EP20 - Black Swans
The Gordian Knot
Ever notice how clients with delicate trust or estate matters fail to tell the truth (or the whole truth)?
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EP19 - Cascading Estates
The Gordian Knot
When multiple generations of deceased owners interests have never been transferred, each interest MAY need to be probated and flow through to current heirs or beneficiaries.
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EP18 - Fractional Interests
The Gordian Knot
This is an introduction to the way we look at Fractional Ownership Interests and Solutions for those who receive no current benefits.
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EP17 - Property With DUST
The Gordian Knot
A quick way to evaluate a property, even before your client’s own issues have been examined.
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EP16 - Irksome Squatters
The Gordian Knot
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EP15 - 8 Properties, No Trustee
The Gordian Knot
Despite a pending property tax auction, these eight beach city properties had no living successor trustee or way to save them from loss, until...
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EP14 - What’s Bad is Good!
The Gordian Knot
How I stopped fearing and loathing California real estate title problems and came to appreciate liens and other problems
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EP13 - PETITO Format
The Gordian Knot
Rick Harmon shares his time-tested method for organizing information about messy real estate cases
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Barry Adams - California Devastation And Rebuilding
The Gordian Knot
Meet Barry Adams. Barry’s practice mainly focuses on probate and trust law and over the course of the podcast, Rick and Barry talk about some of Barry’s more tricky cases and his thoughts on that area of law in general. They also discuss the impact of the fires in California and how it is affecting the people in the region. What kind of cases do you typically encounter? Barry has been doing almost exclusively probate and trust work since 1993 so he’s had quite a bit of experience in that area. Since he’s in the middle of two major regions he gets a wide variety of cases but he often...
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David Shapiro - Tricky Puzzles and Messy Cases
The Gordian Knot
Meet David Shapiro. Rick and Dave discuss David’s trust and estate practice, tricky puzzles he’s encountered in the course of his business, and some of the more messy property cases he’s worked on. What does your practice look like? David’s practice is almost exclusively trust and estate litigation. He represents trustees and beneficiaries from all over the world. No matter what planning people will do, people will die and leave messes behind. As long as there are people around, Rick and David will always be in business. A lot of David’s cases come from other attorneys that refer him...
info_outlineIn this episode of the The Gordian Knot, Rick is interviewing Jenny Alberts. They chat about her estate planning practice in the heart of the tech world. We learn about some of the more wild cases she has worked on as well as some of her techniques for working with new clients.
What kind of clients do you usually work with?
Jenny is a specialist in trust and estate planning as well as probate law. On the planning side, her work involves everything from the standard revocable living trust package to design and implementation of irrevocable trusts.
Her clients range from prominent landowners, to executives at technology companies, to small business owners.
Jenny focuses on advanced planning with her clients so that their families aren’t left in the mess that is so common to probate cases. Many of them are from Silicon Valley but there a lot of landowners in the area that are not necessarily involved in the tech sector. She occasionally gets clients from out of country when a local passes away.
Jenny relates a story of a 42 year old man that died in a freak accident at a work party and didn’t have a will or a trust set up.
Are most of your clients referrals?
95% of Jenny’s clients are referred from other attorneys and financial planners.
Do you get a lot of title issues?
Title issues are fairly common, Jenny gets a fair number of cases where they are trying to prove a piece of property is community property or individually owned. It’s important to make sure that a property is first converted to community property before placing it in a trust.
It’s very important to know who all the heirs are before taking on a case. Sometimes, there can be an entire side of family that gets forgotten about until someone passes away.
A common case is where the parents pass away and one of the children wants to buy the house. Prop 13 rules can make that pretty complicated.
Do you have a specific way of looking at new cases?
When it comes to probate cases, Jenny wants to know the client first and what they want from the case. She also likes to get to know the family and dig into the titles and probate estate before taking the case. Jenny is very happy to refer cases that involve tension between family members.
Practicing probate law is like dermatology in medicine, it doesn’t usually involve emergency cases.
What gets you up on a Monday morning?
You might have a tough week, but for every tough case there are a number of cases that bring you joy and satisfaction that make up for it.
Links To Resources Mentioned
408-256-0473
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