Trusts
California Living Trust Attorneys — Revocable & Irrevocable Trusts
Drafted, funded, and supported for the long term — Serving San Francisco, Sacramento & All of California
FREE CONSULT: (415) 275-1492
Trusts
Drafted, funded, and supported for the long term — Serving San Francisco, Sacramento & All of California
A trust is only as strong as the day you fund it.
We draft California trusts that hold up — calibrated for state probate rules, Prop 19, and the realities of your family — and we make sure every asset that should be inside is actually inside.
Combined statutory attorney and executor fees on a $1M Bay Area home — avoidable with a funded trust.
Trust beneficiaries receive distributions in weeks, not months — and never on a public docket.
Typical property tax increase on an inherited California home that fails Prop 19's primary-residence test.
What we draft
Most California families need a revocable living trust and nothing more exotic. But for blended families, special-needs beneficiaries, professionals with liability exposure, or estates large enough to face federal estate tax, the right structure looks different. We pick the tool that fits the job — and tell you plainly when a simpler instrument will do.
Trusts almost always work in concert with the rest of an estate plan — a pour-over will, a durable power of attorney, and beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance.
Revocable Living Trust
The standard probate-avoidance and incapacity-planning tool. You stay in control while alive, and assets transfer directly to beneficiaries at death — no court, no public record, no statutory fees.
Irrevocable Trust
Removes assets from your taxable estate and shields them from creditors. Used for advanced tax planning, Medi-Cal eligibility, and long-term asset protection when the loss of control is a worthwhile trade.
Special Needs Trust
Funds a beneficiary with a disability without disqualifying them from SSI, Medi-Cal, or other means-tested benefits. Designed to supplement — not replace — public assistance.
A-B and QTIP Trusts
Two-part marital trusts for blended families and high-value estates. Provide for a surviving spouse during their lifetime while preserving the principal for children from a prior marriage.
Charitable Remainder Trust
Income for you (or your beneficiaries) during life, with the remainder passing to a chosen charity. Often paired with appreciated real estate or stock for income tax and capital gains benefits.
Asset Protection Trust
California-domiciled professionals — physicians, contractors, founders — use these to insulate personal assets from professional liability. Structure matters; we will tell you what California courts will and will not honor.
California-specific
Before February 2021, a parent could pass a California home to a child and the low Prop 13 assessed value rode along — regardless of whether the child lived in it. Proposition 19 ended that. Today, a child inherits the parent's assessed value only if the home becomes the child's primary residence within one year, and only up to a $1 million cushion. Past that, the home is reassessed at fair market value.
For a $1.5M home with a $300K assessed value, that often means a tax bill several times higher than the parent ever paid. We design trusts that anticipate the reassessment — using LLC structures, lifetime gifting strategies, and where appropriate, irrevocable trust techniques — to preserve the value your family worked decades to build.
What a trust does
A trust answers the questions that probate court would otherwise spend a year answering — privately, predictably, and without statutory fees skimmed off the top.
Probate Avoidance
Your beneficiaries skip 12–18 months of California probate court and the statutory attorney and executor fees that scale with your estate.
Privacy
A trust is a private contract. A will becomes a public court record once filed for probate — anyone can look up what you owned and who got it.
Prop 19 Planning
Strategic trust structures help preserve your low Prop 13 assessed property value for the next generation, even after the 2021 tax law change.
Incapacity Protection
Your successor trustee steps in immediately if you become incapacitated — no conservatorship petition, no court hearing, no public-docket exposure of your finances.
Blended-Family Control
A trust lets you provide for a surviving spouse while guaranteeing the principal eventually passes to your children — not theirs.
Creditor & Litigation Shielding
Properly structured irrevocable trusts protect inheritances from a beneficiary's divorce, bankruptcy, or lawsuit.
An honest look
We see the same patterns when families call us after a parent dies — most of them avoidable. The trust failed not because trusts do not work, but because the document was never made to fit the state, the family, or the assets.
Unfunded Trust
A trust drafted but never funded does nothing. The estate still goes through probate, and the family pays for the document twice.
Out-of-State Template
A national online template will not address California probate fees, community property, or Prop 19. The savings disappear in the first probate filing.
Wrong Successor Trustee
Naming a relative who lacks the time, financial skill, or family standing to administer a trust is one of the most common causes of trust litigation.
Stale Documents
Trusts written before 2021 often miss the Prop 19 changes; trusts written before a divorce, death, or new child no longer reflect the family.
Conflicting Beneficiary Designations
A retirement account or life insurance policy with an outdated beneficiary will override the trust — every time.
What's included
Trust Agreement
The governing document, drafted to your family's specific structure and California law.
Certification of Trust
A short, sharable version banks and title companies will accept without disclosing the full trust terms.
Schedule of Assets
An inventory of what's held in the trust, kept current as your holdings change.
Pour-Over Will
Catches anything left outside the trust at death and routes it back into the trust.
Recorded Grant Deed
We prepare and record the deed transferring your primary California residence into the trust.
Funding Letter & Instructions
Step-by-step guidance for retitling bank, brokerage, and retirement accounts to the trust.
As life changes
Trusts need to evolve. A new child, a divorce, a remarriage, a beneficiary in distress, a business sale, a move out of California, a successor trustee who has aged out of the role — any of these is reason to revisit the document.
We handle simple amendments, full restatements, and successor trustee changes for trusts we drafted and trusts drafted elsewhere. If your trust predates Prop 19, we strongly recommend a review.
Illustration / image
Why us
We draft trusts for the way California families actually live — with appreciated real estate, blended families, business interests, and beneficiaries scattered across state lines. We handle the mechanical work most firms outsource or skip, including the recorded grant deed for your residence, so the trust is funded the day you sign it.
And because we also handle trust and estate litigation, we draft with an eye toward what fails. Vague distribution provisions, weak no-contest clauses, and inadequate trustee guidance are why beneficiaries end up in court a decade later — we engineer those failure modes out from day one.
Free consultation
No commitment. We'll review what you have — or sketch what you need — and give you a clear, written estimate before you decide anything.
California-Specific Drafting. Every provision is calibrated for California probate, community property, and Prop 19 — not a national template with a state-name find-and-replace.
Funded, Not Just Drafted. We record your deed and walk you through funding every account. An unfunded trust is the most expensive paperwork you'll ever sign.
Lifetime Support. Trusts need amendments as life changes. We support trust restatements, successor trustee changes, and beneficiary updates as your family evolves.
Frequently asked
A will alone does not avoid California probate. Even a well-drafted will sends your estate to probate court when you die, where it will sit for 12 to 18 months and pay statutory fees that scale with your estate's value. A revocable living trust transfers your assets directly to your beneficiaries without court involvement. Most California families with a home, retirement accounts, or minor children benefit from holding both — a trust to control what happens to titled assets, and a pour-over will as a backstop for anything left outside the trust.
A revocable living trust can be amended, restated, or revoked at any time during your lifetime. You remain the trustee, you control the assets, and you can change beneficiaries — it is the standard tool for probate avoidance and incapacity planning. An irrevocable trust generally cannot be undone once funded. You give up control in exchange for benefits a revocable trust cannot offer: removing assets from your taxable estate, shielding them from creditors, qualifying for Medi-Cal long-term care, or funding a beneficiary with special needs without disqualifying them from public benefits. We will tell you which fits your situation — and we will not recommend an irrevocable trust unless the benefit clearly justifies the trade-off.
Proposition 19, effective February 2021, narrowed the parent-child property tax exclusion. A child who inherits a California home held in a trust now keeps the parent's low Prop 13 assessed value only if the home becomes the child's primary residence within one year, and even then only up to a $1 million value cushion above the original assessment. For families holding rental property, vacation homes, or homes likely to be sold by heirs, Prop 19 can mean a multi-fold property tax increase on inherited California real estate. We design trusts with Prop 19 in mind — including LLC ownership structures, lifetime gifting strategies, and irrevocable trust techniques — to preserve as much of the assessed value as your situation allows.
Funding is the step most DIY trusts get wrong. A trust controls only the assets that have been retitled into its name. For a California home, that means recording a new grant deed transferring the property from you as an individual to you as trustee. For bank and brokerage accounts, it means changing the account titling. For retirement accounts and life insurance, it means updating beneficiary designations. We handle this paperwork as part of every trust engagement, including drafting and recording the deed for your primary California residence, so you do not end the process with an unfunded trust that still sends your estate to probate.
Most clients serve as their own trustee while alive — keeping full control of their assets — and name a successor trustee to step in at incapacity or death. The right successor depends on your family. An adult child often makes sense if they are financially responsible and not in conflict with other beneficiaries. A professional fiduciary or trust company is the better call when family dynamics are difficult, when beneficiaries include minors or someone with special needs, or when trust assets include a closely-held business. We discuss the trade-offs in your consultation and help you choose someone who will actually do the job — not just hold the title.
Trust pricing scales with complexity — number of beneficiaries, real estate holdings, business assets, and whether you need specialized provisions for blended families, special needs, or asset protection. Our basic California living trust package is far less than the typical statutory probate fee on a single home in Northern California, which routinely exceeds $20,000 in court costs alone. Call (415) 275-1492 for a free consultation and a clear, written estimate before you commit to anything.
Ready to talk?
Book a free consultation. We’ll walk through your situation and lay out the strongest path forward — including whether a flat-fee Initial Case Assessment is the right next step.
Book a free consultation