Short answer: Estate planning matters because without documents in place, California statute decides who inherits your property, who is in charge of settling your affairs, and who has authority to act for you if you become incapacitated, not you and not your family’s sense of what you wanted. If you die without a will, the intestate succession statutes control distribution instead of your wishes. A will alone does not avoid probate either: only a properly funded revocable living trust keeps your estate out of the probate court process.
What happens if I die without a will in California?
If you die without a will, California’s intestate succession statutes decide who inherits, regardless of what you told your family you wanted. Citation: Probate Code § 6400. For community and quasi-community property, a surviving spouse takes the entire asset, both their own half and the half that belonged to the person who died, under Probate Code § 6401(a)-(b). Separate property works differently: the surviving spouse’s share can drop to one-half or even one-third depending on whether children, parents, or siblings also survive, under Probate Code § 6401(c).
The intestacy rules also draw hard lines that surprise people. Stepchildren who were never legally adopted, and unmarried partners, generally inherit nothing under intestate succession no matter how close the relationship was in life, under Probate Code §§ 6401 and 6402. Dying without a will does not avoid probate either. An intestate estate above the small estate threshold still goes through the same court-supervised probate process, under the same statutory fee schedule, as an estate with a will, under Probate Code §§ 10800 and 10810.
Does having a will mean my family skips probate?
No. A will only takes effect once a court validates it through probate. It tells the court who should inherit and who should serve as executor, but it does not keep the estate out of probate court. The only way to avoid probate on an asset is to move it, during your lifetime, into a properly funded revocable living trust, or to hold it in a form that passes outside of probate on its own, such as joint tenancy, a payable-on-death account, or an account or policy with a named beneficiary.
A trust that sits signed but unfunded does not help. If you create a living trust and never retitle your home, bank accounts, or other property into it, those un-retitled assets still go through probate when you die, regardless of what the trust document says.
What does probate actually cost a family that skipped planning?
Probate in California is not free, and the fees are set by statute, not negotiated. California requires formal probate when an estate’s assets subject to probate total more than $208,850 in gross value, before debts, for deaths on or after April 1, 2025, under Probate Code § 13100. Above that threshold, the estate pays statutory fees to both the executor and the estate’s attorney, calculated separately on the same schedule under Probate Code §§ 10800 and 10810: 4 percent of the first $100,000, 3 percent of the next $100,000, and 2 percent of the next $800,000.
On a $1,000,000 gross estate, that schedule produces $23,000 for the executor and a separate $23,000 for the attorney, for $46,000 in ordinary statutory fees before court costs, bond premiums, or any extraordinary fees for selling real property or handling litigation. That fee runs on the gross value of the estate, so a mortgage does not reduce it, under Probate Code § 10800(b). On top of the cost, most California probate cases take 9 to 18 months from the date the court appoints a personal representative, according to the California Courts Self-Help Guide. During that time the property sits inside a public court process while your family waits.
Does estate planning matter if I don’t have much money?
Yes. The statutory probate fees above are calculated on the gross value of the estate, not what’s left after a mortgage, so a California home alone can push an otherwise modest estate over the $208,850 probate threshold. Naming a guardian for minor children, documenting who should make decisions if you become unable to, and being clear about who gets specific personal property are not functions of net worth either. A family with a modest estate has the same interest in keeping a house out of probate, and the same interest in avoiding a fight over who raises the kids, as a family with a large one.
What belongs in a California estate plan?
At minimum, a plan should address who inherits your property, who is in charge of settling your affairs, who raises your minor children if both parents are gone, and who can act for you financially and medically if you become unable to act for yourself. A revocable living trust paired with a pour-over will is the standard structure for keeping real property and other significant assets out of probate. Powers of attorney and healthcare directives handle decision-making during incapacity, which is a separate question from what happens to property after death, and both should be reviewed alongside the trust and will rather than treated as an afterthought.
Figures verified July 2026.
What to do next
If you don’t have a will or trust, or haven’t looked at them since a major life change, that is the starting point. Talk with an estate planning attorney about whether a trust, a will, or both fit your situation, and make sure any California real estate actually gets retitled into whatever plan you choose. Ridley Law’s estate planning page and the probate cost calculator are useful starting points for seeing what’s at stake before that conversation.
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