About Eric Ridley

Most estate plans do exactly what they were written to do. The problem is the distance between that and what their owners believe they’ll do. I’ve spent my career closing that distance — because I watched what happens when nobody does. I’m Eric Ridley, and estate planning is the whole of my practice, from Port Hueneme across Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

The reason I practice

My father died when I was twenty-five. He had done everything you are supposed to do. A will. A trust. The documents that estate planning attorneys hand you in a binder and call a plan. He believed his family was protected. He said so, more than once.

He was wrong — not because the documents were poorly drafted, but because the documents did exactly what they were written to do. They just didn’t do what he thought they would do.

His wife remarried within a year of his death. She passed within two. And thirty years of my father’s careful work — the house, the savings, everything he set aside — passed to a man my father had never met, under a plan my father believed protected his children.

Nobody did anything wrong. And in California, under the law as it stands, there was nothing to be done about it. I spent a long time sitting with the gap between what people believe a plan will do and what it actually does.

Most families who come to me have a version of that gap in their current documents, and they don’t know it.

So I practice to close the gap — not to fill binders, but to build plans that actually do what the people who sign them think they do.

What I understand about putting this off

To make a plan, you have to picture a version of the world where you are not in it. That is not paperwork — it is one of the harder things a person can be asked to do on an ordinary afternoon, which is why the binder from 2014 is still on the shelf, unopened since the signing appointment. There is no shame in having quietly avoided it. For most of us, there is time. The difficulty is that none of us is told which of us is the exception.

I am not going to frighten you into acting. Fear is a poor foundation for decisions this important, and plans built out of fear tend to be the ones that don’t fit. What I offer instead is an afternoon of clear thinking, alongside someone who has seen how these stories end.

What working with me looks like

1. Talk to Eric. Thirty minutes, free, no pitch.
2. A plan built around your actual family. The second marriage and what it complicates. The adult child who handles money and the one who doesn’t. The estranged sibling who might contest. The business interest a standard trust never addresses. Most of it never appears in a document — but it decides how everything is structured, how assets are titled, and who is named.
3. Everything moved into place. After the papers are signed, I handle funding — moving the house and the accounts into the trust and retitling them in its name. A trust that isn’t funded is not a plan. It is a document. Deeds re-titled, accounts re-registered, beneficiary forms aligned, then a review every three years. That step is where most estate plans quietly fail, years after the attorney has been paid and moved on. It is not where my clients’ plans fail.

Start with step one: Talk to Eric.

Who I work with

A couple in their late fifties in Camarillo: the house nearly paid off, a rental property, brokerage accounts that have quietly become the largest thing they own. A business owner whose company is the estate — and whose standard trust never mentions what happens to it. A blended family in Thousand Oaks being fair to children from two marriages, which most documents handle badly.

For most families, the federal estate tax is not the issue. For a few clients it is — the federal exemption is $15 million per person — and we plan for it.

And increasingly, people who already have a plan — a binder from ten years ago — and want to know whether it would actually hold. Whether the trust was ever funded. Whether the successor trustee is still the right person, still alive, still willing.

What I don’t do is draft simple wills for simple estates where California’s default rules would get most families most of the way there anyway. If that is your situation, I will tell you plainly — and I will not charge you for the conversation.

What’s at stake

Without a trust, an estate goes through probate — the court process that settles it after death. It is a public court record, open for anyone to read. It takes a year or more. And the attorney’s fee is calculated as a percentage of the gross estate, set by statute rather than by the work involved.

A funded trust keeps all of it private and out of court. When the day comes, your family’s whole job is one phone call.

What a consultation with me is like

The first meeting is thirty minutes, and there is no charge for it. I will tell you what you need, what you don’t need, and why — before we discuss any numbers.

I work on flat fees, quoted before anything is drafted. No hourly billing, no invoices that arrive weeks later with line items you didn’t anticipate. The fee covers the documents, the funding work, and a review every three years for as long as we work together — because a plan that isn’t maintained isn’t really a plan.

I would rather spend thirty minutes being genuinely useful to someone who doesn’t end up hiring me than close a client who wasn’t sure they needed what I do.

Why you work with me, not a file number

I run a small practice deliberately. I’ve watched what happens when a firm outgrows the point where the attorney knows every client by name: trusts that sit unfunded because no one followed up, clients who meet the attorney once and then work with staff for everything after.

That is not what I built.

When you work with me, you work with me. The practice stays small enough that I am accountable for the outcome — not just the paperwork.

My father’s plan failed because the attorney who drafted it was accountable for the documents, not the result. I have never forgotten that distinction.

Practice Areas

• Living Trusts & Wills
• Trust Administration
• Probate
• Estate Plan Review & Repair

Bar Admissions

• State Bar of California, No. 273702
• Supreme Court of California
• U.S. District Court, Central District of California
• U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California
• U.S. District Court, Southern District of California

Professional Affiliations

• American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys — member attorneys complete 36 hours of continuing legal education annually in estate planning, elder law, probate, and trust administration
• Ventura County Bar Association
• Beverly Hills Bar Association

About Eric Ridley FAQs

Where is Eric Ridley’s office?

My office is in Port Hueneme, and I work with families across Ventura and Los Angeles counties — in person, or by phone and Zoom when that is easier.

How long has Eric Ridley practiced estate planning?

Estate planning has been the whole of my practice since 2010. I am licensed by the State Bar of California, No. 273702, and I am a member of the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys.

Does Eric handle probate and trust administration, or only planning?

Both. I build living trusts and wills, and I help families through trust administration and probate after someone has died. If a simple will is all your situation needs, I will tell you that plainly.

Talk to Eric — thirty minutes, free, and you’ll leave knowing whether your plan would hold.