An Interview with Ralph (Buz) Code, Trust & Estate

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Hello and welcome to Legally Bond, a podcast presented by the law firm Bond Chennik King.
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I'm your host, Kim Wolf Price.
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On today's episode, we'll be talking with Ralph Code.
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Known as Buzz, to all of us who know him well, he is of Council and Bond's Rochester office.
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Buzz has focused his practice in estate planning and estate and trust administration for more than 50 years.
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Buzz was a founding partner of the Rochester area law firm Boylan Code.
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This past March, Buzz and several lawyers and other members of his team joined us here at Bond.
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Buzz served on the boards of numerous community organizations, including as trustee emeritus of the Seneca Park Zoo Society and lifespan of Greater Rochester.
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Welcome to the podcast, Buzz.
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It's great to see you.
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Thank you, Kim.
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Pleased to be here.
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Yeah, two days in a row we get to talk to each other.
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That's right.
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All right, I'd like to spend our time today talking about your longstanding trust in estates practice, your perspective on how the field has evolved, and of course your deep commitment to community service.
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Does that sound like a plan for today?
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Well, I'd be pleased to do that.
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All right, thank you.
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So before we get into your practice, it's a bit of a tradition on the podcast to ask our guests to first talk a bit about their background so that our listeners can know who's speaking.
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So would you mind spending a few minutes talking about your background?
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It can be law school, undergrad, your family, whatever you'd like to share.
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Well, I actually am practicing in Rochester, and this is really my hometown.
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I've been here since I was nine years old.
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I went to Penfield High School, which is a suburb of Rochester.
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I went to Princeton for my undergraduate studies, majored in history, which doesn't really prepare you for life.
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It's the liberal arts background.
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So in order to earn a living, I uh went to law school at Cornell Law School.
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And then I went from there to a big firm in Rochester, one of the larger firms, and was there for about three or four years.
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In the meantime, I was married to my high school sweetheart, and we've still married, which is unbelievable to many people.
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And we have three children and five grandchildren.
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That's fantastic.
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So, anyway, I'm very pleased to be in Rochester.
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And what happened to me in law was interesting, I think.
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Back when I started, it was 50 years ago, 51 years.
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Well, more than that, 1970, I passed the bar.
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And I started, as I said, with a large firm in Rochester.
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In those days, you really stuck with the firm that you started with.
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It was very unusual to leave.
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Today it's quite usual to change firms on an ongoing basis, not just law, but banking, accounting, everything.
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But anyway, back then it was unusual to leave.
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And what happened was that six of us, six of the same class of lawyers in this large firm at year three, decided we wanted to be on our own.
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We thought we could do it better ourselves.
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We were in the technology.
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We were all first children in our family, which maybe account for a lot.
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Uh, and so we uh left this large firm to start our own practice back in 1974.
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The interesting thing is that we actually sent out our announcements, and our starting day was April 1st.
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And of course, we got a million calls and responses about April Fool's Day, and no one believed it for a while.
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But anyway, we were out on our own and we didn't have a client in the world.
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And we grew the firm over the 50-year period.
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We had a wonderful time, wonderful practice.
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We were as large as 35 lawyers, and we went up and down, had a general practice.
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We joined Bond, actually, as of March of this year, when we recognized that it was very hard to provide services at the level that we wanted to for our clients.
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It was very difficult to compete in the marketplace with large firms for talent.
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And in order for us to provide the kind of service we wanted and to provide the backup that we wanted in all of our areas, we made a very good decision of joining Bond, a firm, although it's large, is very similar to ours in culture, which we really, really liked.
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So we've been here since March and been pursuing our ongoing practice.
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My pursuit has been trust in estates.
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And the reason I'm trusting estates is because that's where I was when I was in the large firm when we left.
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It was it was a choice of mine in the large firm after our rotation that I thought that this was a good area of practice.
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And it's changed a lot.
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And I'll get into that a little bit later how I think it's changed.
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But each one of us had an interest in different areas of the law, and it was a perfect mix when we started our firm.
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I was in trust and estates, we had a corporate lawyer, we had a tax lawyer, we had litigator real estate.
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So we had everything covered, and we grew from there.
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And we went for 51 years, which I thought was a great success.
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And now we're looking forward to our years with bond.
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That's terrific.
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And we're glad that you that you joined us.
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And I want to thank you for sharing that background because I think that guests like to get to know who is speaking today.
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So I appreciate that.
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All right.
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So I guess you teed it up that as a after your rotation as a junior associate, you chose trusts and estates.
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So let's talk a little bit about that.
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I guess we should probably start because not all of our listeners are attorneys.
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What is trust and estates law?
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Well, in its simple definition, trust and estates is there's two parts to it.
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You do estate planning for someone, and the state planning is where you find out what they want to do with their assets, what they really want to do with their family with respect to their assets and wealth, and then draft the documents to accomplish that.
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The other part of trusts and estates is the administration.
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It's basically if someone dies, or if a trust that you set up ends, you have to administer it and settle it and bring it to a conclusion.
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So that's the simple answer.
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The the more difficult answer is it's the family relationships, I think, that are the most important piece of this area of practice.
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It took me a long time to realize this from the beginning.
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When you when you start practicing, when you're very young, you really kind of just go through the steps of preparing wills and doing administration.
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But as you go along and you're dealing with more and more kinds of clients and dealing with all of their different needs, you become really experienced in how to help the client.
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You become experienced in dealing with all of the different issues that come up.
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And I found that it became much more of a personal matter in dealing in trust and estates, and for example, in corporate or banking or things like that.
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Uh, those are institutional clients.
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Those are oftentimes one-off transactions that you do and you never see the client again.
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With trust and estates, and I have to say, I've always called it the people's department.
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I I've never, everything else in a law firm is dealing with transactions and institutional clients, but you're really dealing with people, you're dealing with maybe the executives behind the corporations, and but mostly just ordinary people that come in, regardless of what their wealth is.
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And they all have different needs.
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And someone with not as much wealth, it's pretty basic.
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You help them get their wills in place for their children, and they're worried about their children's education, things like that.
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There is a make sure their insurance is in the right place.
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But as I practiced, I became um more involved with wealthier clients, people with high net worth that had a lot of issues as far as what to do with the wealth and how to deal with their children.
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People don't want to give too much wealth to their children.
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Uh, they worry that it'll it'll hurt them and not make them a very productive member of society.
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So working around those issues became very important to some of my clients.
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A lot of my clients had intentions for charitable giving that they needed help and what to do with their wealth as far as charities are concerned.
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A lot of my clients had businesses that they spent their life building.
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And as they get near the end of it, what do they do with their business?
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Do they give it to their children?
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Or what if their children don't talk to each other?
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How do you deal with the business there?
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There's so many issues that are involved, and they come to rely on their attorneys and their other advisors.
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And I always try to fill the role, and you've heard this bandied about, I suspect, as a trusted advisor.
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Yes.
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And so what you want to do as an estate planner, and especially with clients that have complicated situations, and that usually is complicated when you have a lot of wealth and when you have a lot of entities like corporations or partnerships.
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Trusted advisor is a person who can help them direct what they want to do with these uh assets, how they want to deal with their family.
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And it's a very rewarding thing.
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I I've oftentimes met with have family meetings where I meet with the children and try to explain, you know, what the parent wants to try and accomplish with them.
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We involve children in private family foundations as a way of teaching the children how to give back to the community.
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We involve the children in the family partnerships in order to teach the children how to run a business or deal with investments.
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So it's a you can provide tools to these families to at least for the second generation to imbue the values of the parents and try to get those children on the right path according to what the parents want.
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So that's the estate planning side of things.
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And that's what we try to aspire to.
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That's pretty amazing.
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And I've been at firms where we've called that private client, right?
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Because that, like you said, it's you're the trusted advisor, these are personal issues for these individuals.
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So it's different than the other work we do at the firm, which is much more corporation-based.
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Well, these are clients that become friends.
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Yeah.
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And and that's almost the hard part because as you move into the second phase, which is the administration, it's it's heartbreaking oftentimes to administer your friend's estate.
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But on the other hand, if you're close with a family and you've been an advisor, even even advisors for people without a great deal of wealth, it doesn't have to be just the wealthy.
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You have to develop a certain degree of empathy and feelings of wanting to help the family and especially the surviving spouse through this next phase of their life, which is to continue on without their spouse.
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Yeah.
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Or children without their parents.
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And it becomes even harder sometimes when some oftentimes you hear of when the parents are gone, the children, all the baggage comes up from youth, and the kids start squabbling.
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And oftentimes the role becomes rather as a rather than being a comforter, uh, more of a referee.
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So you have to know how to handle family situations.
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And if you if you've done it enough, you've probably seen almost everything.
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And that is a role that I feel I can have value added to the situation and to the administration of the estate.
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So is that some of what's kept you interested in this field, being that trusted advisor and doing this for five decades?
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Five decades is a very long time.
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So something must keep me interested.
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And I think probably there's really two things.
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There's I certainly like connection with people.
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And I think that I have a way of making people feel comfortable, which is important, if you want to be a trusted advisor or if you want to help them through a very uh traumatic situation, such as the death.
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So, yes, I like that.
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I like I like the personal connection.
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I've stayed active in practice because I really enjoy what I'm doing.
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I enjoy working with the people, working with my clients.
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It's also very challenging.
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I mean, it's not just a social event, it's the challenge really is in the tax laws.
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Yes.
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And the tax laws are quite intimidating when you're trying to do planning at a at a pretty high level.
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And frankly, as I've gotten older, I'm finding that this kind of challenge and uh the rigorous aspects of keeping abreast of the tax laws is probably keeping my mind going.
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And I'm I'm going to be able to keep out of the nursing home maybe even longer.
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Because I I truly think that the tax laws is very stimulating.
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Many people might know a tax provision might run a page long without a sentence.
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So if you can work through that, you could probably work through almost anything.
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I think our mutual friend Rob Nassau would completely agree with you.
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Rob Nassau is an amazing tax lawyer.
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He's a professor at Syracuse Law School and very close to this firm, I know.
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And he was able to take a very complicated tax situation and make it understandable even to me.
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And if anyone could do that, he's a darn good professor.
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What's interesting about what's happened in the law over the past five decades, and it's changed a lot.
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Back when I started, taxes were very important, tax planning.
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In fact, when you're doing estate planning, taxes were important for everyone.
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There was not much of an exemption.
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There was only a$60,000 exemption back in the 70s.
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Now it's$15 million.
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And you can imagine what that means.
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Back in the early days, you always had to worry about estate taxes.
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If you owned a farm or you owned a business, you were facing how do you pay the taxes?
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Now, with a$15 million exemption, you don't have that worry anymore.
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So a lot of the planning that we did years ago is just not there.
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Certainly for what are smaller estates.
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New York doesn't have as high exemption.
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It's around$7 million, as many people might know, practice in New York.
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But other states have lower exemptions than the federal exemption also, which means the federal taxes are not as important focus as state taxes are.
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So a lot of our tax planning now involves tax planning for New York.
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And that means that the level of assets, the amount of assets that someone has can be lower in order for us to do some tax planning for them.
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And that's in the$7 to$10 million range of the states, really require tax planning.
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Without the estate tax planning, there's other things that we've had to move into.
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For example, income taxes have always been an important piece of this.
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And we always have to think about the income tax consequences of how you take retirement plans out.
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We have to consider a lot of current seminars and presentations by top name presenters in the law profession are focusing on allocation of basis on assets.
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It's not as important to get stepped up worrying about basis.
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And the other thing that people are concerned about is in charitable giving, how they can reduce their income taxes.
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So we we work on that too.
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People are also concerned about the costs of nursing home in long-term care.
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That's right.
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And there are ways to, especially uh clients who have assets that are in the one to two million dollar range.
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It's a real concern that if they were to go into a nursing home, with the nursing home costs today, it could be eaten up very quickly, especially because people are just living longer nowadays.
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And there isn't a very good health care system to protect their assets at that point.
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So we do some planning, we do planning in that area of how to save long-term care costs.
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Yeah, I believe that the tax law is, you know, if you're practicing in trusted estates or TE as we call it, it really allows you to think expansively and creatively within the law to solve for what the client's goals are.
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Is that how it really works out?
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Well, I think you have to, when you recognize that clients have very many needs, and you have to be able to respond to whatever those needs are.
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So you have to kind of know everything for a client that is just starting out in life and has children, they want to protect and have money for college for the kids, to the wealthy person who wants to protect the kids from having too much money and what do I do with my business and that sort of thing.
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So you have to understand all the different planning techniques to help those people accomplish those goals.
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Some of them are very simple planning techniques, some are very tax-driven planning techniques that have income tax implications that aren't good if you do it wrong.
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Recognizing the other needs that people have, such as worrying about the basis of their assets to save on income taxes, trying to save their assets from long-term care costs to what to do with their retirement accounts and how best to use them.
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Those are all things that are challenging, and you have to be able to be very light on your feet to move from one to the other so that when you're talking with a client, you recognize that they have a particular need that they might not even recognize that they have.
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Yeah, that makes perfect sense, right?
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They come in thinking they have one need, but then as you think about it, you realize there may be other things.
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You have to be able to move them to the different things that can help them.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Do you mind if we shift the conversation a little bit?
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Because I mentioned in the opening that you've been very active in a number of community organizations, particularly in the Greater Rochester area.
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Can you talk a bit about that deep commitment to community service?
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Yeah, I have a theory on working in that type of thing.
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It what you don't want to do is take on too much.
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When I was early in my career, I was generally on maybe three boards at a time.
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And that may be too much.
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And I think what you want to accomplish on a board is to, well, I should back up, involve with an organization with the goal of getting on the board.
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Right.
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And so you can get on a lot of organizations and be on the board, but you want to be able to make an impact, I think.
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I always strove to be on a board.
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I became president of most organizations that I was involved with for a while.
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There's a couple that I'm particularly interested in in Rochester.
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One is the Seneca Park Zoo Society, and the other is Lifespan of Greater Rochester.
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I'm trustee emeritus of both, and I've been involved with each for over 35 years.
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Now, why I chose those, I really, when I'm asked by young attorneys what they should do, I kind of say, have at least two boards or two organizations that you're interested in.
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I think you need to have an interest in order to want to do it.
00:19:47.359 --> 00:19:47.920
Yeah, so true.
00:19:48.160 --> 00:19:49.519
And to spend the time on it.
00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:54.799
I chose one organization that was kind of one of the crown jewels of the community.
00:19:54.880 --> 00:20:02.559
Uh crown jewels are like the philharmonic or the museums or the theaters or the zoo in this case.
00:20:02.799 --> 00:20:11.039
Uh I also wanted to be on one that was more socially oriented, that would be helpful to some phase of society.
00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:25.039
And I chose Lifespan, which is an organization that is oriented towards the elderly issues and the aged and provides actually, it's become quite nationally recognized for its programs against elder abuse and things like that.
00:20:25.920 --> 00:20:32.480
So I think in order to put the time in, you need to have some kind of a passion for the organization.
00:20:33.119 --> 00:20:35.279
And also choose well.
00:20:35.440 --> 00:20:43.920
You want you are in business and you are trying to put yourself out there, lawyer is to be recognized uh in the community.
00:20:44.160 --> 00:21:11.680
So if you can not only benefit an organization that you want to really benefit, yeah, uh, but if you can also become recognized as a leader of that organization and you're involved with other people in the community who are what I would call maybe drivers of the community or or some of the people who are important to the community, then you really become part of that group.
00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:25.039
And that's not a bad place to be as a young lawyer as you're aging and as you get older in a community, to be part of a recognized group that is helping the community become a better place to live.
00:21:25.279 --> 00:21:30.000
And in both cases, lifespan and the zoo really help this community.
00:21:30.240 --> 00:21:35.519
And I think my connection with both of those is helpful to me and has been helpful to me.
00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:45.759
Lifespan in particular, because there's a natural bridge from what they do to what I do, which is to most of my clients, as I am, have gotten old.
00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:49.519
And I found that lifespan has been very helpful to them.
00:21:49.599 --> 00:21:53.680
And I've called on my friends at Lifespan to really help some of my clients.
00:21:53.839 --> 00:21:55.759
It's been a nice opportunity.
00:21:56.240 --> 00:22:12.319
And it's also great as a lawyer, you know, when we have obviously we provide legal services, but to have other resources for our clients and for you, particularly in your area, you know, knowing what lifespan provides and being able to connect clients to them is another resource for them.
00:22:12.960 --> 00:22:14.559
It's been helpful, absolutely.
00:22:14.880 --> 00:22:24.079
And I have to say that they're much older now, but when they were little, my kids uh we would bring them out to that to the Seneca Park Zoo and um enjoy time there as well.
00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:26.799
So that is truly a great family experience.
00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:30.400
And there's I love animals and I like the family experience.
00:22:30.480 --> 00:22:32.640
So that that was my attraction to the zoo.
00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:39.519
Whenever I go to a city, for one reason or another, I try to make time to go see the city zoo.
00:22:39.759 --> 00:22:43.680
A lot of times just to compare it to ours and see what we need to do, make it better.
00:22:43.920 --> 00:22:45.119
But I like the zoos.
00:22:45.599 --> 00:22:46.960
Yeah, that's fantastic.
00:22:47.119 --> 00:22:56.160
Well, I mean, you talked about part of this, but why is it particularly important for attorneys to give back to the communities where they live in practice?
00:22:57.200 --> 00:23:06.640
I think a lawyer is is probably viewed in a lot of communities as being someone who can and should make things happen in a positive way.
00:23:06.720 --> 00:23:06.880
Yeah.
00:23:07.119 --> 00:23:16.079
I mean, quite obviously that isn't the case always with lawyers, but many lawyers are involved with business activities and corporations.
00:23:16.319 --> 00:23:21.759
Lawyers are always involved in municipal issues, things that are happening in government.
00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:22.160
Yep.
00:23:22.400 --> 00:23:28.799
So, governor lawyers are always present where things need to be done or are being done.
00:23:29.119 --> 00:23:35.200
And I think that you just, and I don't know what there is about lawyers that maybe makes them do that.
00:23:35.359 --> 00:23:39.119
It's more than just being out there and trying to get clients.
00:23:39.279 --> 00:23:41.039
It ought to be something more than that.
00:23:41.200 --> 00:23:48.240
It ought to be where you feel like you want to really be a positive force in the place that you live.
00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:51.759
Because lawyers are in a position to be a positive force.
00:23:51.839 --> 00:23:53.519
They know a lot of people.
00:23:53.839 --> 00:24:03.359
A lot of organizations I'm on, I always end up on the governance committee, which means to go and try and find new board members because I know a lot of people.
00:24:03.599 --> 00:24:10.799
So lawyers can open up doors for these organizations, and knows they know a lot of people for fundraising.
00:24:11.039 --> 00:24:11.359
Sure.
00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:14.480
Um, and that's important for any organization.
00:24:14.799 --> 00:24:29.359
So I think lawyers have a particularly good opportunity to help these organizations, and they should because the lawyer is part of the community, and the better the community, I think the better the practice will be.
00:24:29.519 --> 00:24:29.920
Yes.
00:24:30.240 --> 00:24:43.039
And if you're helping an organization and helping a community be better, people will come to you uh because they recognize that you are an important part of what they want in the community that they want to live in.
00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:43.359
Yeah.
00:24:43.519 --> 00:24:48.160
So I just think that it's another way of saying giving back to the community.
00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:53.279
And that's that's almost the same wording that I use for my wealthier clients.
00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:58.720
That there's a lot of clients that just hold on to their money and they don't need it.
00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:09.680
And I promote a lot of the organizations in town, as charitable organizations, to clients, and and basically the mantra is you know, give back to the community.
00:25:09.920 --> 00:25:14.880
So the lawyers' time in dealing with these organizations is a way of giving back to the community.
00:25:15.200 --> 00:25:16.480
Yeah, it's very important.
00:25:16.720 --> 00:25:26.240
I know mentorship is also important to you, and I've seen you know, some of the folks that you've mentored over the years and then the new crop that you're going to be mentoring.
00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:28.720
So I guess maybe we should close out with a question.
00:25:28.799 --> 00:25:34.400
So, what advice would you give to a law student looking to practice trust and estates law?
00:25:35.599 --> 00:25:39.519
Well, I have to start out by saying I love mentoring young lawyers.
00:25:39.599 --> 00:25:39.839
Yeah.
00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:52.400
And one of the things that I'm very happy to see happening to me now coming to Bond is that I'm having a little bit more time to work with younger lawyers in my department.
00:25:52.559 --> 00:25:52.880
Yeah.
00:25:53.200 --> 00:25:57.119
It's it takes a while to really become good at something.
00:25:57.279 --> 00:26:25.039
And you have to really, I believe, have someone uh who's experienced a lot of things and can explain different ways of doing things, especially in how to deal with clients, because I think dealing with clients is a very big part of a TE practice and guiding clients to the proper result of what they need for their plan as it relates to assets, taxes, and their children and family, all of that.
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:30.559
So what do you tell a young lawyer as far as getting there?
00:26:30.720 --> 00:26:50.559
I think spend time on becoming familiar with tax law, with the basic procedures in the court, take opportunities to actually work on difficult aspects of the practice, such as doing an estate tax return for a large estate, doing a difficult accounting.
00:26:50.720 --> 00:26:58.400
The more of these things that you do, you'll become more comfortable with and you'll be able to supervise others down the road.
00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:02.319
A lot of this type of training has to come from the firm.
00:27:02.480 --> 00:27:08.000
I mean, a young lawyer can't just go out and just say, I'm gonna do a tax return.
00:27:08.319 --> 00:27:13.920
Someone has to recognize that the young lawyer needs that and give it to the young lawyer.
00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:26.880
So that may mean the young lawyer has to be a squeaky wheel in a firm and make sure that the people who are doing this work are willing to give it to the young lawyer.
00:27:27.039 --> 00:27:36.559
And the young lawyer needs to recognize all of the various parts of this TE puzzle they have to work on because there's an awful lot, there's a lot to it.
00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:37.759
That's great advice.
00:27:37.839 --> 00:27:39.839
I mean, it's about building that relationship, right?
00:27:39.920 --> 00:27:48.799
The person who wants to mentor and being engaged as the junior person and interested and curious and excited and doing the work to learn.
00:27:48.960 --> 00:27:51.440
It's a it's both parts are needed.
00:27:51.920 --> 00:28:10.000
And I will tell the young lawyer when they take on work like that, in order to do a good job, think of the person giving them work as the client and make sure the job is done like they would do for a client and uh do the best job possible for that, and then work will come back to them.
00:28:10.240 --> 00:28:11.119
Yeah, I agree.
00:28:11.279 --> 00:28:11.839
That's terrific.
00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:13.359
Well, I thanks, Buzz, so much.
00:28:13.519 --> 00:28:15.599
Thank you for joining us on the podcast today.
00:28:15.839 --> 00:28:24.319
It's been really a pleasure to get to know you since this conversation started, but to speak with you today and learn more about your practice and your incredible career.
00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:29.200
So I hope you'll come back and talk to us again, maybe about some tax laws or something like that.
00:28:29.519 --> 00:28:31.359
Well, Kim, I enjoy this very much.
00:28:31.440 --> 00:28:33.279
And it was a new experience for me.
00:28:33.440 --> 00:28:36.960
So I look forward to maybe doing some more podcasts.
00:28:37.119 --> 00:28:39.119
Anything that comes up, I'm here.
00:28:39.440 --> 00:28:40.640
I I appreciate that.
00:28:40.799 --> 00:28:41.599
Thank you.
00:28:45.440 --> 00:28:48.000
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Legally Bond.
00:28:48.079 --> 00:28:56.240
If you're listening and have any questions for me, want to hear from someone at the firm, or have a suggestion for a future topic, please email us at legally bond at bsk.com.
00:28:56.400 --> 00:29:00.720
Also, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to Legally Bond wherever podcasts are downloaded.
00:29:00.960 --> 00:29:02.799
Until our next talk, be well.
00:29:07.440 --> 00:29:12.720
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00:29:12.960 --> 00:29:17.119
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