Estate Planning · Serving San Diego & All of California
Leaving your home to your family
shouldn’t cost them tens of thousands.
In California, an unplanned estate pays statutory fees calculated on the gross value of your home — before subtracting the mortgage. On a typical San Diego house, that is $40,000 or more that never reaches your family. It is one of the few big costs that can be avoided completely.
The other problem
Proposition 19 changed what your children inherit.
Before 2021, a child could inherit a parent’s home and keep the parent’s property tax basis. A house bought in 1994 kept being taxed roughly like it was 1994.
Since February 2021, that exclusion applies only if the child makes the home their own primary residence, and even then only up to a cap. Otherwise the property is reassessed at current market value.
In San Diego, that can multiply the annual property tax bill several times over. It is the reason families end up selling the house they meant to keep.
Practice areas
What can be settled ahead of time.
Revocable Living Trusts
Keeps the house out of probate, keeps the terms private, and stays fully changeable while you are alive.
Learn moreWills
Names guardians for minor children and directs anything a trust does not already hold.
Learn morePowers of Attorney & Health Directives
Who decides about your money and your medical care if you cannot. Without these, the answer is a court.
Learn moreTrust Administration
Step-by-step guidance for the person left holding the responsibility after a death.
Learn moreProbate
When there was no plan, or the plan missed something. Court supervision, statutory fees, public record.
Learn moreMedi-Cal Planning
Long-term care costs more than most estates can absorb. Planning changes what survives it.
Learn moreThe reason is practical. California estate planning has enough moving parts on its own: the statutory probate fee schedule, Proposition 19 reassessment, Medi-Cal estate recovery, community property characterization, and the basis rules that determine what an heir actually owes in capital gains. These interact. A change made to solve one of them can quietly create another, and noticing that requires working in this area continuously rather than occasionally.
What you should expect to be told
That you may not need a trust. If you rent, your assets are modest, and your beneficiary designations are current, a will and a set of incapacity documents can be the honest and complete answer. Estate planning has a well-earned reputation for selling large packages to people who needed a small one.
And that the documents are only half the work. A trust that is signed but never funded, with no recorded deed and no retitled accounts, sends the estate through exactly the probate it was bought to avoid. Funding is part of the engagement here, not homework handed back to you.
Talk it through with an attorney.
A one-hour consultation by phone — $300, credited in full toward your flat fee if you move forward. You leave knowing what you need and what it costs.