What to Include in a Will: Secure Your Family’s Future

Short answer: A California will needs to cover four things to actually do its job: who gets what, who is in charge of carrying that out, who raises your minor children if both parents are gone, and language specific enough that a court does not have to guess at your intent. A will alone does not skip probate. It only takes effect once a court validates it, and if it is missing, unclear, or silent on a key point, the court fills the gap using rules you did not write.

What actually needs to be in a California will?

At minimum, a will should name an executor and at least one backup, identify your beneficiaries by name and relationship, state who gets specific items or accounts you care about, and say who receives everything else (the residue) if a beneficiary predeceases you or you acquire something you never anticipated. Vague language is where wills fail in practice. “My children” is not the same as naming each child, and leaving out a residuary clause means anything you forgot to list gets decided by intestate succession rules rather than your own terms.

Not everything belongs in the will in the first place. Assets held in joint tenancy, payable-on-death or transfer-on-death accounts, and life insurance or retirement accounts with a named beneficiary pass directly to whoever is named on that account, regardless of what your will says. If your will and your beneficiary designations conflict, the beneficiary designation usually wins for that asset. Coordinating the two is part of the job, not an afterthought.

Who should you name as executor, and what happens if you don’t?

The executor is the person who carries your will through probate: filing it with the court, paying debts, and distributing what is left. California governs how an executor is appointed under Probate Code §§ 8400 to 8402. If you never name one, or the person you named cannot or will not serve, the court appoints an administrator instead, chosen from a statutory priority list under Probate Code §§ 8460 to 8469, generally starting with a surviving spouse and moving through other relatives. That may or may not be the person you would have picked yourself. Naming your own executor, and a backup, keeps that decision in your hands.

How do you name a guardian for minor children?

If you have children under 18, your will is where you name who raises them if both parents are unavailable. Name a primary guardian and at least one alternate, and have the conversation with them before you sign anything. Guardianship nominations in a will are not automatically binding on a court, but a judge gives real weight to a parent’s written choice, and naming no one leaves that decision to a judge who has never met your family.

What happens if you die without a valid will in California?

If a person dies without a will, or the will is found invalid, California’s intestate succession statutes decide who inherits, not the decedent’s wishes. For community and quasi-community property, the surviving spouse takes all of it, both their own half and the decedent’s half, under Probate Code § 6401(a) and (b). Separate property is split differently depending on who survives: the spouse gets everything if there are no surviving children, parents, or siblings; half if there is one child or a surviving parent or sibling line; and one-third if there are two or more children, under Probate Code § 6401(c). If nothing passes to a spouse, or there is no spouse, the estate passes down a fixed order under Probate Code § 6402, starting with children and grandchildren, then parents, then siblings and their children, then outward. Stepchildren who were never legally adopted and unmarried partners generally inherit nothing under this scheme, regardless of how close the relationship actually was.

Dying without a will does not avoid probate either. An intestate estate above the small-estate threshold still goes through full, court-supervised probate under the same statutory fee schedule as an estate with a will.

Does having a will keep your estate out of probate?

No. A will has to be validated by the probate court before it controls anything, so having one does not, by itself, avoid probate. California requires formal probate for an estate with assets subject to probate totaling more than $208,850 in gross value, for deaths on or after April 1, 2025, under Probate Code § 13100. The only document that routes assets around probate is a properly funded revocable living trust, meaning the assets are actually retitled into the trust’s name, not just referenced in it. If avoiding probate matters to your family, a will and a trust do different jobs, and it is worth understanding what a California will covers versus what a trust adds.

What happens to the physical will after you die?

Whoever holds the original signed will, the custodian, has a legal duty to lodge it with the superior court clerk in the county where you lived within 30 days of learning of your death, for a filing fee of $50, under Probate Code § 8200. If the original will was last known to be in your own possession and cannot be located after death, California law presumes you destroyed it yourself, meaning you revoked it, under Probate Code § 6124. That presumption can be rebutted, but it puts the burden on your family to prove otherwise. Keeping your original will somewhere your executor can actually find it, and telling them where, matters as much as what the document says.

Figures verified July 2026.

What to do next

Pull together a list of your assets, decide on an executor and a backup, name guardians if you have minor children, and get specific about who receives what. If any part of that raises questions about probate exposure or whether a living trust makes more sense for your family, talk it through with an estate planning attorney before you sign anything.