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Estate Planning Before You Need It with Christopher Zeh- The Mic Hamptons Podcast · Mic Hamptons Podcast: Hamptons Real Estate & the People Behind It

• 0:00
  Mike Petersohn: Hi, I'm Mike Peterson from Brown Harris Stevens. The Hamptons runs on relationships and over the years, I've built a network of top tier professionals who operate at the highest level. Mike Hamptons is your access point to that world, the people, the insights, and the opportunities behind it all.
• 0:25
  Mike Petersohn: Hi, welcome to another episode of the Mike Hamptons Podcast powered by the hngli.com networking group, a Hamptons networking group. We are approximately 34 individuals. We all work together to help each other out. It's a networking group. It's a variety of folks in the group, anything from smart home systems design.
• 0:44
  We have attorneys. We've got plumbers, electricians, as I always say. On the real estate seat, I'm with Brown Harris Stevens. And with me today, I've got Christopher Zee. Welcome on board.
• 0:56
  Christopher Zeh: Thank you for having me, Mike.
• 0:58
  Mike Petersohn: So this is the newest affiliate of Brown Harris Stevens. So I'm learning everything new and fresh today just to be really clear. So if I stumble a little bit, it's because I'm just getting to know you. It's all good. So you are a trust and estates attorney?
• 1:14
  Christopher Zeh: That I am, yes. I've been practicing for twenty six years. My office is located in Melville, New York.
• 1:22
  Mike Petersohn: He started when he was 12?
• 1:25
  Christopher Zeh: Yes, I actually graduated law school in 1999, went to St. John's, proud Johnny, and yeah, and that's I have an interesting background, and people always ask me how I got into trust in the States because my first internship in law school was at a criminal defense firm, so I got a lot of trial experience there. I thought I was going to be the next Johnny Cochran, and that didn't quite work out the way I thought it was going to be. So we went into Trust and Estates through some personal things that I went through at the time, and it kind of took off
• 2:06
  Mike Petersohn: from there. I guess the first one, when I think about what you do, without naming names, what are the most common mistakes that families of means
• 2:17
  Christopher Zeh: make? I find the most common mistakes that really anyone makes, whether they have means or they don't have means, is they don't have a plan in place. So for example, if an individual dies with a will or without a will, their estate has to go through the probate process or the administration proceeding through the surrogates court of the county in which they live in, that often becomes a very expensive process. It's a very time consuming process, and I always tell clients that if you have a will, you do not have an estate plan. So that is a very common mistake that people fall into.
• 2:56
  Sometimes people get wills from, you know, a union prepaid legal services plan, and they think they're fine, but in my opinion, and it's probably shared amongst a lot of people in my industry, is that, you know, that's really just the recipe for about a 15,000 to $20,000 legal bill at the end of the day, where there's just other ways to set up more of a plan that, you know, the people, you get your access to your assets faster and everything moves a lot quicker, and it's a lot cheaper to do it that way as well if you have a trust or something like that set up. Got it.
• 3:37
  Mike Petersohn: So when you die without a will in New York, that's when the situation just bogs down?
• 3:43
  Christopher Zeh: You know, what happens if you die without a will in New York, you have to start what's called an administration proceeding. That also goes to the surrogate's court. Everything is public record. In terms of a trust, everything remains private. It's expensive to file the proceeding.
• 4:03
  You have to hire an attorney. Where people can navigate the surrogates court and all the rules and laws by themselves. So again, really the people that don't plan run into the biggest problems because we see those in our offices. You know, the hairiest cases or the ones that are the most difficult to kind of unwind are the people that didn't plan properly, and there's people fighting, there's people coming out of the woodworks to contest things, there's creditors looking to get their hands on the assets of the estate as well. So anytime that again, you bet you don't plan, expose yourself to something like that.
• 4:46
  Mike Petersohn: Got it. So I was thinking about this. How often so I go through the process and I utilize your services. How often do I need to update? Well, you know, you should really update it.
• 5:00
  Christopher Zeh: We provide an annual review of everything. If there's a life occurrence, you get divorced, you have another child, a child predeceases the parents, Like certain things like that, it should be looked at again to update the documents, possibly change beneficiaries. The laws are always changing too, so you want to stay ahead of that curve as well.
• 5:27
  Mike Petersohn: Okay. That makes sense. So are there special estate planning considerations for Hamptons homeowners?
• 5:39
  Christopher Zeh: Yeah, I mean, for Hamptons homeowners, you know, the property values, I'm sure, are pretty high out here. As we all know, anyone who lives on Long Island or probably in The United States knows the property values out here, so you definitely want to protect your home from having to go through the probate process. Again, it transfers a lot easier vis a vis a trust or some form of a trust. There's also ways that higher income families or individuals can set up different trusts to kind of defer taxes. We work with CPAs.
• 6:17
  We work with financial advisors. You know, we collaborate with everybody. So it's really like a team approach when it comes to somebody, you know, with a little bit of higher net worth individual.
• 6:27
  Mike Petersohn: So a lot of these are vacation homes, second homes, sometimes third, fourth homes. But is there anything that's different about that in the process?
• 6:38
  Christopher Zeh: Not specifically. I mean, if it's a second home or a third home or a vacation home, you probably still want to put it into some estate tool like a trust, just so, again, you know, a lot of the reasons why you put something in a trust is to it's a probate avoidance strategy. So in order to go through that, you know, it's better off having it into a trust or possibly putting, you know, a vacation home or something into, you know, an LLC that can be, you know, moved over into the trust as well. So does that answer your question?
• 7:16
  Mike Petersohn: Yeah, I think so. Again, it's all learning for me as much as you can without giving up names and whatnot. But he shared a story where good planning saved a family an enormous amount of stress stroke money. Is that like something?
• 7:32
  Christopher Zeh: Yeah. I mean, it normally Mike, I got to be honest with you. It normally saves any time that they have a good plan in place. You know, we say that, you know, our motto is we give people peace of mind. So they come in, you know, these are very sometimes difficult conversations to have because you're dealing with mortality, you're dealing with, you know, family, you're dealing with money.
• 7:51
  And a lot of times that all those issues, when they come about, it's a little bit stressful to talk about. So anytime we put a plan together, it's going to, you know, it's going to benefit the it's going give the people that created the trust, you know, to save parents peace of mind that, you know, once they pass away, that everything is kind of they have a roadmap and a game plan as to everything that's going to happen with respect to their assets. That's you know, without getting into specific case studies, it's usually, like I had mentioned before, it's the people that don't plan properly or at all that really run into the problems. The people that plan, they walk out of our office, they have all their documents, we give them a secure link so they can download everything that they need. And a lot of times, it's transactional.
• 8:41
  I mean, we do updates on the trust, like we talked about before. But it's mostly once they put the plan in place, you know, rarely do we ever need to do anything else, again, but for those specifics that we talked about before with life event changes and things like that.
• 9:00
  Mike Petersohn: I was recently approached by a gentleman I'm engaged with who's got multiple businesses, multiple personal properties, been out here forever. He's getting older. I hate to say aging out, but he knows he's got less time left than he had before. And he's trying to figure out and the strategy around his family, said, Well, don't you want everybody to just inherit everything? He said, I don't think that they all are going to they don't seem to get along enough.
• 9:30
  So we might need to come up with an evaluation for this whole thing.
• 9:36
  Christopher Zeh: A common theme that we see, you know, that people that come into our office. So, you know, some children might have and these could be adult children as well. They might have an issue with gambling or with an issue with drugs, and that have to be addressed within the trust, which sometimes there'll be a trust within the trust so that those people can still, you know, get what their benefit and their distribution, but it'll just have to be monitored a little bit better. And as far as the business goes, usually, you know, that's done through a lot of business succession planning as well. So, you know, which kind of works hand in hand.
• 10:13
  So I don't know how his business is constructed, but that's probably something he would want to look into.
• 10:19
  Mike Petersohn: Good advice. May have to pass him on to you. I guess, are there again, this may seem basic to you, but I'm trying to think for the audience, what do they want to hear? Like, what documents should every adult have
• 10:33
  Christopher Zeh: immediately? So in my opinion, every adult who is married, owns a home, should have at least a living trust, which is a living trust and a revocable trust are kind of synonymous. If it's a young family, they just bought a house, maybe they have two young kids, it kind of outlines what happens with the kids should they both God forbid they both pass away. It outlines what happens if one passes away and the other doesn't. You could appoint a guardian for the children vis a vis that trust, like I gave the example, if something happens to both of them, God forbid.
• 11:11
  So that's what I would recommend for basically anybody, and then again, it's also the tool that avoids the probate process because when someone passes away, emotions are high, people don't know what to do, and if you don't have things in order, or you don't have things planned out, we so see a lot of scrambling that's being done. Sometimes people make poor decisions, and that is only going to lead to more and more problems down the road. I mean, it's better for the probateadministration attorney, but if you have the proper plan, you really don't ever have to get to that point.
• 11:47
  Mike Petersohn: I got it. So you touched on this earlier. I was thinking about, you know, in your offices, you you work with your partners, your attorneys. I know that you speak very highly of the people that you work with. I think you made mention for reviewing my notes that you can't do what you do without your staff?
• 12:10
  Christopher Zeh: Yeah, I mean, my staff is like the lifeblood of my company. If they're experienced, they're friendly, they have my back, I have theirs. I don't run it where I'm like barking out orders at people. I mean, it's more of we're a team. We're not just, you know, I'm the boss and you're the employee because in my opinion, it doesn't work.
• 12:36
  Maybe in other firms or other businesses, that's a better approach, but I haven't found that to be effective, and that's why I do it the way we do it. We try to keep it collegial, and I find that most, I get a lot more out of the staff like that because they know that I'm there for them, and likewise, they're there for me.
• 13:01
  Mike Petersohn: Expanding out from your existing, you know, your core, so I'm assuming you liaise with a number of folks, accountants, realtors, financial advisors, insurance, other attorneys?
• 13:18
  Christopher Zeh: So we deal with a lot of financial advisors because, again, like financial advisors, insurance professionals, they're all in like the planning business as well, right? So, as part of the plan, you might want to have, you know, for insurance, you might want to have long term care insurance, know, so you have to go into a home, or you need an aide to come to the house, you have the insurance there. With a financial advisor, you want to have your documents all set in place, so if something happens to the person that passed away, you know, they have their financial documents in place, they have their estate documents in place, and everything, again, is, you know, the people have peace of mind that, God forbid something happens, because we all know it will, you know, death and taxes, you know, and you have everything, everything's in order, and it's going to make it a lot easier for the surviving [Dr.
• 14:15
  Mike Petersohn: Spouse and the surviving children. It's the inevitable.
• 14:19
  Mike Petersohn: I mentioned to you right before we got going that my wife owns a home care agency, and I'm trying to plug her too much here, but Affirmed Home Care, and we've got about 500 clients.
• 14:30
  Christopher Zeh: Yeah, very reputable.
• 14:31
  Mike Petersohn: So they're covering everything, but those are, you know, she's always talking about the yous of the world.
• 14:40
  Christopher Zeh: What was that?
• 14:42
  Mike Petersohn: The yous, dealing with elder care law, dealing trust in estates. She's always dealing with all these end of life, largely end of life scenarios. Sometimes there's people recovering from, you know, a variety of things, but it's like crushingly important that they have relationships with
• 14:59
  Christopher Zeh: folks like you. Yes, it is. We network a lot with people in that industry as well, so it's, again, know, she could probably repeat a bunch of the stuff that I just said about the importance of having these directives in place.
• 15:14
  Mike Petersohn: Switching gears again, I always try to like, you know, at Hamptons who knew segment, oh my God. You have have you ever dealt with a property or an estate in Hamptons, like, with a crazy detailed history behind it? And again, as best as you can talk about.
• 15:31
  Christopher Zeh: I mean, not so much crazy history, but, you know, obviously with people that have either second homes or live out here, you know, full time, we've dealt with clients with that. Just with more of the planning things because, you know, they're the ones that seem to be more in tune with the financial advisors and the insurance professionals. So, you know, like we were talking about a few seconds ago, you want to have everything in place. So in that regard, we've dealt with, you know, Hamptons homeowners, Hamptons residents, but nothing too crazy. There are some crazy stories out there.
• 16:13
  Yeah, mean, there's a lot of crazy stories, and, you know, we could probably sit here for, you know, a while discussing them, but again, those are the ones that, you know, they end up in court and litigating, and, you know, I had a case a while ago that people were fighting over, you know, who gets the door knocker on the person's home. It's like, it just gets so crazy, and, you know, it's just it's just it's draining the corpus of the estate. It's draining the money. It's draining the distribution, but everybody's so at odds, they don't even care. So it gets a little brutal and very adversarial, but again, in those situations, the only people that are making money are the, you know, the attorneys on your side.
• 17:01
  Mike Petersohn: We're going to be running out of time shortly, but I wanted to get a quick speed round and keep you on your toes here. Sure. Are handwritten wills valid?
• 17:14
  Christopher Zeh: No. Well, it depends. I mean, it has to be witnessed. It has to be properly acknowledged. There has to be an attesting affidavit.
• 17:23
  They're not invalid, but they have to be properly done.
• 17:26
  Mike Petersohn: Can trusts protect assets from lawsuits? It depends what type
• 17:30
  Christopher Zeh: of trust, but usually, no. Okay.
• 17:35
  Mike Petersohn: Let's see. This is a good one. Should parents tell children what they're inheriting?
• 17:43
  Christopher Zeh: That is a good one. I mean, you know, in my personal opinion, I don't think so. But, you know, we leave that decision up to the client themselves. You know, if they There's no right or wrong answer. Yeah, it's my personal opinion.
• 18:02
  You know, I have two children, 22 and 19, and, you know, I have a plan in place, so they don't know anything about it. It.
• 18:13
  Mike Petersohn: Something that unmarried couples should know?
• 18:16
  Christopher Zeh: Unmarried couples, as far as their estate goes, they are not entitled to anything. If they're a fiance, if they've been living together for twenty five years, if they're not married, they have no claim to the other person's property whatsoever. Interesting.
• 18:38
  Mike Petersohn: My last one in the speed round is, how do second marriages complicate estate planning?
• 18:43
  Christopher Zeh: Most of the time we see with second marriages is issues with children from the first marriage, so it may complicate it a little bit with that, but it is, again, if it's a husband and wife from a second marriage, you know, and they have three each have three kids from prior marriages, it can usually be worked out. So the only thing that complicates it that we've seen is, again, if the kids don't agree or the kids don't like the new wife or the new husbands, you know, that could put it doesn't complicate it so much. It just puts it into an area where there could be some animosity based upon how mom or dad want to distribute their assets.
• 19:31
  Mike Petersohn: Cool. All right. Well, I'm going to say thank you very much for coming in today.
• 19:36
  Christopher Zeh: Thank you for having me, Mike.
• 19:37
  Mike Petersohn: Absolutely, my pleasure, truly. Could you please let folks know where they can get in contact with you?
• 19:43
  Christopher Zeh: Yeah. So, you can find us online at www.zehassociates.com. It has all of our information on there. You can find us on LinkedIn, and you give us a call. We'll give you a free consultation.
• 20:00
  We provide home visits, we come to nursing homes, so we really take a hands on approach with our clients and potential clients. Nice to hear. Good stuff.
• 20:11
  Mike Petersohn: So on that note, thank you again for tuning into another episode of the Mike Hamptons Podcast. This is powered by the hngli.com or the Hamptons Networking Group, and a special shout out to Flying Point Studios for having us. Always greatly appreciated. This is where deals get done. So if you ever have a problem question and you need advice of an expert, please reach out.
• 20:36
  I know a guy. We'll see you on the next one. Thank you.
• 20:40
  Mike Petersohn: Hey, this is Michael. Thanks for listening to Mike Hamptons, powered by the Hamptons Networking Group, where the right people make the right things happen. If you're planning anything in The Hamptons, buying, selling, building, hosting, or investing, don't do it alone. Tap into our network of vetted top tier service providers who get things done at the highest level. And if real estate is part of your plan, I bring deep knowledge, strong network, and a track record of getting deals done the right way.
• 21:12
  Reach out anytime. We'll see you on the next one. You can call, text, or DM me right now or visit my website connected. I work with a tight network, and the best deals go to the people who move first. Don't forget to subscribe.
• 21:26
  I'll see you on the next deal. Keep making moves.