Make Probate Easy: Tips for Estate Executors & Hiring Out Tasks | The Probate Podcast (PART 1)
Aug 17, 2023Episode 9
Sherri Lund and Reine Kassulker, Probate Specialist
This is episode 1 of a 2 part Estate Executor Guide.
Join us in this two-part series as we dive into the Executor's role in probate with Reine Kassulker, a licensed Minnesota Real Estate Agent specializing in helping families navigate difficult probate cases with less stress. In Part 1, Reine shares valuable insights on the essential duties of an estate executor/personal representative. He shares tips for doing probate yourself and when it's best to seek outside assistance, providing expert tips on hiring professionals for probate services like estate sales and legal representation. Tune in to simplify the probate process and make it 10x easier being an executor of an estate!
0:00 Introducing Reine Kassulker, Probate Specialist 3:50 The Benefits of Probate 5:03 The Underappreciated Role of the Personal Representative 9:33 Being the Executor of a Will 11:47 Real Estate Agent vs. Probate Real Estate Agent 17:44 Special Administration When Executor Named In Will is Deceased 21:09 Handling Probate Without A Lawyer 24:04 Empathy in Probate Service 26:02 Next-Level Probate Networking 28:01 How To Make Probate Easier 33:25 Hiring the Wrong Attorney for Probate
ABOUT REINE
Reine (Sounds like Green) Kassulker is a licensed Minnesota Real Estate Agent who discovered his passion for probate work in 2018 when he faced the challenging task of cleaning out and selling his family's home, which had been in the family for three generations. Realizing the lack of specialized support for probate cases, Reine dedicated himself to helping families through the probate process with less stress.
Disclosure: The information shared on The Probate Podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. We strongly recommend consulting with a professional for advice specific to your situation. If you need help finding a professional, feel free to reach out to us at www.willowwoodsolutions.com/contact.
Please consider kindly rating this show so others can find it!
This is episode 1 of a 2 part Estate Executor Guide.
Join us in this two-part series as we dive into the Executor's role in probate with Reine Kassulker, a licensed Minnesota Real Estate Agent specializing in helping families navigate difficult probate cases with less stress. In Part 1, Reine shares valuable insights on the essential duties of an estate executor/personal representative. He shares tips for doing probate yourself and when it's best to seek outside assistance, providing expert tips on hiring professionals for probate services like estate sales and legal representation. Tune in to simplify the probate process and make it 10x easier being an executor of an estate!
0:00 Introducing Reine Kassulker, Probate Specialist 3:50 The Benefits of Probate 5:03 The Underappreciated Role of the Personal Representative 9:33 Being the Executor of a Will 11:47 Real Estate Agent vs. Probate Real Estate Agent 17:44 Special Administration When Executor Named In Will is Deceased 21:09 Handling Probate Without A Lawyer 24:04 Empathy in Probate Service 26:02 Next-Level Probate Networking 28:01 How To Make Probate Easier 33:25 Hiring the Wrong Attorney for Probate
ABOUT REINE
Reine (Sounds like Green) Kassulker is a licensed Minnesota Real Estate Agent who discovered his passion for probate work in 2018 when he faced the challenging task of cleaning out and selling his family's home, which had been in the family for three generations. Realizing the lack of specialized support for probate cases, Reine dedicated himself to helping families through the probate process with less stress.
Disclosure: The information shared on The Probate Podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. We strongly recommend consulting with a professional for advice specific to your situation. If you need help finding a professional, feel free to reach out to us at www.willowwoodsolutions.com/contact.
Please consider kindly rating this show so others can find it!
This is part 1 of a 2 part episode that's filled with nuggets. Part 1 will cover can't-miss tips on navigating the probate process and how to know when you need help. Part 2 will cover hidden secrets on saving money and mitigating risk when selling a probate house. Make sure you're subscribed and let's jump into part 1! Hi there. This is Sherri Lund with the Probate Podcast, and I'm so glad that you are with me today. I've got my guest, Reine Kassulker with me today, and you are going to want to have your pen and paper handy because Reine is going to drop a lot of information that you're going to want to come back to and reference later. Reine is a licensed Minnesota real estate agent. He specializes in helping families go through difficult probate cases with less stress. He began his work in 2018 after his father passed away, and he experienced what many of you may be experiencing in your experience with probate. He had to clean out and sell his childhood home, which had been in the family for generations, and through that difficult experience, Reine realized that many traditional real estate agents do not have the training or the skills to help a family get through a probate process. He also realized that weeding out real estate investors was an important step in his process. When Reine finished liquidating his father's estate and closed the estate, he found out that he'd established a network of caring and compassionate people that could help him serve families in Minnesota. Reine reactivated his real estate license and dedicated himself to helping families get through probate with less stress. Today, Reine and his team assist Minnesota probate attorneys and personal representatives with very difficult probate cases. Reine and I met through a national group of real estate professionals who serve families in probate, and I'm so excited. We've connected several times now and I know that you guys will have a lot to learn from Reine. I'm so excited to have him as my guest today. Thanks, Reine for being here. Sherri thank you so much. And I tell this story about my dad and probate a lot, but listening to someone else tell the story kind of makes me tear up a little bit. Even though it was 2018, I think we all find that these things just kind of pop up and hit us and that's part of the whole process. So yeah, I'm a mental health advocate and, you know, we would call that triggering, right? Yeah. You had a traumatic experience and now when you hear that, it brings that... you're just right back there again. And so you can really identify with other people that are in that situation. I also wanted to thank you for your commitment and professionalism and the work that you're doing in the probate space. It's so nice to connect with like-minded people across the country that are really dedicated to serving families. Yeah, it is. It's been lots of fun to bounce ideas off of you. So Reine, if I were to meet you on a Sunday afternoon in Texas, we sip on sweet tea. Yeah. You've been to Galveston from Minnesota. We talked about that. if I met you in Galveston one day and we were just sitting on the beach sipping sweet tea and I said, Reine, tell me about you. What do you do? You know, how would you answer that? Well, when I'm not working on probate cases my first priority is spending time with my family. In fact, you'll hear in some of the stories we share, I've really been able to pull them into the business and now it's a family business for us. So love spending time with the family. Love spending time with family on the beach. Yeah! So if we're sitting on the beach sipping tea, I would probably say this is it. Like this is what I enjoy doing. And then we would probably brainstorm about probate and our businesses and just some of the other things that are going on. I like to really try to focus on the positive and help people you know, come out through some of these difficult situations, come out on the positive. And even though probate is very frustrating for a lot of people and overwhelming at times one of the things I've learned with some of the people I work with is delaying the situation doesn't help. There are just things you have to get done from a legal perspective and from family and even personal. You're trying to juggle all these things. And I would be excited to talk to you about just helping people come out the other side sooner rather than later. You know, I'm a member of some networking groups and invariably when we're going around the circle and introducing ourselves, I am next to someone who is an event planner or something like that. And you know, they're telling their story and everybody's all excited. And then it gets to me and the mood changes when I talk about how I help families with probate. It is a somber topic. It is a sober thing to think about, but my motivation, and I think yours is too, is let's get through this like a funnel. Let's get it down and get it done. And then you've got life to live on the other side of that! What can we do to help you get back to that life sooner rather than later? A hundred percent.
And the other piece of this:
A lot of times your family members who are not the personal representative don't understand what the personal representative is facing, 'cause you have these legal obligations that you never had before. You're trying to grieve the loss of a loved one. You have somebody arguing with you about your dad's penny collection, you know, and then you, in addition to that, you have to maintain the house. You have to try to figure out how to clean the house. You have to meet with the attorney. You have to do all of these things. And it might look like a task list to people who have not been through it, but... and then you're trying to still get your kids to soccer practice and maintain a normal life. It's hard. And so that's part of the reason I don't wanna say I enjoy doing this work, but I do enjoy helping families, because I do know that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And I really wanna help the people that want to get through it and get through it now so that they can begin that personal healing and those relationships.'cause a lot of times probate damages some of our relationships within our family as well. These are some of the things that a lot of the realtors in my market and some of the other investors in my market might not understand if they've never really been through this process. Yeah. Boy, there's so many things right there that I wanna elaborate on a little bit. I'd like for you to talk a little bit about the weight of that responsibility that you feel as the executor, administrator, personal representative. Because the average person will not know that they may know probate and they, you know, a lot of them want their money or they wanna sell the house quickly or whatever. But talk about what it is like to be the person in that position. What is that like? I wouldn't wish it upon anyone, and yet it's something that many of us are going to experience at sometime in our lives. Maybe you know that your loved one is going to pass, maybe you don't, but you wake up one day and you find out they're not here anymore, and you're looking at the situation and you look at the house and you look at their personal property and you're thinking about their accounts and all of these other things, and you're like, wow, what am I gonna do? What do I do? I mean, that's literally what... and in my case, I started reaching out to some of my relatives and everybody was willing to give me advice, but not all of it was good advice. It was well intentioned. But trying to get advice from someone in your family who's never been in your situation is really hard. So you start talking to people, you look for information wherever you can find it. And then you start to sift through it and weeded out some of that. But it's really overwhelming 'cause where do you start, right? Do you change the locks on the house? Do you stop your siblings from going in and taking things out? Do you put the house on the market? Do you sell it as fast as you can? Do you talk to the attorney? Do you pay the funeral expenses? And that's actually the reason why I set up my Facebook group is to try to help people who have some of those questions, right? Even if they don't hire me to be their real estate agent, I just wanna give them a place to start and some general guidelines. And then every case is different, but not having the answer to some of those basic questions also leads to a lot of mistakes that can be really costly down the road. I see families who think that you know, one mistake they make is they say,"well, I am the executor in the will, and so we don't have to go through probate." Wrong. And by the time they find out it may cost 'em thousands of dollars. Or they file to become the personal representative with the courts, and then they start trying to sell the house before they've been authorized or have their letters from the court.. And then they get delayed at closing. Again, very costly mistake. Or they think that they have to wait to complete the probate process in order to sell the house, and the house just sits there for one, two, maybe three years. It starts to get vandalized. These are all really common and very costly mistakes that I see it people make over and over again. And anything I can do, To help families avoid some of those costly mistakes, whether they ever have me sell their house or not, that's what I'm here for. Even if your named the executor in the will, that does not automatically make you an executor. Yeah. I mean there are problems in every direction, right? 360 degrees of problems. Yep. And that's one of the reasons why this podcast is important to me because as a teacher at heart, I think if we can start to educate people they will make fewer mistakes and save that money to pass on to future generations or, you know, to enjoy their life where they are right now. We don't need to be making costly mistakes. The fewer of those we can make the better everybody will be. Hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah. I appreciate your insight as the executor. I'm sorry that your experience.. Can you talk about that a little bit? It was a difficult one. Yeah. For me and my experience, what made it even more challenging was that my father had congestive heart failure and he was declining in health and we knew that this was coming, but he was not comfortable talking about it. So he would not work with us to make any preparations. He did not want to talk about what he wanted after he passed. He just wanted to leave it up to my sister and myself. A lot of times we thought we were acting on his wishes, but we didn't really know for sure. And we might have different interpretation of what those were. For example, did he want us to keep the house in the family or did he want us to sell it? He wouldn't have that conversation with us. The next thing I know, I'm personal representative and it's my decision. It was a multi-generational home, almost all of my cousins and their parents lived in that house at one point. So they all wanted to weigh in, but nobody wanted to buy the house. And no one wanted to maintain it. No one wanted to keep it up.? So if you wanna keep the house and the family, you can buy it just as much as I can, right? Like, you know, come up with a plan, write an offer, let's figure out a way to do this. Otherwise I have to move on. I can't just keep the house sitting there forever. So that was tough. And then at that time, my dad had a lot of personal property in the house. At that time I, I thought, wow, this is unique. Now that I work on a lot of cases, I realized it really wasn't unique. But when you're in that situation for the first time, you're thinking, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do with all this stuff? Yeah. You don't know what you don't know, right? Yeah. Yep. Exactly. So now I know the answer to that question, but when I was personal representative, I did not, and then I was dealing with family members who lived overseas. I already mentioned the people that wanted things to go in a certain direction, but didn't really want to make it happen. People that would promise to show up and do work with you, but then they don't, you know,"Hey, we'll be there to help you clean out the house!" Change your entire schedule so you can accommodate everyone and they don't show up. I mean, millions of things that.. Yeah...You would never imagine that pop up. But if you can find a support system, other people that are going through the same things, even though it's still very emotional and frustrating it can at least make it a little bit easier. You know, you have support going through that process. Mm-hmm. That's true. So you're a real estate agent. Yes. And in the bio it says that you are different from other real estate agents. Yes. And that other agents are different from what you do in probate. Again, as I've introduced myself to my area as a real estate agent who works in probate, I often hear, "oh, I'm a real estate agent, and I, you know, I deal with probate also." Tell me a little bit about what your experience has been as a real estate agent who specializes in probate and how that compares to those who don't. Sure. So as a real estate agent who deals in probate, because I'm a licensed agent, I also do participate in some online groups and some coaching with people who do real estate outside of probate. I'm in a a for sale by owner group. I work with our Minnesota Real Estate Investors Association. So I network with a lot of people who work outside of probate.
Some of the differences:
one is my personal experience that I've had. Number two, you and I have both had training and received certifications which are important. But for me it's really that experience and the empathy, right? So I know that each client, their experience is going to be different than mine, but I also know it's a highly emotional situation and I need to help them deal with it. A lot of other agents, even other agents in the probate space in my market are more transactional, right? They focus on the house, I focus on the family. They will follow traditional recommendations. So for example, I'll give you an example. I was working with a case recently where all of the other realtors that this person interviewed focused on the checklist for getting the house cleaned out so that they could make repairs and sell it on the MLS for top dollar. They didn't wanna help my client who became a client.. They didn't wanna help that person get the house cleaned out. They didn't wanna solve the problem of which charity should we donate to, which things should go to charity, which things should be sold, which things are gonna take more time and maybe not worth it. They didn't have that experience. They just said, "you clean out the house, gimme a call, and then I'll bring in a contractor who can make$30,000 in repairs so that we can get the $300,000 that this house is after repairs." And my approach is "have you thought of, you know, has the family come in and kept the things that you want to keep? Have you thought about what you wanna do with the remaining items? Do you have a timeline that works for you? Do you wanna donate these things or do you wanna sell 'em? Because if you wanna donate'em, I can get 'em over to Disabled American Veterans, but if you wanna sell them, I have a partner that can do that as well, right? So I don't just give them a checklist and tell 'em to call me. I literally give them options at every single phase of the process. And then we also talk about what are some of the impacts, right? You know, if you decide you're going to wanna sell the house as is to an investor, we don't need to spend a lot of time and money cleaning it out. And here's how much you're gonna get if you go down that path. And if you do wanna go down that path, I have some investors that will follow through and deliver and not put you through a lot of extra stress. If you do wanna go down this path and maybe go on to MLS and get more money, here are the ways that we can do it that meets your family's expectation, that meets your family's timelines. That makes sure your cousin's not angry with you. And here's the reasons why maybe we shouldn't even fix the house up, right? So I go through all of those scenarios and I help them understand the impact of all of those scenarios on their family and their probate case so that it's not really just about the house. No one else in my market does that. The agents are focused on the house. The investors are focused on buying as is. They all send out the exact same letter. I know, because I work with those investors and I've received the letters. Hey, my name is Tony. If you have a house to sell, we can close in two weeks. All cash leave every... okay, that's great. Except all 50 letters all say the exact same thing. So that's not my approach at all. My approach is really helping the family do whatever they need to do to get through probate with less stress. If that means we sell a house along the way, great. And if we don't, we don't. And sometimes we don't sell their house, but they refer me to other people. I was thinking about your letters and how they land on the table along with, you know, 60 others or however many are out there. And so the empathy and the compassion that you have has to come across from the get go. And for them to know that you're authentic and then and genuine and what you're saying. And so I hope that this podcast reaches them, this video reaches people so that it can back up the letters that you're sending out. It is a challenge. But that's one of the.. I kind of put that in God's hands, right? Like, I am.. Right...Letting people know that I'm out here. But I can't help everyone and not everybody wants my help. But not everybody is the typical agent or the typical investor. And so yeah, you're one in a million out there in Minnesota that's doing that. And I really appreciate what you're doing. You know, my focus is also on the person, the personal representative, and a lot can happen. I mean, Before the pandemic probate took months to years. And the pandemic has just lengthened that timeline even more, so a lot can happen. Probate is stressful by itself. Life is stressful by itself. And then you overlap them? Right. And people still get divorced, they still have babies, they still need that job promotion. They still lose jobs. They relocate and they're grieving. You know, like a lot is happening. And then to just say, clean out this garage and clean out this house... that's one of my things, is let me call people and let me set that up so you don't have to do that. I'm here, you can delegate it to me and you can just check that off your list. And I've thought about the clients that I work for, and I've thought how nice it is for them! I can just check in and say, "we've done this, we've done this." And what would you like for me to do next? And what a gift that is that you're giving your clients that peace of mind. Yeah. Can you tell me about a recent thing that you've been working on, A case that you've been working on, and how you've been able to help a family, for example. Sure. I have two. They're similar. I'll try to make them brief. One is a case where I was hired by an attorney and that case took us about a year and a half. And closing papers just went to the court, literally just last week. So I'm kind of excited about that. I bet! Now that one, I didn't even wanna do it. I thought it was too much work, too big, too beyond my scope. But the attorney talked me into it. Describe the scope of, like, what is it that, when you heard that and thought, that's too big for me, paint me a picture here of what you Yeah. So a, an attorney that I had worked with, actually the attorney that I worked with on my father's case he called me and he said, Hey, I, you know, I see that you're doing probate. He saw on LinkedIn that I'm doing probate, and he said, "I have a case and I really need your help." I said, "okay, what do you need me to do?" And he said, "well, I need you to be the special administrator for this estate." I'm like, "no, I don't.. I did that once with my dad. Yeah. Don't wanna do it again. Like, that's not what I do.. I'm a realtor." And he said, "I know, but we need someone with your skillset!" And the situation was that one of his clients had passed away. And all of the executors who were listed in the will had also been deceased. And at that time, they couldn't find any other living relatives. And so what he wanted to do was have me appointed as special administrator so we could secure the home right away and so that we could start closing accounts and liquidating assets so that there was less risk, right? So at least if we have cash in the estate account, there's less likely something's gonna happen rather than winter and Minnesota squatters moving in, or people breaking in, taking the copper pipes, all of that stuff. And I'm like, "I don't know how that'll work with my real estate license." He is like, "oh, we'll get the judge to approve it. You know, you'll be good." And so finally I said, "okay, let's!" I did it because I wanted to help him and this family that we couldn't even identify. And part of the work, they wanted me and my team to do genealogy research to see if we could locate heirs. And so we were tracking down documents all across the United States, going into court records and death records and all that.. And anyways, we put together the family, we were able to find some living relatives, and then we had to navigate through the court process. And I finished all of my work. I also had to sell the home... we finished all of my work and I thought, okay, now we're gonna really wrap this thing up, this is great... And then the lady who was the heir in Canada nominated me to be the personal representative because special administration was just to liquidate all the assets. And then they were gonna go through traditional probate with the personal representative distributing the assets and closing the case.... so I'm like, oh no, here we go again. And so we did that and she even came down from Canada to visit my wife and I, and to look through some of the personal property that we set aside for her to determine if she wanted those family heirlooms and that kind of thing. So she came down to visit, and then she went to the Taylor Swift concert. Both laugh]..But it was great. you know, we got to know her and her family through this whole process. and then always, whenever you're doing this kind of work, you feel like you kinda get to know the decedent, too. Like... It's true. So that was one story. The other story is I had a person who contacted me and they received one of my letters and they were going through probate pro se. They had joined my Facebook group. Liked what they saw even though there wasn't a lot of content out there. And they called me and asked me if I would come over. We went over to the house and it was, I've already told the story, right? It's the common scenario. They have way too much stuff. It was a sister who passed away. They didn't know what to do next and they didn't want to sell the house for pennies on the dollar, but they also didn't feel like they had the time or the emotional energy to go through all of the sister's stuff. There were a lot of holiday decorations and pictures and things that really just reminded them of all the good times that they had with her. And I started that by doing what I just described other realtors doing, giving them the checklist, here's what you need to do. And he kept saying, " I can't do it. I need somebody to do it." So I said, "well, you know, I have a team that can do this. We could do this for you." And we partnered up. He hired us. We spent almost three months going through all of her personal property, auctioning- we did an online auction- and then we did a second phase where we donated to Disabled American Veterans. And then when the house was finally all cleaned out, he started talking about repairs. I'm like, no. Remember we talked about selling this as-is, like. And he was nervous. It was really funny because we put the sign in the yard and some of the neighbors started calling me. Some of them upset that we're selling. I've had this happen more than once. Sherri, I don't know if it's happened to you. A lot of times when I sell a house, a probate house as is, I will get neighbors who call me that are really upset that I'm selling the house as-is. They think I'm bringing down the value of their neighborhood by not repairing the house. And I often have to educate the neighbors on how it's different than the normal process and the reason we're doing it the way we are and assuring them that we'll do everything we can to honor the home and the neighborhood. But the neighbors get really fired up about this. So anyways, we put the house on the market. It took us about three and a half months to get to market. We put the house on the market. Our plan went exactly the way we anticipated. We had multiple offers in 24 hours, we were able to get him about $30,000 more than what he was initially asking. In fact, we almost ended up getting the after repair value, which.. Wow!..Which was fantastic. Yes. And in 24 hours! 24 hours, yep. In this market, 24 hours in this market. And this family is just he keeps sending me emails almost every day, telling me how pleased he is that he found us. And then we also paired him up with an attorney, as I mentioned, he was doing this pro se. And so there were a couple of pieces that I knew we needed and should come from an attorney, and he took my advice and we paired him up with an attorney. And the attorney's happy. He's happy everybody's happy. Yeah, man, just the weight, just to think about the emotional toil that he was looking at and I don't know if he's retired, if he's working or if he is working, what kind of a job he has... but it's not just the physical labor. It's the getting bogged down in all the memories. Seeing all of the stuff and having to make all of those decisions that decision fatigue is a real deal. And then you're gonna give up how many weekends and you're gonna give up how many holidays in order to make this happen. And just the relief, like, and you didn't just do it for him- you did it well for him. And I can hear the compassion and the empathy in your voice. Also, you are a third party. You're not in this family- you're an objective party here, but I also hear how you went in and did things with dignity. You're very respectful about the neighborhood and the home. And I mean, you're holding a lot in this net that you're coming to the table with for the family that you don't even know this person, but you come to know her as you're going through her things. And that's really important to me too. And the people that we choose to be on our team to help us do this work? They also need to be empathetic and compassionate and respectful of the family and the deceased. My wife helps me with the empathy side. I like to think I'm good at it, but you know, sometimes she reminds me of.. We, we help each other out. Because sometimes she'll be the boots on the ground doing some of the sorting and some of those kinds of things. She's really good at it. But as you know, even for us as a third party, some of these situations are really overwhelming and you can only do so much in a day. Like, if I have a nine to five job and I plan, I'm gonna go in there and work for eight hours. But if I go into a probate house and I'm looking through someone's things and trying to sort, I might only be able to do it for two or three hours, and I have to get out of there and come back the next day. Yeah. And that's as a third party. Yes. It's even more difficult for the family. I think you're right. What is something that's come up for you that's been a surprise that you didn't expect? So biggest surprise. And we talk about building our networks and working with other caring and compassionate people. And I met this lady back in 2018 after I missed the opportunity to work with her, right? So I was working on my dad's estate and we were doing this garage sale. my sister wanted to have a garage sale- that's a whole nother story... And some of the people were coming to the garage sale and they're saying, "Hey, have you heard of this service? You need to talk to this lady." we were already wrapping things up. Well, later on, my cousin lost her spouse and ended up working with this lady and again, talked about how fantastic... So I'm like, "I gotta add this lady to my network!" Right? And she does online auctions, so I've known her since 2018, but we really had our first chance to work together. That's how long she's been in my network. And she came out and said that the situation was- she couldn't handle it. So she asked if we would team up. She wanted to work out a unique solution. And I said, sure. So she, my team and the client, we came up with a solution that worked for all of us. We started doing the work. This lady enjoyed working with us so much that she became good friends with my wife and later told my wife that she's planning to retire. And she asked if my son would be interested in taking over her business. And we were like, well, how much do you want? And she said, no, I just, I wanna hand it off to caring people that share my values. Wow. And if it's something he's interested in, I'll train him and starting this fall, my son is gonna start working with her and he's scheduled to take over her business as she transitions into retirement. And then, you know, we'll keep it in our portfolio of businesses as well. But we never saw that coming. Never saw that coming. Yeah. Well, that says a lot about your family and you guys, and again, what you're doing and how different it is. It's like a breath of fresh air, a cool cup of water on a hot day like we're having- uh,..Tea on a beach! Yes. Yes. That's funny. Tell me about what you do that gets you up in the morning? What is it that you like about what you do? The number one thing is, again, just helping families. Now the other side of that coin the thing that's frustrating is remembering that my service is not right for every family. Every family's not right for the service I provide. And you know, there are some days when maybe you lose an opportunity to another agent who doesn't approach the situation the same way. And then I start racking my brain going, "how did that happen? Like, what did I miss? how, what are they doing to serve the family that I wasn't doing? Or, how did we not connect?" So I think about those things from time to time. But then when we are working with a client on one of these cases, and my cases typically take anywhere from six months to a year. It's really rare that we're doing something less than six months, unless it's a cash offer or something like that. But, a lot of these cases just take a lot more time. And typically we just keep looking at the next step.'cause we know how the process ends if we do it right. And so when we get up in the morning, we really just ask ourselves, you know, what is it we need to do today to keep this process moving for this family? Yeah. And if they can streamline that case and get it off their plate so much sooner, just get back to living again.. Yep...Excited about that. So if you have a client or a soon to be client listening what is ,something that you could advise them on what they could do? What could they do to make your work easier or to make their situation easier? Or maybe all they need to do is come to you ,and just like dump everything in your lap. And you might take it over from there, but what would you want to say to them maybe to help lower the threshold? If there was an obstacle that might be holding them back from asking for help or, what would you want to say to someone that knows they're gonna be facing probate? I don't know that you're ever mentally ready for it, right? You could do things to prepare, but when it happens, it happens. So some of the just basic things that I tell people that maybe other realtors don't, but I think it's really important: very first thing, be ready to secure the property, right? Because you and I we have clients and we also hear these stories in some of our groups where squatters moved in. Or they let a relative move in, or my, you know, my sister and her family has keys, or Sherri, I don't know if you've come across this, but in the last three cases I've worked, I can't believe how many people in the neighborhood have keys to the house. Yeah, well, you know, a lot of family live away so they'll leave a key with a neighbor. I've had that very thing. And then the family comes and they're like where's the jewelry? Yeah. Somebody in the neighborhood helped themselves because they had a key, like, you don't know. Yeah. Or I told, I, you know, I told my nephew he could take some tools, but then he got there and there were no tools and.. It just blows my mind. All these people have keys. We worked on one case where a nurse had keys, someone who was doing landscaping, had keys, a couple of different neighbors had keys, and we were like, we're just changing the locks right now. Changing the locks. So, secure the property as fast as you can.
And then second is related:
don't let anybody move in. And and some families don't take this advice because they think the house would be more secure if they let their nephew stay there while they're going through probate, well, whatever. And that's a family decision. But if they leave it up to me I advise 'em, do not let people move in because once they move in, it can be hard to get them out. And what we have found is if we're trying to get a squatter out of a home, a lot of times the sheriff will say, no, you need an eviction notice. And then you go to court and they say, well, it's not an eviction case because you don't have a lease. And they bounce it back and forth and you can't get these people out. Or they're family, and they say they have a right to be there. So just don't let anybody move in. right. Save a ton of problems. And then contact a professional as quickly as possible. So whether it's someone like you or someone like me, contact me right away. Not because we wanna talk about selling a house, but we can give you tips and advice on where you should start and things you need to stay away from that have nothing to do with selling the house but if you decide to sell the house, it's gonna make it a lot easier when you're ready. Yeah, for sure. A lot of people think, you know, "I'm not gonna call a realtor because we're not ready to list the house." Well, I'm not ready to list your house either. I don't even know if I wanna list your house. And there's no harm in asking questions. And one of the things that I tell people too is that even if you're not ready to probate the estate, because in Texas you don't have to do it right away. But you can start asking questions. You don't have to obligate yourself to anything just in having a conversation. And you don't even have to be the executor. You can be a family member that's just gathering information. And the more you start to talk about it and learn what your options are, you're gonna get some good advice instead of.. If I got advice from you for my Texas estate it's not all gonna apply. It's specific for your state and even within your county. Things can be done differently. So, again, that's the teacher in me coming out. Yeah. No, it's true. Get informed. Get informed, find reliable, capable people to help you and They're not gonna twist your arm. If you feel weird at all, then you don't have to use them, but get people in your corner that will support you and not pressure you. I think that's important. One of the things that I want people to think about is not all attorneys are created equal... just like not all real estate agents are the same when it comes to probate neither. True. Or all attorneys. Good point. Yep. And so a lot of times I'll be talking with someone and they'll say, oh, we've got it covered. We have an attorney. Man, there are some attorneys out there that do not understand the probate process. I've worked with some of them and we have some really good conversations and I'll start asking questions like, well, what about this? Can we do that? And they'll, "well, why would you wanna do?" and then I start to realize like, oh, they don't do probate. And then I look up their history and it's like, oh yeah, they've been doing corporate law or employment law, but they're somebody's cousin and they took on the probate case and they don't even know the process. You know? And then it's really hard because they're giving legal advice that might not be relevant to the probate process. And I'm not an attorney. I do not give legal advice, but I do know the process. So not all attorneys are equal. And then second is cheap attorneys are not always the best. I see so many personal representatives that wanna save money on legal costs, and maybe they have a case for going pro se without an attorney works. But then when they go to hire an attorney, they hire one that might be the cheapest hourly rate as opposed to someone that takes a percentage of the estate or a flat fee. I have friends who have hired cheap attorneys and they've ended up paying more than I did, and I hired great attorneys. Like, so be careful. That's all for part 1. Stay tuned for part 2 where we go over everything you should know about selling a probate property on your own or with an agent - airing next week on the Probate Podcast. In the meantime, if you'd like to contact Sherri or Reine, check the show notes and they'll be happy to help.