Estate Planning in Woodland Hills

Estate Planning in Woodland Hills

Most people believe their will, or their trust, controls everything they own. It does not. Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, annuities, and payable-on-death bank accounts pass to whoever is named on the beneficiary form, not to whoever is named in the will or the trust. I see this gap in nearly every Woodland Hills plan I review: a beneficiary form nobody has looked at since a job change or a divorce, sitting right next to a trust the client assumes covers everything.

Woodland Hills is one of the larger, more established communities in the San Fernando Valley, where a great many homes have appreciated well past a million dollars. Many of those houses have been owned by the same family for decades. A valuable house next to a stack of retirement and insurance paperwork nobody has revisited is exactly what decides whether a Woodland Hills estate moves smoothly to the next generation or gets stuck.

I’m Eric Ridley, an estate planning attorney serving Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles Counties since 2010. I work with Woodland Hills families on flat-fee plans, meeting by phone or video, with one signing visit once the documents are ready.

The accounts that never read your will

A 401(k), an IRA, a life insurance policy, an annuity, a payable-on-death bank account: none of these pass under your will, and none of them pass under your trust unless you deliberately named the trust as the beneficiary. They pass to whoever is named on the beneficiary form on file with the plan administrator, the insurance company, or the bank, full stop. If that form still names an ex-spouse, was never updated after a remarriage, or defaults to “estate,” that is where the money goes regardless of what your trust or your will says. I ask every Woodland Hills client to pull the actual current beneficiary forms, not describe them from memory, because after a decade or two of job changes, refinances, and life events, the two rarely match.

For a lot of the professionals and retirees I meet in Woodland Hills, the retirement account is worth as much as the house, sometimes more. A trust that looks airtight on paper does nothing for an asset it was never told to control.

Naming your trust as the beneficiary

A trust can be named as beneficiary of a retirement account, and in a second marriage where you want a surviving spouse provided for and then the remainder to go to your own children, that is sometimes the right structure. It is not a box to check without thought. The IRS applies specific technical requirements before it will look through the trust to the individuals behind it, and a trust that fails those requirements can force a faster, more expensive payout than the family expected. Congress also rewrote the rules for inherited retirement accounts through the SECURE Act, narrowing the long stretch-out that most non-spouse beneficiaries used to rely on. I will not reduce those rules to a sentence here, they are technical and depend on your specific accounts and beneficiaries. If a retirement account makes up a meaningful share of your estate, the beneficiary designation deserves the same drafting attention as the trust itself.

Funding: the step that makes any of this real

A living trust only controls what is actually titled in its name. I have seen Woodland Hills clients pay for a full trust, then never retitle the house, so the one asset that mattered most still went through probate. Funding means retitling the home into the trust and moving bank, brokerage, and business interests into it, asset by asset, not a signed binder handed over and hoped about. Funding and beneficiary designations are two separate jobs. A trust can be perfectly funded and still miss a life insurance policy or an IRA if the beneficiary form was never coordinated with it.

What probate actually costs on a Woodland Hills home

Woodland Hills is part of the City of Los Angeles, so an estate here that has to go through probate is handled by the Los Angeles County Superior Court. California sets statutory fees for this by formula, not negotiation: Probate Code § 10810 for the attorney and § 10800 for the personal representative, and both fees are owed, one does not substitute for the other. The schedule is 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 amounts above $25,000,000 set by the court. Extraordinary services beyond ordinary administration are billed separately and require court approval under California Rules of Court, rule 7.703.

The number that surprises people is that this fee is calculated on the gross appraised value of the estate, not the equity you actually hold. A house appraised at $1,150,000 with a $700,000 mortgage against it is still counted at $1,150,000. Run the schedule on a $1,150,000 house with no other assets: $4,000 on the first $100,000, $3,000 on the next $100,000, $16,000 on the next $800,000, and $1,500 on the remaining $150,000. That is $24,500 in statutory attorney fees, and the personal representative is entitled to the same $24,500 under the identical schedule, $49,000 combined before extraordinary fees, on a house that might still carry a mortgage. A funded living trust avoids the formula entirely because there is no probate to calculate it against.

Proposition 19 and the house itself

Proposition 19 narrowed the parent-child exclusion that used to let a child inherit a parent’s home and keep the parent’s low property tax bill no matter what the child did with the property afterward. Under current law, the home has to have been the parent’s principal residence, and the child has to make it their own principal residence and file for the homeowners’ exemption. Miss that, and the county reassesses the property to current market value. Even when the child does move in, the break is not unlimited: the exclusion covers the property’s factored base year value plus an indexed amount, currently $1,044,586 for transfers 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 from it.

With many Woodland Hills homes now well above a million dollars and held for decades on a much lower assessed base, that indexed limit is worth mapping out before you assume the house passes tax-free. A child who rents the house out or keeps it as a second home should expect full reassessment. A child who moves in may still see a partial increase if the home’s value clears the base year value plus the current limit. See Prop 19 planning, and for the exact statutory-fee number on your own estate, the probate fee calculator runs it for you.

Planning for incapacity, not just death

None of the above helps if you are alive but unable to manage your own affairs. A durable power of attorney lets someone you choose step in and handle your finances without a court appointing a conservator to do it instead. An advance health care directive names who makes medical decisions on your behalf and states your wishes, paired with a HIPAA authorization so that person can actually get information from your doctors. For a lot of the Woodland Hills families I work with, these documents end up mattering as much as the trust itself, because they are what keeps a medical crisis from turning into a court proceeding on top of everything else.

What a complete Woodland Hills plan looks like

For most Woodland Hills households, the full plan is a funded living trust holding the house and other major assets, a pour-over will that names a guardian for minor children, a durable power of attorney, an advance health care directive, and beneficiary designations on every retirement account, insurance policy, and payable-on-death account reviewed and coordinated with the trust, not left to whatever was filled in years ago. Each piece does a different job. None substitutes for another.

Questions Woodland Hills clients ask

Which court handles probate for Woodland Hills? Woodland Hills is a neighborhood within the City of Los Angeles, so probate is handled through the Los Angeles County Superior Court. It is a high-volume court, which is part of why a funded trust that avoids probate altogether is worth setting up.

My retirement account is worth more than my house. Does my trust control it? No. It passes by the beneficiary designation on file with the plan administrator, not by your trust or your will. Naming the trust itself as beneficiary is sometimes the right call, especially in a blended family, but it takes drafting that meets specific IRS requirements. Pull your actual beneficiary forms and check them, do not assume.

How does Prop 19 affect the home I leave my kids? Your child keeps your low property tax basis only if they move into the home as their principal residence and file for the homeowners’ exemption, and even then the break is capped at your factored base year value plus a limit that is currently $1,044,586. A home kept as a rental or second home gets reassessed to current market value.

What does a plan cost? I work on flat fees so you know the number before we start. Current pricing is on the fees page.

Can we handle this without multiple office visits? Yes. I meet with Woodland Hills clients by phone and video for the planning conversations and arrange one signing visit, in person, once the documents are ready.

Related

See also Living Trusts, Wills, Prop 19 Planning, Probate, Fees, Encino, West Hills, Tarzana, and Calabasas.

Book a consultation at https://ridley.click/eric-60 or call 805-244-5291. I serve Woodland Hills and all of Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles Counties.

If you would rather compare a few options first, this list of estate planning attorneys in Woodland Hills includes credentials and State Bar numbers, so you can check out anyone before you meet with them.

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Woodland Hills sits in Los Angeles County, so a probate here is filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court rather than in Ventura. For the county-level detail on trusts, recording, and Proposition 13, see living trust attorney in Los Angeles.

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