my two children and just wipe my hands with it. Well, if you're two children don't get along. This is going to be a very expensive and very painful process and again this is all avoidable just with that clear and concise language. If you mean to say I want everything liquidated and everybody gets a cash distribution great say that if you mean to say that child one gets the house and child to gets the retirement accounts, say that, you know, but just have that concise language in there to reduce conflict is so important when, when people die and I say this from personal experience when people die. It gets very stressful and is one of the most stressful situations you can find yourselves in. And when people start infighting it just gets worse. And so you can take care of all of that just by having a good effectively drafted a state plan at our fingertips. One thing I want to mention in terms of what a good California state plans to accomplish is the reduction or elimination of tax exposure and I say this because if you're lucky enough to own a piece of real estate in California congratulations you probably have one of the safest investments in the country I am so excited for you. But I do want to tell you that depending on how that piece of real estate is titled can actually determine how much of a capital gains exposure your beneficiaries have later. And so it's really important that your state planning attorney reviews the titling on that on that piece of real estate to see if they can reduce capital gains and let's be honest. Real estate in California almost never goes down in value I mean unless you're building on top of the Superfund site, which is rare. Your property is probably only ever going to go up in value, especially if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and I think we can all attest to that. So, naturally, the next thing you want to talk about is, let's look for in a good California estate planning attorney. Okay, this is where it gets a little tricky. I don't like to trash other attorneys. I'm not that I'm not that guy. But I will say that there are some there are some bad attorneys out there and so you need to be really good about vetting that attorney not just for a personal fit obviously you're going to be spending a lot of time with this, this person so you're going to want to make sure that your personalities mesh and that you feel like you're being listened to. But the other thing is, in terms of their expertise. Do they have subject matter expertise. Are they are they specifically an estate planning and probate attorney or are they part of a more general practice. Personally, I like to go with a more focused practice that we do with state planning and probate. Maybe we do some business succession planning. Maybe we handle some guardianships, but really we're going to stay in the probate court and we're going to focus our attention here. You know, the law changes so frequently that keeping up with those changes is really daunting. And so, again, if you have a general practice and you are, I do divorce and I also do cut the custody cases and I also do a state planning and I also do probate. It's really difficult to sort of put all of that together and make a really good estate plan, especially with the laws in California. I have to say the legislation there is. It's wonderfully complex if you're a nerd like me then you love reading it you geek out to it but the problem is, if you're an average person you're just reading this because oh my gosh I need an estate plan. You're going to really want somebody who looks at this from the, from the perspective of this is the core of what I do and I really love what I'm doing. That being said, watch out for trust mills. A trust mill is the kind of law office that spits out the same trust over and over and over and over and over again, with very minimal changes depending on who you are. Make no mistake, every single person in this presentation has a very different scenario than everybody else here. If you're a state planning attorney says, well, you know, this is the one kind of trust that I do. And it fits everybody and I, you know, I don't really change this too much because there's a really need to be changed. I would probably advise you to turn around and walk out and that's again not legal advice is no legal advisor. But if that happens if they're telling you that they really only do one or two different varieties of trust. I have to tell you that is not the right law office for you because things change. The financial situation and property situation that you find yourself in today is not necessarily where you're going to be in 10 years. And so you need an estate planning attorney who is well versed in the estate planning, the state the estate planning techniques. They know what different trusts can do. And they know that they have those tools at their disposal and they know how to use them. Another thing that you're going to want to look for in terms of that subject matter expertise, especially as it pertains to estate planning. They need to have some experience with the tax code more experiences better than less, but at a fair minimum they need to be able to identify facts that lead to taxable events. So what does that mean. Okay, so we talked about titling before. Okay. And how titling can determine what your capital gains exposure looks like. If you decide to retitle your home in the name of your children. That's a taxable event. Okay, that's a taxable event that means that not only do they have all of that capital gains exposure from when you first bought that property to when they sell it, but it's also going to get reassessed. And that can be a problem. You really want to make sure that again, you have an attorney that says, you know, red flag, big red flag, we don't want to do this. Why don't we put this in a trust? And why don't we, why don't we let it pass when you pass. And that way you get the parent child exception, you get a reduction in that capital gains exposure. Somebody should be thinking about that for you. And frankly, the average person unless you're very experienced in the tax code yourself, you're not going to know that your estate planning attorney should. And there are a couple other things that they should be looking for as well, but primarily the tax code. That's that's something that they should know about. And then just on a personal note, you know, in terms of in terms of an attorney and again I draw back to the experience that my mother had with her probate attorney. She didn't like him. She didn't trust him. And she felt like she didn't really have a choice because again she was stuck in this scenario where she's burying her husband. And she doesn't really know what to do and she just wants this easy out to make this stress go away. Okay. If you walk into an estate planning attorney's office and you get a bad feeling, you need to turn around and walk out there are tons of other attorneys out there and I have to tell you, when you're spending that kind of time and money with somebody if you don't get a good feeling about them. That's a problem. Another thing is again, if they're not listening to you if you feel like you're repeating yourself or the documents that you get back, don't reflect the conversations that you've had. That's an issue. The estate planning attorney should be asking you questions about your family dynamic and I'm going to be honest with you in my intake sessions. I warn my clients ahead of time look. This conversation is going to delve into some really sensitive topics. I'm not here to embarrass you. I am not here to make you feel uncomfortable. But I do need to know about your family dynamic because I for one do not want to find out that I inadvertently put your and I have a drunk uncle so I can make fun of this. I don't want to put your drunk uncle in charge of the trust for your minor children. If you pass away unexpectedly you might love your brother to death. You might love your uncle to death but let's be honest if they have an alcohol or drug problem they're probably not the right person to be managing that trust. Same thing with somebody who's recently had a bankruptcy somebody who's recently going through a divorce, somebody who let's say that they are elderly, and this is just way too much you don't want to put elderly people in charge of a trust for minor unless again they have an adult that they can go to to actually manage it for them. These are the questions that need to be asked. And again, a basic search about how your title is or your property is titled again for the same reasons to mitigate that tax exposure and make sure that you're reducing it as much as possible if not eliminating it.