California Inheritance Law: Probate, Wills, Living Trusts and Legal Help

California inheritance questions can begin while planning for your family, after a death, or when a disagreement arises. This site explains wills, living trusts, probate and inheritance disputes, and connects you with Corcoran Smith Law for a free first consultation about your California matter.

Start with the deadline

If you have received a trustee’s notice, bring it to the firm’s attention promptly. The service date and the delivery of trust terms can affect the time to contest a trust. You can call even if you are unsure what the notice means.

It starts with an envelope. A trustee serves a notice under Probate Code §16061.7, and from the day it is served the clock runs — whether or not anyone explains that to you, and whether or not you have seen the trust.

Check your deadlineFree. Takes about a minute. No account required.

What this site covers

Plan ahead, settle an estate or trust, or resolve a dispute. Start with the help you need.

• Probate AdministrationSettling an estate through the court: whether you need probate at all, opening the case, the four-month inventory, creditor claims, the statutory fee schedule, and final distribution.20 guides · getting it done
• Trust AdministrationThe successor trustee’s job after the settlor dies: the notice that starts every clock, the duties the Trust Law imposes, what a trustee may charge, and the accounting beneficiaries are owed.6 guides · getting it done
• Estate Planning Attorney for Your FamilyPlan ahead with attorney help for a living trust, a will, financial decisions and health care wishes. Start with your family and the questions you want answered.4 services · planning ahead
• Will LitigationWhat makes a California will valid, and what unmakes one: execution and handwriting, undue influence, capacity, fraud and forgery, plus the heirs a will left out by accident rather than intention.6 guides · when it goes wrong
• Trust LitigationDisputes over a living trust: contesting the instrument, removing or surcharging a trustee, and recovering what left the trust.10 guides · when it goes wrong
• Probate LitigationContested estate administration: who serves as personal representative, what belongs to the estate, and how property that left it is recovered.5 guides · when it goes wrong

What is happening to you?

Most people arrive here able to describe the situation but not to name it. Find yours below.

• You want to make or update a will or living trustPlanning ahead for yourself and the people you care aboutFind help preparing your will or living trust
• You need help receiving your inheritanceIdentify the asset, your share and what comes nextGet my inheritance
• A parent died and you do not know where to startThe first weeks, in orderWhat to do when someone dies
• You are not sure whether probate is neededIt depends on how each asset was titledDo you need probate?
• You have just been told you are the successor trusteeThe office, and what it requiresWhat a trustee must do
• The house is still in your parent’s name§13151 petition, or full administrationThe home, without probate
• You need to know what probate will costA statutory fee on gross valueWork out the fee
• A spouse or child needs support during administrationFamily allowance and homesteadSupport while the estate is open
• An asset was left out of the trustSigned but never retitledHeggstad petitions
• You are not sure the will was signed properlyTwo witnesses, or the testator’s own handWhat makes a will valid
• A trustee or sibling won’t show you the trustBreach of the duty to informYour rights as a beneficiary
• You received a notice and don’t know your deadlineA §16061.7 notice may have started a 120-day clockWhat that notice means
• The trust was changed shortly before deathUndue influence or incapacityHow trust contests work
• The trustee is mismanaging or self-dealingBreach of fiduciary dutyRemoving a trustee
• You were left out of a willWill contest or omitted heirWill contests
• Money moved out of accounts before the deathFinancial elder abuseElder financial abuse

What is actually at stake

For most families the estate is not a portfolio. It is a house someone lived in for forty years — and the question of who gets to keep it.

California inheritance disputes are rarely about greed. They are about a document that changed at the wrong moment, a sibling who moved in and took over, a trustee who stopped answering the phone. The law has specific names for each of those, and specific windows in which each can be raised.

What happens next, and where

Two questions come up before anything else: what the process actually involves, and which court hears it. For an estate being settled, that is probate administration and, for a funded trust, ordinarily a private administration outside court. Where there is a dispute, how a California trust dispute works walks the stages and realistic timing. Where we practice explains which county hears your matter — and why that decides the venue, not who can represent you — with the courts and procedures for Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco.

Watch: probate, trusts and inheritance in a few minutes

Videos from the firm, each with a full transcript and links to the guides behind it.

• Selling a House in Probate: How Long, How Much & How to Skip It11:07 · with transcript
• 10 Inheritance Problems Every California Family Should Prepare For8:48 · with transcript
• Selling a House in Probate? Don’t Sign Yet58 seconds · with transcript
• Mom’s Living Trust: Why You Need One Now50 seconds · with transcript
• Attorneys for Probate and Trustee Disputes48 seconds · with transcript

All videos with transcripts · Subscribe on YouTube

Work it out yourself first

Three of these questions have arithmetic behind them rather than judgment, so the site answers them directly. The probate fee calculator estimates ordinary scheduled compensation for an entered estate base and compares it with equity before fees, expenses and taxes. The deadline calculator estimates the section 16061.8 window from qualifying notice and trust-delivery dates. And the Probate Code index routes a bare section number to the page that explains it. All three are free, and none of them asks for an email address.

How a case starts here

Who publishes this

California Inheritance Law is published by Corcoran Smith Law Corp., a California litigation firm founded by Mark C. Smith, a U.S. Army combat veteran and UC Berkeley School of Law graduate. The firm represents heirs and beneficiaries statewide, meeting clients in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.

This is the firm’s own publication, not a directory and not a matching service. Every attorney is named, and every bar number links to the State Bar’s own record so you can check it. More about the firm, or visit corcoransmithlaw.com for the firm’s full practice — estate planning, real estate, veterans law, and general counsel work alongside inheritance litigation.

This site exists to explain the law. When you are ready to instruct someone, the firm is who you instruct.