Top Estate Planning Attorneys in Port Hueneme, CA (2026)

Port Hueneme is a small city of roughly 20,700 residents, and the population moves in a way most cities’ don’t: it rises and falls with military rotation schedules at Naval Base Ventura County, which sits inside city limits and dominates the local economy. Median home value is around $623,000, the lowest of any city in this comparison, median household income is near $93,000, and about 61.3% of residents are Hispanic. This is also where Ridley Law’s office actually is.

NBVC Port Hueneme is home to the Seabees, the Navy’s construction battalions, including the 30th Naval Construction Regiment. Between active duty, reserve, and family members, the base community runs to more than 19,000 people: roughly 6,500 active duty personnel, 2,500 in the ready reserve, and 1,077 family-housing units on base. A meaningful share of Port Hueneme’s civilian population works for or alongside the base, and a meaningful share of its residents are themselves servicemembers or military spouses, often mid-career, often planning to move again in two or three years.

That changes what estate planning actually needs to cover here. It’s not just a trust and a will. It’s a beneficiary designation on a life insurance policy that overrides the trust if nobody checks it, a power of attorney that has to work while someone is underway or forward-deployed, and a survivor benefit that has to be coordinated with the rest of the plan instead of contradicting it.

Below are estate planning attorneys who serve Port Hueneme, with verifiable credentials. This is not a ranking. It is a starting point for doing your own homework.

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How to vet an estate planning attorney

The California State Bar certifies attorneys as Legal Specialists in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law. Fewer than 1% of California attorneys hold this credential. It requires a written exam, substantial documented experience, and peer review. You can verify any attorney’s specialist status at calbar.ca.gov.

For Port Hueneme specifically, certification is a starting point, not the finish line. Ask whether the attorney has actually handled:

• SGLI and other military life insurance beneficiary designations, which pass outside the trust and outside the will no matter what those documents say.
• Powers of attorney built to work during a deployment, not just a durable POA drafted the same way it would be for a civilian client.
• Multi-state property from a career of PCS moves, which can mean probate exposure in more than one state if it isn’t addressed.
• The county’s probate venue. Like every Ventura County city, Port Hueneme’s probate matters are filed at the Juvenile and Probate Division, 4353 E. Vineyard Avenue, Oxnard, CA 93036, a short drive up the road.

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Estate planning attorneys serving Port Hueneme

The honest answer for Port Hueneme is that there are very few estate planning firms with an actual office in the city. Ridley Law is one of the only ones. The firms below are the nearest ones with a genuine estate planning practice that serve Port Hueneme residents and military families stationed here.

Ridley Law

Eric D. Ridley has practiced estate planning in Ventura County since 2010, working with families across Port Hueneme, Oxnard, and the surrounding area. This is the firm’s home office, blocks from Naval Base Ventura County, and a large share of its clients are active duty, reserve, retired military, or civilian employees of the base. The firm handles living trusts, wills, powers of attorney, advance healthcare directives, trust administration, and probate. Flat-fee pricing, disclosed before engagement. Free 30-minute initial consultation by phone or video.

567 W. Channel Islands Boulevard, Suite 210, Port Hueneme, CA 93041. (805) 244-5291.

Kaiden Elder Law Group

Randall Kaiden (State Bar #185463) is a Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law and holds an LLM in Taxation, with an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell. The firm’s main office is in Valencia, with a branch office in Oxnard, a short drive from Port Hueneme.

1000 Town Center Drive, Suite 300, Oxnard, CA 93036. (805) 351-3920.

Susan Borquez, Attorney at Law

Susan Borquez (State Bar #118757) was admitted to the California Bar in 1985 and has a practice limited to estate planning, trust administration, and probate. She does not handle litigation, family law, or other unrelated matters, and has served the county, including Port Hueneme, for close to four decades.

340 Rosewood Avenue, Suite R, Camarillo, CA 93010. (805) 482-3738.

Ferguson Case Orr Paterson LLP

John Mark Andersen (State Bar #162930) was admitted to the California Bar in 1993 and has been a Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law since 2008, with a JD from UC Hastings. The firm’s established trust, estate, and probate group serves clients throughout the county from its Ventura office.

1050 S. Kimball Road, Ventura, CA 93004. (805) 654-0100.

Edsall Law, A Professional Law Corporation

Katherine Edsall Wells (State Bar #252789) is a Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law, with a JD from Stanford Law. She joined her family’s firm after practicing complex litigation at O’Melveny & Myers. The firm handles estate planning, probate, and trust administration matters for clients across the county.

400 Camarillo Ranch Road, Suite 102, Camarillo, CA 93012. (805) 633-5140.

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What Port Hueneme families actually deal with

SGLI and other beneficiary designations that ignore your trust

Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance pays out to whoever is named as beneficiary on file with the Department of Defense, full stop. It does not look at your trust. It does not look at your will. If the SGLI beneficiary form still names an ex-spouse, an estranged parent, or nobody at all, that is who gets the money (or it defaults to a statutory order of beneficiaries that may not match your family’s actual wishes). A trust that leaves everything to a spouse and kids does nothing to fix a stale SGLI form. This is one of the single most common estate planning failures among military families, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the trust.

Deployment powers of attorney

For a servicemember who deploys or goes underway, a standard civilian durable power of attorney often isn’t enough. The document needs to anticipate that the servicemember will be unreachable for months at a time, not just temporarily unavailable, and it needs to give the spouse or agent real authority to sell a vehicle, manage finances, handle a lease, or make healthcare decisions for a child without a court order. Families who wait until orders come down to think about this are working against a clock that isn’t on their side.

PCS moves and property in more than one state

A career built on Permanent Change of Station orders often means a family owns, or has owned, property in more than one state, sometimes more than one at the same time during a transition. If a piece of that property is titled in an individual’s name alone rather than in trust, it can require a separate ancillary probate proceeding in that state on top of whatever happens in California, doubling the cost and the delay for the family left sorting it out.

Survivor Benefit Plan coordination

The military’s Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) pays a monthly annuity to a designated beneficiary after a retiree’s death, and the SBP election is made separately from, and can conflict with, a trust or will. A plan that names a trust as the general beneficiary of an estate but never accounts for how the SBP annuity interacts with that trust, or with a former spouse who may still be entitled to SBP coverage under a divorce decree, can create a real mess for survivors. Coordinating SBP with the rest of an estate plan is not optional for a retiree, it’s the difference between a plan that actually pays out as intended and one that gets contested.

SCRA protections during active planning

The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act gives active duty servicemembers certain protections and, in some circumstances, the ability to delay or adjust legal proceedings and obligations while on active duty. It’s worth knowing about even outside of litigation: an attorney familiar with military clients understands how deployment status can affect timing on everything from signing documents to responding to a probate filing back home.

The probate math on a Port Hueneme home

Probate fees in California are set by statute (Probate Code §§ 10810 and 10800), calculated on the gross value of the estate, not equity net of any mortgage. On a Port Hueneme home at the city’s median value of $623,000, the statutory fee works out to $15,460 for the attorney and $15,460 for the executor, or roughly $30,920 in statutory fees alone, before court costs, appraisal fees, or any petition for extraordinary compensation. Port Hueneme has the smallest estates of the three cities in this comparison, and the fees are correspondingly the smallest, but $30,920 is still a significant hit on a $623,000 estate, especially when a family could avoid it with a properly funded trust for a fraction of the cost.

Where Port Hueneme probate is heard

Like the rest of Ventura County, a Port Hueneme estate that goes through probate is heard at the Juvenile and Probate Division of the Ventura County Superior Court, 4353 E. Vineyard Avenue, Oxnard, CA 93036, not at any courthouse in Port Hueneme itself.

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Credentials listed are drawn from the firms’ own public information, the State Bar of California, and public court records. This page is not a ranking and is not an endorsement. Ridley Law is listed first because we publish this page, not because of any ranking; we are included because we serve Port Hueneme, and because this is our home office. We wrote this page, and we think you should know that. Verify any attorney’s license status and specialist certification at calbar.ca.gov.