Trusts Attorney Las Vegas | Wondering Who To Hire As An Attorney?

Trusts Attorney Las Vegas | Wondering Who To Hire As An Attorney?

Hello, and welcome to the trusted podcast. I’m Blake Johnson, your host, and we’ve got another fantastic guest on the show today. And, uh, we’ve got Kenny Lee and he’s going to be talking about trust administration and also trust litigation. So some interesting stuff. I know he’s got some great cases to reference, to give you an idea of what not to do. So with that, Kenny, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. Yeah. Glad to have you today. And I want you to start by giving us a little bit about your background on yourself and then also on your firm and what makes you guys the experts in your field with our new Trusts Attorney Las Vegas services?

Sure. So in my firm, all we focus on is, and issues to deal with trust and, um, whether it’s on the front end planning, which is actually not a huge part of our practice right now, but we do that, um, the administration on Knox and cases where somebody passed away and we got a will or a trust, and we need to handle things for the family, pay the debts and creditors take care of gathering up the assets and distributing that the inheritance to beneficiaries, or when things go South and their litigation will, uh, you know, get in and join the fight and those types of matters. But, uh, all we focus on are our trusts will in any matter regarding those. So bankruptcy, family law, personal injury, criminal, all that out of our area of focus. So we have a pretty narrow niche, uh, but uh, we try to be the opposite of the saying, Jack of all trades master of none. We focus on just the very narrow niche and go very deep in our knowledge and experience in that area. And how long have you been doing this as the top Trusts Attorney Las Vegas?

I graduated from law school in 2011 and at that point jumped into this area of the law. And so I’ve been doing this solely for the last approximately nine years. I’ve had a few, uh, partners join up with me. Uh, one of the, uh, advantages of the partners that I’ve taken on are they came from a litigation background, and then we got them up to speed on the areas of trust and the state law. I find that that works better on our litigated cases, as opposed to the reverse, where a lot of times we’ll have attorneys who go into estate planning and probate, and then they get cases that come their way involving fights and disputes with families or, or beneficiaries. And so they try to take on the fight. The problem is they’re not geared towards litigation. They’re not litigation mind. They don’t have a litigation mindset.

They don’t understand the procedure on how those types of cases work and how to, you know, lay those out. I find it’s much easier to come from the litigation mindset and understand it in other areas of the law and then apply that to, you know, trust and estates and learn, you know, the applicable rules and statutes that govern trust and estates. And so, um, I think that’s where we have a strong advantage over a lot of other litigated in this era, the laws we came from, some of the partners came from a litigation background and then picked up on the trust in the States instead of vice versa. Gotcha.

Yeah. And I would agree with that cause I am just the estate planner and um, every time I try to even get close to a question about litigation or, or anything like that, I always defer to you for that very reason that I’m not litigation minded and it’s, it is, it’s a completely different animal, right?

Yeah. It’s a completely different mindset. Uh, and, and obviously there’s room for both, right. There are needs for both. We need estate planning. Um, and as I’m sure we’ll talk about there, there’s a benefit to having somebody geared towards an estate planning mindset to prepare things to go, right. There’s also a mindset that is different to address when things have gone wrong with our new Trusts Attorney Las Vegas.

Yeah. So let’s talk about that. What are the, let’s talk about the most common aspects of trust or wills that are litigated. So where do you see the most problems Uh, there’s, there’s a few, um, obvious is probably bad drafting. Yeah, You would probably attest,

Not all the things planners are, uh, equal competency. Uh, I’ve seen your work and you’ve done great. And you happy to defend any of your documents at any time. And we’ve seen other work where it was, uh, unfortunately not well-drafted and that can be for a number of different reasons, uh, what there it’s confusing and unclear language. Unfortunately, when you get, uh, the administration part post-death, there all sorts of situations that you may not be able to completely anticipate, you know, years in advance. And so you have to draft in such a way that you use the proper legal terms and are able to plan for contingencies that may arise and use the language necessary to address it. So, or provide, a personal representative or trustee the authority and discretion to yeah. Handle those properly, if they could not have been anticipated.

Um, you also get provisions that don’t coincide. One provision says one thing. And then a little bit later in the trust, or will you have a, a contradictory, a provision that both can’t be complied with? So bad drafting is a big problem. And a lot of times it’s from vague or confusing language. Um, years ago when the legal zoom was, um, working its way onto the scene and getting a lot of traction, I feared that that may replace the need for, you know, estate planners, the legal zoom has a, it’s a fairly easy and user-friendly process at a good rate. Um, no, I think legal zoom has its place, but, uh, that jumped into the thing LA I’ve found that unfortunately, and not necessarily on legal zoom part because, uh, what they’ve done, but more on the user error part because those completing the forms or questionnaire don’t understand all of the complexities that may arise later with a good Trusts Attorney Las Vegas service.

Uh, some of those do it yourself formed caused some backend cleanup, whether it’s an instruction from the court and it’s not complete litigation, or whether it’s, you know, a confusing or contradictory language that causes fights with the family. And there’s often a lot of backend work from the, a do it yourself type, um, options. And so that’s, um, that’s a very common aspect of trust and will drafting the least problems. Uh, I think one of the other major ones is just the lack of communication between the family members. Um, sometimes these are hard conversations to have aware you’re going to distribute everything equally to perhaps children. And some children think that they’re more deserving than others, or there’s maybe a black sheep in the family and the parent doesn’t have it within them to decrease or write them out completely or vice versa where you have somebody with maybe more needs and a parent wants to give them more of their share and maybe justifiably.

So, but if this isn’t the, you know, express the head of time, then the other children may feel slighted or JIP because they didn’t get as much. Um, the here well understand that these are sometimes hard conversations to have. And when people come in arguing, well, mom told me this, or dad told me that, or they promised I could have X, Y, Z court’s general position is unless that’s in writing and executed properly. That oral statement may have been nothing more than I’m telling you what you wanted to hear. So you would go away and stop bothering them. And so that they didn’t have to have a hard conversation with you. So the lack of communication, it’s often a problem. If people can just have the proper expectation prior to death and when the post-death situations arise and whether they like it or not, they’ll at least know what to expect and have a proper expectation. And that resolved a lot of problems, you know, right away. Um, one of the other primary issues that we see is our blended families.

And that’s, you know, as you are aware, takes a different type of drafting and planning because default laws address and fix, you know, sometimes some of the problems when they’re just a core nuclear family, that’s never been blended because, you know, default rules would give to the next closest family members in line and treat them all equally. Um, and the tracing of where the assets came from isn’t really applicable because the family’s all been together. But when you have blended families and later in life marriages, where spouses come to the marriage with children from previous marriages, then it gets tricky as to whose assets go. Where, what about the order of the deaths? We’ve seen situations where one spouse may be coming to the marriage with the majority of the assets. They die first, everything is left to the second spouse, um, and they use it for their benefit with the smartest Trusts Attorney Las Vegas.

And then upon their death, the second spouse leaves that all to their own kids or other individuals of their choosing, but not the first spouses, family members and the children and those children, understandably. So it can get very angry and frustrating because perhaps it was their father who accumulated all the wealth, married a, you know, another woman later in his life and understandably took care of her. And then her kids got the remaining portion of their father’s wealth. Um, that often seems unfair and not right. And, uh, in order to address situations like that need a good estate planner on the front end to make sure that those contingencies are properly handled, because there are ways to handle that and to make sure that it goes correctly, but, uh, if it’s not addressed properly, then some of those default rules or the authority given to the survivors and based on the order of deaths can make things very, either confusing or, or cut people out and make them angry. And so we get a lot of blended family situations that end up in disputes or litigation.

Yeah, I would say that that’s definitely true. The hardest part from my perspective, as a planner is getting the clients to understand why that’s an issue because, you know, a dad who acquired the money, it was like, well, I just want my spouse taken care of. Um, and they don’t have, they don’t even think about what’s going to happen when, when the second spouse dies or so I just want her took care of, and they think it’s automatically going to go to their kids. Like, no, you’ve got to put these restrictions in place. Now. It seems like you’re doing this to harm her, but it’s actually to, to make sure everybody’s happy and everybody’s taken care of. So that’s definitely a hard one when to deal with, especially, you know, because husband and wife will come in together and technically that’s a conflict of interest for me. Cause I’m advising him one way. That’s going to harm her and trying to explain, Hey, you probably want to go get a different attorney to represent your wife. Cause it’s, you know, we’re going to be going against each other or at least, you know, you got to sign a waiver or whatnot.

Right. And it’s tricky because like I said, it’s nothing against the wife or it could be the opposite situation, right. Sometimes. Yeah. Um, you know, the wife comes in with the money and the husbands there. And, uh, but you know, for this scenario, you know that the husband’s there and he does want to take care of the wife. He does love her. And it is a legit marriage, you know, he wants to provide for her. But because of the complexities of the law, it’s a difficult conversation to have that, Hey, I’m not doing this and putting these restrictions in place and bringing in these other advisors because of my feelings towards you at all, or because any sort of concerns I have about you, it’s more of what happens after the two of us are gone. What happens to the application of the law, if we don’t put certain things in place. Um, and you know, back to the first point that drafting the blended family is called the problem, bad drafting caused the problem. This is a scenario where both, you know, may, you know, complicated, could you, you haven’t been a blended family and you try to draft and prepare for it. And if you don’t have somebody that knows what they’re doing, you’re going to get some bad drafting on a situation like this. And that’s not helpful that only compounds the problem more often as the top Trusts Attorney Las Vegas.

I also want to point out that sometimes the drafters get a bad rap because they probably didn’t know the full extent of the situation because clients don’t like to disclose everything for some reason. And so we draft based off of the information we have, which if it’s incomplete, of course, we’re going to do bad drafting cause we don’t know the whole scenario. So, you know, if you can disclose everything that makes, you know, the drafter’s job easier and we can plan for those things.

Sure, good, good information is necessary in order to have a good result. If you only have partial information, you may get a good result. And you know, that individual got lucky that the information they withheld didn’t cause any material damage. Uh, but it’ll soften as you indicated, it’s, it’s not the scenario where you withhold certain facts and information and that’s going to, uh, possibly lead to a contingency or a possibility down the road that hasn’t been planned for. And you know, there you go,

Give me your biggest mistake. You see that, uh, from a drafting perspective that either the client or the attorneys don’t think about when they’re doing their planning, I think the biggest is the blended family and the order of deaths you see often where, um, it’s you have the blended families, you have different individuals. Look, I want the husband’s money to be used for the wife for her life. And then back to the husband’s kids. I want wife money to be used for the husband if she were to predecease and then back to her kids. Um, and you have a number of different possibilities on, well, this person dies first and this is the way to go. But if this person dies first, that changes the game and this is the way it needs to go. Um, and so I think understanding the blended family scenario, the parties involved in any sort of special needs or adjustments, because if some of the children are, you know, spendthrifts or black sheep, or have any other sorts of problems or issues that need to be addressed, you know, we’ve, there’s a number of different scenarios that could play out and you have to get the drafting right. To cover each of those scenarios.

Yep. And I agree with that. And I think the hardest part is from a drafting perspective is sometimes attorneys get into this group of all. This is my form says, do I really want to adjust everything for this one thing? And it’s like, yes, you need to do it. That’s why they’re paying you is to adjust every little thing and make it work. Um, so that’s the, it all comes back to having a competent estate planning attorney who’s willing to put in the effort. I think that the best Trusts Attorney Las Vegas is here for you.

I had a recent case where a friend was the beneficiary of a sizable amount. It wasn’t enough to make them, you know, retire and super-wealthy, but it certainly wasn’t anything too bad. And I add an extra check that everybody would appreciate. Um, but it was a husband and wife. They were married a little bit later in life and they didn’t really have any close family. And in order to receive the gift, the individual needed to survive both the husband and the wife. Right. So we’re talking about the order of deaths here. Well, the friend survived, the wife who died first, but then did not survive the husband. And then the husband died. So she fell right in between the document, talked about if she died before the husband and wife, what happens. And the document talks about if she died after the husband and wife, what happens, but it did not talk about if she died after one, but before the other.

And so we had to go to the court to get instruction on that. There’s some law in Nevada. So this is regarding it trust there’s law in Nevada as to how this would likely, uh, what it would likely result in if this had been a will. But unfortunately, um, the statute that was applicable to a will, there’s not an analogous statute applicable to trust. And so we had to use by analogy with the court and say, well, there’s a statute on the whale and trust are very similar to wills and there’s not a direct, you know, the authority on point to trust with our new Trusts Attorney Las Vegas. So the best we can do is say this same type of policy should be applicable to trust. Um, and so, you know, unfortunately, because of the way that was drafted, that individual did not end up getting their gift. And I don’t know what the intention of, you know, the husband and the wife were.

Did they want it to go to her family members? Um, you know, if it didn’t go to her and she died before the husband, did they want it to go to her children? Or did they say, if it doesn’t go to her, it doesn’t go to anybody? Oh, we don’t know. Cause it wasn’t. I know, I didn’t know them personally and it wasn’t, that’s spelled out in the documents. And so the best we could do is, you know, take a guess and apply what relevant law is on point and then leave it up to a judge. So that’s a situation where there were just gaps there. They didn’t anticipate the order of death. And there was a gap based on how things played out.

So we’ve talked a lot about drafting and proper drafting to avoid litigation. What things other than the drafting side of things can people do to make sure that their estate or trust is not litigated?

The biggest one is to communicate, absolutely communicate, um, set proper expectations. Um, if it ends up being a hard conversation, have that hard conversation, you know, don’t put your head in the sand and, uh, after I’m dead, what do I care? I’m dead. And, uh, you know, my family can deal with it. And unfortunately, that leads to some major problems. Um,

But that’s a common answer. That is a common answer. I get, I don’t care, I’ll be gone. And so I’m like, well, we can’t do that. We’ve got to do something, but I get that answer a lot when I’m driving when I’m meeting with Courtney

And if that’s where they’re at, right? It’s like, well, if that’s truly your position, I don’t want to, I would rather avoid it 30-minute hard conversation than spending tens of thousands. And depending on the case and the size of the estate, sometimes hundreds of thousands, especially, you know, if you combine the multiple parties involved in legal fees and stress and drama and the bitterness that will ensue between the family after death, everybody have their priorities. To me, it seems like it’s better, to be honest, and upfront with those involved, have a little bit of an uncomfortable conversation if necessary, but that may save the relationship between the family. Um, there’s a number of situations that I’ve unfortunately seen where the family has fought. If they had just got the money, you know, they’re okay with each other, but then there is no family relationship after, you know, they’ve, they’ve become so emotionally drained and angry at each other that there are rifts, there, sides that people take.

And, um, you know, the family is broken after that, to me, the family’s important. And I think, uh, you know, keeping a family relationship important, uh, it certainly, to me, it’s worth having a difficult conversation. Uh, assuming it’s even difficult, it’s not always difficult. Sometimes you just sit everybody down and say, I love you all. I’m gonna treat you all equal and that’s it. You’re all getting the same amount and the same thing, um, or telling them, say, listen, this person has a greater need or, you know, sorry, you, you’re not really good with money. And so I’m going to hold your money back and someone’s going to manage it for you. But, uh, you know, my other kid over here, he is good with money, so he’s going to get his out. Right. And not sometimes if it goes that way. Um, but yeah, having the communication, uh, going to ensure that a lot avoid litigation, like I said, sometimes that’s excuse people have, and that that’s what they want to do is then plan on the litigation with our good Trusts Attorney Las Vegas.

Yeah. I don’t think people realize the Le the bad legacy they’re going to have by, by leaving something like that. Um, just, you know, another Infor for instances, the one I see a lot is people who have businesses, you know, they usually have one kid who works in the business, um, more than any other. And so, um, you know, if they just leave ownership in the business equally amongst the kids that cause a big rip because the other kids just want the money that comes from, and they’re not working in it. And they don’t, they don’t appreciate it, or the opposite. They leave every, the whole business to the kid. Cause they’re the ones who’ve worked in it and built it. And if you don’t communicate that ahead of time and say, Hey, this is why I’m doing this. And this makes sense for this reason. Um, you know, that there’s going to be big issues with that. I see that a lot with business.

Yeah. And, and here’s one thing that I don’t think enough people take advantage of Nevada law allows for a sense of a pre-death confirmation of the estate plan. Um, you get a state planning package, done, execute everything. If there’s any sort of expectation that there may be a fight, either part of they’re not treated equally, or, you know, whatever reason you, you’ve got a, you know, a kid who just a problem caused her and may, you know, have an issue, whatever it is, unless we’re really sure that things are going to go smooth. And there are plenty that does, right. We bet a lot of war stories because that’s what we practice. And then we see a lot of fights. But what we don’t see in full numbers is how many of the families did it. Right? And everyone got along and things were great and no problems, right?

There’s plenty of those out there. But if there’s any anticipation, Nevada law allows the client to, you know, through the asked the court for a confirmation of their, they plan to ratify it, to interpret it and to confirm all the yeah. Aspects of it. I love that option that people hardly ever take advantage of because if there’s going to be a fight, you’re going to do it in front of mom and dad’s face. And what’s mom and dad going to do, uh, if you’re going to fight and say, no, mom, I actually think I should get more than my sibling. Or I think, you know, you know, whatever their excuse is going to be, what’s mom and dad going to do, they’re going to either lessen their sherries and more they’re going to say, okay, this isn’t my plan. Guess what, Blake, I’m going to come back to you. And this kid right here, I want to disinherit him we are.

You have a complete disincentive to fight against your parents while they’re living. Um, and, and so one of two things is going to happen. You’re going to either get the, uh, nobody coming in, fighting against mom and dad while they’re alive. And there before you get the court order without a hitch confirming everything. And if you get that court order while mom and dad are alive, well, guess what? You can’t fight it after they’re dead. Uh, any sort of issues that may come up as far as, uh, confusion or unanticipated, um, situations, you can ask the court for some instruction, but you don’t get the fight on the underlying, you know, uh, fight because that already happened to her mom dad’s life. And he chose not to fight while they were living, or if you choose to fight while they’re living. Uh, and we had this, once we went and got a pretest confirmation and the daughter came in and said, no, mom, you can’t do that with our awesome Trusts Attorney Las Vegas service.

Well, no, what the court said, the court said, yeah, actually mom can do that. And the second that they were done, mom went back to the estate planner and disinherited her daughter, she was done. And the court said, yup, that’s all good. It’s mom’s asset. It’s mom’s money. You have no right to it really don’t even have an expectation until you know, they’re gone and they leave you in a document. And so if you get that pre-death confirmation, that’s going to solve a lot of problems because they’re either going to be disinherited or there’s not going to be a fight. So I think that’s something that’s rarely used and should be used a lot more often because that’s why they’ll cost them money on the front end. It’s fairly cheap and inexpensive compared to the costs and expenses that are going to be incurred on a fight. Post-death because you don’t have them or dad testify after they’re gone. All you need is one testimony in front of them, your client, if they planning to tell the court, this is what I meant. This is what I want to do.

Yeah, no, that makes a huge difference. Cause yeah, if we have the person there, what, where are your actual intentions? Great. We get that. Sure. This is how we’re going to interpret it then. And yeah, it just makes it a lot easier. Um, it’s so funny how people think they have a right to mom and dad’s a state, especially before they, they actually pass away. I had a client call once and you know, complaining about what mom’s choice was for building this brand new house and putting all this money into, you know, redoing or, you know, putting all the bells and whistles on it. It’s not a great economy. We think that, you know, shouldn’t be spending your money on that house and doing this and then this I’m like, is it your money? No. Okay. Is she competent? Yes. I saw her last week, you know, so you don’t have any rights. So see you later, you know, like you have nothing to complain about. It’s not your money yet. So go away.

If you didn’t agree with mom’s choices, talk to mom about it. And if mom says, I don’t care, that’s your opinion. You’re entitled to your opinion. I’m telling them my opinion. And I like my choice. That’s the end that’s mom’s money.

Yep, exactly. It’s mom’s money. And so that’s why I said that, like, I mean, if you want to keep making this an issue, I can, I can tell her she can take you out. You know, like that’s, that’s the extent of it. I mean, she can, she can do whatever she wants with her money. So, um, I think that’s really great. Um, I had heard about it. I haven’t personally had to do that confirmation of the estate, but yeah, I agree. That’s anything we can get done while they’re living is a great idea. So I appreciate your insight on that with our new Trusts Attorney Las Vegas services.

I think one of the other things that’s helpful is to ensure that your state plan and then other assets that pass outside of an estate plan, coincide a beneficiary designation on investment accounts, a pod payable on death for bank accounts, um, any sort of, uh, life insurance, you know, these type of assets, if done correctly, pass outside of probate or pass outside of the trust because they have a mechanism to get to the ultimate beneficiary without the need of a will or a trust. Um, we want to make sure that the named beneficiary on those coincides with your overall plan in the trust, or will you want to treat all your kids equally and you give them all equally, but then only one kid is on the life insurance. Well, now all of a sudden that kid got an equal share of what passes through the pro you know, the probate or the trust administration.

And then they got the life insurance on top of that, but it wasn’t equal in the end, right. They were equal on the one side and then got, you know, an additional amount. And so that made things unequal. Um, the other part is, is lifetime gifts. And that’s, that can be a big problem. You have some kids they’re often needier than others, and they rely on mom and dad a little bit more. They’re not quite as self-sufficient as maybe other children are. And so the question becomes if you’re treating all the kids equally, but it’s three kids and $300,000 there to split at the end of the day. But one of the kids over the last 10 years or the last year, or whatever time period, you know, received, um, you know, $75,000, well, did that $75,000 count against their share or is that just a gift that doesn’t count against what they’re going to get from mom and dad afterward?

And if that’s the case what’s equal is equal. Whatever I have at the end of the day, it’s split equally or as equal whatever I have in this last period of time in my life. I want it to go to my kids equally. And if one of my kids got some during my life and that counts against their share, and then my other kids are going to get more than, than, uh, then the other one after my death. So how our lifetime gifts to be addressed. And that’s, that’s one thing if it’s spelled out pretty easy to spell it out one way or the other either option is fine, depending on what the client wants just needs to be spelled out.

Yeah. We’ve talked a lot on the litigation side. Let’s talk about the administration side. So somebody passes away and you guys are helping, you know, the executor or the successor trustee you with the administration. What things can clients do before they pass away to help make that administration, you know, as seamless as possible with our Trusts Attorney Las Vegas.

One is to ensure that all the assets are known. One of the problems that we face, our clients come into a thing. I know mom had money, but I just don’t really know where it is. Where can I look? But I don’t have any magic wand or database to look up where mom had their money and their assets, um, that is going to have to be on the family, to track down. So one of the easy things is, if you can have a list of accounts or other assets or ensure that regular statements are saved in a file somewhere, so the children or whoever’s going to handle it have easy access to the information. Um, so if the assets are known and compiled into one place that makes it much more efficient to pick things up after death and proceed forward. Um, I think another important thing is to name a trustee, or if it’s a will a personal representative that you actually trust, um, right there, the root word there is of a trustee is trust.

A lot of times people will just pick somebody who’s convenient. Oh, um, my daughter will do this, um, because she’s good with money and she’d close. Well, that can be a problem. If the daughter is the beneficiary and you’ve got another daughter who has kind of been a problem for many years and had been, you know, living off of mom and dad and the two don’t really get along very well. Well, they’re going to be a high likelihood of, of bias or some sort of resent resentment creeping in, and it’s going to cause them too difficult. So choosing a convenient person may not always be the best choice. Um, not the choosing somebody that’s actually going to comply with the terms of the trust, had many situations where the trustees thought that they knew better are going to do the things their way. And that’s the major problem because when they violate the terms of the trust that inevitably result in litigation, and if they want to dig their heels in, then it can become complicated. And so having somebody that you can trust to not be biased against the beneficiaries and not take sides and favor one over another, and to actually comply with the terms of the trust as laid out, instead of thinking they have their own better ideas is a really big, important key.

Hey, um, yeah, I’ll support all that a hundred percent. Um, you know, documentation is key, you know, make sure you have a current list of your assets. And then I would add, make sure they’re actually titled correctly. So, you know, if you have a house that you owned jointly, but it’s supposed to be your property, you all, it’s not going to go to your estate. It’s going to go to whoever that joint owner is and just inherit people. Or if it’s not in the trust, it won’t go through the trust. So, um, you know how those assets are titled as another important aspect of that with our Trusts Attorney Las Vegas.

Yeah, I would agree. All right. So somebody needs to find, um, a litigation attorney or someone to help with the administration of things when it gets complicated. What, what types of things do they look for in a trusted attorney like yourself? You know, any red flags that they should be aware of,

Once somebody is going to tell you the truth, you want somebody who’s going, to be honest with you regarding your position. And the end results that you’re looking for. There are plenty of attorneys out there who will make the argument that you want to be made because you paid them money. Unfortunately, that’s not always the best strategy that often leads to frustration and wasted money. If the individual’s not standing on solid ground legally, or it’s a bad argument. So you want somebody who’s going to give you a real assessment of your case and give, you know, the good part and the bad parts of your case, the strengths and the weaknesses. And if you’re talking to an attorney and they say, there is no weakness, it’s your kids. Now, this is strength. And you know, just, don’t just grind. It’s a slam dunk. This is great. They’re lying to you or else they’re incompetent and don’t understand the weaknesses that are there.

I don’t really care what case it is. Um, almost every single one of my cases, even cases with facts that I love and clients that were sympathetic. And, uh, you know, I almost knew for sure that there’s no guaranteeing the law until the judge actually rules in your favor, but, uh, almost knew for sure that we were going to win and we ended up winning. Um, there are always weaknesses. Sometimes they’re just a fraction compared to the strength of the case, but there’s always a weakness and you need an attorney who can give you both sides. Um, and you want that attorney to be able to educate you on the law and the process so you can make informed decisions. It’s okay if there are some weaknesses, because the strength may completely outweigh that weakness. So it’s not a big problem. We’re not concerned with it, but you want to be able to understand that so you can make an educated decision.

Um, you want to understand the cost and the time involved, you want to understand what the process is. Um, because sometimes enforcing legal rights, even though you have every right to do so just might not be worth the headache or the distress and the cost that’ll be involved for it. Sometimes you’ll spend more money or more energy than it was worth in getting the final result. Um, and so an attorney who won’t be upfront with you and talk about that now, if you want to proceed on a case like that, that’s fine, but it’s better to do so well, being educated and knowing that that’s the choice you’re making, and you need an attorney frugal, explain that to you because that’s an attorney that you can trust.

Alright, I like it. Um, and I would add if you’re going to do litigation, you want somebody who’s not afraid to, you know, if they can’t tell you the truth to your face, when on their side, they’re not gonna be the one that’s going to be arguing with the judge or, you know, with the other side. So you need, you know, we call them Bulldogs in the industry. You need somebody who’s really going to be aggressive and go after, you know, what your rights are. Um, so don’t, don’t get a timid litigator.

Sure. Right? And you want to get somebody who knows the areas of law that you’re litigating in. Uh, you don’t want my firm in a family law dispute. We don’t know family law. We wouldn’t take a case, but, um, you get, you know, attorneys out there who they may be a bulldog. They may not be afraid at all. Uh, but the problem is there’ll be a bulldog in every single area of the law and mitigation. And you get up against somebody, who’s an expert in one field and you just going to get steamrolled because you don’t know that area of the law and all the nuances, um, the law can get complex and you know, certain areas. And if you don’t know the ins and outs, you’re at a huge disadvantage. So you want somebody who’s not afraid to litigate who is focused on the area of law that you are litigating.

Yeah. And people think, Oh, you’re an attorney. You can do this. And it’s like, no, we all have our specialties. Just like, have doctors have their, their areas that, they specialize in as well. So, um, that’s why I don’t litigate cause I’m not experienced in that. And I, you know, I defer to you on, on those cases and, um, it just, it makes sense. We all have our areas where we can focus and dive in and, and really become those experts. All right. We’ve covered a lot today. Was there any really important piece of information that we missed that you think our listeners need to hear?

Yeah, I don’t think so. I mean, this is a, it can be a complex and a difficult area of the law and it’s very fast by our case, by case situation. So you want to make sure that you have no good legal advice, whether it’s on the planning side and, uh, you know, they get somebody to like you, whether it’s in litigation and they get somebody like us. Um, you know, we’ve talked about in general here and you don’t want to apply any of these to a specific case because it could be faxed that to change the analysis. And so you just want to make sure you get good advice on the, on your specific situation.

That’s a proper disclaimer there. So I like it. Um, Kenny, how can people get ahold of you? Um, if they have questions about their estate that they want to want to talk to you about? Sure. Our phone number is (702) 333-1711, our website www.lkpfirm.com. That stands for Lee Keifer and the park.

All right. And I’ll make sure I put that in the show notes. So listeners can find it. Um, thank you for being on today. Really appreciate all the insights that you brought, um, to the show and to our listeners as always, please like subscribe, um, you know, give us a review, let us know how we’re doing and reach out if you have any questions or topics that you think we need to cover. So with that, um, we’ll go ahead and end the show today. Thank you again, Kenney, for joining us. Thank you.