Latest / Your Estate Matters / Episode 38 - How Cultural Traditions Shape Estate Planning with Perminder Tung

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Episode 38 - How Cultural Traditions Shape Estate Planning with Perminder Tung · Your Estate Matters

0:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, and welcome to your estate matters with your hosts, my colleague Greg Bernand, and myself Nicole Garton of Heritage Trust.
0:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Your estate matters is a podcast dedicated to everything a state, including building and preserving your legacy.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's a state related, we'll be talking about it.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We're having the conversations today that will help Canadians protect their families, their assets, and their legacies tomorrow.
0:34
[SPEAKER_00]: With us today in your estate matters is Priminder Tong, a partner at Lindsay Kenny LLP and the co-leader of the estate planning and litigation practice group at LK Law.
0:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Priminder assists beneficiaries who have been disinherited are unfairly treated in relation to the distribution of a family estate.
0:51
[SPEAKER_00]: These claims can be emotional and difficult as they often evolve at beneficiary feeling they have not been treated fairly, or that the executor is not fulfilling their duties and responsibilities.
1:01
[SPEAKER_00]: These are delicate issues for families.
1:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Permanors goal is to assist families with a resolution while avoiding costly court conflicts.
1:09
[SPEAKER_00]: If the case must go to court, Praminder and his team in L. K. Law are skilled litigators for prepared to advance your rights.
1:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Praminder is a passionate about this area of law and is a regular contributor to presentations and online content to educate the public.
1:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Praminder, thank you so much for being with us today on your estate matters.
1:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, thank you for having me.
1:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell us about yourself and how you have arrived at your role as a senior partner with Lindsay Kenny.
1:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, yeah.
1:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Depending on how far we want to go back, I went to law school and a dual program where I've taken an American law degree and a Canadian law degree and a three year intensive program.
1:49
[SPEAKER_02]: The goal was to become a corporate lawyer in New York.
1:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I worked in my first summer.
1:54
[SPEAKER_02]: in the States and started to really miss home, which is Vancouver.
1:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I got a position at a large firm in Vancouver for a second year in Articleing.
2:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was the financial crisis of O-A-D-O-Nine, markets crashing, and corporate solicitor were seemed to be dying at that time, or positions weren't really available.
2:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And I reached out to Lindsey Kenny L. K. Law for a position in their litigation department, and from then building out a litigation career.
2:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Minder, how do you have different cultural traditions around inheritance and family dynamics impact state planning?
2:28
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a really good question.
2:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll first start by saying, I went into this area of law, meaning a state litigation out of sheer interest in a connection to my community.
2:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So my community as I'm a Punjabi Sikh and we have a large or South Asian community, we have a large South Asian community in the Fraser Valley and in British Columbia.
2:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And there were interesting things that I saw growing up, and we have this law, a Wessa, that basically provides a sword or creates an opportunity for women that have been disinherited to challenge their estate.
3:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So as my career was growing, and I saw people marketing in this area,
3:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I started to really understand the connection to my community, right?
3:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And the stories that of people that were coming in, and I was having consultations with them, I started to say to myself, wow, this is really happening out there.
3:18
[SPEAKER_02]: The community is holding on to some old world traditions, and BC law conflicts with those traditions, and these people don't know.
3:26
[SPEAKER_02]: The community doesn't know their rights, women don't know their rights, the people doing the planning,
3:31
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a conflict with what goals they're trying to achieve in their estate.
3:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So I started to look deeper into this and started to create content and educate the community on the issues.
3:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell us a little bit about that culture.
3:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what are the inheritance customs?
3:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
3:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things I started to see was that some families would attempt to leave their daughters out of their inheritance and provide a full estate, their full real estate portfolios or their businesses to their sons.
4:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So they were preferring boys over girls when they're related to their estate.
4:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And also does the dynamic change because we know there's a multi-generational living in the community.
4:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So often from what I've seen from a states I've administered, there might have been a parent that's favoring, as you say, a perhaps an older son.
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And the real properties are inter-owned and getting loaned.
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's the death of the matriarch or patriarchy.
4:32
[SPEAKER_01]: and the family just all of a sudden because you have spouses involved to get it gets into some big arguments about what was intended and what it looks like currently.
4:42
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
4:43
[SPEAKER_02]: You know intellectually I couldn't help myself but want to dig deeper into the history to find a why do they do this.
4:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Where does this come from?
4:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I'm a Canadian born boy.
4:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I just have a brother.
4:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So we don't really have that issue in our own household.
4:57
[SPEAKER_02]: But speaking to relatives hearing the stories or T from my mom and then as a lawyer hearing the folks come in with their complaints and seeking consultations about their rights, I couldn't help myself but want a dig deeper into the history.
5:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So as you might know, there's a large South Asian Punjabi Sikh community in Canada.
5:16
[SPEAKER_02]: The two major cities seem to be in the Fraser Valley, so Surrey Abbotsford, and an Ontario Brampton, Mississauga.
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: These are significant communities, a million plus populations in both cities and regions.
5:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So
5:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I talked to my father and asked him about these things.
5:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, look, back home in India, a lot of the Punjabi Sea community comes from Punjab.
5:40
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a state, right?
5:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Northern India.
5:43
[SPEAKER_02]: In that state, it's kind of like the bread basket of India.
5:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And by that, a lot of them are farmers.
5:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So you might think right now, oh, yeah, that's making sense because you heard about those large farmers protests that were happening in the some years ago.
5:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Huge influential community, even in India.
6:02
[SPEAKER_02]: What happens in farming communities?
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my father explained to me in this makes sense.
6:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You would be raising your family, you hone the farm, the farm provides for multi-generational living and wealth to families.
6:13
[SPEAKER_02]: When it's time to marry off your children,
6:16
[SPEAKER_02]: you'd be looking to marry your daughter off to hopefully another family with a farm, right?
6:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what would happen if they were in Punjab.
6:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And if that a farm that I've land, land provided security for your daughter.
6:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And the relationship was you were being married off to a family that already has a farm.
6:33
[SPEAKER_02]: That'll become part of your estate line, your children, right?
6:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm starting to think about times of feudal Europe as well, right?
6:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't study feudal European history, but you would try to set your family up and, you know,
6:46
[SPEAKER_02]: the state would be the farm, the land, you would try to keep it within the male line.
6:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And those traditions as those communities from Punjab India made their way into Canada, those traditions seem to follow here.
6:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And they would come into conflict.
7:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And now the interesting thing is
7:03
[SPEAKER_02]: My parents immigrated in the seventies.
7:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a child of the early eighties, and we're not farmers, right?
7:09
[SPEAKER_02]: My father was in a farmer.
7:11
[SPEAKER_02]: My mom was a maid.
7:12
[SPEAKER_02]: My dad was a courier.
7:13
[SPEAKER_02]: We knew farming communities here, and I guess the first generational professional, right, child.
7:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So I didn't really see these things myself.
7:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
7:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And some people who are not farmers, I make this point to say some people who are not farmers, still carried on some of those beliefs because it came from back home.
7:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So you may have to be dealing with a business owner like a tile company, a manufacturing company, they don't farm.
7:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But because of those beliefs that they had back home in India, and they may have one son, two daughters, they still carry on those traditions, even though it's not related to the farm.
7:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
7:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I would reflect that the European standard was second sons got nothing.
7:55
[SPEAKER_01]: The all eldest got the firm and that's why they often immigrated because they were going to be an employee for their brother.
8:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
8:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know, USA and Canada looked pretty good.
8:04
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
8:05
[SPEAKER_01]: When they were immigrating.
8:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So I understand South Asian families do have significant agricultural interests though, like I understand blueberry and cranberry farms, and they often generate quite significant wealth.
8:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Do those traditions, are they continuing with even Canadian or in seek farmers?
8:24
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really interesting.
8:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So what I'm seeing as in the last three, four years where part of my practice, I started with an approach of educating the community.
8:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was putting out a lot of video content showing the hypocrisy of some of these things that the community was doing to start the conversation.
8:40
[SPEAKER_02]: But wasn't traditional legal marketing and the way people might think where, you know, a few of us standing there in a suit with the words a state litigation underneath, right?
8:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It was storytelling of the things that our community is doing.
8:53
[SPEAKER_02]: That is unfair, prejudicial, not the way you want to raise your daughters, right?
8:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I love so many of these stories, right?
9:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I would get the phone calls.
9:05
[SPEAKER_02]: of a forty-fifty-year-old professional self-Asian female saying, I'm successful.
9:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't need the money from my family.
9:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm being told my parents are leaving me out of my state.
9:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, of my parents' state.
9:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I have one brother.
9:18
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been equal in terms of the way we've treated our parents.
9:21
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, my parents rely on me more for medical appointments and everything than they do.
9:26
[SPEAKER_02]: My brother's not really great to them.
9:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm being left out.
9:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And so she would tell me these stories of growing up in a home where it was almost like they were grooming her for not challenging the estate, giving better meat and better food to her brother and not preferring her for even education.
9:45
[SPEAKER_02]: She paid for a lot of her own education.
9:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Being seen as a little bit of a liability rather than asset.
9:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So these stories, they're so interesting, right?
9:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It goes deeper than just the inheritance.
9:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the feelings that I started to have was that, and I have a daughter, right, is that in this professional female would say to me, if I'm in a board room with a bunch of men, I feel inferior, and that comes from a place of me being a child, being taught these things, right, or maybe not outright, but, you know, through inference, right, and her perception.
10:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's complicated, it's interesting intellectually as well.
10:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got so many other stories I can tell you about the kind of things that I've seen in other communities and ours as well, like adoption.
10:28
[SPEAKER_02]: That's another interesting, adoption of convenience.
10:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell me about that.
10:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, so another example of so Westa, right, is the act that we're talking about and the people that have rights first, the spouse, second children.
10:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, children can include adopted children.
10:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course it can, right?
10:51
[SPEAKER_02]: The self-Asian community, one of the things that I've noticed that they would do or did do, especially during the seventies and eighties, it is still kind of happens now, is let me give you an example.
11:01
[SPEAKER_02]: So for a person who immigrates to Canada, they're setting up their life.
11:06
[SPEAKER_02]: They may have left brothers or sisters back home in India.
11:09
[SPEAKER_02]: They'd get a phone call from their sibling and India who has multiple children.
11:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll say, how are things in Canada?
11:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And the person would say great.
11:16
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much opportunity.
11:17
[SPEAKER_02]: It's exactly what they said it is, right?
11:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Land of opportunity.
11:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And they say, look, I've got three kids.
11:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you take one of my children?
11:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you adopt one of my children so that we can set a seed in Canada?
11:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
11:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And examples would be, in this one, male or female didn't really matter.
11:33
[SPEAKER_02]: People would adopt whoever the scenario required them to ask for that, you have to let it option.
11:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So the family would take on a family member, right?
11:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Usually a first sibling, right?
11:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Children.
11:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So they would come to Canada.
11:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It was really what I, the word that I use is an adoption of convenience, right?
11:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Meaning it's not that you're, you're actually adopting for them to become your own child.
11:57
[SPEAKER_02]: You're doing it as a favor for your sibling in India so that you can get the immigration status, right?
12:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And then start their line in this country.
12:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And so many families have come to Canada this way.
12:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So that person sets their themselves up in their twenties.
12:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we'll sponsor their family to come arrive in Canada, much of the South Asian community success has come that way.
12:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so interesting.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea.
12:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so this is one that I haven't created a ton of content about yet because it is very controversial, meaning
12:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's where the controversy comes.
12:29
[SPEAKER_02]: First off, that person who gets adopted into the house in Canada might help them a lot with things, might have worked on a farm, kind of trying to pay them back for the favor that they're doing.
12:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And they may have contributed to the growth of their asset, either the farmer or a business, right?
12:46
[SPEAKER_02]: As a way of, let's say, an equal trade off.
12:48
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't speak in those ways in those households, but let's just say, from a legal analysis, right?
12:53
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's what one says.
12:57
[SPEAKER_02]: they successfully get independent sponsor their family, they come here.
13:01
[SPEAKER_02]: In some ways, this case could be one if that adopted child makes a claim that they're disinherited from the Canadian families estate.
13:09
[SPEAKER_02]: They might double recover, right?
13:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Because they'll still likely, and I watch and witness them pursue their actual real families estate in India as well.
13:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I've been thinking about it when this case comes, there's absolutely going to be a double, it's kind of tort analysis of a double recovery.
13:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wonder how that would go because we do know our BC courts kind of bend over backwards for the disinherit to child to achieve fairness, right?
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in typically, when we talked about adopted, there's sort of two sides of adopted, adopted in to the new family.
13:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually, severes you for inheritance purposes from the old family.
13:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I think California is an exception.
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got some weird rules.
13:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But in Canada, that would be, case unless you could still put them in your will, and it would be valid, but on an entestacy, an adopted outchild would not typically inherit.
14:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
14:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So, that is unique.
14:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So, does the female child get a dowry?
14:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Great question.
14:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So Dary is one that as a tradition has followed from India here, but less and less.
14:13
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't season them so much in the modern marriages.
14:16
[SPEAKER_02]: But while I was growing up the eighties and the nineties, you would see it happen.
14:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You'd see a gift of cars, some jewelry, that kind of stuff.
14:23
[SPEAKER_02]: People were even openly demanding it.
14:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So the male side during the wedding would say, what are you going to give with your daughter, right?
14:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Then really happen to my marriage.
14:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Not something that really comes up.
14:32
[SPEAKER_02]: They'll do it out of the goodness of their hearts.
14:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Some things, but most of the male sides are demanding at these days.
14:37
[SPEAKER_02]: That's something you see less and less of now.
14:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So the wedding's with.
14:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've hundred even a thousand people are those still common.
14:45
[SPEAKER_02]: They are.
14:45
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's interesting is I thought during COVID, because all of that went to the wayside, I thought, okay, this will be a reset with the big South Asian wedding.
14:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think people are going to want to spend that kind of money anymore.
14:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And they realize that they can have limited gatherings and they can be squainted nice and sweet.
15:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And those things, it's come back with vengeance.
15:04
[SPEAKER_02]: They're doing the bigger and better than they did.
15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're often like multi-day affairs.
15:09
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
15:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're ceremonial.
15:11
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right, leading up to the ultimate wedding.
15:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not just the South Asian communities.
15:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see other cultures with similar ideas?
15:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely.
15:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've got a number of cases and consultations that I've had with different ethnic communities, right?
15:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So the Asian community, I've seen in the Dutch community, it's often just the preferring the male line, which is intellectually something I want to study and understand better as well.
15:39
[SPEAKER_02]: We can kind of assume where it probably comes from.
15:41
[SPEAKER_02]: There's also just the preference over one child over the other.
15:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So we see sort of the black sheep child, the drug-addicted child, which happens in all communities where these Wesa claims come up right where you're preferring one child over the other who helped you more in your older years versus one that may not have done anything, right?
15:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very interesting area that'll all vary.
16:02
[SPEAKER_02]: back dependent, a lot of storytelling.
16:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And when it's something that happens over so many, so many years, right, pulling in witnesses becomes really, really important and telling that story.
16:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
16:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And is there an issue?
16:17
[SPEAKER_01]: especially with the original immigrants of just the literacy of understanding what the document is, what it means.
16:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we were approached last year to help a mother out that had been cut out by several children over the years, but she couldn't read a writing list.
16:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And we said, well, and the assets were already dissipated.
16:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And we just saw it while this is really
16:40
[SPEAKER_01]: a tragedy, but we just, there's nothing to help pursue the claim.
16:45
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
16:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, other than the conscience of the children, really.
16:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, you're making me think about a recent case involving a Filipino community, which made me think a lot about elder abuse, right?
16:56
[SPEAKER_02]: In this scenario, that's one where the children, one child in particular, was sort of really draining the mom's assets while she was alive using her first sort of child care with their own children and using them as like a care taker and
17:10
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they're a minimal understanding of the English language and all of the transfer of a state's gifting of various things and appointments to notaries, right, without independent legal advice, all that kind of stuff, right?
17:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've seen a number of interest in cases in the Iranian community and there's the other layer of sharia law often and assets in Iran and assets here.
17:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you seen that as well?
17:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't have much experience with those.
17:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you speak about that a little bit?
17:39
[SPEAKER_02]: What would you say?
17:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have significant percentage of clients that were primarily on the North Shore.
17:46
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a similar overlay.
17:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they do have a their equivalent of a dowry.
17:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got a particular name which is skipping me right now, but certainly there are different rights for women versus men around property and things like that.
18:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, I think with a lot of those cultures coming from there too, because they had to leave so quickly.
18:07
[SPEAKER_01]: In some cases, you know, the assets weren't documented necessarily how they came in and who owned them.
18:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And old arguments come back in these cases, which is a bit of a shame.
18:19
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things I just thought about was, you know, one of the, there's not so recent anymore.
18:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, I think, a twenty-nineteen decision, graywall and lit was sort of a Richmond family, a couple male children, few female children.
18:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, another one of these interesting things that happened in particular in that case was the female children while they were getting their education and going through high school and wanting to go to university.
18:44
[SPEAKER_02]: They wanted to pursue these things to advance themselves, but their father would often say, I need you at the farm, right?
18:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's another classic farm situation, right?
18:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I need you at the farm, especially during the seasonal picking and seasonal work, right?
18:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what would happen is these
19:02
[SPEAKER_02]: These female children would sacrifice their own education, which is their capital asset, their individual capital asset for future earnings and the like to be independent for the sake of the family.
19:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the families assets, the farm, in this case, I think they leveraged
19:20
[SPEAKER_02]: first farm to second to third, which grew a substantial estate, right?
19:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And the beneficiaries of that were the two sons.
19:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And the court had to analyze why this wassa and this analytical framework is so important, right, with the preferential treatment of
19:37
[SPEAKER_02]: always over girls because then you can see what happens.
19:41
[SPEAKER_02]: The court talked about in that case.
19:42
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the women had been life ended up in a terrible marriage divorced without her own capital asset, right, of her education to go work.
19:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And then she kind of ended up in poverty.
19:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
19:54
[SPEAKER_02]: That's such a perfect example of why this is wrong.
19:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
19:58
[SPEAKER_02]: That case when I really dug into those facts, that was really when it hit home about what the community was doing and where their beliefs, though, you know, held true fully and maybe they felt honestly, right?
20:11
[SPEAKER_02]: The impact it has on other people, right?
20:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about that.
20:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So your reference was says, so there will be states in succession of acts.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have section six.
20:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to tell our listeners what that says?
20:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
20:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So when it comes to the true legal terminology, the thing I like to bring home for people is that the court leaves us with the impression that they will be analyzing things to tell us.
20:36
[SPEAKER_02]: As parents, we have a moral and ethical obligation to provide for our children.
20:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And what's interesting is some people often think that it's, you have to provide to them equally.
20:45
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not necessarily what the court is saying.
20:47
[SPEAKER_02]: It opens up a whole analytical framework for the court to look at many different things, right?
20:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And in a state planning where I did a deep dive recently on this was that people often thought that if you and practitioners, if you
21:02
[SPEAKER_02]: If you try to deal with the estate outside of probate, so things like insurance policies with designated beneficiaries or joint tendency with the right of survivor, things that would transfer outside of probate that you somehow are protecting those from wills variation claims.
21:18
[SPEAKER_02]: The court will still look at the assets that fall into probate to try to make that balancing act of what happened outside and what happened inside.
21:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the beauty of this legislation and the court's analyzing the act.
21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So what about discriminatory autonomy, though, and honoring the wishes of the deceased?
21:36
[SPEAKER_00]: How does the court reconcile that with the, I guess, cultural norms of our society, a set-up and legislation?
21:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, while I was driving here, I was really thinking about testamentary autonomy.
21:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought, if you asked the question of how do I feel about Wesa, right, and testamentary autonomy, how do you reconcile as a lawyer when
22:01
[SPEAKER_02]: you would hope you are an individual who goes to seek legal advice and draft a will in plan your state that whatever as long as you're competent right that your wishes would be honored that's what testament to autonomy is right that you your wishes will be honored we are we build our
22:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Our careers, we build our states, we build our portfolios, and if you want to give it to whoever you want to give it to, you should be able to do that, right?
22:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Is what everyone would think?
22:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So how do you reconcile that in a province?
22:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're one of a few, right?
22:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Some say BC's the only province in the rest of the country, right?
22:37
[SPEAKER_02]: That hasn't act like this.
22:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You can challenge a state's and other provinces, but West has very particular to BC.
22:43
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you reconcile that with legislation and our courts and rights that you have to challenge these states?
22:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to talk about that and how you as a professional reconcile that.
22:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's interesting.
22:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So the history in two thousand fourteen is when the new legislation came into force.
23:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So we, in British Columbia, we had about eight different individual acts.
23:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, administering those was difficult.
23:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And also a lot of our estate law had been really from eighty years previous.
23:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they created this omnibus piece of legislation.
23:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And the idea was to modernize and make it more efficient.
23:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But there was a lot of controversy at the bar around whether you were going to have this, what was the old Will's Variation Act and Compassed within Wesse or not.
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: In British Columbia, we are somewhat of an outlier.
23:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, in Ontario, if a child or a spouse is left out, they effectively have to make kind of like a dependence relief
23:42
[SPEAKER_00]: a claim in respective obligations to support whereas we really have one of the most proactive pieces of legislation where you have to make what's called adequate provision and the courts can and do go in and truly very what someone chose and maybe that's a boon to a state litigators but there there was an interesting divide at the bar and that it seems generally like the downtown lawyers
24:07
[SPEAKER_00]: sort of favorite, I don't know why a testamentary autonomy whereas sort of more of the suburban layers of which I am and you are tended to more err on the side of the variation.
24:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can see both sides.
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean on one hand, yes, as you mentioned, you've required your whole life, you
24:23
[SPEAKER_00]: you've generated these assets, you should be able to do what you choose to do, but on the other hand, there can be great unfairness.
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, it's not necessarily because that they know in the Chinese surface and community that the oldest son gets it, it might be that a family doesn't like that somebody decided that they're gay or are other variant fair reasons or what we perceive culturally to be unfair reasons.
24:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know how you reconcile that, but it seems like our courts have
24:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Have we had the legislation and we have aired on the side of varying for good and for bad?
24:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and it is kind of strange because sometimes when you get the background of the family, some people that were disinherited, probably deserved it.
25:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a bunch of fun.
25:09
[SPEAKER_01]: By the end of this act, they made their way back into some extent in the variation.
25:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So when they do a well's variation, I think we need to explain to people, is the will still valid?
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what does the variation accomplish?
25:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, great question.
25:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So to keep it very basic that you may, there's there's those two stages of analysis.
25:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So it might actually challenge the the solemn form of the actual will that the person have the capacity and is what is written what actually they they wrote and was witnessed and done properly, right, or were as they're undoing fluids and all those types of things, right?
25:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's step one.
25:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Assuming it gets past that stage, right?
25:49
[SPEAKER_02]: That'll make it, whether it's a valid will or not, right?
25:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You may end up with a completely struck will.
25:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you end up dealing with in test to see, right?
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, if you end up, so let's say it passes that test that Kate they had competency and it's, it's where on to now the analysis of, was it fair or not?
26:10
[SPEAKER_02]: What's interesting is in basic ways, the court will go on to literally strike provisions, right?
26:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what happens with it.
26:17
[SPEAKER_02]: They will say that these provisions are, you know, struck for being, you know, disinheriting and being unfair and leaving this person out and here's what I'm going to substitute in as my award, right?
26:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think often on its face, so in a person dies without a will, there's a described distribution to spouse and children when there is no will.
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And often when it's varied and you've left a child or a spouse out, it often mirrors what an anticipated distribution would be.
26:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So as an estate lawyer, a family comes to you in conflict.
26:53
[SPEAKER_00]: What are some strategies you use to try to resolve it without necessarily a full-court application?
26:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great, great question.
27:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So what I find a lot that comes up is people say, is this going to be a long-protracted?
27:07
[SPEAKER_02]: piece of litigation are we going to be dealing with are we really stuck in the courts for years and it all depends on what you're dealing with but often I'm promoting early mediation in part because most of the time what I'm hearing is it's actually siblings that
27:22
[SPEAKER_02]: seem to get along and care about each other.
27:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm often dealing with a South Asian female that I'll say that I really love my brother, right, or brothers.
27:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't want this to be the thing that breaks us apart.
27:33
[SPEAKER_02]: How can we do this in a way where I can pursue my rights and still maintain a relationship with my brother?
27:41
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, an early mediation is one of the best ways that I've been able to have that relationship honored and successfully have this person maintain their rights, share their feelings.
27:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I can't help but think about that same gray wall case where
27:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Imagine this in that situation, you had two male that received the majority of the estate, right?
28:04
[SPEAKER_02]: The executor, the oldest brother, maintained that he wanted what was stated in the will, right, to be the parents wishes and litigated that case.
28:14
[SPEAKER_02]: trying to make it so that the boys keep everything, right?
28:17
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the brothers actually maintained and even then the decision the court says that he believed that it should be split equally between all the children.
28:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So imagine that, where there's disagreement between the two males without we're getting it in that case, right?
28:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is sometimes the benefit and we often get called on this where it's been a year or two years because the executive both has a beneficial interest often as a family member to inherit the most.
28:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you end up with a neutral administrator, that takes, I think, the pressure off the executive to stand there and just be so dug in in the position.
28:53
[SPEAKER_01]: that you have to see what reason the ability can bring.
28:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And it makes the others feel that, OK, now he's acting as beneficiary.
29:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's, you know, he's defending his position, but not Amy, I think it just helps.
29:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Great resolution.
29:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm seeing that more and more in the benefit of that is a very, very clear to me.
29:11
[SPEAKER_02]: An neutral administrator is an incredible resource to you.
29:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I know often they've tried and think of a family friend, but I suggest think of some poor friend trying to step in.
29:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah.
29:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's friends with the whole family and doesn't really want to join into this and lose their relationships.
29:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It's right.
29:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So another question, so the advent of no fall at the NDP government has changed the regime and a lot of former ICBC lawyers I understand are flooding into the estate litigation realm that have you seen that and what's your experience in that regard?
29:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, what I look at the vague sort of talking about the legal landscape and BC now a little bit in what I've observed and what I know about my colleagues.
29:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks like class action litigation has picked up.
29:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So what we're talking about here for listeners are, you know, we have as of May, twenty twenty one any motor vehicle accident that you're in.
30:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You no longer have the right perspective legislation to sue the other motorists for compensation.
30:12
[SPEAKER_02]: with the exception of some criminal charges that you could pursue, if they're charged and convicted of certain enumerated crimes, they're pretty serious.
30:21
[SPEAKER_02]: What I found there, just so people understand that because many people thought, oh, I still have the right to do it in serious situations in that sounds fair.
30:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not that they have insurance.
30:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So that person has to actually have assets, right?
30:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And someone who's going to commit one of those enumerated crimes ends not to have a house properties career that kind of thing.
30:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've dealt with a lot of situations now where someone was convicted of a serious criminal driving offense and they have nothing.
30:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So the poor individual's left with no real right of recourse.
30:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So what we're talking about here is it was a huge practice area.
30:57
[SPEAKER_02]: There was lots of lawyers representing victims, lots of lawyers representing ICBC.
31:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Our courts were very active with motor vehicle litigation.
31:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And now since that was twenty twenty one, you know, a lot of lawyers since then have had this sort of pivot fine new practice areas.
31:12
[SPEAKER_02]: My analysis is that you have a bunch of people that have gone into sort of class action.
31:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I've seen a bunch of people go to family law.
31:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe people thought a state litigation would be one of the next big things in part because of the biggest transition of health and history, the baby boomers, everyone talks about that.
31:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I've seen a little bit of it, but not at the level that I thought.
31:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when I sat down and was designing all those emotional videos and my content and my strategy around telling the story and I sat down for a year and and created the background for my pivot and
31:48
[SPEAKER_02]: During that time and once I launched, I haven't seen as many as I thought I would, is my sense.
31:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But the other interesting thing from a marketplace, I'll just share openly.
31:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been tracking my consultations since I think I launched in late, twenty-twenty-two.
32:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I've done two hundred and fifty or so consultations.
32:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And many of, and many of the more self-Asian females.
32:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And they indicated to me that their parents are still alive, but they know that they're going to be excluded.
32:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So when does this work really start to pick up?
32:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I don't think we're there yet.
32:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It's slowly happening, but maybe over the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, you're going to see a lot more of this.
32:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And why is it that it's going to be a hot area in the law?
32:31
[SPEAKER_02]: If there's one way to call it that, there's so much value in the real estate assets.
32:36
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much of value in the businesses that the South Asian community has built.
32:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm proud to say that it is a community that has come to this country in
32:45
[SPEAKER_02]: The sixty seventies eighties and they've done really, really well.
32:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of cream to fight over and that's what ends up happening.
32:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it for these members being excluded and knowing that they're excluded?
32:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there preventive measures prior to the estate they should be taking?
33:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's the question that they ask.
33:02
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, Pramender, I can't hire you right now because these people are alive and they can do as they wish, which is true.
33:08
[SPEAKER_02]: My advice is this.
33:10
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to document everything as much as you can.
33:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't obsess about it, right?
33:13
[SPEAKER_02]: But take notes.
33:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Keep a Google Docs file somewhere.
33:16
[SPEAKER_02]: If you see your brother, all of a sudden receiving things, you kind of want to know around what time of year.
33:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I mean by that is like cars, jewelry, like really expensive stuff that doesn't make sense for maybe what they do as a career.
33:30
[SPEAKER_02]: do some title searches from that one again to see if title is changing on a property, right?
33:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Trying to know what your parents might have.
33:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Family meetings and things as another thing I say, like if you're if the parents bring up these things, who's there?
33:43
[SPEAKER_02]: What was said?
33:44
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the intentions, right?
33:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Who are other witnesses that are around?
33:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And look, that also makes me think about actually just honestly having the discussion, right?
33:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Talking about the content, I've had many people call me and say, we've talked about your content.
33:57
[SPEAKER_02]: We've sat down as a family and I think
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: My parents are changing their ways, I've had.
34:02
[SPEAKER_02]: South Asian mothers, meaning the person who was fighting with her husband about how they should distribute their estate, say, my husband still wants to give it to just our son.
34:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it should go equal.
34:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Will you sit down with us and help us like have a conversation around this?
34:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you educate my husband on what you're saying?
34:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a really awkward position to be put in, but what I'm hearing is the conversation is being had, which was the whole purpose of what I was doing.
34:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I've done well enough of my career as a lawyer.
34:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't really do this for the money.
34:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that the community is having the conversation.
34:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that people see me as someone that is, I'm hopefully not looking to be some opportunistic lawyer.
34:45
[SPEAKER_02]: This was really all about having the conversation.
34:47
[SPEAKER_02]: If I could have it that everyone just does planning,
34:49
[SPEAKER_02]: and sits down and there's not a ton of money to be made in the state planning, right?
34:53
[SPEAKER_02]: The litigation is where the big dollars are spent the days in court and discoveries and mediation.
34:57
[SPEAKER_02]: But if people just sit down and ask us to do their planning and they want to do things fairly, that fills my cup for this next stage of my career.
35:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you say now that we're a generation or two in of the major migration coming to Canada that some of these families are looking at family office type structures where it would be managed and fair because there's like you say that the wealth has gone up extraordinarily in some of these farms and leveraging the farms and setting up on two sides of the border and such and I, you know,
35:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It probably needs to migrate that way as opposed to just trying to deal with it in a state.
35:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, we're talking about farms.
35:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there's a good amount of farms and I wish I had a stat so we could say how much of the farming land is owned by South Asians.
35:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I have no idea what it is, but
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: actual real estate development towers, condos, townhouses, that stuff's worth way more than the farms are.
35:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And the South Asian community has, they've turned into tower developers now right there playing with the both us and the likes, right?
36:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So the wealth that's there now we're into the, we have I know families that are into the hundreds of millions of net worth multiple.
36:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
36:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
36:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And would you still see this type of inheritance?
36:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Like just going back to the old way, it was done.
36:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Like hard to come along yet.
36:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say those players probably more modern, but it's hard to say.
36:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And what if they just choose not to give it to their children?
36:28
[SPEAKER_02]: What if they decide to give it to a charity?
36:30
[SPEAKER_02]: But the children dispute that distribution.
36:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
36:33
[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting.
36:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
36:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Or to the Gordon water, the temple.
36:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
36:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I know who knows what they might do.
36:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's flip it around, say you are mom and dad and you've sacrificed and worked like crazy and you have an idea of how you want to distribute your estate and your worried it might be very, what are they doing to protect their interests?
36:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we are talking about classic estate planning, right?
36:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Is sitting down with the, I call it, I call it the trifecta, right?
37:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to have your account into your qualified tax planning account and a good CPA.
37:06
[SPEAKER_02]: financial planner lawyer and talk about your wishes, talk about your plans and there are ways that you can make and ensure that the people you want to receive these things get them, right?
37:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Or at least create the best chance and best opportunity at them.
37:21
[SPEAKER_02]: That's much of what you did in your career.
37:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
37:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's just touch on the rise of the South Asian community.
37:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not just numbers and significant wealth, which is happening, but there's also very substantial political cloud isn't that true.
37:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was at a political convention on the weekend, and there was an enormous number of South Asian very, very organized, very strategic people, and it seems like
37:51
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got it together better than many other communities.
37:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell us about that?
37:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And what is it that your communities so savvy and so organized in this regard?
38:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but I think we're not very organized and not very savvy, but just because I'll say, you know, there are other communities that have done it so much better in the world.
38:10
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, as South Asian sometimes talk about it going, we would be so much better if we were organized.
38:13
[SPEAKER_02]: We're just not organized, right?
38:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And part of that is, I don't know where this comes from, but they are always very active in politics.
38:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is true back home in India as well.
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'd love to be able to do a historical deep dive on that.
38:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we're just talking about my best guess as about this.
38:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you look back at the history of Punjabi Sikhs, it is a persecuted community, right, of minority religion, minority people in India.
38:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So you had a majority Hindus, and majority Muslims, high conflict in the country.
38:46
[SPEAKER_02]: You had British rule.
38:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And you had this one community that just always seemed to get there on to the stick, right?
38:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you have a community like that, when you've been beaten down, there's been genocide the only way that you can have some way to come out of that is to be somewhat organized.
39:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You're somewhat fearless.
39:07
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a bit of history of being sort of warriors.
39:10
[SPEAKER_02]: There's helping the British during the World Wars and
39:13
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some stats that I've read around, you know, a sequel or was equivalent to ten other, or a sequel armyman was equivalent to ten others, right?
39:21
[SPEAKER_02]: In terms of their discipline, command of army, so you have this really interesting community that has had to face a lot of
39:30
[SPEAKER_02]: difficult times so what comes out of that is they're they're politically active they fight for the rights they try to organize they try to build influence and so that that's historically from India then you come into a new country and now you're just trying to do well and one of the things that I've witnessed and I see and I see this in myself is we really like to contribute to the community and not just our own community the community at large
39:54
[SPEAKER_02]: a lot of it has to do with giving a lot of, so all the hospital foundations, a lot of it has to be like the Guru Nanak Free Kitchen.
40:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You've probably seen a lot of the how the temples are twenty four hours open for anyone to come in and eat.
40:06
[SPEAKER_02]: There's all the feeding people in the downtown east side.
40:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's just something about your karma, your doing good in the world, and that seems to feed, right?
40:15
[SPEAKER_02]: The positive vibes for the community.
40:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're going to do that, if you're going to be active, you're going to be involved
40:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to do well in business.
40:23
[SPEAKER_02]: You do need to have a voice and they will push hard for their voice to be heard.
40:27
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my observation, right?
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's noticeable and they are getting significant results and influence in my experience.
40:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of the other history, and I'm no, I didn't study South Asian.
40:39
[SPEAKER_02]: history, but you know, when I read some of these things, I see myself more as a Canadian than I do, like of a, let's say a South Asian Punjabi Sikh from India, right?
40:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a proud Canadian, but we have our own history here with a Kamagata Maru, right, being denied access to the lands of Vancouver, right, being stuck on a boat and hundreds of people dying.
40:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love reading the articles of lawyers that fought for the rights of those people, right?
41:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's, it's a beautiful history, history is always complicated, but the community, especially at a time like we're facing these days where don't you love the patriotism that you're seeing out of Canada right now?
41:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I do.
41:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
41:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's what's going on with the US and our political relationships in the world right now.
41:23
[SPEAKER_02]: If you sit down, I'm confident about this.
41:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I can say this about my community.
41:27
[SPEAKER_02]: You sit down with a South Asian Punjabi seek and you talk about their pride of being Canadian.
41:32
[SPEAKER_02]: This community loves this country.
41:34
[SPEAKER_02]: They'll always say this country has done so good by us.
41:37
[SPEAKER_02]: They're going to be major contributors in this.
41:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to see that local pride, the bi-local, you'll see the South Asians really bring this home because they really love this country.
41:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Where can people find you?
41:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
41:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
41:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you Google me.
41:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I think my social channels will rank pretty high.
41:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So just Google, you'll find me at my law firm, L. K. Law, Lindsey Kenny.
41:58
[SPEAKER_02]: We have offices in downtown Vancouver, Langley, and now West Vancouver.
42:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So three offices.
42:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you to Cole.
42:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I create a lot of content and I'm very accessible.
42:09
[SPEAKER_02]: People think I'm super busy, but I tend to respond very quickly.
42:12
[SPEAKER_02]: That's for young lawyers who I love to mentor.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Anyone who needs a consultation, we don't charge for our consultations at the firm.
42:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm happy to talk about these things and be available to the public.
42:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect.
42:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much for under.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered individual legal, financial, or tax advice.
42:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure to consult the advisor of your choice to advise you on your own circumstances.
42:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Your State Matters.
42:44
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42:49
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42:55
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43:00
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