Santa Clara Estate Planning Attorney

No. A will directs the probate court; it does not bypass it. Assets that pass under a will generally go through the court process. What avoids probate is holding assets in a funded living trust, or having a valid beneficiary designation, or fitting a small-estate procedure.

For most Bay Area homeowners a trust is the document that does the heavy lifting, because the home is the asset that would otherwise drive a probate. Whether it is right for you depends on how the property is titled, what else you own, and who you want to manage it if you cannot.

Probate Code section 6401 applies. Your spouse receives your one-half of the community property. Your separate property is divided: one-half to your spouse if you have one child, one-third if you have more than one child. A court applies that formula regardless of what anyone believes you wanted.

A will speaks only after death and works through the court. A living trust works during your life as well: if you become unable to manage your affairs, your successor trustee can act on the trust’s assets without a court proceeding. That living-benefit gap is the reason most California plans are built around a trust.

A durable power of attorney names someone to handle financial matters if you cannot. California publishes a statutory form at Probate Code section 4401. Without one, your family’s route to paying your bills is a court-supervised conservatorship.

Whoever you name in an advance health care directive, the form for which is published at Probate Code section 4701. If nobody is named, the decision falls to whoever the hospital and the law identify, which may not be the person you would have chosen.

Reread it whenever a name or an asset changes: a move, a marriage or divorce, a birth, a death, a new property, a new business, or a refinance. Property tax rules for inherited homes also changed with Proposition 19 in 2021, so plans drafted before then are worth checking against current rules.

Yes, for the accounts they cover. Retirement accounts and life insurance pay whoever is on the form. Probate Code section 5000 confirms these nonprobate transfers are valid even though they are not executed like a will, so the form controls regardless of what your will says.

Yes — Santa Clara is the closest city to our office at 100 Century Center Ct. in San Jose, roughly ten minutes away, and we also meet by secure video. Santa Clara is in Santa Clara County, so any filing goes to the same court we already appear in.

California probates commonly run twelve to eighteen months, and a contested claim or a property that has to be sold can extend that. Santa Clara County matters are heard in the probate department in downtown San Jose. The point of a funded living trust is to keep the assets it holds out of that timeline altogether.

Yes. If there is a trust, that is trust administration; if there is none, or if assets were left outside the trust, it may be a probate. Either way the first step is the same — we look at how each asset was titled and what documents exist before telling you which process applies.

Joint tenancy moves the property to the surviving owner without probate, so it handles the first death. It does not handle the second one: once there is no surviving joint tenant, the home passes under whatever plan exists, or through probate if there is none. How title is held can also affect the tax basis your children receive. It is worth having the deed reviewed rather than assumed.