Everyone knows they need an estate plan, but most people think estate planning is complicated, so they put it off until the burden of putting it off becomes too great. Often, the burden becomes heavier after the death of a loved one, a health scare, or some other event that reminds us of our mortality and our responsibility to protect our family.

The perception that "estate planning is complicated" goes like this: I know I need an estate plan, but I don't know how. I looked at some DIY estate planning websites and even tried to create my own documents, but it's confusing, and I'm not sure the documents will work. I know I need an attorney to help me, but I don't know one that I can trust.

It's not unlike when you know you need a plumber: my sink is leaking, but not that much, so I can put it off. But I can't put it off much longer. I tried to fix it myself and couldn't. And I'm afraid that if I try one more time - one more torque of the wrench, I'll break the pipe and make it even worse. I need to find a good plumber.

This article will outline what you need to know about California estate planning and show you that you can get your estate plan done simply and efficiently so you will feel confident you have done what you needed to do to protect your family.

Why You Need an Estate Plan

The elephant in the room is that you need an estate plan because you will die, and when you get older, you may need help paying your bills. A California living trust estate plan is your legally enforceable plan that makes clear your wishes about how you want your assets managed and distributed, and if done correctly, will avoid the costs and hassles of probate.

Probate

In California, an estate worth more than $184,500 will go through probate. This includes your home, bank accounts and investment accounts. California probate is a very expensive court process that typically takes over a year.

You can enter your estate value below to estimate the probate fees.

However, you can avoid probate if you transfer your assets to a living trust.

Living Trust

A Living Trust is the building block of a California estate plan. A living trust is a contract you make with yourself and your successor trustees on how to manage and distribute your assets.

Additional Documents

A complete living trust estate plan includes several other documents.

• Pour-Over Will names the guardians to raise your minor children if something happens to you. It also names your executors who will transfer assets not already in your living trust to your living trust.

• Durable Power of Attorney authorizes your agents to manage your assets if you become incapacitated.

• Advance Health Care Directive and HIPAA authorize your agent to make health care decisions for you and to talk to your health care professionals.

Asset Protection for Your Children

Your living trust can include provisions to significantly protect your children’s inheritance from divorce and lawsuits. At our law firm, we call these “beneficiary asset protection trusts.” Your attorney can include beneficiary asset protection trusts in your living trust. Asset protection trusts are in contrast to an outright distribution. With an outright distribution, your children can accidentally commingle their inheritance money, and, in California, their divorcing spouse can claim half in a divorce. That can’t happen with a beneficiary asset protection trust. With a beneficiary asset protection trust, when you die, your trust assets are distributed to a protected trust for the benefit of your child.

Funding Your Living Trust

Many believe that if you have a living trust your estate will not go through probate. That’s only partially correct. You still have to fund your living trust - this means transferring title of your assets that would otherwise go through probate to your trust.

Retirement Plans

In most cases, you will name individuals or charities as the beneficiaries of your retirement plans. Most married couples name their spouse the primary beneficiary and their children the contingent beneficiaries. We don’t usually recommend naming your living trust as a beneficiary of your retirement plans unless your child is a minor or has special needs or addiction problems.

Life Insurance

Your life insurance also needs a primary beneficiary and a contingent beneficiary. For most of our married clients, we recommend naming spouse as primary beneficiary and the living trust as contingent beneficiary.

Estate and Gift Tax

Unless you are very wealthy, you won’t have to worry about the estate and gift tax. In 2025, the federal gift and estate tax exemption is $13,990,000 per person. Unless your estate is greater than $13,990,000, there will be no federal estate tax. And married couples can double this amount.

Believe it or not, while many states have their own “state estate tax,” a separate extra tax in addition to the federal estate tax, California does not.

Trust Administration

When someone with a living trust dies, the successor trustee must administer the trust. If the probatable assets (real property and large bank and investment accounts) are titled in the trust, then the trust administration will not require probate and should be smooth and efficient.

However, although a trust administration is more straightforward and much less expensive than probate, there will still be work to do. The primary tasks include notifying trust beneficiaries, notifying state agencies, identifying and getting access to the assets, selling assets as needed, preparing an accounting of the assets and expenses, paying the bills, filing tax returns, and distributing the assets. Most trustees hire an estate planning attorney and accountant to help guide them through the trust administration.

Maintenance

Unfortunately, estate planning is not a one-and-done event. You have to keep your estate plan up to date so it works the way you want it to when you need it to. Your life is not static, nor are the tax laws. Life happens. Things change. Your estate plan must keep up. When you expand your family with another child or buy a new home or need to change your successor trustees or beneficiaries, you need to update your estate plan. Also, tax laws change from time to time. Reviewing your estate plan with your estate planning attorney every few years is a good idea. An outdated estate plan is an ineffective estate plan.

How to Create Your Estate Plan - It Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated

Estate planning does not have to be complicated. I’ve been an estate planning attorney for over 25 years, and during this time, I’ve developed a system to make the client experience easy with attorneys our clients enjoy working with. Here’s how we do it:

• Initial meeting with one of our attorneys in-person in our El Dorado Hills, Roseville, or Camarillo offices, or virtually by zoom. You don’t need to fill out any forms before the meeting. Our smart, kind and responsive attorneys will guide you through the design your estate plan.

• We charge fixed fees and don’t bill by the hour—no surprises and mystery billing.

• And best of all, once you become a client, you are in the club, and you can ask our attorneys questions anytime for free.

• Second attorney meeting in-person or by zoom to review your estate planning documents and sign and notarize them in-person or with our remote online notary.

• Your attorney will teach you how to fund your trust - transfer your bank and investment accounts to your trust and how to name the beneficiaries of your retirement plans and life insurance. Our office will prepare and record the deeds to transfer your real property to your trust.

• After signing and notarizing your estate planning documents, you will receive your original hard copies and digital copies.

• Setting up your estate plan takes two one-hour attorney meetings and is usually completed in a few weeks.

You Need an Estate Plan, Now is the Time to Get It Done

Estate planning is very important, and you know you need one. It doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think. Let us know if we can help.