The Journal — Plain-English Estate Law
Plain-English guidance on wills, trusts, probate, and protecting your family in California.
How Do I Object to a Trustee’s Accounting, and By When?
You object by petitioning the court, and the deadline is shorter than most beneficiaries realise. The three-year clock in the Probate Code starts running from the account itself,…
Read →Can a Beneficiary Be Charged for the Trustee’s Legal Fees?
Not personally, in the ordinary case. But the trust pays the trustee’s lawyer out of assets that would otherwise be yours, so beneficiaries fund a good deal of…
Read →Beneficiary Designation vs Power of Attorney: Which Controls?
They never actually compete, because they operate at different times. A power of attorney works while the principal is alive and dies with them. A beneficiary designation does…
Read →How Do You Voluntarily Change or Substitute a Trustee?
Changing a trustee by agreement is far cheaper than removing one by petition, and most California trusts contain the machinery to do it. The mistake families make is…
Read →Who Controls a Minor’s Inheritance, and When Do They Get It?
Not the minor, and usually not the surviving parent automatically. Who controls the money depends entirely on how it was left, and the four common structures produce very…
Read →My Rights as a Beneficiary of an Irrevocable Trust
More than most beneficiaries realise, and they attach the moment the trust becomes irrevocable. That usually means the day the settlor died, and the rights are enforceable whether…
Read →Can a Trustee Buy the House From the Trust?
Only with real protection in place, and the burden is on the trustee to justify it rather than on you to attack it. A trustee buying trust property…
Read →The Trust Says Equal Shares But the Assets Can’t Be Split Evenly
Equal in value doesn’t mean identical in kind. A trustee dividing a house, a retirement account, and a coin collection three ways has to make choices, and the…
Read →Want a straight read on where you stand?
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