ESTATE PLANNING · CALIFORNIA
Foundational Estate Planning For California Families
Preparing your core documents can help protect your family when they need it most. As part of our foundational plan, you’ll get a revocable living trust, will, healthcare directive and power of attorney, drafted by a California estate planning attorney with over a decade in trusts and estates.
What's Included
If you die in California without a plan, the state has one for you. Your assets go where the Probate Code says they go, not where you would have sent them, and they get there through probate, which in Los Angeles County typically takes a year or more, is open to the public, and charges fees set by law on the gross value of everything you own. An unmarried partner receives nothing. A child from a previous relationship can be left out. A house you meant for one person is split among several.
A foundational estate plan replaces all of that with your decisions. It is the plan most people need, and it is where I start with almost every client. Five documents that work together — a trust that holds your assets and keeps them out of probate, a will that catches anything left outside it and names guardians for your children, a healthcare directive, a power of attorney, and a certificate of trust so banks and title companies can deal with your trustee without reading the whole document.
I do not hand you a template. I sit with you, find out what you own and who matters to you, and build the plan around your actual life. Then I make sure your assets are moved into the trust, because a trust that was never funded is the most common reason a family that paid for a plan still ends up in probate.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
The What: Foundational Plan Documents
The core document. You keep full control while you are alive, and on your death your successor trustee distributes your assets privately, without a court, on the terms you set.
"Pours" any remaining assets into your revocable trust and names guardians for any minor children.
Names who makes health care decisions for you if you are incapacitated.
Names who manages your money and property if you are incapacitated. Without one, your family may have to petition the court for a conservatorship.
A short summary banks, brokerages and title companies accept in place of the full trust, so your trustee can act without disclosing your private terms.
A written plan for retitling your home, accounts and other assets into the trust, and help getting it done. This is the step most firms leave to you and most people never finish.
Every document signed and notarized correctly, and explained in plain English so you understand what you have signed.
WHY IT'S WORTH DOING
The Why: The Importance of Trust Funding
Statutory probate fees are calculated on the gross value of the estate, before mortgages are deducted, and the process takes a year or more. A funded trust avoids all of it.
Probate files are public records. Anyone can read what you owned and who received it. A trust is never filed anywhere.
California intestacy law gives an unmarried partner nothing and can split assets in ways that force the sale of the family home. Your plan says what you actually want.
Trust funding is part of the work, not a follow-up task. When we are done, your plan works.
WHO THIS IS FOR
The Who: Who This Planning Is For
Homeowners in California, because owning property is the single biggest reason a will alone is not enough here.
Parents of minor children who want to name a guardian rather than leave it to a court.
Unmarried partners and chosen families, for whom default inheritance law does the least.
Couples in a second marriage with children from a first.
First-generation wealth builders with no family template to follow.
Anyone who has been putting this off because it felt enormous, morbid or expensive. It is none of those when it is done properly.
WHY WORK WITH ME
Structures Built To Last
I have spent over a decade in estate planning, first at a premier California law firm and then as in-house counsel at a registered investment adviser, where I watched hundreds of plans meet real portfolios and saw which ones held up and which quietly fell apart. I am admitted in California and New York, and I have been named to Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch in Trusts and Estates.
You work with me from the first conversation to the signing and every update after. Not a junior associate, not a paralegal. I keep the practice deliberately small so that is possible.
I also built this firm for families whose lives do not fit the standard form. LGBTQ+ couples, unmarried partners, blended families and clients for whom generational wealth is a first-generation achievement are the people I serve every week, and none of it needs explaining twice here.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Common Questions Before Booking
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My fees are flat and confirmed at the initial consultation, so you know the number before any work starts. The figure depends on what your plan needs, which the first conversation establishes. For comparison, probate on a $1 million estate in California costs the estate around $46,000 in statutory attorney and executor fees alone, before court costs and a year of delay. A funded living trust avoids that entirely.
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In most states a will is often enough. In California it usually is not, because a will still goes through probate. If you own a home, or your estate is worth more than the state's small estate limits, a revocable living trust is the way to keep your family out of court. If a will really is enough for you, I will tell you.
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A revocable living trust can be changed or cancelled at any time while you are alive, and it is the foundation of almost every California estate plan. An irrevocable trust generally cannot be changed once it is created, and is used for specific tax, asset protection or multi-generational planning goals. Most families need the revocable trust. Whether you also need an irrevocable one depends on the size of your estate and your goals, which is something we cover in the consultation. My Multigenerational and Advanced Planning page covers those structures.
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Your family has to go to court and ask for a conservatorship, which is expensive, public, slow and stressful, and the judge decides who is appointed. A durable power of attorney and an advance healthcare directive avoid that. You choose the people, in advance, and they can act the day they are needed.
Our firm offers thorough plan reviews for clients who have existing documents they want evaluated. A review is almost always less expensive than discovering a problem after the fact.
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Possibly. A trust only works if your assets are actually in it, and estates change: a new home, a refinance, a new account, a marriage, a divorce, a child, a move to California. If your plan is more than a few years old or has not been looked at since a major life change, my Plan Review and Second Opinion service checks the documents, the funding and your beneficiary designations, and gives you written findings whether or not anything needs redrafting.
BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION
Your Plan Only Works If It Exists
Book a free consultation, by video or at my Marina Del Rey office, and you will leave knowing exactly what your plan needs and what it will cost, whether or not you decide to go ahead.