Witness the heartfelt tale of Jacqueline Revis, who transformed personal advocacy into a thriving career in 'happy law', where she specializes in guiding clients through life's most significant legal thresholds—without a courthouse in sight. On the Good Neighbor podcast, I, Jeremy Wolf, am thrilled to bring you Jacqueline's story, from standing up for her grandmother to becoming a partner at Revis, Hervas and Goldberg PA, where she brightens the often-daunting corridors of real estate, estate planning, and probate law with compassion and clarity.
Step into a world where legal expertise meets life-changing events, as we unravel the synergy between estate planning and real estate law, and shed light on the misconceptions clouding these essential services. From the classroom to the closing table, Jacqueline shares her journey of resilience woven through her practice's fabric. We also tackle the sinister trend of vacant land fraud in Florida, offering crucial tips to keep you one step ahead of deception. This episode is a treasure trove of personal victories, professional wisdom, and practical advice—all aimed at empowering you with knowledge and fostering a community of well-informed neighbors.
Learn more: http://www.rhglegal.com/
Call us: (954)-747-1400
Visit us: 1792 Bell Tower Lane Weston, Florida 33326
Email us:info@rhglegal.com
Like us: https://www.facebook.com/RHGLegal
Witness the heartfelt tale of Jacqueline Revis, who transformed personal advocacy into a thriving career in 'happy law', where she specializes in guiding clients through life's most significant legal thresholds—without a courthouse in sight. On the Good Neighbor podcast, I, Jeremy Wolf, am thrilled to bring you Jacqueline's story, from standing up for her grandmother to becoming a partner at Revis, Hervas and Goldberg PA, where she brightens the often-daunting corridors of real estate, estate planning, and probate law with compassion and clarity.
Step into a world where legal expertise meets life-changing events, as we unravel the synergy between estate planning and real estate law, and shed light on the misconceptions clouding these essential services. From the classroom to the closing table, Jacqueline shares her journey of resilience woven through her practice's fabric. We also tackle the sinister trend of vacant land fraud in Florida, offering crucial tips to keep you one step ahead of deception. This episode is a treasure trove of personal victories, professional wisdom, and practical advice—all aimed at empowering you with knowledge and fostering a community of well-informed neighbors.
Learn more: http://www.rhglegal.com/
Call us: (954)-747-1400
Visit us: 1792 Bell Tower Lane Weston, Florida 33326
Email us:info@rhglegal.com
Like us: https://www.facebook.com/RHGLegal
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Wolff.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Good Neighbor podcast. I'm your host, jeremy Wolff. Today I'm joined by Jacqueline Revis. Jacqueline is with Revis Hervis and Goldberg PA. They are a law firm right down the road from us in Weston and I'm happy to have her on the show today to talk all about what she does. So, jacqueline, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.
Speaker 2:Yeah, likewise, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in. So let's get into this. Jacqueline, tell us a little bit about what your law firm offers. There we go.
Speaker 3:So we are a boot-cheek law firm. We have three partners and we practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning and probate mostly. We do some other areas, but mostly real estate estate planning and probate, and it's all transactional. We don't do litigations. The way I like to explain it is I do happy law, so if there's anything contentious I refer it out. But I help people close on their homes, I help people protect their families through estate planning and even though we do probate law, I still consider it happy law because we help people get through the grieving process as quickly and as painlessly as they can.
Speaker 2:I love that. I must say I've never heard anybody use the term happy law before.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's something that I came up with because I did not want to do litigation. I don't really gravitate towards that area, and transactional is something I'm so passionate about. People may think it's boring just looking at contracts, but I find it just fascinating. I'm very, very passionate about it.
Speaker 2:So how did you get into law? Let's talk a little bit about your journey and about how you got into the practice at Revis, Hervess and Goldberg. Let's get into that.
Speaker 3:So I have an interesting story. I'm a native Floridian. I've actually lived in the same five mile radius my entire life. I went to the local schools I actually went to Cooper City High School, so go Cowboys. And then after high school I went to DC, which was DCC at the time through the early admissions program and I got my AA when I got my high school diploma. So I then just stayed at FAU and got my bachelor's degree and I ended up trying to decide whether I wanted to go get my master's or my law degree, and it really was dependent on what I wanted to do. You can do a lot of things with both, but you can't practice law with a master's degree. So that was the determining factor.
Speaker 3:What ended up happening is I took care of my grandma, who was my abuela. I speak Spanish. My grandma was from Argentina and so I ended up taking care of her. She was paraplegic, lost both of her legs and was pretty much confined to a bed, but we would be taking her in and out of the bed and I told her that I was her legs. So in that she had to go through a lot of insurance, medicare, medicaid, all those various things, and it was not very kind to her. The legal system, the governmental authorities, everything was really difficult and I learned through that that she needed an advocate and I wanted to be an advocate for her and other elderly people that may not have someone.
Speaker 3:So there was one specific circumstance where we had to buy like a $10,000 bed for paralyzed people. It's an air mattress that keeps on inflating so that they don't get bed storage. We did that and it was a five year payment plan with a lifetime warranty. This company, which I'm not going to name, gave us a lifetime warranty and told us we would never have to worry about it. After the five years, six or seven years in, there was a leak in the bed. I contacted the company who had filed bankruptcy and there was no warranty. We would have to buy another $10,000 bed.
Speaker 3:So what I ended up doing is researching it, found out that they actually merged with another company. They declared bankruptcy so they could avoid their liabilities, but all of the principles of that company moved to the new company under a different name. So it was considered in corporate. You know, loss somewhat of a de facto merger. To make it easy for people to understand, I contacted the company. I explained that they can't avoid their liabilities like that and they ended up replacing the bed. But had my grandmother not had someone who had some knowledge or the aptitude to find things out, she would have either been without a bed and gotten bed storage, or she would have had to try to come up with another $10,000. That made me want to go into law to help people.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that happened before you even went to law school, so this was like the spark that lit the fire.
Speaker 2:So okay, so this this happens you have this experience and you say wait a minute, this is pretty cool, I'm good at this, I navigated this experience, I could help people out, I could do this and that that kind of lit the flame for you to get into law school and move over. Okay, so cool, fast forward Out of law school. Now Did you? Obviously you went into law school and you had a. You wanted to deal. I guess that's elder law essentially right.
Speaker 3:It is so I ended up. I always had a passion for real estate, and so real estate is part of our practice, but I ended up working at this firm that does real estate, estate planning and probate, as a paralegal. I actually worked all through law school full-time, and then I went to school in the evening and I did the evening program. I graduated in the four years instead of the three years that a full-time student does and Became an attorney at this firm that I was already a paralegal for for several years and when you say I'm sorry, when you say this firm, you're talking about Revis service and Goldberg.
Speaker 3:Okay so it wasn't called that before. It was called crowds and Goldberg. Okay so this is basically after, after law school.
Speaker 2:So you've been with them, for you've been in this firm for a while now.
Speaker 3:I've been here for about 16 17 years.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, Okay cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I've been, you know, an attorney for Decade, but before that I was with the firm as a paralegal, and so it was originally crowds and Goldberg. Then it was crowds, goldberg, revis and Hervath. Unfortunately, one of the partners has passed away, so now it's Revis, hervath and Goldberg. But I started out as a paralegal, worked my way up, and now I'm a partner.
Speaker 2:Very cool, very cool. So you handle. Is there any specific? I know you guys, like you said, you do real estate, probate State, elder law, estate planning. Is there anything that you specialize specifically? Do you handle all these different aspects?
Speaker 3:So for me, I handle exclusively real estate. All the real estate goes through me. I started in real estate when I was very young. I got my license my salesperson license at 18 and I've always had a passion for it. My father was a commercial developer, so that's just something that I grew up around. So purchase, sales, refinances we do all the title work we. The benefit is that, even though we act as a title company for that part of the transaction, you have an attorney doing it instead of a non-attorney title company doing it. So you pay the same or similar rates for that portion of the transaction. But if you want to have an attorney representing you, we charge a flat rate additional fee and we represent you through the transaction.
Speaker 2:So did you. After having discovered this Through your grandmother about the kind of elder law area, did you want to get specialized in elder law, or was it always real estate law? Did you just? Did you just discover that you're good at this transactional, behind-the-scenes law and you gravitated towards real estate from there?
Speaker 3:I discovered I was good at transactional. I gravitated towards real estate because it's something I'm very good at, something I know in and out. I even teach the subject at Nova Law. So I'm an adjunct professor and I teach real property closing workshop at Nova. The estate planning is something that we do as a firm. My other partners do estate planning and probate. I also do a state planning, but my main bread and butter is the real estate. The elder law is something that we Assist with within our estate planning, but the Medicaid planning and the guardianship we leave that to the expert. We don't handle those types of areas because what I have learned is that you need to focus on something and Really hone your craft in those specific areas and use your other colleagues that are honing their craft in the other areas to handle those.
Speaker 2:So you must know Jason Neufeld then, right From Elder Needs Law, Because he was a guest on the podcast as well and I guess he specializes in those types of issues with elder law and Medicare. So if you have a case that needs special attention, you'll go and refer that to somebody like that right. Absolutely, absolutely. So. How long have you been teaching at Nova Law?
Speaker 3:I think it's about five or six years. Now. It's been a while. This is probably my fifth or sixth year.
Speaker 2:What's been one of the most rewarding things having been teaching at Nova Law? Because I know it's always nice for me anyway anytime somebody asks me to teach them something and share with them. It's very rewarding to kind of give back and it also reinforces what you know. For you, what's been the most rewarding thing being a teacher and educator at Nova Law?
Speaker 3:For me it's really when a law student takes the knowledge they learned from my class and they come back after the class has ended and they send me an email, or they send me a text or whatever the case may be, stating that I learned this in your class and it helped me in this particular case or in this situation. That's really the most rewarding thing is the fact that I'm giving them things that are practical in practice, and a lot of law school is theoretical. A lot of law school is case law and you need that. It's how we learn, but my class is all practical knowledge. It's from a practitioner and not a, you know, born and true law professor. We do closings in the class and so they learn how to do a closing from contract of closing while they're in the class.
Speaker 2:What are some I know myself included right, the general public. They hear a real estate attorney and I think you have a general idea in your mind of what that is, but when pressed to explain what it is that you actually do as a real estate attorney, a lot of people have myths or misconceptions surrounding that. Can you speak to some of that and maybe kind of shine a light on some of the intricacies of what you do?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so when you hear a real estate attorney. Whenever someone hears attorney, they get scared for whatever reason, and it shouldn't be a serious title.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know there are attorneys that try to get transactions closed and not kill deals. Realtor specifically think attorneys come into kill deals and I don't, and I have a lot of colleagues that do not either. So we want to make the deal go as smoothly as possible. The issues that we find are especially in South Florida. There's a saying where it's welcome to sunny South Florida, where everyone is shady. That's why you need a real estate attorney, and so I've always really loved that saying and it rings true because there's been a lot of permit issues, especially because we do estate planning and probate. We deal with a lot of probate estates that are selling and many people don't realize that you need all the beneficiaries of a homestead property to sign off, and so these buyers are coming in thinking that they're going to be able to close. They sell their house and then they can't close on their purchase because they don't have everyone they need in order to sign the deed, they can't get marketable title, and so one of the biggest misconceptions is that once you sign a contract, once you get through the initial process, that there's not going to be something that comes up 10 days before closing that can affect the transaction. It can affect the closing.
Speaker 3:What if there was an open permit, which we just dealt with? This situation a open permit from 1997, three permits for a garage addition and we're 10 days from closing and it comes up in the lien search that has to get closed out. So to try to get a 97 permit closed out you have to open a new permit, then attach it to the old permit and go through the whole process of the new GC. It's extremely complicated and complex and you want an attorney to help you feed that through or you might lose your deposit on various transactions. This particular transaction, we represented the seller. The seller almost lost that sale and was contracted to purchase another property, almost lost the deposit on the other property. Luckily we were able to get it handled. But not everyone can do that and a title company that doesn't have an attorney it doesn't have the requisite knowledge to get that done.
Speaker 2:Okay. So if somebody was going through that process and that title issue came up with the permit and they didn't have in-house counsel and that would be put back on the buyer or the seller, I guess in the realtor if they had knowledge they would fix it. Otherwise they would say, hey look, you gotta figure out how to do this. And then you gotta go out and kind of wade through the sea of documentation and figure it out on your own. It could be stressful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the other thing is one of the biggest misconceptions is the contract doesn't exactly protect the buyer in that situation, unless there's additional language, the buyer may be subject to taking on that permit and the seller is not obligated to spend any money unless it's written in the contract. One of the biggest misconceptions of estate planning is that if you have a will, you avoid probate. It's not true. The will is your ticket to probate. So there's all these various things that people think with regard to law that just are not exactly the correct case. So, in order to avoid probate, the property would need to be in some type of life estate or ladybird deed, or it would need to be properly transferred to a trust, not just a will. So those are all things that people think oh, I have a will, I'm good. It's not exactly true.
Speaker 2:Very interesting. I'm glad we're having this discussion because it's shining a light for me. So somebody that is, let's just say, somebody's out there they're a first time home buyer and they're going to buy a property. They're not familiar with this process. Or should they start with trying to seek an attorney to help them, or, I guess, with the realtor and then trying to find out if the title I think it makes sense right To have the attorney first, because they're gonna be the one that's looking out for your immediate best interest, right?
Speaker 3:So I recommend having the attorney first. You know, obviously it's self-serving, but I actually do recommend having the attorney first it's not really an expensive case because you want the attorney to review the offer before it becomes a contract. Well, if it's a contract, can't change it, they're stuck yeah. It's difficult to change, so you want the attorney to put in that language so that they can protect you from the open permit.
Speaker 3:The biggest thing is also the permits that should have been opened and were not. We have language that we put in that says that if something was done which required a permit and a permit wasn't pulled, that a permit needs to be pulled so that in, especially in Hollywood not to do anything to Hollywood, but city of Hollywood there's a ton of houses and properties that have permitted items that were not permitted. So a kitchen addition or even an addition to the house that you should have gotten a permit for and it just didn't go through the permit process. Converting a garage, all of those various things. But that's the biggest issue I see down here is the permitting issue, and also there's a ton of wire fraud. There's fraud prevalent throughout South Florida. Unfortunately, the vacant land scam. That's a huge thing right now. So all of these things are items that you know real estate attorneys are aware of and we can protect your interest from falling victim to.
Speaker 2:The vacant land scam. Do we want?
Speaker 1:to go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 2:What's that all about?
Speaker 3:So there's a ton of vacant land, meaning properties that don't have houses built on, just you know parcels of land, and there are parties we'll call them bad parties that are recording these deeds, transferring the ownership from the true owner to them. It's a fraudulent deed and then they're selling these properties to innocent purchasers. The issue is that because it's a vacant land, the owner doesn't really get mail to. You know a specific location. It's not that you can see these, you know bad actors walking around the property. This is all done remotely and there's now a lot easier to do because the recording office does their best. They really do. But if you receive a deed at the recording office which is properly executed, witnessed and notarized, the recorder is going to record that document.
Speaker 3:They don't know it's possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if there's not any rate flags that stand out as being fraudulent, why would they look into it any further? It's just another document that comes through. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3:And so people are losing thousands of dollars it's not usually big money, not a few hundred thousand, but thousands of dollars purchasing these vacant lands and it's all scam and you just don't find the bad actors. It's really prevalent in Florida.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now, if there's a way to make money out there, people will figure it out, right, wrong or indifferent, right?
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Now for your viewers.
Speaker 3:Growerty County Property Appraiser actually has a program that they started where you can sign up and get a notification if anyone records any type of transfer document on your property. So it's like DCPA alert or something. I don't remember the name of it, but if you go to bcpanet it will, you'll be able to.
Speaker 2:That makes a ton of sense. It's like a credit alert for your property, right? It's like somebody's accessing your credit Interesting. So sitting here today, let's shift for a second as we get close to wrapping up. Looking back through your journey, is there something that comes to mind? A life, hardship or challenge, something that you struggled with all the way? Maybe a defining moment, something that you could say you're grateful for having gone through? Or maybe it kind of helped shape you to where you're at today?
Speaker 3:So obviously the thing with my grandma was one, but the biggest hardship I faced was I actually became legally blind in my left eye. In my last semester of law school I had some issues. Yeah, I had some issues with my eyes. I was going to Vastcom Palmer shout out to Vastcom Palmer they saved my vision. I had about 11 surgeries and it affected my ability to finish exams and do the bar exam and all of those things. So I had two transplant surgeries actually which allowed me to get my vision back and so, believe it or not, my eyelid and my left eye is not mine, it's donated. So there is an incision line that most people cannot see. But that was a hardship that I went through and I actually still to the stake it treated at Vastcom Palmer and they have this really cool program that they give me eye drop from my own blood and it acts as sort of as an antibiotic for my eye so that doesn't happen again.
Speaker 2:Wow. So what was the cause of this? The blindness in the one eye? What did they figure out? How it came to be or it's just one of those things.
Speaker 3:It was a really rare disorder that they don't actually know what caused it. But I had about 100 little tumors in the eyelid and I did a bunch of surgeries where they would scrape them out and then they ended up just having to remove it because it got removed the bad stuff and so they did remove it. They got a donor and I have a donated my I think it's the from a pregnant lady, the that's part of what's on the inside, because you have to have something to coat the eye and then you have the eyelid. So I got donation and I went through the transplant process. That was something that really did at the time negatively affect me, but now I'm just so glad I went through that process and I can come out saying that if you can get through something like that, you can get through anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly gives you a deeper appreciation for what we have, and a lot of times we take for granted our basic faculties, right when we're having a bad day and we're stressed out over the minutia of the nonsense of the day and what. We're perfectly healthy in all our ways, and that's the most important thing, for sure. So, jack, before we wrap up here, what's the one thing that you'd like to leave our listeners with, that you'd like them to know about your business?
Speaker 3:We work hands-on, we are handholders, we're the warm and fuzzy attorneys is what we like to call it, and what we do is we really do a hands-on approach. We don't charge on most cases. We charge flat fee, not hourly, so that clients have the ability to call us and ask questions. We don't want them to feel that they're getting charged for every call that they have.
Speaker 2:That's nice, right. You don't want to get the invoice with the bill for like 0.2 hours for $50.
Speaker 3:Correct and I don't even want to make the invoice.
Speaker 2:Review email 0.2 hours, $75.
Speaker 3:So the flat fees really help a lot of our clients and it makes them feel comfortable to be able to call us. There's three partners there's myself, there's Adam Goldberg and there's Chris Hervaz and we're all happy to help you. When you call our office, you seek them to turn. That's one of the differences. In our office, You'll seek with a Florida license to turning. When you call our office and you have a question, we're not going to meet you and then pass you off to a paralegal or a legal assistant or something like that. That's another unique thing about our office. So we really pride ourselves on being there and being the ones who speak to our clients.
Speaker 2:All right For our listeners out there that aren't actually watching this, because you have in your background your contact information, but for those that are just listening, please let us know how we could find you, how we could reach you, how we can get in touch to get more information.
Speaker 3:Sure. So our website is wwwrhglegalcom, our phone number is 954-747-1400. And we are also very active on the socials, so Facebook, linkedin I'm starting to get on Instagram trying to figure all of that out, but just to connect with everyone, and we're also on that next door app. So you know you can find us on any of those locations, but the best way to contact us is through our website or call us on the phone.
Speaker 2:Very well. We will, of course, link in the description to all of your contact information. Jacqueline, it was a pleasure getting the chance to meet you and learn all about what you do for our great community. So thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. The pleasure was definitely all mine, Jeremy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I hope to be seeing you again soon. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in and we will catch you all next time. Have a great day, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, cooper City. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to gnpcoupercitycom. That's gnpcoupercitycom, or call 954-231-3170.