2156: Unlocking the Secrets of Offshore Trusts: Strategies for Asset Protection with Mauricio Rauld Part 2

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My name is Brandon Cook. This is my fourth Meet the Masters seminar. All these markets that Jason and his network endorses are great markets. We're getting better. Higher rents, prices are going up right now. But with financing terms as good as they are, they're still real great deals and all have been through Jason's network.

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Welcome empowered investors. This is episode 2156 and I am here with my mom in her beautiful home. And we've broadcast from here before. But since my mom is a very experienced real estate investor who has been doing it for many decades. In fact about a decade or two longer than I have. Two decades, I guess that would be right.

Is that about right?

And the story is just so all of you know, I saw this infomercial with this guru, I got his book, I read three whole chapters, I put it down, my mom picked it up, read the entire book, got very interested in real estate investing. And when I was about 16 years old, then it all went from there. She got her real estate license about six months before I did and we both sold real estate as agents. She was investing before that, Had a couple of rental properties here and there and some experience. But over the years I have called my mother an extreme self manager because she self manages her properties. She has tried property managers a couple of times. Been disappointed with it. Imagine that, being disappointed in a property manager. I mean, really can't imagine that happening. She must be the first, right? Anyway, look, we all have our complaints about property managers and most of them are very much warranted. But we're not really going to talk about that too much today. We're going to talk about asset protection. And by the way, we just did a survey of several of our investors and the number one thing they wanted to know more about is asset protection. Now my mom just expanded her asset protection and estate planning plan, I guess I should say, and did a bunch of things and asked some questions about it. She's been a little confused about it. So we've been talking about this and the lawyer set up a variety of limited liability companies, LLC as well as land trust in this part of her plan. And I know you have been questioning that moment. So I think one of the things that's been confusing to you is the idea that what they set up is a management company. So you now have your own property management company, so you can't complain about the property manager anymore.

Yeah, it is I.

It is I. And we've seen the enemy and it is us. Right? That's the same. So she has her own management company, I have my own management company. And then the management of the properties and the ownership of the properties are different. That's the key. Think of it just like this. In a plan like this, which is a common and good plan, I think you would hire a third party property manager. Sometimes this is the same idea. You're just doing it with legal structuring and you're forming your own property management company. Now one question probably people are thinking is, Jason, can I do this if I already have an outside third party property manager? And the answer is yes, absolutely. Because you can have multiple layers of property management. That's what institutional investors do all the time. They have on site management and then they have corporate level management at a headquarters type of level. You can have a property manager managing all of your different properties or multiple property managers doing that. That's sort of the on the ground or direct tenant contact property manager. And then you can have a portfolio manager that is managing your entire portfolio, or you can do it any way you want, it doesn't matter. You can have three layers of property management. So it's totally fine to have your own management company even if you have a property manager. But of course, you know, what we recommend is the hybrid self management approach. Then you really can have your own property manager. And if any of you want to become real estate professionals and have that designation with the irs, this is very helpful to be your own property manager. And again, it should not take more time than it does with a property manager. Sometimes you get that third party out of the way. It actually takes less time. But this is using the hybrid approach. You're not fully self managing your property. You're having A property manager do a la carte services or a real estate agent do your tenant turnovers and your lease up. But mom, speaking of tenant turnovers, and we were just talking about this, you do a really good job of, number one, raising your rents consistently and at the same time keeping your turnover down and keeping your tenants for a long time. Anything you want to share on that?

Well, it just depends on the area that you're doing business in Some areas it is much easier to keep tenants for a long, long time and other areas perhaps not. But if you respond to your tenants and if something is broken or whatever, I just think that they have a great respect for you and they know that you will get things done and I think that makes them stay with you longer. And besides, it's always better to go direct, you know, to the problem rather than going through other people.

Meaning a property manager. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And now with all of the technology tools we have, it's just so easy to do this nowadays. One of the funny things, my mom is very good at getting good deals on services. She used to have paper phone books in her trunk. Yeah, she did. She's a low tech person, but she is upgraded to Google. Okay, and now tell everybody your little secret of getting good deals from service providers.

Well, it's very simple. Just go on Google, whatever it is, companies that you're looking for, such and such and such and such city, okay? And then, you know, they'll give you scans of people and you go to about the third page of it and start making about 8, 10.

Okay, so, so let me, let me tell the secret. This is the secret, okay, is that she doesn't reach out to the, anybody on the first page or even the second page.

They're too busy.

Mom's theory is the people that have the good search results, and I think this is true, are busy, have lots of business and they don't want to make deals. So those are the worst ones to call. Call the ones that are in the lower end of the results or reach out to them. You don't have to call them. You can email them, you can do whatever, go to their website, doesn't matter, you know, fill in a web form, whatever it is. But the point is you don't go with if it's the yellow pages in the old days, right? You don't go with a person with a big ad in the yellow pages. You go the person with a small ad because they're not a big business who, you know, has tons of customers.

You go to someone who is less busy so you get a better deal.

Yeah.

So that they'll appreciate your business.

Yeah. Good. Good stuff. Okay, Any other little tips you want to share before we get to our guest today? You said that all was quiet on the western front when I asked you how your properties were going. So that's good that it's quiet, right?

Yeah. Not. Not many people are leaving. The main reason people leave is they're building their own house. I mean, if you're a good landlord, they have no reason to leave you unless they're building their own home or they're moving to another part of the.

Country or they're just buying their own home, they don't have to be building it. I think one of the reasons you said that, and I do want this to people, is that when you're choosing your tenants, and I've noticed this for my properties in the nicer areas, and I think you've noticed this too, the nicer but still affordable areas. And one particularly comes to mind, it's Sarasota, Florida, where both my mom and I own properties. Okay. This market, which, by the way, if you're interested in that market, just reach out through Jason hartman.com One of our investment counselors will be glad to connect you with properties in those area with our local market specialist in that area or any other area around the country. But that area is a relatively affordable area, and it's a developing area with a lot of new home development. So when you have that, you tend to get a lot of tenants applying for your properties who give you this story. They say, we, we want to rent for just one year or 16 months or two years or whatever it is, because we are building our own home. And most people think this is a great tenant. They'll typically have a great credit score because they've qualified for loans to build their own home or buy a new home from a builder. Same thing, building it, whatever. And they've usually got a good amount of money in the bank and jobs where they make good money. And on the surface, you think this is a great tenant. I've got an A class tenant. And you're right. But here's the problem. They're. They're moving, right? They're not staying. Okay.

What you really want are tenants that stay 30 years, like a couple of months.

My mom has one tenant, and we've. We've talked about this on the show before, so we won't go into it today. But this one particular tenant, he's A truck driver has been in one of her properties for over three decades, over 30 years. He could have mortgaged the property, paid it off, and own a free and clear by now. But he's stuck around.

Right.

Yeah.

And. And it's not that these people are staying in your properties because you're soft on rents.

Right.

I want to make that clear. You raise your rent, how much do you try to raise your rents? Well, I mean, percentage wise, because it differs by area. I understand that, but. But, you know, I always say try to raise them 4%. What do you do?

Well, I've been raising them more than that in some areas. Definitely way more than in the market.

We'Ve had during the COVID era, rents went up way more than 4%.

Yeah.

And we all benefited from that. But I'm just talking about generally over time, you know, I think 4% is about the. The target.

Well, that's probably reasonable.

Yeah. So in other words, if they're paying $2,000 a month, they're going to be 20, 80 next year.

Okay.

That seems so low, though, Jason.

Well, in the market we're coming off.

Yeah, I listen, that seems not worth.

Writing the thing, writing the letter, the rent increase letter. But in the market we're coming off of, we, you know, we've reported on this ad nauseam on the show. You know, we've seen rent increases of 4 or 5, 6, $700 a month in tenants that don't move when they get these huge rent increases. Because instantly when they get a rent increase, what does that tenant do? Naturally, they shop around. They're going to jump online. They're going to say, oh, this is terrible, I'm getting a rent increase. I don't want to pay an increase, obviously. What else can I get? And in the past couple of years, the market has made it so they just can't get anything else. So it's just supply and demand. So you've been able to really increase rents very nicely, but over the course of 10, 20 years, that's not always the case.

Okay.

Oh, yes.

No, you're not. No. This has just been a really very good period for Lynn.

It's been an anomaly. So over the course of time, and it depends on the inflation rate, it depends on the market competition, obviously these factors all come into play. But over the course of time, if you could average 4% per year, that's great. If inflation is higher, maybe you're averaging 5, 6, 7% per year. It just depends on the market and the overall inflation rate as to that, but you keep your tenants, you retain them, you minimize tenant turnover and you still get your rent increases in there.

Right.

Even in the area that we have to be a little more careful about raising rents. I think that when, for example, if you have to do a new H vac system and you just get it done, the tenant really appreciates it and it just kind of stick with you.

And by the way, you just reminded me I'll tell one of my stories. For an Alabama property I had, I had to do a new H VAC system. I owned the house about 15 years and it, it finally just gave out. It wasn't worth it to fix it anymore. So new system, thousands of dollars in expense, and the tenant actually helped me shop for the contractor. This is one of my self managed properties. The tenant made the appointments, had had contractors come over and literally gave me advice, said, jason, I think you ought to pick this contractor because they, you know, they showed up on time, they had the lowest price. The tenant wanted me to choose the person with the best price. You know folks, most of your tenants are just great people who just want a nice house to live in and they just want to be taken care of. Remember, our tenants are our customers and you can easily take care of them and self manage your properties and not have a property manager charging you a bunch of fees and nickel and diming you. And you know, when I self manage, I get my whole check every single month.

Right?

Yeah.

You know, any comments?

That's what you're entitled to, that chin. Why share it with someone else?

Yeah, why share it with someone else? So keep that all in mind and.

I hope that's helpful.

And let's go ahead and continue our discussion today on asset protection. Mom, thanks for joining us.

You're welcome.

And so there's always the argument, well, that was a fraudulent transfer. The only reason you did that was to avoid creditors. And so if a judge wants to go down that route, they can say, jason, I want you to transfer that outside of the I don't, I can't control the trust or I can't control, transfer that asset back into the LLC or back to where I can now have control. And if you say I can't or I don't want to or whatever, to your point, they can hold you in contempt of court and can throw you in jail to comply. Now at some point when you spend too much time in jail, you, there becomes a point where, okay, he must be telling the truth because nobody wants to spend a year in jail. He must. And Then they let him out.

But the famous cases are ruin your life. I mean, you're waiting out the judge, right? So.

But here. But I want one important point basically, folks.

I mean, this is welcome to North Korea. You know, that's pretty much what you've got with some of the stuff these judges can do. They're insanely powerful. So it's pretty scary.

Before I went to law school, I actually went to work for a pretty well known plaintiff lawyer up in the, in the San Francisco Bay area. And as you know, plaintiff's lawyers, right, People are actually going to file lawsuits against you. They work on a contingency fee basis, right? So they only get paid if they're able to recover damages on behalf of their clients. And so the plaintiff's lawyer have a huge incentive to make sure that if they go spend the time, little years to get, go get a judgment against you, that there's something to collect on the other side of that judgment. And so one of the first things we used to do and what plaintiff's lawyers generally do is they do asset searches, right? They'll pull. It's very easy to do a property search. They can find out, hey, what properties does Jason own? I can do a bank sweep to see what bank accounts Jason owns or whatever brokerage accounts Jason owns. And if they can't find anything, right, that's where the privacy and putting things in Trust and LLCs and kind of removing ownership. If they can't find anything, then the plaintiff's lawyer is much less inclined to go pursue that because they don't want to go spend three years, get a judgment and then be like, okay, let's collect and there's nothing there. So having an insurance policy at that point, they tend to just want to, you know, want to settle for insurance policies. And so privacy is a big point of this because what people forget or not that they forget, they don't really realize is that your ability to pay the judgment is completely irrelevant during the lawsuit. They can't ask you about what you own or where you have it, or do you own a trust or where you're. None of that is relevant as to whether you are liable for a particular claim. It's only until you get a judgment against someone that you can then start bringing them in for depositions and you know, and asking them all the stuff. But, but a plaintiff's lawyer doesn't want to go spend three years of their life getting a judgment, no matter how strong the case is, if they don't have some level of Assurance they're going to be able to collect. And so having Trust and having LLCs, if your cash, your excess cash is an. In an LLC as opposed to your personal name, they won't be able to find that. And the odds of them suing you decline significantly. And the odds of them taking a settlement for the insurance limits goes up exponentially.

But they will be able to find it if you're doing business with it. That's why you need holding companies.

If they can see somehow it's going to have to be a public. It's going to have to be a public transaction. Right? And if you're doing.

What I mean is. What I mean is, if they know that's your business, they're going to know.

And that's. And that's what we talked about it earlier. I mean, you know, your businesses, which are your operational companies, that's where all the liability is anyway. Those companies shouldn't own anything. Right? You shouldn't. You should have a little bit of money in a bank account, but your valuable assets should be tucked away in a holding company in one of these states that we like so that they're really private. Nobody should know. It's nobody's business that you have, you know, 100 rental property somewhere or you have a bank account with a million dollars. Like that's none of anybody's business. You should have, you know, all of that stuff in. In a private LLC or a trust or something like that so that people can't just go and do a public search and file because otherwise you just have a big target on your back. Right?

All right. Yeah. No. No question about it. Okay. So, Marisa, we've got to get back to this question of trust, okay? Because we got to poke the holes. So you've got a trust that's not a living trust. It's a trust that's meant for estate planning, asset protection. And the amazing thing about these trusts is some of these things have been around for a thousand years. It's incredible that these old European families have passed down assets through many generations. And this is the one way to really leave a legacy, folks. Because, you know, these trusts, they're so durable. It's amazing. I mean, can you imagine having your future generations a thousand years from now? I mean, like, that are, you know, that are engaging with this trust that you set up? That's an incredible thing. You know the year is 3122, right? Or so, whatever. Right? Yeah. And. And you set up this trust and it's still there.

Yeah, you pass the beneficiaries down to generations and generations. I mean, you can set it up. I mean, just ask the Rockefellers, right? You set up the thing and it's like, hey, I'm going to hand this much to this generation. And then. And the next generation, you kind of pass it down. And as long as they, they're good stewards of the money, it can last forever. I mean, you know, the big, the big holes. The first one is not really a huge hole, but, you know, one is obviously a cost factor. I mean, if everybody, if they were handing. I always say if people are handing out asset protection trust for free, then I think everybody should have one. It just has an exponential cost. Especially if you really go offshore, which is really where we're really. The gold standard of asset protection is offshore trust. But the whole. For an offshore trust is what we just talked about. Like, even though you may set it up, let's take the Cook Islands, for example, which is parenthetically where I, I met my wife. But the Cook Islands is the gold standard for tr. If you're looking to set an offshore asset protection trust, the Cook, it doesn't get any better than the Cook Islands. It's virtually impossible to go break that trust, go fly down to the Cook Islands and breaking that trust, getting assets from that trust is virtually impossible. However, as we mentioned earlier, you. If, if you're here in the United States and there's a judgment here in the United States and you're in front of a US Judge, the US Judge has jurisdiction over you and can basically order you to bring those assets that are offshore, bring them back to the United States. And if you decide that you can't, because that's, that's going to be the main thing. You're going to, you're going to write a letter to your trustee asking them to comply with the judge's order, and the trustee is going to decline because that's what they're supposed to do. So you're going to come back and say, judge, I try, I try to get this. I try to comply with your order, Judge, I try to get the trustee to wire money over or sell assets to bring it back, but they won't listen to me. I don't have any control. But the judge does have that. If they don't believe you, they have the opportunity to hold you in contempt of court and throw you in jail, which again, has.

What are they holding you in contempt for? They're saying you're lying. Is that the contempt?

Yeah, they don't believe you. Yeah, you're like, hey, I'm, you're, I'm ordering you, Jason, to call your trustee and, and demand that that money get sent back. And you're going to send them a letter. Look, Judge, I already sent them the letter. I, I requested it as you, I demanded it and they declined because they have to because that's in the trust documents. And so you did not comply with the judge's order. And if they don't believe you, they have the power to, to throw you in jail. Which has happened at least a couple times on some very well known cases.

Right, right. No, I remember reading one about one of those in the Wall Street Journal many years ago. But, you know, I gotta ask you, Mauricio, some big businesses and I can't. Some big businesses are not corporations, they're trusts. Big businesses we all know of. I just can't remember the names of them at the moment. But they're, they're business trusts. Now is there some difference between a business trust and like the asset protection trust?

Yeah, I mean, you know, like, let's talk about REITs. I mean a REIT is a trust, right? So real estate investment, that's a good example too. Yeah. No, it's got to do with specific language that you put some spend, we call it spendthrift language that we put into the trust agreement which basically limits what happens with these trusts, is that it's not like you're getting a distribution that just is consistent like a REIT. A read is like automatically you're getting 90% of the distribution, whatever. So if I attack that, I'm going to get that. But it's the way that these documents are drafted that prevents somebody from automatically being able to pull that money. It really does depend on the trustee. And of course the trustee is somewhere off in the Cook Islands or some other trust. So you have no jurisdiction over the trustee. Now again, the other argument I like to make too is like if you really are well, well off, I mean, you always have the option to just leave the United States if it really gets to that point where you're about to lose everything and you don't want to go there, if you do leave the US then, then there's zero, zero jurisdiction over, over your offshore trust and stuff. But yeah, so it does have to do with the. Just because it's an irrevocable trust doesn't necessarily mean it's an app. Not all irrevocable trust or asset protection trust. All asset protection trusts are irrevocable Right.

So if you look at like, I mean the only one I can actually think of besides the REITs is like, you know, Bitcoin's all the rage now. Right. So the grayscale Bitcoin trust.

Yeah. Like ETFs. Yeah. Exchange traded. Well, those are, those are funds I get. Yeah.

I think Walmart might be a trust too. Possibly. Why would a business set themselves up as a trust and not a corporation? A big business.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna expect. I don't know the answer to that. I mean, certainly doesn't make any sense for a small potatoes to do that. Now again, there might be, but even like a Berkshire Hathaway, obviously they're a corporation and they're a C corp. And, but, but there's got to be some benefit.

But I don't know, one other distinction here if we can. So a, a trust does not have a corporate veil like an LLC or a corporation. Right. It's.

That's, that's exactly right. Because you have removed that. Nobody owns the trust. The trust is its own separate distinct person or entity or structure. It's got nothing to do with you because there is no owner. So you can't pierce the corporate veil to get to an owner because there is no owner. It only has beneficiaries which are not owners. They're just the ones that get all the benefits from the trust. So that's one of the benefits of having. One of the big benefits having a trust is you do remove ownership completely and you don't have that concern. You also don't have the concern of a charging order because if you get same same thing, you look at the outside attack, right? And you get into a car accident or something completely unrelated and there's a judgment against you. And I come to you and say, what do you own? You don't own anything. You don't even own the trust. You're the beneficiary of the trust, but you don't own the trust.

And so that poke the holes.

Then what's the hole? That sounds good, but the whole is.

That if the judge wants to get to you, which they do because they, they, you transfer the assets a little too late or they, they think you're doing this primarily to avoid and hinder creditors being able to get to you, they still have control of you and they have power of you. It's not easy. I'm just saying there are holes. It's not bulletproof. Right. There are holes and there have been cases before like the ones you probably read in the Wall Street Journal, the Anderson case, in the Lawrence case, which is talking about in the book. They ended up in jail because the judge thought that they had just set up all these structures. A lot of times it set up structures kind of late.

I wonder what the real outcome was of that, though. Are they still.

They get really. At some point. Yeah. They get released? No. At some point. Well, I think one of them, one ended up caving, was able to, was able to repatriate some of the cash and was good enough for the judge. And then the other one, at some point, when you spend six months in jail, at some point the judge has to go, okay, he's got to be telling, nobody's going to spend six months or a year in jail just to do. I mean, that he must not really, he truly must not have the ability to do that. And that's what happened in, in the other case where the judge at some point has to. But it's a year. Do you want to spend a year in jail in order to do that?

Okay, so, so the other part of it is that the trusts are expensive, right?

Yes. That's 100%.

How much? Why are they expensive?

Well, first of all, you're, there's two expenses. One is the creation of the, of the stuff. I mean, I think a Cook Islands trust, you know, if you go to somebody who's competent. Again, I don't, I don't set these up. I don't have a dog in this fight. But the ones that I've seen, I don't have an offshore trust, but I know they're about $30,000 to set up. And then there's an ongoing maintenance cost because you have to, you don't want to hire a US Trustee, so you're going to hire, let's say you set up a trust in the Cook Islands, you're going to want to have a Cook Islands trustee, right? To, to be the trustee and make all the decisions for you. And that's going to cost you another, you know, $5,000 a year or something just to have the trustee. So they are expensive to set up. And so again, if you just bought your first rental property and have a W2 job, you're not going to be getting a trust, let alone an offshore trust. But if you're Donald Trump or you're somebody who has significant assets, then having a trust is something that, again, it's the gold standard. It's as good as it gets. So it's something you should consider, depending on how liable. You know, what. What job you have. Are you a heart surgeon? Is your liability pretty high and the size of your state? I mean, if your estate is a couple million dollars or higher, spending 30 grand to do this protection makes a ton of sense. But if you're in a state, if all you own is a couple hundred grand, it makes no sense as to.

Why it's 30 grand. Like, for what reason is it that expensive? Just because lawyers can get away with it?

Maybe. I mean, you're also. And again, I don't set them up, but I mean, obviously, if I'm setting something up in the Cook Islands, I got to make sure it's compliant with Cook island laws. I got to know Cook Islands law. There's not that many people who know how to do it. It's kind of supply and demand to do it well, so can you get it for cheaper? Sure, I can probably find somebody in the Cook Islands do it for me. But do you. Do you really want to have somebody out there do it for you, or do you want somebody licensed in the.

U.S. and then there's ongoing fees for maintenance, right?

Yeah, there's filing fees, but the big one's a trustee, because again, the trustee is not going to be the local cab driver, you know, who's going to be your trustee, because they have control. Overall, you want to have a. It's going to be an institutional trustee that's bonded insured, that your little puny $10 million is nothing to them because they've got $1 billion of trustees that they're overseeing. So, yeah, it just becomes expensive on that side. So it's not for everyone. But I said if they were giving them away for free, everybody should get one because it is the gold standard of asset protection.

Right, Mauricio? You know, the great thing about this interview, folks, is we go deep. Like, these are deep answers that Mauricio is giving you, folks. I hope you appreciate it. You know, most podcasts you listen to or YouTube video you watch, it'd be this, like, shallow discussion. And call me at 1-800- lawyer, you know, to pay 30 grand. Mauricio's really do it.

I don't. I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't. I don't. I'm a former recovering asset protection attorney, but I don't do it anymore. So that's one of the fun things for me is I can just get to tell you how it is. And hear the pros, hear the cons, and you can make a good business decision of what works for you.

That's great. You know what's always. I've always wondered, and you just alluded to it, these trustees, if you have a trust there, and I have searched this before, but I didn't really find anything. Like, aren't there cases of trustees ripping people off and stealing money, embezzling money from a trust?

100.

That's why I say you shouldn't. You don't. You know, people like. For some. I used to, as you know, Jason, I used to live in Belize, and so I'm. Belize trusts are, you know, not as good as. Not as good as the cocaine, but they're up there. And yeah, you don't want to have some Belizean taxi driver or bike guy be your trustee or your Uncle Bob because, you know, there's an incentive for them.

They're.

If they're overseeing $10 million, $100 million, even a couple million dollars, they have the ability to write a check and move money around. I mean, if. Forget it. So you want to have somebody that's licensed, that's bonded, that has insurance so that if, if the guy somehow takes off with their money, that the company has insurance to cover your loss, because they have absolute control. They are the trustee. They are the ones that actually make the decisions as to, as to. As to what to do. Now, just a little bit of a. Of a very technical thing. Most trusts are what we call dormant trusts. So they actually, they are coupled with an llc, so the trust will own the LLC and you get to manage the llc. So I wouldn't even have a bank account for the trust. I'd have a bank account, you know, for, for the, for the, for the llc. And I would run everything at the LLC level, but the owner will be the trust, and then there is no owner above that. That's how I keep control.

Yeah, right, right, right. But I would assume they could somehow get access to the llc. They could go to that bank and say, hey, I'm the trustee and. Or I don't know, maybe not.

They could, because they, they obviously are the owner. So they could fire you as the manager. Right, they could fire you as the manager and then insert themselves or somebody else as the manager that they control. And now the manager can go in and. And move money around. So, yeah, to that point, they could still do that. So, yeah, that's the bottom line is.

You know, if you want to do all this stuff, there are some Risks. So I think the answer is diversify. Don't ever put all your eggs in one basket, okay? You know, you can have multiple entities in multiple jurisdictions, and, you know, that's. That's probably the. The wise thing to do, but the important thing also to do is to do something. Because if you don't do this stuff in advance, folks, you're asking for trouble. You know, I was reading an article a while back that said the average person, and I thought this was crazy. I thought it was ridiculous. I thought, no way. But then I thought about it and I thought, well, yes way. They said the average person in the US during their lifetime, they'll have seven lawsuits. And I thought, gosh, I know people that never even had one lawsuit. But then I thought about it and I thought, well, if you get married and then you get divorce, a divorce is a lawsuit. If you have kids and your kid gets into trouble, that's a lawsuit. Okay. And then maybe you do something and you get in a dispute with someone, and, you know, you got a couple of those, and that's a lawsuit. Maybe you have an insurance claim and your insurance company doesn't pay you and you got to sue them, and that's a lawsuit.

Yeah.

It's sort of easy to see seven lawsuits, actually.

Yeah. And I. It's hard to pin down. What I always want to try and find is what are the odds of you actually getting sued in general. Right. And there's some statistics on the medical. Because the American Medical association keeps some stats, and it's like one in three. Three doctors will get sued at some point in their lifetime. But I'm pretty sure it's pretty safe. If you're a business owner or you're a real estate investor, you probably have somewhere around 1 in 4 or maybe even 1 in 5 chance of getting sued in general. I mean, because again, the lawsuits may have been something that you instigated, but I'm talking about somebody suing you.

Yeah.

The chances are pretty. Pretty.

It's not.

It's not crazy. One in a million. It's going to be a one in three or one in four chance of you getting sued.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the misleading thing about that statement, which is a statement everybody makes.

Yeah, yeah.

Is that it's not about you getting sued. Sometimes you have to be the plaintiff. Right?

Correct.

Because someone takes advantage of you and you got to go pursue it. Right. But if that case doesn't work out, your attorney might end up suing you for fees, because attorney fees are beyond absurd. Right. You know, that might happen, or you might lose, and they get a judgment against you for attorney's fees so you don't have to get sued to have problems. Okay. And that's why.

And. And we are working on that. I know there's only 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S. jason, but we are trying to get the. The supply of lawyers and higher so we can keep those down. So I know there's a bunch of lawyers coming through the law school system, and maybe that'll reduce the. The legal fees because of the. The supply and demand dynamics.

It doesn't seem to. You know, the problem with being an attorney is there's no scalability to it, you know, and so. So attorneys have to charge really high hourly rates because they're only one person. And they. Once they've sold their time.

That's right. They're like hotel rooms. Once the hotel room that night comes and goes, you can't. We can't resell last night's hotel room.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, Mauricio, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with people. Where can they find you?

They can go to Legal Strategies for Everyone dot com. I got a website there, and it's on Amazon, but that's probably the easiest way. And if you need to get a hold of me, just go to ask Mauricio, askmauricio.com and that'll point you in the right direction.

Sounds good. Mauricio. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Jason. Really appreciate it.

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