Unlocking Real Estate Secrets: Casey Conklin on Law & Trusts

Dylan Silver (00:01.129)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And on this episode, we have Casey Conklin, based out of Michigan. He is a real estate attorney. Casey, welcome to the show.

Casey Conklin (00:15.022)
Thanks for having me.

Dylan Silver (00:16.551)
Absolutely. And before we were hopping on here, I let you know, hey, I think you’re my second attorney that I’ve had on the podcast. So I’m always glad to have this perspective because I tend to think you can’t have enough feedback in your back pocket when you need it, right? You want to have it when when you can. So how did you get into the real estate space?

Casey Conklin (00:41.14)
it kind of happened by chance really. So, through law school, I knew, I knew one thing, and that that was, I didn’t want to be in court. so I went the route of, corporate law. So I have a background in, you know, contracts and intellectual property, sports and entertainment law, and estate planning. and then when I got out, I realized that, you know,

If I wanted to make money I was gonna have to do some things that had me end up in court. So I spent the first couple years, you know, basically doing whatever people were willing to pay me to do, which ended up being a few litigation things and that’s what I ultimately realized. I never want to go to court again. So I started working with an attorney friend of mine who is also a licensed realtor and a licensed broker.

I was working with him as a law clerk and just learned the area and then it just kind of grew from there. And then, you know, when I started my own practice, I had the knowledge to start bringing those, types of clients in.

Dylan Silver (01:48.863)
Casey, when I hear about attorneys and I’ve had a couple friends and relatives who are attorneys, I’m not at all in that world other than just being involved in real estate. But it does, I don’t necessarily know if I would like being in the courtroom as well. So I guess selfishly because I’m curious.

What percentage of attorneys are day to day in the courtroom or that’s a big part of their life and what percentage of attorneys are not in the court?

Casey Conklin (02:20.302)
So it’s actually even the attorneys that interact with the court all the time so you know the the civil litigators personal injury attorneys and stuff like that they actually use don’t go to court very often it is somewhere around 95 % of cases get settled before it gets to court

Dylan Silver (02:44.426)
Wow.

Casey Conklin (02:46.406)
So the ones that are in court are, you know, the ones that really can’t, the ones that are in court all the time are the ones that can’t avoid it. So it’s a lot of criminal defense. You know, they’re always in court because that’s, you know, what they do mostly. Divorce attorneys, you know, tend to go a little more often and things like that. But, you know, I have a, I have a litigator that works for me and he’s actually only in, in a courtroom. I don’t.

maybe a week or two out of the year total.

Dylan Silver (03:17.397)
So when when people are I guess new or out of law school but I guess at any point in time right if you don’t have that that court experience to me and maybe I’m the only one that thinks this way but to me that’s a lot of pressure to go into a courtroom where there’s an opposition and you have to think on the fly you don’t have it just seems like a degree of difficulty of the judge sitting in front of you and I don’t know I’m of course probably using the wrong terminology here but what do attorneys do to to

themselves like even I would say like emotionally for the level of pressure is it kind of a sink or swim thing?

Casey Conklin (03:54.19)
It is a little bit, but they do. So I never actually, I’ve never actually worked for another attorney as an attorney. Right out of law school, I started working on my own. You know, I had a newborn at the time and I just figured I’d start taking clients. But most of the time, especially with litigators, you need to start with that seasoned attorney and then go to court with him or her several times and just kind of sit there and…

sit at the table and take notes and watch. And that’s how you kind of get into it. But you know, my first time in court, I didn’t have any of that. And I kept getting in trouble because I didn’t know the rules. Like the judge is like, it’s not your turn to talk or why we’re not talking about that now. And I’m like, I’m sorry. Just let me know. But yeah, it’s usually something where you want to tag along with somebody who’s been doing it and then go from there.

Dylan Silver (04:35.317)
yet it’s confusing.

Dylan Silver (04:48.575)
So, know, this is my only frame of reference here at KC, but I just got my real estate license in Texas last week, right? And it’s interesting because they give you all this real estate law and then say, never use it. You can’t never use it, but you have to know all of it, but do not use it. You know, the acts and the agencies and the years, what you can and can’t do, how to fill out the contract. So in effect, all of the realtors that I know say, you know, I knew most about the real estate laws.

right when I left school. Is there a little bit of that? Like if you don’t start getting into the courtroom, like right after you get out of law school, that this can be a little bit, you know, I don’t wanna say tedious, but it can seem like a giant task to then have to go and remember all the rules and procedures of the court.

Casey Conklin (05:35.894)
Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s like that with most professions. So if you were to, if I were to go to court right now, I, I think the last time I was in a courtroom would have been 2017. I think. Yeah. So if I were to go to court right now, I would have no idea what I’m doing. I would not be able to do it. Not just the procedure, but you know, the, areas that take you to court, you know, I don’t, I don’t work at.

Dylan Silver (05:49.011)
Yeah, eight years ago.

Dylan Silver (06:04.649)
Yeah.

Casey Conklin (06:05.582)
I want study those, so I don’t know those off the top of my head. So yeah, I would have to do a significant amount of research and prep if I wanted to go sit in a courtroom.

Dylan Silver (06:14.353)
I didn’t realize that. I was sitting here thinking, you gave the number and I could believe it. Majority, 90%, right? But here I was thinking like every attorney is in court all the time. But you go from that experience, you mentioned a couple of different areas, sports, so on and so forth, to then being a law clerk working for a real estate attorney. At that point, was it kind of like an aha moment? I’m gonna do this for an extended period of time, carve out a niche here.

Or was it like, let me see how this goes and take it from there.

Casey Conklin (06:48.43)
So there’s really two ways that people go about it. There’s the, I’m going to be a general practice because I don’t want anybody that walks into my door. I don’t want to have to tell them no. And then there’s the, I want to have a niche. I’m going to tell people, no, I’m only going to work in these areas and I’m going to be the expert in these areas. The attorney that I worked for that,

has the real estate license and he’s also a licensed contractor as well. He is more of the general practice. I do anything. He does divorces, does probate, does estate planning, he does some criminal defense. just working in that type of office, I saw the benefits of it, because you know, there was never a time when somebody would come in and he’d say, well I don’t do that, but I got a friend who does. Whereas I’m saying that all the time.

But I decided at that point that I didn’t want that. It’s too scatterbrained for me, right? You’re going to go from working on a criminal case to drawing up an estate plan to signing contracts. And I just decided that wasn’t for me at that point. so when I started to narrow down my focus, what I started to do along with that was build up a relationship.

Dylan Silver (07:54.879)
Yeah!

Casey Conklin (08:13.964)
So if, because, and you probably see this in your own life, if somebody is a lawyer, you think they know all law, right? So I get questions all the time for these areas that I’ve never worked in. So what I’ve done is I’ve built up a network of attorneys throughout the state of Michigan that work in these areas that I don’t. So that when somebody comes in and says, hey, I need this, I can say, you know, I can’t do that, but I know somebody who can, and then refer them on from there.

Dylan Silver (08:43.509)
Casey before we hopped on here you mentioned a couple areas in the real estate space, know, trusts, tax law. And I’m thinking there’s a couple other areas which I’m selfishly interested in here in Texas, right? But do do you see that real estate attorneys will have maybe one or two areas that they specialize in, and then won’t deal so much with like evictions and, you know, squatter situations or pretty much if you’re in real estate,

anybody that comes to you with any real estate contract this that you have to be able to handle all of it.

Casey Conklin (09:19.202)
Yeah, so it’s a mix. There are those ones that’ll handle all of it. again, that’s not me. So there’s definitely a lot out there that are like me too. So if you came with me with a landlord tenant issue, I’m passing that on. know, that’s, it’s, landlord tenants are ones, they’re low dollar amounts and they’re, you know, quick turnaround and you’re in court a lot. So me, I’m more of a purchase and acquisition.

I focus on the contract areas of it. You know, adverse possession type stuff. I don’t really do that either because again, that’s more litigation. So it just depends on the attorney. If the attorney is a litigator by nature and does the contracting and that stuff as well, then they’re gonna do it all. But if they’re like me and they’re not a litigator and don’t ever want to be again, you know, they’re gonna stay away from certain areas.

Dylan Silver (10:16.253)
It seems like a lot of stress. mean, just a lot of pressure. There’s a famous case here on national news. was this ASAP Rocky case, which was a criminal case. And there was an attorney from my neck of the woods, I believe was New York and New Jersey. I’m from New Jersey originally. And just watching him talk about the preparation for this criminal, and of course not all people are in court for criminal reasons, right? But I’m like, of course the…

Casey Conklin (10:19.16)
It is.

Dylan Silver (10:45.405)
the defendant is going to be stressed, the attorney being that stressed too, was like, wow, it’s a lot. I definitely hear it. We’re coming from there Casey, but pivoting, pivoting a bit here in, and you may not be able to answer this. totally understand that, but I’m curious to what your perspective is on this. In, in Michigan is there for real estate agents, a very lengthy sales contract is like 10, 12 pages long. is here in Texas.

Casey Conklin (11:12.8)
Yeah, and that’s pretty standard throughout the country. And it just depends on…

you know, the type of purchase it is or something like that. You know, for instance, I went through a sale once where the person was buying a home that had been purchased by the city. And so that was way more extensive because we had to go through this, you know, the city council and the city attorney and all that. But most of them are, yeah, they’re going to be 10 to 15 pages. You’re going to have to assign your name about 37 times and to get it completed.

Dylan Silver (11:47.071)
You know, my perspective, and you might not be able to give yours and I understand, but my perspective on this is it’s now been, I don’t know the term, obfuscated or it’s a degree of difficulty, a degree of complexity to where the average person cannot understand these contracts. And so as me, I’m in Texas, we have something called the Trek promulgated forms, which were created by attorneys and real estate brokers kind of.

in union if I’m understanding that correctly and every every couple of years it seems like it’s getting more and more complicated and so my perspective is like I get it you know people have to protect themselves but it does make it a little bit inaccessible I kind of again selfishly feel like maybe it would be better if it was a little bit less but in your experience do you feel like you know these forms are only going to get more and more complex as the years go on?

Casey Conklin (12:45.836)
Yeah, they are. And the reason being is as lawyers, so I do this with my contracts too. I’ll draft a contract for company A, right? And then something will happen.

that contract didn’t cover. when I write a contract for company B, I include that thing that wasn’t included the first time. And so that’s how they get to be these behemoths because you just keep adding and adding and adding because you don’t know what you don’t know. And then when something happens that you didn’t think about, you add it to the next one. And so I almost guarantee that’s what’s going keep happening with these forms.

Dylan Silver (13:21.301)
So in your practices, you talk about trusts and tax expenses. This is kind of new to me. I do need to get into this. I do have an LLC that I do for real estate wholesaling and I may use it for my real estate commissions as well. But I’m imagining that a lot of the people that are coming to you are high level operators that have very niche or specific questions.

Casey Conklin (13:47.561)
Yeah,

So when you speak about trust specifically I generally use trusts for two reasons. One the main thing I do it for is probate avoidance. Right. So if you own real estate that’s that’s a titled asset. Right. And so if you die while owning that real estate you have to probate that asset in order to pass it on to your beneficiaries of your estate with a trust in place on your personal assets you don’t have to

probate anything. It skips the probate court and goes right to the beneficiaries you list. So you save thousands of dollars and months if not years of time dealing with the probate court. And so even with so like you say you have an LLC

What I would do with you is I would set you up with your own trust. You’d have the Dillon Silver Family Trust. And then I would assign your membership rights, your ownership in your LLC to the trust so that the trust now owns the LLC. So if something happens to you, the trust continues to run the LLC as if nothing ever happened to you. Whereas you owning it yourself, something happens to you, business ceases.

Dylan Silver (15:04.799)
Yeah, I mean, this is this is such an interesting topic, I think right now to Casey specifically, because as we’re seeing an aging population, right, more and more of this is going to start to happen. And as a as a wholesaler myself, I feel like probate is just a huge issue, because it’s a headache for the family. You know, they they’re not attorneys, they might not be real estate people. And this is now they’re having to deal with this whole issue, which can take who knows how long.

Casey Conklin (15:05.013)
and then you have to probate that business.

Dylan Silver (15:34.419)
So when you have a trust in Michigan and someone dies, right? I’m assuming the executor of the trust is able to disperse it somewhat quickly. It’s maybe what? What’s a month, two months?

Casey Conklin (15:46.646)
Yeah, so Michigan uses a set of laws for that called EPIC, the States and Protected Individuals Act, which has actually been adopted by a number of states. I can’t tell you if Texas is one of them or not.

But what that means is most states operate under these same laws. So when you when you have a trust in place, you yourself don’t own anything. Your trust acts as an entity, but it’s a pass through entity while you’re alive. So there’s no change in your taxes. You don’t to file a different tax form or anything for it because it’s a pass through. But your trust owns everything. So when you die, even if somebody tries to probate your estate, your family goes to court and say, well, he didn’t own anything.

so there’s nothing to probate, sorry. And so what that does is the trust can actually start to administer immediately after death. As soon as there’s a death, the successor trustee, so the one who takes over, can come in and start to administer the trust just like you were running it while you were alive.

So you’re missing out on probate and probate they say in the United States averages somewhere between five and nine percent of the gross estate of the gross value of the estate. So if you’re a real estate investor and you have, you know, six half million dollar homes, take nine percent of that and that’s what it’s going to cost your family to get through the probate process. So.

Dylan Silver (17:18.409)
Yeah, it’s a mess.

Casey Conklin (17:20.418)
Well, and on top of that, you got to remember that that value is not liquid. So what happens is your family has to start selling assets in order to pay for that, those probate expenses as well as death taxes. So avoiding probate saves not just the headache, but it saves thousands, thousands of dollars. I drafted a plan for a family last summer that owned several businesses, including

some rental properties and they were valued at around $15 million. And so when I go through, I want to make sure that people understand why we’re doing this. So I went through and laid it out for him and his wife and said, this is what you’re saving by putting these trusts together. And what we figured out was we ended up saving them over $2 million in fees, costs, and taxes at the point of their death. And again, that’s not their $2 million. It’s their families, but you know,

We don’t want your sons to have to start selling your businesses in order to pay the IRS, right? So we can work on things.

Dylan Silver (18:24.905)
Yeah, I mean, this is a very interesting topic for me. The previous guest on the show actually, it lines up with this because he actually was a firefighter, EMT, and college professor. His family member, I believe it was his father, had a stroke of some kind. And he realized that all this information that he needed in case something were to happen to his father, he didn’t have. So he ended up writing a book.

something about strategic planning, you know, for your family, right? And this kind of coincides with that because like once people are going downhill health wise, it’s in some in some cases too late, like you’re already wrapped up in it, you know, and if hearing about this, I didn’t realize and this is just my ignorance. I didn’t realize that there was a pass through. I can’t speak for Texas, but hearing about Michigan, it just seems like a no brainer like do this, you know, you need this because otherwise it’s going to be a mess.

if something were to happen to you.

Casey Conklin (19:26.646)
Yeah, and that’s so it’s the same and that’s why I do things like these podcasts all the time. The way that I get clients is by educating people because people don’t know what they don’t know. Especially, you know, the younger generation. If you have a, you know, a business owner that’s in his young thirties, they’re going to be like, well, I’ve got 40 more years to live. I don’t have to worry about this stuff. Well, maybe, hopefully, but you really don’t know.

And so, you know, I like to educate people in these areas because most people don’t understand. So I tell everybody, you know, if you have kids cash or a clue, you should get a trust based estate plan in place because you never know when you’re going to need it. And if, like you said, if something starts to happen, it’s probably too late to put stuff in place. So when I do when I do estate plans for elderly people, I have to kick everybody out of the room.

Dylan Silver (20:14.132)
place.

Casey Conklin (20:22.188)
and ask them a series of questions to test their cognitive ability. Right? So if they start to answer those questions wrong or can’t answer those questions, then we can no longer, they’re no longer legally allowed to sign a contract. So they can’t draw up any power of attorney documents, a will, a trust, anything like that.

Dylan Silver (20:25.333)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (20:42.709)
So if someone’s in that state, right, and they’ve already appointed a power of attorney, is the power of attorney able to create a trust if the trust is in that elderly person’s name, or is it kind of too little too late?

Casey Conklin (20:56.142)
It’s kind of too late at that point. So, you know, the power of attorney gives you access to your financial. So there’s two power of attorneys, really. There’s a financial power of attorney and a healthcare. The one gives you access to the financial so you can go to the bank so you can continue to pay their bills, pay their mortgage, their electricity, whatever it might be. The other one is for making your medical decisions. And they’re really pretty narrow to what they can and can’t do.

You can draft them so that a trust might be able to be drafted by the power of attorney, but, you know, I wouldn’t recommend waiting until that point, you know, because now all these decisions that are being made about your estate are being made by somebody else, not you.

Dylan Silver (21:33.598)
at long.

Dylan Silver (21:40.935)
else. How common is it that you’re seeing people wait until that 11th hour versus people, know, I’m 31. I have a company that, you know, I don’t have any deeds in my name yet. I don’t have or in an LLC that I own, but I hope to one day and I’ve never thought about a trust because just like you said rather foolishly, I was thinking I have forever. Who cares? You know, my time is not coming anytime soon. But how often are you seeing elderly cases like that?

Casey Conklin (22:08.238)
It’s most of the time. Most of the time my clients that come in for estate planning are one of two. They’re business owners with large estates or they’re retired. And they’re like, okay, it’s time to put something together. you know what? So I’m 43, right? And part of my presentations that I give is I show them a picture of the accident I was in.

In when I was 27 years old, I was in a bad car accident and I was pronounced dead at the scene. And so I tell people, know, I was 27 at that time. Did I wake up that morning knowing I was going to die? No, I didn’t. I clearly I didn’t. know, something changed, you know, but they got me to the hospital and fixed me up.

Dylan Silver (22:45.279)
Jeez Louise.

Casey Conklin (23:04.76)
You you just never know. And that’s why I say, especially if you have kids, you want to make sure you get that stuff in place. Because if you own a home and you have minor children and you die, those minor children aren’t going to go into child protective services. And they’re going to be put in foster homes until the court decides who gets to take care of them the rest of their lives. Whereas if you have the plan in place,

you decide who takes care of them and that person can take them immediately. They could take them right from the scene of the accident. Right? And so, like I said, you just don’t know. You don’t know what’s gonna happen. So, you know, make sure you have a plan and plan for the worst and hope for the best. Right? So, yeah.

Dylan Silver (23:44.842)
You don’t.

Dylan Silver (23:53.117)
Is the process of administering the trust a court process? Are people having to go to court after death? Or how does this happen? Is it anything related to that? Or is it pretty much you have the trust in place, therefore you can go and shoot once this happens, you have the right to go ahead and execute it.

Casey Conklin (24:10.498)
Yep, so a trust is a contract that you have written with yourself. So you wrote yourself a contract saying, is what I’m gonna do with my assets while I’m alive and well. After I pass away, this is what Steve’s gonna do with my assets. And your successor trustee is under a fiduciary duty to follow the rules that we put in place for him. So they can start, there’s no court involvement.

with trust administration whatsoever. The only time there would be a court is if somebody wants to argue the trust. Somebody wants to fight the trust and say the trustee is not doing what I think the trust says. Then that would go to court. But other than that, no, it’s the administration is done outside of court. And the best part about keeping it outside of court is it’s all private. Because once something goes to court, it’s all public record. But by being able to skip court, everything stays private.

Dylan Silver (25:05.119)
So, I’m totally new to this and I probably should know, but I don’t. The trust is both a set of rules, effectively a document, and an individual who executes it. Is that correct on some level?

Casey Conklin (25:18.83)
So the trust is just a set of documents. Okay, and then in those documents there are three roles involved. The first role is the grantor, and that’s the person who drafts it. That’s the person who creates it. So if you set up a trust for you and your family, you would be the grantor. The second is the trustee. That’s the person who manages the trust assets.

So the trustee is similar to the personal executive or the executor of an estate through probate, but they’re the ones that are in charge of taking care of those assets. So when you first do it, you’re the trustee and the grantor. And then the third role is the beneficiary. Those are the people that benefit from the trust assets. So if it’s businesses, they’re going to get the income from those businesses. it’s property, they get to now own the property in any…

gains from those properties when they sell. So when you first do a trust, are, you are all three roles. And so while you’re all three roles, you’re pretty much not limited at all to what you can do with your assets. You can control them how you want. It’s, it’s planning mostly for those times when you’re no longer in control. So if you become mentally disabled or if you pass away, you want to make sure that you have those things in place.

that are written in the trust document that says this is what the trustee, this is who the trustee is and this is what the trustee needs to be doing.

Dylan Silver (26:51.829)
Got it. Yeah, this is critical information. think younger people with businesses, whichever state they’re in, need to look at this. we are coming up on time here. Casey, where can folks go in the Michigan area to get a hold of you?

Casey Conklin (27:05.752)
Yep, so I’m actually based out of Okemos, Michigan, which is just east of Lansing. But I can go statewide and I can do virtual. And I’m also licensed in the United States Tax Court, which means I can talk tax law in any of the United States states. if you have tax questions, you can contact me. But the best way to learn more about me and what I do with businesses and estates is by…

hitting up my website, that’s just caseydconklin.com.

Dylan Silver (27:39.637)
Casey, thank you for coming on the show today.

Casey Conklin (27:42.134)
Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s been fun.