Living Trust Attorney in Calabasas

Living Trust Attorney in Calabasas

Most Calabasas households that come to me already have a trust. The work is usually not drafting one. It is finding out whether the one they have actually controls anything.

Funding is where these plans fail, and in this city they fail in a specific way, because so much property is held through entities rather than directly.

The two-step funding problem with entity-held property

When you own a house directly, funding is one step: record a deed transferring it into the trust. When the house is owned by an LLC, funding is a different step entirely. The trust does not take the house. It takes your membership interest in the company, by written assignment, and the company’s records have to be updated to show the trust as the member.

Families skip the second half constantly. The trust is signed, the attorney says fund it, and everyone assumes the LLC is covered because the LLC owns the property. It is not. The membership interest is still held individually and goes through probate.

The operating agreement has to permit the assignment as well. Many restrict transfers, including transfers to a revocable trust, and require member consent. That consent is easy to get while everyone is alive and cooperative, and it is a problem afterward.

What the trust does that a will cannot

A will does not avoid probate. It gives instructions inside it. With Calabasas property values, that is the expensive route, and it is also the public one, since probate creates a court file anyone can request listing what the estate held and who received it.

A funded trust keeps administration private and out of court, lets a successor trustee act immediately on death or incapacity, and can hold a beneficiary’s share in a protected trust rather than handing it over outright, which shields it from that beneficiary’s divorce and creditors.

How the engagement runs

The fee is flat and quoted before anything starts: $4,100 for a married couple, $3,700 for a single person, covering the trust, pour-over will, durable powers of attorney, advance health care directives and certification of trust, along with the funding work.

The practice is remote. Design meetings happen by phone or video, which for a Calabasas family means no drive and no half day gone. For signing I arrange a notary and witnesses local to you, because California has not authorized remote online notarization for general use.

Questions Calabasas clients ask

We have a trust and the house is in an LLC. Is that funded? Probably only halfway. The trust needs to hold your membership interest in the LLC by written assignment, and the company records need to show it. The LLC owning the property does not put the property under the trust.

Does the operating agreement affect this? Often, yes. Many operating agreements restrict transfers, including to a revocable trust, and require consent from the other members. That is straightforward to handle now and awkward to handle after a death.

What does it cost? $4,100 for a married couple and $3,700 for a single person, flat, quoted before work starts. A restatement of an existing trust is priced the same as a new one.

Do we have to come to an office? No. The work happens by phone and video, and I arrange a local notary and witnesses for signing so nobody is driving anywhere.

Can I protect what my children inherit? Yes, and it costs nothing extra to draft it that way. A share left in a properly drafted trust rather than outright can be shielded from a child’s divorce, creditors and judgments.

Talk to Eric or call 805-244-5291. I serve Calabasas and the surrounding Conejo Valley communities.

For the statewide version, see living trusts in California, and trust or will if you are weighing the two. If someone has already died, see probate in Calabasas.