Short answer: Most of what people believe about estate planning is wrong, and the biggest myth is that it only matters for the wealthy. California requires formal probate for an estate worth more than $208,850 in gross assets, before debts are subtracted, for deaths on or after April 1, 2025 (Prob. Code § 13100). A modest house in most California counties gets you there on its own. Age, marital status, and net worth do not decide whether you need a plan. Whether you own anything that would otherwise get tied up in court does.
Do I need to be wealthy, married, or elderly for estate planning to matter?
No. The $208,850 probate threshold applies to everyone, not just people with large estates. If your assets, including your home equity, exceed that number at death, your family faces a court-supervised process to distribute what you own, regardless of how “wealthy” you feel. Marital status does not change this either. A single person still needs someone authorized to make financial and health care decisions if they become unable to make those decisions themselves, and still needs to say in writing who gets what. Age is no different. Incapacity and death do not check a birth date first.
Am I too young to start, or does a plan only need doing once?
There is no minimum age at which incapacity or death becomes a possibility, so there is no age at which an estate plan stops being relevant. What changes is how often you should look at it. Marriage, divorce, a new child, a move in or out of California, a new business, or a significant change in assets are all reasons to revisit your documents. Some of the dollar thresholds and tax figures that affect estate planning also adjust on scheduled dates, which is another reason a plan drafted years ago may no longer reflect current numbers. Treat your estate plan as something you check in on periodically, not something you file away permanently.
If I already have a will, do I still need anything else?
A will by itself does not avoid probate. It only takes effect once a court validates it through the probate process, which is the opposite of what most people assume a will does. A complete plan generally also addresses what happens if you become incapacitated before you die, since a will has no legal effect while you are still alive. That typically means documents authorizing someone you trust to make financial decisions and health care decisions on your behalf if you cannot. It can also mean naming a guardian for minor children, which a will alone does not automatically resolve in every circumstance. None of this is optional if you want your wishes followed rather than left to a court to sort out. A will and a power of attorney serve different purposes and most people need both.
Can I skip the attorney, or does having a trust finish the job?
You can write your own documents, but a plan that is not properly executed or not fully funded does not do what you think it does. This is the same problem whether you did it yourself online or paid someone to draft a trust and then never followed through. A revocable living trust that is created but never funded, meaning your home, accounts, and other assets are never actually retitled into it, does not avoid probate for any asset left outside it. The trust document existing in a drawer is not the same as the trust owning your property. That funding step, deed by deed and account by account, is where do-it-yourself plans and unfinished attorney-drafted plans most often fail.
Can I give away everything before I die to avoid estate taxes?
No, and trying creates a different problem. The IRS caps how much you can give away tax-free each year: $19,000 per recipient in 2026, or $38,000 for a married couple who elects to split gifts. Gifts above that amount to one person require filing a Form 709, but they generally trigger no actual tax owed until your cumulative lifetime gifts exceed the federal exemption, which is $15,000,000 per person in 2026 ($30,000,000 for a married couple). Direct payments of tuition or medical bills made straight to the school or provider do not count as gifts at all and are unlimited. California itself has no state estate tax and no state inheritance tax. But giving away an appreciated asset during life passes your original cost basis to the recipient, not a stepped-up basis. If you had instead left that same asset to them at death, they generally would have received a step-up to fair market value on the date of death. Giving assets away early to dodge a tax most people will never owe can hand your heirs a larger income tax bill than if you had simply left the asset to them.
Figures verified July 2026.
What to do next
Start by listing what you own and who you want it to go to, then compare that against the $208,850 probate threshold to see whether your family is looking at court involvement if nothing changes. If you do not have documents addressing incapacity, or you have a trust that was never funded, those are the two most common gaps to fix first. An estate planning attorney can review what you already have and tell you specifically what is missing before it becomes your family’s problem instead of yours.
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