Short answer: Estate planning is the set of legal documents, at minimum a will or trust, financial and healthcare powers of attorney, and a healthcare directive, that determines who manages your affairs if you cannot and who inherits your property when you die. In California it matters more than people expect: without a will or trust, state intestate succession law decides who inherits, not you, and any estate holding more than $208,850 in probate assets is required to go through formal, court-supervised probate (Probate Code § 13100). A properly funded revocable living trust is the only one of these documents that keeps an estate out of probate entirely.
What does a California estate plan actually include?
A complete plan is built from a handful of distinct documents, each doing a different job. A will names an executor, states who inherits, and nominates guardians for minor children, but it only takes effect after a court validates it through probate. A revocable living trust holds title to your assets while you are alive and passes them to your beneficiaries directly when you die, without a probate filing, as long as the assets were actually retitled into the trust’s name.
A financial power of attorney lets someone you choose manage your bank accounts, pay bills, and handle transactions if you become unable to. A healthcare power of attorney lets someone make medical decisions on your behalf when you cannot communicate them yourself, and an advance healthcare directive lets you put your own wishes about life-sustaining treatment in writing so your family and doctors are not left guessing. None of these documents are optional extras. Each covers a gap the others do not.
What happens if you die without an estate plan in California?
If you die without a will or trust, California’s intestate succession statutes decide who inherits, not your own wishes (Probate Code § 6400). For community property, a surviving spouse takes all of it, their own half plus the decedent’s half (Probate Code § 6401(a)-(b)). Separate property is split among the spouse, children, parents, or siblings depending on who survives you, under a fixed statutory formula (Probate Code § 6401(c)). Stepchildren who were never legally adopted and unmarried partners generally inherit nothing under this scheme, no matter how close the relationship was in life (Probate Code §§ 6401 to 6402).
Dying without a plan does not avoid probate either. An intestate estate above the small estate threshold still goes through the same court-supervised process, under the same statutory fee schedule, as an estate with a will (Probate Code §§ 10800, 10810).
Does an estate plan avoid probate in California?
A will does not. A will has to be filed with the probate court and validated before it does anything, and California requires formal probate for any estate with assets subject to probate totaling more than $208,850 in gross value, for deaths on or after April 1, 2025 (Probate Code § 13100). Assets held in joint tenancy, payable-on-death or transfer-on-death accounts, and life insurance or retirement accounts with a named beneficiary generally pass outside probate regardless of what a will says.
A funded revocable living trust is different. Because the trust, not you personally, holds legal title to the assets, there is nothing left in your name for a probate court to administer. The word funded carries the weight here. A trust that was signed but never used to retitle a house, accounts, and other assets does not avoid probate for whatever was left outside it.
Will a trust cut my taxes or protect me from nursing home costs?
California has no state estate tax and no state inheritance tax (Revenue and Taxation Code § 13301). On the federal side, the 2026 estate and gift tax exemption is $15,000,000 per person, $30,000,000 for a married couple, made permanent under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (IRC section 2010(c); P.L. 119-21 section 70106). Most California estates never come close to that number, which means most families planning here are not doing it to avoid an estate tax bill. They are doing it to control who is in charge, avoid probate, and keep the process private.
A revocable living trust will not shield assets from Medi-Cal either. Because you can revoke the trust and take the assets back at any time, everything in it remains fully countable when California calculates eligibility for long-term care benefits (42 U.S.C. section 1396p(d)(3)(A)). Asset protection for Medi-Cal purposes, to the extent it is available at all, requires different planning done well in advance, not a revocable trust.
What does an estate plan cost, and what does skipping one cost?
At Ridley Law, a complete trust-based estate plan, meaning a revocable living trust, pour-over will, financial and healthcare powers of attorney, and the deed moving a California home into the trust, is a flat fee: $4,100 for a married couple, $3,700 for an individual.
Compare that to what probate costs when there is no funded trust. California’s statutory fee schedule pays the executor 4% of the first $100,000, 3% of the next $100,000, 2% of the next $800,000, and 1% of the next $9,000,000 of the estate’s gross value, and the estate’s attorney is entitled to an identical fee calculated the same way (Probate Code §§ 10800, 10810). On a $1,000,000 estate, that works out to $23,000 for the executor and another $23,000 for the attorney, $46,000 in ordinary statutory fees alone, before court costs, bond, or any extraordinary fees. Those fees run on the gross value of the estate without reference to encumbrances, so a mortgage does not reduce them (Probate Code § 10800(b)).
Figures verified July 2026.
What to do next
Pull together a rough list of what you own, real property, accounts, retirement plans, life insurance, and who you would want handling your affairs if you could not. That list is the starting point for any conversation with an estate planning attorney about whether a will, a trust, or both make sense for your situation. If you already have documents but have not looked at them in several years, or since a marriage, divorce, birth, or move, that is reason enough to have them reviewed.
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