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 story of a 42 year old man that died in a freak accident at a work party and didn’t have a will or a trust set up.
Are most of your clients referrals?
95% of Jenny’s clients are referred from other attorneys and financial planners.
Do you get a lot of title issues?
Title issues are fairly common, Jenny gets a fair number of cases where they are trying to prove a piece of property is community property or individually owned. It’s important to make sure that a property is first converted to community property before placing it in a trust.
It’s very important to know who all the heirs are before taking on a case. Sometimes, there can be an entire side of family that gets forgotten about until someone passes away.
A common case is where the parents pass away and one of the children wants to buy the house. Prop 13 rules can make that pretty complicated.
Do you have a specific way of looking at new cases?
When it comes to probate cases, Jenny wants to know the client first and what they want from the case. She also likes to get to know the family and dig into the titles and probate estate before taking the case. Jenny is very happy to refer cases that involve tension between family members.
Practicing probate law is like dermatology in medicine, it doesn’t usually involve emergency cases.
What gets you up on a Monday morning?
You might have a tough week, but for every tough case there are a number of cases that bring you joy and satisfaction that make up for it.
Links To Resources Mentioned
408-256-0473
svestateplanning.com
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