Pour-Over Will: Definition and How It Works in California

By Eric Ridley, attorney, Ridley Law. Updated September 2026.

A pour-over will is a short will that works alongside a living trust. Instead of naming beneficiaries directly, it names the trust as the beneficiary of everything the will covers, so any asset left outside the trust at death pours over into it and is then distributed under the trust’s terms rather than under the will’s own instructions.

How it works in California

California adopted the Uniform Testamentary Additions to Trusts Act, codified starting at Prob. Code, § 6300. That section lets a will devise property to a trust even if the trust is amendable or revocable, or was amended after the will was signed or after the person died. A pour-over will relies on this statute: it names the trust, then leaves the residue of the probate estate to the trustee to hold and distribute according to the trust document.

The catch is that a pour-over will doesn’t avoid probate. Any asset the will has to pour over is, by definition, an asset that was never retitled into the trust during life, so it has to go through the probate process before it reaches the trust. If the value of that asset qualifies for the small estate procedure, Prob. Code, § 13100, the family may be able to skip full probate; otherwise the estate goes through the same court process as any other probate estate.

Why it matters

The pour-over will is what keeps an unfunded asset from passing by intestate succession instead of under the trust. Say someone opens a new brokerage account the year before death and never retitles it in the trust’s name. Without a pour-over will, that account passes under California’s intestate succession rules, Prob. Code, §§ 6401 and 6402, which may not match what the trust says at all. With a pour-over will, the account still has to go through probate, but it ends up back inside the trust and gets distributed the way the person actually planned.

Common mistakes

Treating the pour-over will as a substitute for funding the trust. It isn’t; every account and piece of real property still needs to be retitled in the trust’s name during life. Naming specific people or dollar amounts directly in the pour-over will, which creates a second, competing set of instructions instead of deferring everything to the trust. Losing track of the trust’s exact legal name and date, which the will must identify correctly for the pour-over gift to work under Prob. Code, § 6300.

Related terms

• Holographic will: a will whose signature and material terms are in the maker’s own handwriting, valid in California without witnesses.
• Living trust: the pour-over will’s companion document; the trust holds the plan, and the will catches what the trust missed.
• Probate: the court process a pour-over gift still has to pass through, since the will doesn’t avoid it.
• Trust funding: the ongoing process of retitling assets into the trust that a pour-over will is meant to back up, not replace.
• Will: the broader category of document a pour-over will belongs to, just written to work with a trust instead of on its own.

Part of the California estate planning glossary. For the full treatment of what a pour-over will does and does not do, see Pour-Over Will: How It Works for Heirs.