Short answer: A complete California estate plan is built from four documents that work together: a will, a revocable living trust, a durable power of attorney, and an advance health care directive. A will alone does not keep your estate out of probate. Only a trust that is actually funded, meaning your assets are retitled into it, does that. Ridley Law’s flat-fee plan bundles all four, plus the deed that moves your home into the trust, for $4,100 for a married couple or $3,700 for a single person.
What documents make up a complete estate plan in California?
Four documents do the real work. A will names who receives your property, names an executor to handle the process, and lets parents name a guardian for minor children. A revocable living trust holds title to your assets during your life and directs how they pass at your death, without going through the probate court, but only for the assets actually titled in the trust’s name. A durable power of attorney lets someone you choose handle your financial affairs if you cannot. An advance health care directive lets someone you choose make medical decisions on your behalf and states your wishes about treatment.
Each document covers a gap the others do not. A trust does nothing for a medical decision made while you are alive but incapacitated. A power of attorney does nothing after you die. Leaving one out leaves a gap your family has to fill in court, at the worst possible time.
Does a will by itself avoid probate?
No. A will has to be admitted to probate before it does anything. It does not transfer property on its own, it only becomes effective once a court validates it. Only a properly funded revocable living trust passes assets to your beneficiaries outside of probate.
Whether probate is required at all depends on the size of the estate. California requires formal, court-supervised probate for an estate with assets subject to probate totaling more than $208,850 in gross value, before debts, for deaths on or after April 1, 2025. That threshold holds until the next scheduled adjustment on April 1, 2028. Below that number, simplified small estate procedures may apply instead.
Some assets skip probate no matter what your will says. Property held in joint tenancy, payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts, and life insurance or retirement accounts with a named beneficiary all pass directly to the named person or co-owner. A will controls only what is titled in your name alone, with no beneficiary designation attached.
What if I set up a trust but never move anything into it?
Then the trust does not do its job. A living trust that is never funded, meaning your accounts, real estate, and other assets are never retitled into the trust’s name, does not avoid probate for those un-retitled assets. This is the single most common mistake in California estate planning: people sign a trust and stop, without recording a new deed on the house or changing account titling at the bank. The trust document itself is only half the work. Funding it is the other half, and it is the half that actually keeps your family out of court.
Do I need a power of attorney and a health care directive too?
Yes, and they cover a risk your will and trust cannot touch: what happens while you are alive but unable to make decisions yourself. A durable power of attorney names someone to manage your bank accounts, pay your bills, and handle financial matters if illness or injury leaves you unable to. An advance health care directive names someone to make medical decisions on your behalf and lets you put your own treatment preferences in writing, so your family is not left guessing.
Without these two documents in place, a family member who wants authority to act on your behalf during a period of incapacity generally has to ask a court for it, which is slower, more public, and more expensive than executing the documents in advance while you are healthy and able to sign.
What happens if I die without any of these documents?
If you die without a will in California, the intestate succession statutes decide who inherits, not your own wishes. For community and quasi-community property, a surviving spouse takes all of it. For separate property, the surviving spouse’s share depends on who else survives you: everything if there are no surviving children, parents, or siblings; half if there is one child or a surviving parent or sibling; one-third if there are two or more children. If nothing passes to a spouse, or you were unmarried, the estate passes first to your children, then to your parents, then outward through more distant relatives in a fixed statutory order. Stepchildren who were never legally adopted and unmarried partners generally inherit nothing under these rules, regardless of how close the relationship was.
Dying without a will does not avoid probate either. An intestate estate above the small estate threshold still goes through the same court-supervised probate process, under the same statutory fee schedule, as an estate with a will.
What to do next
If you have none of these four documents, or you signed a trust years ago and are not sure whether it was ever funded, that is worth a direct conversation with an estate planning attorney rather than a guess. Bring a list of what you own and how each asset is titled. A short review usually shows exactly which of the four documents you are missing and which assets, if any, still need to be moved into a trust.
Figures verified July 2026.
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