when we do that i've been a lawyer for thirty one years of the time trial thirty three now there are thirty two now and the trust office or the exact of this estate had been a trust officer of the bank for sixteen years and what we do is several six return and we have a large estate which will in this case is a four million dollars state and we have to do a several six return with the i r s there's a lot of work to be involved in that particular provide with the personal property of the will and it was in our opinion whatever we have to do with my years of experience we have to do a seven zero six return there's a lot to do part of that is getting appraised values of everything all the assets of the city farmland the the van and the house everything we had to get it appraised value in order to attach to that several six returns and that takes a lot of time and sat down which we decide on three percent of the gross state we don't know how we're going to do the farming and exact are generally has in our experience to where it going sometimes we do what we call she a bit auction where i know people that i see in the grocery stores every day farmers out there who are adjacent to this around they'll say hey tom you got any farmland available coming up through a stage and so i pedal steel bit options for the testimony of a trial would be three to five percent of whatever the land brought ok and so we believe just like in the store case which we sided we sold this land and we disabled person living in there and so i told exact we had to get another appraisal because an appraisal is not going to work and sell the house and so that's one of the things we had to do so i guess it up in the whole body of the work in order to put everything and in doing so several six returns over the years i know what is reasonable and and what is not in that sense and and i know what directors when they're going to accept this large estate with a four million dollars they these six return based on three million dollars is it that has to be doing that justifies three percent five hundred thousand dollars worth of certificates of deposit personally my years experience of the war i would probably take a good look at that say you know if that's if that's all we had to do in that probably not be that the three percent is not set in stone as to every case i mean it's just we look at it when we see this case come up and say ok what do we have to do what do we have to get seven six around and for make sure that they were delivered to the people on death or whatever the case maybe that type of thing so we had communications with with that payable on death person of the everything else that we just by three percent when i set out to to set the groundwork is what i was going to charge was based on three percent i don't know what the exactly the second i have worked together a over on other states before i don't know if you want to do a seal bit  based on the on the totality of the of the gross state would have been far reduced as well but i don't know where he thought the double dipping was occurring because just like in a partner case i think the attorney and  make sure the appropriate parties are present now we're going to get a good bid and then we're going to you know the advertising we have to do whatever it is you have to do that's communicate with their attorneys offices direct communicate with realtors do i reach out to through to farmers that i in the various regions around this farm and colfax all that area and i put up i made up flyers i put up flyers i talk to the farmers in the grocery stores grain elevators fertilizer companies that is what is entailed i want to get a good price yes yes that that doesn't change that doesn't change and i've had experiences where officers come back they don't get a bit you know there's a level a bit can be rejected by the object you don't get a bit i could still get options we don't get a bit believe we understand a case by case decision but we believe that we have more then the evidence more than show we had enough there to war are three percent or affect fees and attorney's  also the evidence was by the way under budget on rebutted by anybody we had an expert testified yeah this is customary that's what the rule question context is what is customary to community that's what's custom martha washington how is it both of those cases predate the first national bank of decatur and both of those cases actually recognized that that goal five was changing the landscape and that you couldn't use fee schedules anymore but before you talk state that was the named party in this appeal and the problem is that the state is not agreed by getting one hundred seventy five thousand dollars back in its coffers and this is why also the misnomer argument doesn't work because the executor in his capacity as executor is also not agreed because he should be happy as the executors representative to get the hundred seventy five thousand dollars plus back into the estates coffers so really the only two people who are grieved are the executor in his individual capacity and the attorney in his individual capacity and that neither of those people five the notice of appeal so because the the the party that was aggrieved or the non parties that were grieved have no presidential value under this crane ports decision in price and from which side it is one seventy four will second seventy seven so here to sum up there is no appellate jurisdiction here because the only parties who were aggrieved did not file a notice of appeal and the parties that were the party that was not to agree its biggest stage or including the executor in his capacity as executor were not aggrieved and so they couldn't appeal and you know the courts you know courts have been very particular about how this is of appeal for example you know there are cases where if you have two losers in the circuit court and only one files a notice of it is named in the notice of appeal only that person is the  jurisdictions taken very seriously by the courts and here there simply is no appellate jurisdiction but let's say for the sake of argument that there is here the circuit court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the fees that the executor and his attorney had been paid were reasonable and i think if you do the math you realize how how completely unreasonable these fees work for example  remember it's first that the neither the executor nor the attorney has challenge the hourly rates that the circuit court sets so at two hundred seventy five dollars an hour to earn the over one hundred seventy thousand dollars fee the attorney would have had to work six hundred eighty hours in the nine months six said i'm sorry two fifty an hour right you're right i'm sorry so six hundred and eighty thousand six hundred  eighty hours that is over nine months so think how many weeks that is that's what seventeen weeks over nine months that's how he would have had to be spending forty of these a forty hour weeks how tough his time on this on this estate and the and the circuit court probably concluded that this was not this was he has not put in enough time to earn this money now and ok parties reach an agreement here as to how   ness of the feet and so and neither is is an attorney's own opinion about his own about the reasonableness of his fear the factors under thor well one of the most important factors is good faith and i think we all the reasonable fee cases this is the time expended and that's why the supreme court thought very hard about the hours that would have been expended for example the executor himself said i spent five hundred maybe six hundred hours on the estate case with the case that you're trying to present its evidence so the circuit court itself was very clear about this and i'm so so when you translate i just want to make clear that when you translate the dollars to hours six hundred eighty hours for the attorney twelve hundred hours for the executor over not only nine months you have to have the circuit court was quite quite within its discretion to determine that those fees were not argument here has consistently been we always do this when we have an estate large enough for always charged three percent he said that in his letters to the charity the attorney said that in his letters to the charity and it was also in the testimony and it was even here today this is what we always charge when we have a feud when we have an estate that's large enough for a federal tax return but that kind of one size fits all you know fees setting if schedule it also doesn't make sense under thought which says you have to look at the facts of each case and most important of these five is the time expended now the again the executor said i spent five or six hundred hours and yet he was charging for for you know twelve hundred hours he or i'm sorry sixteen hundred hours he which is you know more than twice three times what what the circuit court is from and that he i'm here to actually see spencer you know from his testimony he testified about what he did as did the attorney similarly the court looked at the other factors that found for example that there was a lot of duplicate if work for which you cannot charge it also found that there was no evidence that this case was fertik this estate was particularly complex or unique you know there were no thorny evaluation problems there were no missing you know stock certificates there were no missing you know relatives that couldn't be found or lived out of the country there was no real property in another state or another country that we presuppose problems there were none of these these problems that make in the states truly complex in this case are you had you had a bunch of certificates of deposit you had some real estate that was pretty much it in this some cash and that that was it for this estate so it was really quite and it remember it pretty much tied up within nine months and i mean i know states have gone on for ten years that were less money than that so you know when you think about the complexity  in of this case it really wasn't fair and that was another factual finding of the circuit court remember the circuit court's final factual findings are entitled to you know significant deference because they're determined under the manifest weight of the evidence standard is part of their the supreme court's determination of reasonableness so in addition the benefit to the state now the counsel said that well there was a significant benefit to the state because he charged a lower percentage than then he testified that auctioneers charge well in fact the the the expert the other attorney who testified said that he knew that auctioneers do charge two percent at the low end so there was no savings to the estate from two percent or two percent option fee two or three percent option because in fact the testimony was that two percent was it was a fee at the this sale value was sixty five hundred acre and she and he said well that was because of my seal bid option but in fact before they decide to seal good auction the council and the executor agreed that the appraisals were too low which is not uncommon when you're praising an estate for tax purposes that an appraisal will come in too low when compared to the actual market value so in fact and also counsel testified at trial fortune was this that there was increase in the front between the appraised value and the sale value of the farmland so it was not his he was not the cause of the benefit of the estate between those two four hundred thousand well now we are actually are are brief did mention that and i notice accounts of didn't mention it in his reply brief didn't answer our arguments about that about the double billing problem that the circuit court found here and also just saying he did it for talking to people and you know in grocery stores it doesn't seem to be a reasonable thing to charge in a state for i mean he was charged you know he's saying you know i i did all of these things and yet you know when you know it might have been three or four or five or six we require the auctioneer to testify as to how much work he did before we decided with your view state was just right in saying that fee to assist in the know i mean i don't you know i mean i think that's it real estate agent charging six percent when you know that it's so but that doesn't make any sense when you know some real estate charge agents tried six they all charge six percent they said you go and you know some some people contention fees are acceptable in certain circumstances like you know personal injury and so on for lawyers but they're not acceptable here because it's a reasonable the state of the property act makes clear that you can charge only a reasonable fee and again the most courts have been uniform in holding that the most important factor in this equation in determining reasonableness is the time expended and the circuit court judge here an experienced circuit court judge has done you know has certainly his fair share of the state cases determined that there that the reasonable number of hours stands by counsel on this case you know what's not was  not the number of hours that he was charging for the case and the agony you have to translate i mean if you say that if you recognize and we must that that you can't say i'm using a fee schedule and charging three percent because it's a custom that's what we hours over nine months for this for the work on this estate including the the option and the circuit court determined having heard all the evidence that six hundred eighty hours was not correct the three hundred hours was the more reasonable amount of time that had been spent on this estate by the attorney similarly the courts found that regardless of what banks might charge at to ac executors and indeed there was no testimony at all but individuals even customarily charges executors so and the court looked at that it took you know the executor and this word five hundred hours that's an hourly wage which which is not going to jack to two and determined what that feat was thirty seven five so in both cases the circuit courts took into account the factors the reason it's not the the little work had to be done and it was you know was twenty five percent twenty five percent of the value of the estate with enough probate assets so so there was that problem but in addition the three percent you know is  or the three percent which again you know was you know so many hours that that was even that was more than the circuit court found it had been spent on everything that was done including the expressed a lot of concern about the notion that that's an attorney would be charging attorney rates for conducting a for non attorney activity but the outcome and again i think i think it's telling that the executor himself testified that he felt he did not he couldn't he would not charge extra for his work on the seal but auction it was only the attorney who charged for extra work on the seal good auction so that was i think another piece of evidence that the circuit court took into account about what is reasonable to do with regard to this seal bit auction which was you know it again looking back to several six when you do a seven or six return he also will have to get your approval from attorney general office on a form seven hundred eternity general approved the seven and six return as it was fi which had our fees and the executors fees in it and on that form seven hundred take a look at it they excuse or discharge a personal liability on the executor for any penalties and didn't like it and say we will do your work for you and by the way this may garner a new a minute seven o six return so what is the form seven hundred piece of paper worth that we have to comply with as a lawyer out there we have to get approval from the i r s we have to get approved an attorney general what is that form seven hundred worth after they put that in there and then they come back and say it waited your fees are good or your feet are too high together and media caves and other things and we said no this appraisals to low farmland is going you know just like i did and i say i think we can do a better job with it with an option you're still bit or intersect that's why you know i don't know when she says it takes water skills leave when i go out there in my experience and skills and everything else when i go out and i meet with farmers i go farmers and community i think that's a skill and how do you put a price tag on that