Estate Planning
What Probate Actually Costs (and Why Having a Trust Doesn’t Always Prevent It)
On a $500,000 California estate with no living trust, statutory probate fees alone run about $29,735, roughly 6% of the estate’s value, calculated under a
A clear, guided approach to estate planning: wills, trusts, trust administration and probate support.
Estate planning is not about paperwork. It is about protecting your legacy, preserving your voice, and making sure everything you built stays in the hands of the people you love. We make the process simple, educational, and guided with care.
Avoid probate. Maintain privacy. Protect your family.
LEARN MORE >Support for trustees navigating legal responsibilities.
LEARN MORE >Protection for loved ones receiving public benefits.
LEARN MORE >Align personal planning with business succession.
LEARN MORE >Ensure guardianship and emergency access are clearly established.
LEARN MORE >Headquartered in Carlsbad, we serve clients throughout San Diego County
and statewide through our secure virtual planning process. No travel required.
"Estate planning is not about documents. It is about reducing uncertainty and protecting the people you love from court and conflict.
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A 15-minute call to understand your situation and explore your options. Completely free.
Yes, you can get quick documents. But are you truly confident they'll protect you when you need them? We take a different approach.
Estate planning questions answered clearly, without the legal jargon.
Yes. California law permits estate planning documents, including trusts, to be signed and notarized via concierge mobile notary or virtually, using approved remote online notarization procedures, and our entire process is built around this, from your first call through document signing.
This means location isn't a barrier: we serve clients throughout California, not just San Diego County, without anyone needing to travel to an office.
A complete plan through our firm typically runs between $3,500 and $8,000, depending on the complexity of your assets, family situation, and the level of planning you need (we offer four tiers, from Essentials through Legacy Protection).
We start with a free Clarity Call to understand your situation before you spend a dime, so you'll know what to expect about our process before committing to anything.
If you die without a will or trust in California, state intestacy law decides who inherits your assets, not you, and the result often surprises people. For a married person with children, California's community property rules typically split assets between your spouse and children in ways that can unintentionally leave a surviving spouse without full control of shared property.
Intestate estates also have to go through full probate, with no ability to name your own executor or guardians for minor children.
Funding a trust means formally re-titling your assets, your home, bank accounts, investment accounts, into the name of the trust itself, rather than your individual name.
This step is what actually makes a trust work: a signed trust document that hasn't been funded does not avoid probate, because the law still sees those assets as owned by you personally, not the trust.
It's the single most commonly misunderstood part of the process, and it's one we walk through with every client rather than leaving to them to figure out.
A California trust generally remains valid if you move to another state, since trusts are recognized across state lines. That said, moving can change how certain assets are handled (particularly real estate in the new state, and any state-specific tax or Medicaid rules), so it's worth a review with an attorney licensed in your new state, or with us, to confirm nothing needs to be adjusted. This came up often enough in past client questions that we now flag it proactively during three-year reviews.
If you have an existing trust from another attorney, we don't amend that original document ourselves, as a matter of professional ethics and liability: we can't attest to the quality or accuracy of another attorney's work product, and our malpractice insurance doesn't permit us to build on it.
What we do instead is create a new trust for you via restatement (so any currently funded assets in the trust stay there), one we draft and stand behind fully, informed by what's already in place so you're not starting from a blank page. We'll walk through your current trust together during a Free Clarity Call so you understand exactly what's changing and why.
Accounts with a named beneficiary or a "payable on death" (POD) designation generally pass directly to that person outside of probate, without needing to be included in your trust. That said, beneficiary designations can fall out of sync with the rest of your plan over time (after a divorce, a death, or a new child), and they don't carry the same protections a trust offers, like control over how and when a minor or vulnerable beneficiary receives funds. Part of what we review during planning is whether your beneficiary designations actually match your overall plan or quietly work against it.
Community property and joint tenancy both involve shared ownership between spouses, but they're treated very differently at death. Community property generally receives a full step-up in tax basis on the first spouse's death, which can significantly reduce capital gains tax if the property is later sold, while joint tenancy typically only steps up the deceased spouse's half. Simply holding a deed as "joint tenants with right of survivorship" is not automatically the most tax-efficient choice for married couples in California, and it's worth reviewing which title your property is actually held under.
A properly structured trust can offer meaningful protection for what your children inherit, for example, by keeping inherited assets in trust rather than distributing them outright, which can shield them from a beneficiary's creditors, a lawsuit, or a divorcing spouse's claims in many cases. A revocable living trust generally does not protect your own assets from your own creditors during your lifetime, only what's passed to your beneficiaries and how it's structured for them. This is a common point of confusion worth addressing directly, since people often ask it hoping for broader protection than a revocable trust actually provides for the person who created it.
Generally, yes, estate planning documents need to comply with the laws of the state where the person creating them resides, so a parent living outside California typically needs an attorney licensed in that state; we only practice in California. That said, we're happy to do an initial review call to help you understand what questions to ask and what to look for when you're evaluating attorneys in their state.
Families throughout San Diego County trust Aisha Williams Law for thoughtful, ethical estate planning guidance.
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Understand your situation - Answer initial questions - Determine the right next step