Estate Tax Planning Attorney in Agoura Hills

Estate Tax Planning Attorney in Agoura Hills

Most people who ask me about estate tax in Agoura Hills do not have an estate tax problem, and the useful thing I can do is say so quickly rather than sell around it.

California repealed its own estate tax. The federal exemption is $15 million per person in 2026. A household with a valuable house, retirement accounts and some savings is not close, even where the house has appreciated enormously.

The tax that actually affects you is the property tax

The number that changes an Agoura Hills family’s finances is not the estate tax. It is what happens to the Proposition 13 assessed value when the house passes to the next generation.

Under Proposition 19, a child who inherits a parent’s primary residence and moves in within one year gets a partial exclusion from reassessment. A child who does not gets none, and the property is reassessed to market value. On a home assessed near its 1980s price, that can multiply the annual tax bill several times over, every year, forever.

That is the real tax planning conversation here, and it belongs in the trust rather than in an estate tax structure nobody needs.

Where portability still matters

For the small number of households genuinely near the federal threshold, one point does real damage. Unused federal exemption transfers to a surviving spouse only if a federal estate tax return is filed at the first death to elect it, even where nothing is owed.

Families skip that filing because nothing appears due, and the cost lands years later at the second death. If your combined estate is anywhere near the exemption, that filing is the cheapest insurance available.

What is worth spending money on instead

Making sure the trust is funded, so the estate does not go through probate. Deciding the Proposition 19 question deliberately rather than by default. Protecting what the children receive from their own divorces and creditors, which costs nothing extra at drafting. And keeping beneficiary designations current, since retirement accounts pass outside the trust entirely.

Those four are where the money is for an Agoura Hills family. I would rather tell you that than build a structure for a tax you will not owe.

Questions Agoura Hills clients ask

Do we owe estate tax? Almost certainly not. California has no estate tax, and the federal exemption is $15 million per person in 2026. Very few Agoura Hills households are near it.

Our house has gone up enormously. Does that create a tax? Not an estate tax. It creates a property tax question under Proposition 19 when the house passes to your children, and that is a much more likely and more expensive issue for you.

What is portability? It lets a surviving spouse use the deceased spouse’s unused federal exemption, but only if a federal estate tax return is filed at the first death to elect it. Families skip that filing because nothing is owed, and lose it.

Is there a capital gains issue? There is a related one worth asking your CPA about: assets generally receive a stepped-up basis at death, which affects what your children owe if they sell. It usually favors holding until death rather than gifting during life.

So what should we actually do? Fund the trust, decide the Proposition 19 question deliberately, protect the children’s shares in trust rather than outright, and keep beneficiary designations current. That is where the money is for a household at this level.

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

For the statewide version, see estate tax planning in California. For the issue that is far more likely to affect you, see living trusts in Agoura Hills and the Proposition 19 calculator.