[Pankaj Raval] (0:00 – 0:15)
All right. Welcome to another episode of Letters of Intent. I am Pankaj Raval, your co-host, and this is the podcast for deal makers and risk takers.

Today, I’m here with my co-host, Sahil Chaudhry, and also a special guest, Justin Gordon. Sahil, take it away.

[Sahil Chaudry] (0:16 – 0:37)
That’s right. I am associate attorney here at Carbon Law, and today we’re going to be interviewing a very good friend of mine, someone I’ve known for years. We went to college together.

We took some courses in law school together. We’ve been friends. We’ve been involved in politics, public service as well.

I’m really proud to introduce Justin Gordon. Justin, welcome.

[Justin Gordon] (0:38 – 0:41)
Thank you guys so much for having me. I’m happy to be here.

[Pankaj Raval] (0:41 – 0:43)
Great to have you. Great to have you.

[Sahil Chaudry] (0:43 – 0:58)
So Justin, you are a Santa Monica native. You are a USC and Dodgers fan. If anyone follows your social accounts, that’s what you’re going to see.

You’re going to see a lot of Dodgers content. I’m a subscriber to the Justin Gordon Instagram page.

[Justin Gordon] (0:59 – 1:07)
Yeah, a lot of Dodgers, a lot of politics. Not too much Wills and Trust. I saved that for my LinkedIn, but …

[Sahil Chaudry] (1:07 – 1:58)
Right, right. Exactly, exactly. That’s right.

So Justin, you run a family law practice with your father, Gordon and Gordon. It’s focused on trusts and estates. One thing I noticed, Justin, is ever since I’ve known you, you have the ability to combine, I think, technical aspects of law, but your personality is actually very, in a way, you’re very empathetic.

You’ve got this way of explaining complex matters and emotionally sensitive issues, too, when it comes to the law. And I just wanted to ask you a little bit about how you see trusts and estates as an attorney. You know, what is the kind of driving factor for you?

What is the passion element here? What really motivates you every day when you’re working with your clients?

[Justin Gordon] (1:59 – 2:57)
Yeah, well, I think maybe more so than most fields in the law, trust and estates is a people-oriented business. It’s a volume business. You have a lot of people that need estate plans or their families didn’t plan in advance and they’re going through probate or there’s a trust administration and you need to walk them through this at, you know, what is oftentimes a very difficult point in their life.

Someone just passed away. They’re dealing with grief. They’re dealing with emotions.

They’ve got siblings who are, you know, on their back about getting distribution. So you need to have empathy. You need to, you know, feel like you know where they’ve come from and, you know, having an experience, you know, with death or with other families who have experienced death and the process of either probate or trust administration is really key to, you know, oftentimes handholding and walking through clients, walking clients through a difficult time in their life.

[Pankaj Raval] (2:59 – 3:35)
Absolutely. Yeah, I think trust and trust and estates are such a fascinating area. I, when I first started practicing, worked with a trust lawyer actually in law school and I always found it fascinating.

The challenges also with this area because a lot of people don’t like talking about death, right? I think we have this aversion, especially in the West, for talking about death and kind of preparing for end of life. Tell me a little bit, like, how do you deal with that with clients?

How have you addressed that? What are your thoughts on addressing mortality? I love to hear more because this area of law definitely intersects with that a lot.

[Justin Gordon] (3:36 – 5:12)
Yeah. And I’d be interested to hear if you guys have experience with other cultures and death and how they treat that. But in the West, it’s something that you just want to put off.

You don’t want to deal with. It’s going to be years away. And so we get a lot of clients who’ve been like, yeah, I’ve been wanting to do this for 20 years and I just never got around to it.

And as my mother-in-law says, you know, the best time to plant the tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. And I think that applies perfectly to estate planning because if you’re still alive and you have capacity, you can do an estate plan.

And it’s there to protect, you know, your interest, but also your spouse, your children, your grandchildren. And so we do get a lot of clients who, you know, reluctantly are there, but, you know, there was a health scare or a family member passed away or a friend passed away and it hit them. And they said, you know what, I’ve got to do this to protect my family and make sure that there will be, you know, a smooth transition or a smooth transition as possible when that time comes.

And so we try to use a lot of humor and we try to, you know, be personable and empathetic so that the process doesn’t feel like, you know, this is it, you know, this is the end. No, this is just the beginning of you getting your affairs in order for that time decades from now where you might, you know, face mortality. But, you know, what we try to remind them is that you’re going to have peace of mind after this because you know that, you know, you’ve taken care of your affairs and you don’t have to think about it, you know, being on the to-do list every day.

[Pankaj Raval] (5:13 – 6:32)
Yeah, no, it only makes sense. Yeah, you asked about like, you know, thoughts about mortality. I mean, Sal and I are both Hindu.

And there’s a lot of thought, you know, there’s discussion about reincarnation, you know, in Hinduism and all that. But even I’m a big fan of stoicism. And even on my desk, you know, I was showing you this here, I have this little memento mori.

This is a statue of like Marcus Aurelius with a skull. And it’s from stoicism. And stoicism, you know, they have this whole idea that, you know, we are all going to die, memento mori.

And I’m a big fan of Buddhism, too, and the belief that, you know, life is impermanent and everything is impermanent. So, you know, we really don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. So I feel like there should be that a bit of, you know, understanding that nothing is guaranteed.

So why not get your affairs in order sooner rather than later, because we don’t know what tomorrow will hold. And, and, you know, the best thing we can do is prepare, you know, for right now in this present moment. So I think, I think it’s important to remember that we’re, that life is finite.

And because it reminds us also how we treat people and how we deal with people and how we deal with others, because, you know, we want to be remembered for, I think, treating people well, as opposed to, you know, treating people with their like a transaction like we unfortunately see in some situations nowadays.

[Sahil Chaudry] (6:32 – 6:44)
And yeah, I wish, you know, Bhankaj, you make a good point, we are Hindu, and yet we can’t will our assets to our next incarnation. And I feel like that’s something we need to work on.

[Justin Gordon] (6:44 – 6:49)
There should be something with AI and reincarnation.

[Sahil Chaudry] (6:49 – 7:07)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. On the verge of transferring your consciousness, right, whether through incarnation or some other body, I just, I want to just throw that out there that I hope Gordon and Gordon is looking at that.

[Justin Gordon] (7:07 – 7:09)
We’ll look into that.

[Sahil Chaudry] (7:12 – 7:29)
Justin, can you tell us about, okay, your path into estate planning, it feels like a niche segment of the law. What kind of courses did you take? What kind of mentors did you have?

How did you find your way into this niche?

[Justin Gordon] (7:31 – 8:02)
Yeah, so I’m not gonna lie, if my father didn’t practice trust in estates, I might not have known about, you know, what an amazing and wonderful field it truly is, you know, growing up, I knew that my dad was a lawyer, and, you know, sort of an esoteric field, and it seemed dry and boring with paper and wills and all that. And so I went to law school out in Philadelphia Temple University, and I knew that I wanted to come back to California at some point, they had offered me a scholarship. So I went to the cold from Southern California.

[Sahil Chaudry] (8:02 – 8:11)
You went to Temple, and then I know we got to spend some time together at UCLA, you were a visiting student, which was so much fun.

[Justin Gordon] (8:11 – 9:37)
Yeah, we actually took wills and trust together, which was one of my favorite classes. So I knew I wanted to take the California bar, and I was sort of deciding between entertainment and trust in estates. Entertainment, you know, sounds, you know, fun and exciting.

And, you know, after doing a couple internships, you know, it was, it was a little bit drier than I expected, it wasn’t so glamorous of a field. And so I also worked with my father when I was out in California, and just, you know, meeting with different families and seeing the different issues that come up and how probate and trust intersect with so many other fields of law that it’s just a constant, you know, quest for learning, because you’re always learning about new areas of the law and, and how they intersect with, you know, this main field.

So I took that class at UCLA, I also took federal income taxation, which I thought was really fascinating. And, you know, after taking the California bar decided that, you know, I’ll give this a try and work in the family business, so to speak. And I’ve been working there for the last almost 13 years, and it’s been great.

My father is a wealth of knowledge, you know, and I sort of bring us into the 21st century in terms of getting us online and digital marketing. So it’s a good balance between that, you know, knowledge and modernity.

[Sahil Chaudry] (9:37 – 10:08)
You know, that’s something I noticed, Bunkage, about kind of your sense and Justin’s sense of entrepreneurship. Justin, you were pretty quick to bring your firm online. And you figured out kind of the value of online reviews.

And I noticed, Bunkage, you were also pretty early to that. So I’d love to kind of hear, actually, both of you talk a little bit about that level of entrepreneurship with the law and how the internet changed the game.

[Pankaj Raval] (10:08 – 10:13)
Yeah, Justin, I mean, please, your guests, I’d love to hear your thoughts first. I mean, yeah, how did you?

[Justin Gordon] (10:14 – 11:31)
Yeah, I’ll give you a little background. And I’d have to give 95% of the credit to my wife, who, you know, background is in marketing and social and digital strategy. And so back in 2014, she told me, you know, it might be a good idea for you to set up a Yelp page.

And, you know, I looked at her crazy. I’m like, Yelp is for, you know, restaurants and pet groomers. Like, why would I as an attorney set up a Yelp page?

And she said, you know, that’s people don’t not everybody knows that trust in the state’s attorney, you know, it’s just because you are one doesn’t mean that, you know, other people know one. And so she said, it’s probably good idea to start building those reviews over time. And, you know, eventually, I think a lot of attorneys are going to be on there.

And, you know, lo and behold, you know, we have significant reviews, and they’re all good, thank God. And it’s, you know, I can’t tell you how many people come to us because they didn’t know a trust in the state’s attorney, they googled, you know, trust in the state’s attorney Los Angeles, or went on Yelp. And they found us online.

So I would say the majority of new clients now found us on Yelp, or super lawyers, or avo, which is like Yelp for lawyers, avvo.com, which is a great site as well.

[Pankaj Raval] (11:31 – 12:57)
That’s so funny. Actually, I think that’s around the same time I first went on Yelp is 2014. And my story is like, you know, somewhat similar.

It’s funny, like I, I was working as a solo in my offices in Koreatown, sharing with these two other guys, the two other lawyers, you know, just legitimately smarter than me, like these guys went to like, University of Chicago, Georgetown, great guys, you know, and, and, you know, they are very good attorneys, but they just didn’t realize they didn’t want to take any risks. And I think that sometimes the challenge, you know, getting a little philosophical is when we kind of have these identities that we don’t want to, you know, we don’t want to sacrifice, we don’t want, we don’t want to blemish on this, this identity that we’ve created, we’re, we’re now less risk, we’re less willing to take risks, you know, we’re, we’re more averse to taking risks. So I said, Hey, you know what, trying to build this business been struggling, you know, in rebuilding this, you know, my firm getting more clients, people are on Yelp, let me let me try putting myself on Yelp.

And this is in Koreatown. And this the next day, without any reviews, I got a client, it was it was like $1,000 matter, but I was like with the client and, and I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to go network.

I didn’t have to go to all these different meetings. It was it was amazing, right? It changed, it changed everything.

And it opened my mind. And these two guys were like, No, man, you can’t do it. You’re gonna get a bad one bad review and your career is over.

You know, and I said, you know, one bad review, my career is not really going right now.

[Justin Gordon] (12:57 – 13:35)
So what I have to lose, you know, so no, that’s, that’s a great story. And I and there are certain areas of law, I think, where, you know, you might not want to have a Yelp page, you know, if you do evictions all the time, you know, that might be a tough place where people will write the bad reviews. If you’re in family law, you know, there’s always some tension going on in there.

But I, you know, I try to, to treat every client, you know, as a person, and also that there might be a grade at the end of this, and it could end up online. So you’ve got to, you know, be conscious of that.

[Pankaj Raval] (13:35 – 14:33)
Yeah. And also, like, from our old philosophy in our firm, too, has always been, like, Maya Angelou quote, you know, people will forget what you did, they’ll forget, you know, what you said, but they won’t, we will never forget how you made them feel. And our goal is like, always made them feel taken care of.

I’m pretty sure I butchered the quote, but essentially, that’s, that’s it. So I mean, that’s how we approach it. And I feel like if you just focus on the person and making sure they’re taken care of, because oftentimes, they’re trusting us to make sure the documents are right, make sure that you know, what’s in there, it’s right.

And, you know, if we’re competent, we’ll do that, we’ll do that job. But it’s also beyond that, making sure that they understand the process that we communicate with them. I mean, so much, I think you guys can probably attest comes out of communication.

It’s like those attorneys, I think that get good reviews and are happy clients are the ones that communicate well. And I’ve always put an emphasis on that in our firm. And but I love to hear about, you know, you how you guys have managed to get so many good, great reviews and how you go about your philosophy on deal with clients.

[Justin Gordon] (14:33 – 15:28)
Yeah, I think communication is key. Just getting back to clients. And, you know, a reasonable amount of time is, you know, you’re doing more than 90% of other attorneys are, you know, we hear situations of clients coming to us, and they haven’t been able to get ahold of their attorney for a couple weeks or months.

And I just I don’t understand what’s going on where an attorney isn’t responding for, you know, in more than a few days, unless they’re out of town, and there should be an away message or somebody that can step in if they’re not available. But I think communication and responsiveness is so important to making sure that clients feel like they’re taken care of. And, you know, a lot of these clients are dealing with very anxious situations, or they’re anxious people.

And as long as they’re able to talk to you and or get some sort of response, I think it can calm them down and make them feel like they’re in good hand.

[Pankaj Raval] (15:28 – 16:02)
Absolutely. I’d love to change the conversation a little bit to pivot a little bit to the specific some of the dynamics around estate planning. Just today, funny enough, my dad texted me and he said that, you know, someone in their neighborhood, he was 53, passed away without a will.

So in those situations, can you tell me like what happens? Like what happens if you don’t have a will, and maybe even explain to us even the point, you know, the difference between a will and a trust or estate plan, and maybe break that down for us, because I think a lot of listeners are still somewhat complicated, the difference between all these different documents.

[Justin Gordon] (16:02 – 18:38)
No, absolutely. So this is just California specific, since I’m only licensed in California. But if in California, you own real property, and you don’t have a trust, at some point, there’s going to be a probate, which is a court proceeding where there’s a judge and an administrator or executor needs to be appointed, it’s public, it’s very expensive, attorneys love it, because there’s very high fees, and costs.

But the goal for most estate planning, ethical estate planning attorneys will be to set up a trust, especially if there’s real estate involved. If someone only has a will, but they don’t have real estate, there are ways of making sure that your assets don’t go through probate by putting beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and brokerage accounts and other bank accounts. But you know, if you have real estate, you basically have to set up some sort of trust in order to make sure that your assets get to your beneficiaries without a court proceeding.

So your question about if someone, you know, didn’t have a trust or will, what happens? And if they have over a certain amount of money, and they don’t have beneficiaries designated right now, it’s 184,500. If you have less than that, you can use the smallest state affidavit in California.

But if it’s over that, they’ll end up in court where, you know, the siblings might be fighting over who’s going to be in charge. If there’s no spouse, there’s an order for how appointments work. You have to, you know, pay thousands in fees for different petitions.

You’ve got a publish in the newspaper. It’s a total mess and can take over a year to get the assets from the decedent to the heirs. And so, you know, you’re basically just leaving it up to chance that California gets it right.

And sometimes that means that your assets will go to some first cousin that you’ve never met or a sibling that is your enemy. So by getting at least a will together, you’re at least saying to the court, okay, this is who I want to receive my assets. Here’s who I want to have in charge.

And, you know, and then you leave it up to the executor or the court to make sure that your assets get to your intended beneficiaries. But if you don’t do anything, it’s just going based on the default in California.

[Pankaj Raval] (18:40 – 18:50)
Interesting. Interesting. And can you tell us a little bit more about like an estate plan?

What does that involve? Why, you know, why is it even important for me to have an estate plan?

[Justin Gordon] (18:50 – 20:30)
So it’s not just about assets. If you’re alive and, you know, you have children or family members that you love, you want to have something in place. And that, you know, if you have real estate or significant assets, usually a trust is the most important document.

And the difference, to answer your question about what’s the difference between a trust and a will, a will comes into effect only at death and deals with the transfer of property, a trust begins, if it’s a revocable living trust, it begins immediately and can help ensure that there is a succession. If you become incapacitated, for instance, that successor trustee can step in and help administer the assets and take care of the person who set up the trust also called the settler while they’re still living. Having a trust also can help avoid conservatorship.

If you become incapacitated and you don’t have any documents, someone has to go to court and spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get appointed as your conservator to take care of your health and your assets and all that. Whereas if you have a trust in place, if you have what’s called an advanced healthcare directive, someone, an agent that can make healthcare decisions for you, if you’re not able to do so yourself, you’re in a coma or have dementia. And then lastly, a financial power of attorney, someone that can handle ongoing litigation or do your tax returns, deal with Social Security, Medicare.

So all of these pieces come together as an estate plan so that if you become incapacitated or pass on, there is a plan for what happens next, who’s in charge, where your assets go. Interesting.

[Sahil Chaudry] (20:32 – 20:46)
So it sounds like there’s actually quite a high cost to doing nothing and just letting things go to probate. What are some common misconceptions that people have about probate and the laws of wills and trusts?

[Justin Gordon] (20:47 – 23:16)
Yeah. So I’ve had clients, I don’t know if they’re all just looking at chat, GPT, or Google and trying to come up with what the law is. And that’s fine.

Sometimes it gets it right. Sometimes it doesn’t. But for instance, there’s something called a no context clause.

And so some people think, oh, if you put that no contest clause in your trust, it means that nobody can contest it. And that’s not exactly right. It basically means that if you have this no contest clause in your trust, and someone does challenge it for, let’s say, incapacity or fraud or undue influence, and they lose and they didn’t have probable cause to challenge the trust, they’ll lose out on their inheritance, what they were going to receive under the truck.

But if you don’t leave them anything, they really have nothing to lose. So the goal with the no contest clause is to leave them something. So let’s say you have one child who’s really evil and has done a lot of bad things, and then the other one is great, and you want to make the distribution uneven.

So let’s say 80-20, you want to make sure that you have this no contest clause in there because the one receiving 20% will have to think twice because they will lose that 20% if they didn’t have a sufficient reason or probable cause to bring a challenge to the trust after you’re gone. Interesting. Some other misconceptions is, I’ve had parents that say, oh, even though my children don’t get along and they’re always fighting, I’m going to name them as co-trustees, and they’ll work together after I’m gone.

And almost the exact opposite of what happens because you’re adding in death, you’re adding in money, you’re adding in the sibling rivalry, and all of that comes to a head after the parents pass away, and that is just a recipe for litigation. And so oftentimes where you have children that don’t get along will recommend something called a professional fiduciary. This is someone who’s licensed by the state of California, bonded, insured, and this is what they do day in, day out.

They act as trustees or administrators or executives or conservators. And so they have the resources. They know good CPAs and good realtors and financial planners and managers that can help them, whereas you put the kids in charge and there’s just going to be a whole lot of dispute and money wasted on attorneys.

[Pankaj Raval] (23:17 – 23:18)
Absolutely. Interesting.

[Sahil Chaudry] (23:19 – 24:11)
There is an intersection with what we do with corporate law. For example, in most of our LLC agreements, we include a spousal consent, which acknowledges that the shares are separate property. That’s usually something that we would include.

And then also, we notice that many small business owners or founders, they will be very successful as business people, but leave a mess of corporate governance documents. Especially like family businesses, assume that everything’s going to work out and there are a lot of verbal agreements and understandings. And sometimes there are incorporation documents and no bylaws, and nothing has been really followed.

So I just wonder how often does your work necessitate some kind of corporate cleanup as part of a transfer?

[Justin Gordon] (24:12 – 25:35)
Yeah, it comes up more than you think. And that’s where trust in the state’s attorneys can work with firms like yours to make sure everybody’s got eyes on the documents that everything’s in place. When we set up a revocable living trust, that’s part one.

The second part is making sure that the assets get into the trust. So that’s whether that’s preparing a deed and getting that recorded to transfer a house into the trust, whether that’s telling the clients to go to the bank and brokerage institutions to retitle the counts in the name of the trust. And that also involves preparing assignments of LLC interest into the trust.

So we’ll have to review the operating agreements, make sure that there’s nothing that prevents an assignment of membership interest into the trust. Most operating agreements these days allow for that, but you don’t want to do anything that’s going to cause problems to the LLC. If they have an S Corp, if it’s a small business, doing the corporate minutes, voiding the shares that are in their individual names and reissuing the shares into the name of the truck is an important next step to make sure that they’re having annual meetings and meeting their obligations.

So those two, like I said, a lot of fields intersect, and this is where there’s an intersection between corporate law and trust in the state.

[Pankaj Raval] (25:36 – 26:09)
Yeah, I think there’s obviously so much we could talk about with estate planning. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the future and also how technology is playing a role in your practice going forward. Well, I guess maybe first, because you have a background in politics and you’re interested in politics, I love to understand like, what do you see coming down the line?

What’s the future look like for estate planning with regard to the change of laws? What should people maybe be watching out for in this administration and maybe just in the future laws coming into effect?

[Justin Gordon] (26:11 – 28:35)
Yeah, so 99.5% of families are not going to have to worry about estate taxes. I know there’s a lot of politicians that say, oh, the death taxes and this and that. Right now, the estate tax exemption is $14 million per spouse.

So you can have $28 million per couple right now, at least, and there won’t be a dollar of estate taxes going to the federal government. California hasn’t had an inheritance tax since the 1980s. You’d expect California, which is a pretty high-tax state, to have an inheritance tax, but they don’t.

Other states do. So for most people, there’s not going to be a lot of taxes on the recipient side for the heirs. There’s also something called a step-up in basis, which is for capital gains purposes.

If the parents bought a house 40 years ago for $100,000, and now it’s worth $3 million, that gain after the parents pass away from $100,000 to $3 million gets wiped out by operation of death. So there’s actually a death benefit for holding on to appreciating assets, at least under current law. So with taxes, right now, if you have less than $28 million, there’s not going to be a whole lot in taxes for a married couple.

But that law is going to sunset at the end of this year, but I assume with a Republican president in Congress, they’re going to extend those tax breaks. It’s fluctuated over the years, but at least right now, our practice doesn’t consist of a whole lot of tax planning. There are larger firms that are dealing with very wealthy individuals that are figuring out all sorts of gimmicks to avoid estate taxes starting foundations, irrevocable life insurance drop.

But for the vast majority of our clients and people in California, there’s not going to be estate taxes. So for the future, I think that the high estate tax exemptions are going to be around for a while. Who knows?

It could be AOC getting in with a far left Congress and they’ll flip it and the exemption will be much lower. So there’s always this uncertainty, which I think keeps lawyers in business. There’s always some work to be done.

[Pankaj Raval] (28:36 – 28:55)
So one other question I had is, in terms of our clients, the listeners, a lot of them are business owners, a lot of them are entrepreneurs. What’s some advice you would have for a business owner or entrepreneur looking to make sure that their estate is protected? And does it matter how old you are to start thinking about this?

[Justin Gordon] (28:55 – 31:57)
There’s a common misconception that you have to be in your 70s or 80s to start thinking about estate planning. And I would say that this applies to founders, but it applies to all folks who have families and just want to make sure that their assets get passed down. It’s really never too early to start.

Even if you just get something very basic down, a big issue that comes up with a lot of families is who’s going to be the guardian to my children. And I’ve had clients end up in therapy, trying to figure out because they can’t agree on who’s going to, if something happens to both of us and we have minor children, who’s going to be our children’s parent, legal guardian. And that issue has come up multiple times where they’re just stuck and the whole planning process can’t move forward because they can’t figure out who that guardian is going to be.

And in those situations, it’s really up to the probate judge to decide who the guardian is, but your will will include basically your recommendation. So you don’t want to hold up your whole estate plan just because you can’t figure out who’s going to be that person. So we recommend to just put two people down.

Then you’ve at least narrowed it down to two instead of not having anything. So I think that’s a common issue with young families, whether they’re founders or not, just trying to figure out who’s going to take care of the kids. Another thing, like I mentioned, is just making sure all of your assets that need to be in the trust get there, whether that’s your ownership interests in LLCs or your corporate shares.

That takes time to get those assets retitled into the trust. But if you leave them out, you might end up in probate court, which would defeat much of the purpose of setting these documents up in the first place. So I would definitely recommend to people to get started sooner rather than later.

If you’re married and expect to have kids or have kids, that’s a great time to get started. And then you can kind of set it. I don’t want to say set it and forget it, but you can set it and look at it every few years to make sure that the successor trustees, the agents are still who you want them to be.

You might have a falling out with someone and realize, oh my God, I can’t believe I named this person as my executor. I’m going to have to make a change. But for most people, they can leave their estate plan in place for many, many years, decades, and not have to change it.

And so there’s no annual fee to have an estate plan like there is with LLCs or corporations. There’s no separate tax return that you need to do with this type of revocable living truck. So it’s a lot less complicated for most people than people realize.

And I think that can be a roadblock for people getting started. Makes sense.

[Sahil Chaudry] (31:58 – 32:09)
So for let’s say some of our clients who this feels very financially daunting, emotionally daunting, how does someone start? What’s the first step if you want to get your affairs in order?

[Justin Gordon] (32:10 – 33:12)
Yeah, the first step, whether it’s with our firm or any estate planning firm, is to reach out and see if you can set up a consultation. Our policy is to offer a complimentary consultation for an hour because we think that it’s a good way to meet clients and get them to know who we are. We get to know who they are, and they feel comfortable working with us because we see this as a lifelong relationship.

And a lot of times, I expect the clients want to work with my father because he has a lot of experience. But many times they want to work with me because they want to get to know me because it’ll be their children who are going to be working with me decades from now, hopefully, down the line. So they like the fact that there is this sort of succession within the succession planning is a little bit meta there.

But it’s something that I take pride in that there is a succession plan for our firm, and there is a succession plan for the client as well. Amazing.

[Pankaj Raval] (33:12 – 33:31)
Amazing. I love it. Well, this has been really, really fascinating.

I think, obviously, a lot more to chat about. Yeah, I mean, anything else you’d like to leave with listeners about just estate planning yourself and also let us know how we can find you, how people can find you online, on social. If you can provide all that, it’d be great.

[Justin Gordon] (33:32 – 34:36)
Yeah, I think this just goes back to what we’ve been talking about all along, is that when you’re an entrepreneur, when you’re in business, it’s really about people and having empathy and being a good person, and that’ll pay dividends. I think that goes back to karma in general, that if you treat people how you want to be treated, things will, for the most part, work out. And so if there are listeners out there that want to learn more, our website is gordontrust.com.

G-O-R-D-O-N-T-R-U-S-T.com. They can reach out. There’s a way to message on our website.

They can look at our reviews on Yelp and Avvo and see if they think that we would be a good fit for them. But this is a people business, and we enjoy the volume of people that come in and seeing everyone’s story and trying to make the process as smooth as possible, and also the process of administration after they’re gone as smooth as possible as well.

[Pankaj Raval] (34:37 – 35:02)
Well, thank you guys so much for joining. This is, again, Letters of Intent, the podcast for deal makers and risk takers. Justin, thank you so much for your time and insight here today.

You’ve been super informative about the estate planning process, really broken it down and made it really simple for people to understand. So really appreciate that and loved hearing more about your also journey. Sal, anything, any last words for us today?

[Sahil Chaudry] (35:02 – 35:15)
I think just the final takeaway as far as I can see is that estate planning is a gift to your loved ones. Don’t avoid it and be sure to reach out to Gordon Trust when you’re ready to make your plan for your family.

[Justin Gordon] (35:16 – 35:30)
Well, thank you guys so much for having me. This has been really, really interesting and hearing your perspective on your practice and how our two practices might interconnect have been a real joy. Thank you so much.

[Sahil Chaudry] (35:30 – 35:31)
Thank you so much.