What to Expect When You’re Inheriting

Someone you loved has died, and you’re named in the trust or the will. You’re not the one in charge, and nobody has told you what happens next. This book does.

What to Expect When You’re Inheriting is a plain-English guide for the son, daughter, sibling, grandchild or friend who is a beneficiary of a California trust or estate. It’s written by a California attorney whose practice emphasizes estate planning, trust administration and probate, and it follows the order a beneficiary meets things: the first weeks, the notices, the waiting, the money and the end.

What’s inside

• Trust, probate or neither. How to tell which process you’re in, and which assets skip both.
• The trust notice. What the letter from the trustee says, and the deadline to contest that it starts.
• Your right to information. What a trustee has to tell you, and how to ask for it in writing.
• The accounting. What a trust accounting must contain, and how to read one line by line.
• Probate notices. The papers in your mailbox, special notice, notices of proposed action, and an uncontested probate month by month.
• Timelines. Why it takes months, and when partial distributions happen.
• Fees and taxes. Who gets paid, who pays, and what you might owe on what you inherit.
• Keeping the peace. How to ask questions without starting a fight, the warning signs worth a closer look, and when to get your own lawyer.

It’s fair to the trustee or executor, who is usually doing a hard job slowly and honestly, and it’s clear about where ordinary delay ends. Every dollar example is labeled as an illustration and shows its arithmetic. Every rule is tied to its source. The back of the book has checklists, sample letters, worksheets, a glossary and a table of deadlines.

This book is general information about California law. It isn’t legal, tax or financial advice. The families in it are composites.

Read the free guide first

• Your rights as a beneficiary in California
• What a trustee has to tell you
• Signing a receipt and release

More books: when you inherit

• The Prop 19 TrapComing soon
• The Inherited IRA ClockComing soon
• You Just Inherited a Million DollarsComing soon