Real Estate Puzzles Untangled The Gordian Knot

Ever notice how clients with delicate trust or estate matters fail to tell the truth (or the whole truth)?

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.

This is an introduction to the way we look at Fractional Ownership Interests and Solutions for those who receive no current benefits.

A quick way to evaluate a property, even before your client’s own issues have been examined.

Despite a pending property tax auction, these eight beach city properties had no living successor trustee or way to save them from loss, until...

How I stopped fearing and loathing California real estate title problems and came to appreciate liens and other problems

Rick Harmon shares his time-tested method for organizing information about messy real estate cases

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 gets a lot of litigation cases but prefers to avoid the litigation if he can. Practicing in Northern California has a very different feel than the cases in Orange County. Most of Barry’s clients find him through existing clients and other attorneys, but he’s getting a lot more from the internet than he expected would be the case. The California court system is the biggest in the world, it’s actually bigger than the Federal system.

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 when the case becomes too litigious. The first introduction to the case where they put together the plan is the most exciting time. Discovery tends to be the most costly part of the case but you will need to do some discovery to reach a resolution. When working in trust and estate law in California, you end up seeing the same people all the time since most cases are consolidated into the primary courthouse, which can end up being

Listen into the interesting interview with Joseph McHugh. Rick and Joseph discuss the ins and outs of his law practice, some of the more tricky cases he’s dealt with, as well as how Joseph works with his clients. What kind of work do you like to do? Joe’s background of working at Disney gave him a taste for contract administration and project management. While he was working at Disney, he got a lot of questions about probate and estate planning. His wife eventually pointed him in the direction of focusing on the field. Joe realized that he could protect people and their assets and grew to enjoy the work. He started off with a lot of referrals from a CPA firm that he worked with and this lead him to get into elder law where he could help people in very difficult situations. There has been so much bad advice that has been given out about elder law. Joe deals with a lot of MediCal cases because a lot of people don’t realize what the requirements are. He gets quite a few cases that are in crisis mode by the time

In 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 s

Meet Marivel Zialcita and enjoy this discussion about her Claremont California based trust, estate, and elder law practice center, her extensive involvement in community service, and how she approaches new clients with property issues. Tell us a little bit about your practice and your clients. Marivel has been practicing for over 15 years. She always enjoyed working with and helping the senior community. When she went out on her own a few years ago, she began practicing with special needs clients and asset protection planning for seniors. Her typical clients include family businesses, probate clients that have had a loss in the family, and seniors. Marivel gets a lot of clients going through probate that have trouble maintaining the properties in probate and their own mortgages. She usually has to work quickly to get injunctive relief for the clients to get some breathing room and time to sell the property. They can often be wild rides with a lot of work and lot of parties involved. Where do your special need

In this episode of the The Gordian Knot, Rick is interviewing Bruce Norris. Rick and Bruce talk about Bruce’s early years as a real estate speculator, the Norris Group’s role in funding fix and flip real estate investors and some of of his own experiences in the California real estate market. Find out about Bruce’s experience with his own 700+ property investments and his predictions for the California real estate market. What kind of customers do you usually work with? Bruce was a house flipper himself which was how he got started in teaching his methods to a variety of people. He eventually got into the loan business because he was borrowing a lot of money each month to fund his flipping business. The first time Bruce went to the club he eventually started speaking at, the first thing that Jack Fullerton said was “anyone that says they can flip houses for a profit immediately after buying them is lying.” Bruce took a hundred pictures of the properties he had flipped and itemized the numbers to show him it w

Meet Megan Waugh. Rick and Megan talk about her work as a litigator at Schomer Law in California and how she approaches some of the more interesting cases that come across her desk. Tell us about your practice Megan has been working as a litigator for the last 5 years and deals with both contentious and non-contentious cases dealing with fun topics like incapacitation and death. Megan managed to help Rick out on a case where he had written off the money he advanced that he thought he would never see again. She discovered a situation where the person in the case managed to sign a deed months after becoming deceased. The suspect in the case actually had the ironic last name of Charity. There has to be a continuous adverse possession of five years, and that can be added together between adverse possessors. The heart of the argument in that particular case that Megan made was whether or not the five periods had run. Tell the listeners about some of your cases. Megan sees a lot of will and trust disputes where the

Meet James (Jake) Walker. Rick Harmon and James talk about his law practice, some title surprises, transfer tech challenges, and some interesting stories. Learn a creative approve to sorting out a five-way inheritance and the unexpected dangers of filing an insurance claim for fire damages. How has the local Napa economy been affected by the fires? The wine industry has been going through some tough times due to the fires recently, in addition to all the other people having it rough. There has been a lot of money raised by the wine industry to help out because a lot of people have lost their homes, so much so that a rent gouging law is going into place. What does your typical client look like? James’s typical client is a family or individual that owns some amount of valuable real estate. Estate taxes are not really his focus, but income tax and Prop 13 are major parts of his practice. Everyone should have some estate planning, but especially those with valuable real estate holdings. His business is mainly abo

George Liddle is a veteran with four decades of experience with a practice devoted strictly to property possession issues. They talk about some of the more challenging cases over the years as a top-level eviction expert for some of the biggest national lenders. What does your typical practice look like? George started the office of Liddle and Liddle with his sister in 1986 and he knew before he started law school what he was going to be doing once he graduated. He usually introduces himself in the manner of Alcoholics Anonymous and says “Hi, my name is George and I evict people.” If possession of real property is not an issue, it’s not a case that ends up on George’s desk. George does everything by the book and faces the judge straight on. If you get into an unlawful detainer action that gets complicated, you’ll be glad you’re working with someone who knows their stuff. Who is your typical client? George works with all sorts of people including individual mom and pop landlords, medium to large management comp

Meet Scott Schomer. Rick and Scott talk about his very successful real estate practice and his experience over the last two and half decades working commercial real estate. What does your typical practice look like? Scott is a probate and trust specialist in addition to focusing on commercial real estate. When it comes to probate court, you’re often finding real estate so there is a lot of overlap between the two fields. Diminished capacity cases also come into play quite often and can be quite complicated. Looking back into the past to forensically identify whether someone had diminished capacity can be very difficult. Medical evidence is the first place Scott looks when trying to prove diminished capacity because without decent medical evidence, there is often no case at all. A cursory conversation with someone may not reveal anything obvious, you have to dig into their executive functions before you may notice a truly diminished capacity. Scott relates a case where a man became so impaired by alcohol and d

Paul Horn is one of the highest volume probate attorneys in Southern California. Paul and Rick Harmon talk about Paul's probate practice, how he chooses which cases to work on and which ones not to, some easy ways to avoid a formal probate, as well as some great stories. Paul focuses on delivering educational seminars in order to reach new people in the market. Paul does probate all across California so he has to analyze which cases will pay out or not. The first thing he does is pull up the grant deed and if he sees the name of the deceased, he knows for sure he has a probate case. In California, if the amount of money involved is more than $150 000, you have a probate case. You have to analyze the case first before you take it because there are many situations that do not qualify as probate. What do you do from there? Once Paul checks the deed and takes the case, he looks to see if there was a living trust. He uses a checklist to find out if the case is a probate or not, first by checking the deed, then loo

Meet Byran Hartnell, his California Law practice and some of the more unique situations he has encountered over the years. Early on, Bryan realized that general practice was neither practical nor rewarding and has since focused on estate accounting and probate law, with a side specialty in mental health law. What kind of stories do you hear from the bench? Bryan's two most memorable comments came from the same judge and he relates how Judge Victor would have no problem calling someone out in the middle of a monologue during a session in court. When you encounter a problem, you will often discover the solution seemingly at random in the middle of the night. Bryan tells a story where a woman going through a divorce wrote a cheque to her granddaughter and then committed suicide. The bank initially refused to honor the cheque. Bryan was able to get the court to find the cheque as, at worst a constructive trust and was able to solve the problem. Sometimes you have to step back and not force the answer. It can be i