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 set schedule in the California Probate Code. That’s before court costs, appraisal fees, and the average 9 to 18 months it takes to close.
That number gets people’s attention. It’s not the part that actually decides the outcome.
Here’s what actually determines whether a family goes through that: not whether a trust exists on paper, but whether it was ever properly funded. A trust only protects what’s actually titled in its name. If the deed on the house was never changed, if accounts were never retitled, that asset still passes through probate exactly as if no trust existed at all. The document did its job. The follow-through didn’t happen.
We recently worked with a family who ran into exactly this. Their father had signed a trust years earlier with another attorney, and the family assumed that meant a straightforward trust administration when he passed. It didn’t. The house had never been deeded into the trust. No bank accounts had been added either. What looked like a completed plan was, in practice, no plan at all for the assets that mattered most.
The family ended up in full probate instead. Before the court would even let them deal with the real estate, they had to pay an $8,000 bond premium out of pocket, the cost of the surety bond required to protect the estate during probate. The process took nearly two years. By the end, the costs had grown large enough that the family made the difficult decision to sell the house simply to cover them, the same house the trust was supposed to protect.
This is the single most common gap we see in estate plans, and it usually surprises people who assumed a trust meant they were covered. If you already have a trust, it’s worth confirming your home and major accounts are actually titled in its name. If you don’t yet have one, this is exactly the kind of gap worth planning around from the start.
Case details shared with identifying information withheld to protect client privacy. This matter arose from a death prior to April 1, 2025. California’s threshold for the simplified primary-residence succession procedure increased to $750,000 for deaths on or after that date, so the earlier, lower threshold governed this family’s case, one of several reasons formal probate was required rather than a streamlined alternative.
Disclaimer:
This article is a service of the Law Office of Aisha M. Williams, APC, serving San Diego, Carlsbad, Escondido, and all of California. We are your virtual estate planning and trusts experts. Our process ensures you make informed decisions about life and death for yourself and the people you love.
We created this material solely for educational and informational purposes. It does not serve as ERISA, tax, legal, or investment advice. Should you need legal advice tailored to your specific needs, you must seek such services independently.
