Estate Planning for Singles in California

Short answer: If you are single in California, the law does not wait politely for you to get around to estate planning. Die without a will and California’s intestate succession statutes decide who gets your property, not you and not the people you actually care about. Having a will does not avoid probate either, and if your probate assets exceed $208,850 your estate still goes through court supervised probate under Probate Code § 13100, will or no will. The fix is the same core toolkit anyone needs: a will or a properly funded revocable living trust, a financial power of attorney, and a health care directive, kept current and matched to who is actually in your life.

What happens if you die without a will in California?

California’s intestate succession statutes control who inherits when there is no valid will, and they do not ask what you would have wanted. Citation: Probate Code § 6400.

For someone who is unmarried, the estate passes in a fixed order set by statute: first to your children, or their children if a child has already died, then to your parents, then to your parents’ other children (your siblings) and their descendants, then out to grandparents and their descendants. Citation: Probate Code § 6402.

This order has real consequences for singles. A long term partner you never married inherits nothing under intestate succession, and neither does a stepchild you helped raise but never legally adopted. Citation: Probate Code §§ 6401 through 6402. If those are the people you actually want to provide for, only a will or trust makes that happen.

Dying without a will does not get you out of probate either. An intestate estate above the small estate threshold still goes through the same court supervised process, under the same statutory fee schedule, as an estate with a will. Citation: Probate Code §§ 10800 and 10810.

Does having a will keep your estate out of probate?

No. A will only takes effect once a court validates it through probate. It is instructions for the probate process, not an alternative to it.

Probate becomes mandatory in California once the assets subject to probate in an estate exceed $208,850 in gross value, for deaths on or after April 1, 2025. Citation: Probate Code § 13100. Most California probate cases take nine to eighteen months from the date the court appoints a personal representative, and the estate stays a matter of public record the entire time.

The only thing that keeps assets out of probate is title. Assets held in joint tenancy, payable on death or transfer on death accounts, and accounts or policies with a named beneficiary generally pass outside of probate regardless of what your will says. A revocable living trust does the same for everything else, but only for what is actually retitled into it. A trust you sign and never fund does not avoid probate for the assets you forgot to move.

Should a single person bother with a revocable living trust?

If avoiding probate, keeping your affairs private, and controlling who steps in if you cannot manage your own finances matter to you, yes. A funded revocable living trust is the only tool discussed here that actually keeps assets out of court. A will does not.

For a single person, a trust also lets you name a successor trustee, someone who takes over managing your assets if you become incapacitated, without a court proceeding. That person does not have to be a spouse. It can be a sibling, a close friend, an adult child, anyone you trust to follow the trust’s terms.

The trade off is upkeep. A trust only works for assets titled in its name, so real property, bank accounts, and investment accounts have to be retitled, and new accounts opened later have to be added.

What about power of attorney and health care decisions?

Without a spouse, there is no automatic default decision maker if you become incapacitated. That gap is what a durable power of attorney and an advance health care directive are for.

A durable power of attorney lets you name someone, in writing, to handle your financial affairs if you cannot: paying bills, managing accounts, dealing with property. An advance health care directive lets you name someone to make medical decisions on your behalf and record your own treatment preferences, so the people around you are not guessing during a crisis.

Naming the right person matters more for singles than for married couples, because there is no built in assumption about who that person should be. Choose someone who knows you well enough to make the call you would actually make, and tell them you named them.

If you have children but no spouse, what protects them?

A will lets you nominate a guardian for minor children. Without that nomination in writing, a court decides who raises your children with no direct evidence of your preference.

A revocable living trust adds a financial layer on top of that. Instead of a lump sum going to a young beneficiary outright, the trust can hold and manage assets for a child’s benefit, releasing funds for specific purposes or at set ages rather than all at once.

Figures verified July 2026.

What to do next

Start with the document that matters most if you become incapacitated tomorrow: your power of attorney and health care directive. Then decide whether a will or a funded revocable living trust fits how you want your estate handled, based on how much you value staying out of probate versus keeping the plan simple. An estate planning attorney can walk through which combination actually matches your assets and the people in your life.