Estate Planning Attorney for Calabasas, CA

Estate Planning in Calabasas: Why Privacy Takes More Than a Trust Document

Calabasas homeowners tend to have two things most families do not: a high-value property and a strong preference for keeping their financial affairs to themselves. Probate works against both. It is a public court proceeding, and in California a public court proceeding means an inventory of what you owned, what it was worth, and who received it, sitting in a file anyone can walk in and read. A gated street does not change that. Only a properly funded trust does.

I am Eric Ridley, an estate planning attorney at Ridley Law. I work with Calabasas clients by phone and video for the planning conversation and meet in person to sign, and I have handled both sides of this: plans that were built to avoid probate and actually did, and plans left half finished that landed a family in the exact public proceeding they thought they had avoided.

Calabasas is in Los Angeles County, and that is where the file lives

Calabasas sits in Los Angeles County, so a probate for a Calabasas resident is filed with the Los Angeles County Superior Court, not the Ventura County court. That matters for two reasons. First, the file is public regardless of which county hears it. Second, Los Angeles County’s probate calendar is heavy, which tends to stretch out an already slow process. Neither problem is solved by where you live. Both are solved by whether your assets are titled to avoid the court in the first place.

What actually becomes public record

A petition for probate is not a quiet formality. It requires a full inventory and appraisal of the estate’s assets, filed with the court, listing the house, the brokerage accounts, the business interest, and the appraised value of each. The petition names every heir and beneficiary and states what each one is set to receive. If anyone contests the will, disputes the executor, or argues over an asset, that fight happens in open court and every filing joins the same public record. No subpoena is required to read any of it. A competitor, an estranged relative, a journalist, or simply a curious neighbor can request the file and see exactly what you owned and who got it. For a high-value estate, that is a level of exposure most people never intended to sign up for, and most do not learn about it until a family member is already going through it.

What probate costs before privacy even enters the conversation

Set the privacy problem aside for a moment, because probate also has a statutory price tag, and it is larger than most people expect. California Probate Code § 10810 sets the fee the estate’s attorney is entitled to, and § 10800 sets an identical fee for the personal representative, so the schedule is effectively charged twice on the same estate. The percentages run 4% of the first $100,000, 3% of the next $100,000, 2% of the next $800,000, 1% of the next $9,000,000, and 0.5% of the next $15,000,000, with anything above $25,000,000 set by the court.

Run the math on a $2,000,000 estate, which is not an unusual figure once a Calabasas home is counted alongside investment and retirement accounts: 4% of $100,000 is $4,000, 3% of the next $100,000 is $3,000, 2% of the next $800,000 is $16,000, and 1% of the remaining $1,000,000 is $10,000. That totals $33,000 for the attorney, and the personal representative is entitled to the same $33,000, for $66,000 total before either of them has done anything beyond the ordinary administration the statute assumes. Extraordinary work, selling a house, defending a will contest, resolving a tax question, is billed on top of that under Cal. Rules of Court, rule 7.703.

The detail that catches people off guard: this fee is calculated on the gross appraised value of the estate, not on what you actually own after debt. A $2,000,000 house with a $1,200,000 mortgage against it is still counted at $2,000,000 for purposes of this schedule. Equity is irrelevant. The statute taxes the value of the asset, not the value of your interest in it. You can run your own numbers against the same schedule using the probate fee calculator.

A trust only protects what is actually inside it

Here is where most of the privacy promise quietly falls apart. A revocable living trust keeps assets out of probate, and out of the public file, but only for assets that are actually titled in the trust’s name. Signing the trust document does not do that by itself. I have reviewed plans where a Calabasas client signed a trust years ago, filed it away, and never recorded a new deed on the house, never retitled the brokerage account, never moved the LLC membership interest into the trust’s name. Every one of those assets is still owned individually, which means every one of them goes through the same public probate the trust was drafted to prevent.

Funding is the unglamorous half of this work: recording deeds, retitling accounts, reassigning business interests, and confirming each institution actually reflects the trust as owner. It is also the half that determines whether the privacy is real or theoretical. I fund the trusts I draft rather than leaving it as homework for the client, and if you already have a trust drafted somewhere else, I will tell you directly whether it was funded correctly or whether it is a document sitting on a shelf while your assets remain exposed.

Proposition 19 and the property tax bill that follows the house

Privacy is not the only thing that changes when a Calabasas property passes to the next generation. Proposition 19 narrowed the old parent-child exclusion from property tax reassessment. To keep the exclusion now, the property has to be the parent’s principal residence, and the child has to make it their own principal residence and file for the homeowners’ exemption. Even then, the exclusion is not unlimited: it covers the property’s factored base year value plus an indexed amount, currently $1,044,586 for transfers occurring between February 16, 2025 and February 15, 2027, adjusted every two years by the California State Board of Equalization. Value above that combined figure gets added to the new assessed value rather than excluded.

The consequence that surprises people most: a property your child does not move into as their own principal residence, a rental, a vacation property, land held separately, gets reassessed to full current market value with no exclusion at all. Given what property in Calabasas is worth, that single fact can turn an inherited house into an annual property tax bill several times what the parent was paying. It is worth planning around before the transfer happens, not after the reassessment notice arrives. This connects to the broader Prop 19 planning page, which goes through the mechanics in more depth.

Incapacity and beneficiary forms sit outside all of this

Two more pieces belong in the same plan, briefly stated. If you become incapacitated without a durable power of attorney and an advance health care directive on file, a family member may have to petition the same Los Angeles County Superior Court for conservatorship, another public proceeding, to get authority to act for you. Signing those documents while you are competent keeps that decision out of court entirely. Separately, retirement accounts and life insurance pass by whatever beneficiary designation is on file with the custodian or insurer, regardless of what your trust or will says. A trust that is perfectly drafted and fully funded will not fix a beneficiary form that still names an ex-spouse or someone who predeceased you. Both of these get checked as part of the planning, not left as separate items to track down later.

Where to start

For most Calabasas clients, the core plan is a funded revocable living trust, a pour-over will, a durable power of attorney, an advance health care directive, and a review of every beneficiary designation against the rest of the plan. See living trust planning, wills, and powers of attorney for how each piece fits. If a family member is already administering an estate without one of these plans in place, the probate page walks through what that process involves in Los Angeles County, and fees lays out flat-fee pricing before you commit to anything.

Privacy and cost are not the only things worth comparing before you choose someone to handle this. This list of estate planning attorneys in Calabasas lays out credentials and State Bar numbers so you can vet anyone you are considering, including me.

The privacy a trust promises is only as good as the funding behind it. Call 805-244-5291 or book a no-cost consultation at https://ridley.click/eric-60 and I will tell you plainly whether your current plan would actually keep your estate out of court, or whether it is a document waiting to fail at the worst possible time.

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Written by Eric D. Ridley: Estate Planning Attorney, Ridley Law. Serving Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles Counties since 2010. Learn more about Eric →