Dying without a plan hands the decisions you care most about to a court. California's intestacy laws will decide who inherits your property, a judge will choose who raises your minor children, and your family will spend months — often more than a year — in a public court process before anything reaches them. Every one of those outcomes is avoidable with a set of documents you can put in place in a few weeks.
I have practiced estate planning in San Jose since 1980, and this checklist reflects what actually matters in a California plan: the documents to put in place, the order to tackle them, the California-specific rules that catch families off guard, and the events that should send you back to review the plan.
Why a will alone is not enough
A will matters, but it is rarely the most powerful document in a California estate plan, for three reasons.
First, a will does not avoid probate — it is the instruction sheet the probate court follows. Under California's statutory fee schedule, a $1,000,000 estate — which in Santa Clara County can be a single house — generates $46,000 in combined attorney and personal representative fees before court costs, and the process commonly runs 9 to 18 months.
Second, many assets pass outside a will entirely. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and pay-on-death accounts go to their named beneficiaries no matter what the will says. An outdated beneficiary form beats a current will every time.
Third, a will only speaks at death. It does nothing if you become incapacitated. The documents that protect you while you are alive — the financial power of attorney and the advance health care directive — do work a will cannot.
That is why most of my clients' plans are built around a revocable living trust, with a pour-over will as the safety net behind it, plus the incapacity documents. The checklist below covers all of it.
The checklist: documents that speak after death
- Decide who receives what. List the people and organizations you want to provide for, and be realistic about them. If a beneficiary is young or not good with money, the trust can hold their share and distribute it by age or milestone instead of all at once at 18.
- Choose your executor and successor trustee. This person liquidates accounts, pays final bills, deals with the court or administers the trust, and distributes what remains. Choose for reliability and follow-through, not seniority, and name at least one backup.
- Name a guardian for minor children — and a backup. Without a named guardian, a California court chooses who raises your children. Name an alternate as well: if the primary cannot serve, the backup can be the difference between a familiar home and a placement nobody wanted.
- Check every beneficiary designation. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and pay-on-death accounts pass by those forms, not by the will. Make sure each one names a current primary and contingent beneficiary, and that none still names an ex-spouse or someone who has died.
- Write a personal property memorandum. A short, specific letter describing meaningful possessions and who should receive them prevents more family conflict than almost any other document — be precise about items and names.
The checklist: documents that protect you while living
- Sign a durable financial power of attorney. Your agent handles legal and financial matters if you cannot — paying the mortgage, managing accounts, dealing with insurers. "Durable" is the key word: it keeps working through incapacity, which is exactly when it is needed.
- Sign an advance health care directive. This names your health care agent and records your wishes for medical care, including end-of-life care. In California this one document covers what other states split between a medical power of attorney and a living will.
- Ask the people you are naming. Executor, trustee, guardian, financial agent, health care agent — talk to each of them, explain the role, and confirm they are willing. A surprised agent is an ineffective one.
- Consider a revocable living trust. If you own a home in California, a funded trust is usually the difference between your family transferring assets privately in weeks and a year-plus public court process. It also provides for management of your affairs during incapacity, often avoiding a conservatorship entirely.
- Tell your family where everything is. Documents no one can find help no one. Make sure the people you named know where the originals live, and do not forget access to digital assets — password managers, accounts, and devices.
The California rules that catch families off guard
Community property. California is a community property state: most assets acquired during marriage belong to both spouses, whichever name is on the title. This shapes what each spouse can give away and what a surviving spouse receives, and it is one of the first things I walk through with married clients.
Probate costs are set by statute. The fee percentages come straight from the Probate Code and are calculated on the gross value of the estate — not the equity. A mortgaged home counts at its full value, which is why even ordinary Bay Area estates generate substantial fees.
Incapacity without documents means conservatorship. If you lose capacity with no power of attorney or trust in place, your family's remedy is a court conservatorship — expensive, public, and ongoing. Two signatures on the right documents avoid it.
When to come back to this checklist
An estate plan is not a one-time event. Review it after any of these trigger events:
- A birth, adoption, marriage, or divorce in the family
- A death or serious illness of anyone named in the plan
- A significant inheritance or change in what you own
- A move to or from California — documents drafted elsewhere may not fit this state's rules
- Buying real estate, especially if a trust exists but the new property was never titled into it
Even without a trigger, read the plan every few years and ask one question about every person named in it: is this still the right person, and can they still serve? The executor you chose twenty years ago, or the guardian you named when your children were babies, may not be the right answer today.
Where to start
If you have nothing in place, start with the two incapacity documents and a will — they cover the most dangerous gaps first. If you own a home, talk through a living trust before anything else, because it changes how the rest of the plan fits together.
I draft every plan personally, and every engagement begins with a consultation where you leave with a written recommendation and a fixed-fee quote. Bring whatever documents you have — even old drafts — and a rough list of what you own and how each item is titled. Titling matters more than most people expect, and it is one of the most common reasons a plan fails to do what a family expected.
