Why Hire an Estate Planning Attorney in California 2026

Short answer: Because a will alone does not avoid California probate, and probate has a real price tag set by statute. On a $1,000,000 estate, the statutory fee schedule produces $23,000 for the executor and a separate $23,000 for the estate’s attorney, before court costs or bond (Probate Code §§ 10800 and 10810). An estate planning attorney’s job is to build a plan, usually centered on a properly funded living trust, that avoids that process entirely or narrows what it costs your family if part of your estate still has to go through it.

Does a will by itself actually protect your family?

A will does not avoid probate. It only takes effect once a court validates it through the probate process, so whatever assets pass under a will still go through a public, court-supervised proceeding. The only document that moves assets to beneficiaries outside of probate is a revocable living trust that has actually been funded, meaning the assets are retitled into the trust’s name. A trust that was signed but never funded does not avoid probate for the assets left out of it, and neither does a will sitting in a drawer.

How long and how much does probate cost if there’s no funded trust?

California requires formal probate for any estate with assets subject to probate worth more than $208,850, gross value before debts, for deaths on or after April 1, 2025 (Probate Code § 13100). Most California probate cases run 9 to 18 months from the date the court appoints a personal representative, according to the California Courts Self-Help Guide. The cost is not incidental. The executor is entitled to a statutory fee of 4 percent of the first $100,000, 3 percent of the next $100,000, 2 percent of the next $800,000, and smaller percentages above that, and the estate’s attorney is entitled to an identical fee calculated the same way (Probate Code §§ 10800 and 10810). That fee runs on the gross value of the estate, so a mortgage does not reduce it. On a $1,000,000 estate that produces roughly $46,000 in ordinary statutory fees alone, before any bond, court filing costs, or extraordinary fees for selling a house or handling litigation.

What happens if you die without any plan at all?

If you die without a will in California, the intestate succession statutes decide who inherits, not your personal wishes (Probate Code § 6400). A surviving spouse takes all community and quasi-community property. For separate property, the spouse’s share depends on who else survives: all of it if there are no surviving children, parents, or siblings, one-half if there is one child or a surviving parent or sibling, and one-third if there are two or more children (Probate Code § 6401). If nothing passes to a spouse, or you were unmarried, the estate passes first to children, then to parents, then to siblings, and outward from there in a fixed order (Probate Code § 6402). Stepchildren who were never legally adopted and unmarried partners generally inherit nothing under this scheme. And dying without a will does not avoid probate. An intestate estate above the small-estate threshold still goes through full, court-supervised probate under the same statutory fee schedule described above.

Can a living trust protect your assets from creditors or a nursing home?

Not on its own, and this is where generic advice tends to oversell what a revocable trust does. A revocable living trust does not reduce income tax, property tax, or estate tax. Assets held in a revocable trust also remain fully countable for Medi-Cal eligibility, because the person who created the trust can revoke it and take the assets back at any time. The trust’s value is privacy and probate avoidance, not creditor or Medi-Cal protection. An attorney who tells you a revocable trust will shield your home from a nursing home spend-down is not giving you accurate information, and that gap is exactly the kind of thing a template or a generic online service will not flag for you.

What does an attorney catch that a downloaded form can’t?

A form only produces the document. It does not check whether your document actually does what you think it does. 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 or trust says, so those designations have to be coordinated with the rest of the plan or they will override it. A trust that is never funded, meaning the house, the accounts, and the other assets are never retitled into it, still leaves your family in probate court. An attorney reviews how the pieces fit together: the deed, the beneficiary forms, the trust, and the will, so that one document does not quietly undo another.

Does your plan need to address incapacity, not just death?

A complete estate plan covers what happens if you are alive but unable to manage your own affairs, not only what happens after you die. That generally means naming someone to make financial decisions and someone to make health care decisions on your behalf if you cannot. Without those documents in place, your family may have to ask a court for authority to act for you, at a time when a court proceeding is the last thing anyone wants to be dealing with. This part of a plan is worth building alongside the trust and will, not as an afterthought.

Figures verified July 2026.

What to do next

If your plan is a will you downloaded, a trust you signed but never funded, or nothing at all, the gap is fixable, but it does not fix itself. Pull together a list of what you own and how each asset is titled, then sit down with an estate planning attorney who can tell you plainly whether your current documents, including any power of attorney you may have signed, actually do what you think they do.