Estate Planning for Your Family
The core of every estate plan in California is a revocable trust. A revocable trust is usually the most effective mechanism to avoid probate: an expensive, time-consuming process that reveals your personal details to the public record.
When properly designed, drafted, and funded, a revocable trust fully mitigates estate and gift taxes, income taxes, and property taxes.
We don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. Every estate planning engagement is designed to uniquely fit your family, your timing, and your goals.
How We Help Individuals and Families
Estate Planning for Parents
Involves creating individualized plans to protect minor children, manage assets, and prepare for medical or financial emergencies. The nomination of the children’s guardians is one of the most important considerations during the process.
Estate Planning for Married Couples
Involves creating individualized plans that reflect your exact wishes for the distribution of assets to intended heirs or beneficiaries, as well as titling community property correctly to preserve the double step-up in basis.
Estate Planning for Single People
Involves planning for incapacity: naming the people you trust to make financial and medical decisions for you, and a successor trustee to step in without court involvement.
Estate Planning for Non-Citizen Spouses
US citizens married to a non-citizen face a different estate tax picture. A Qualified Domestic Trust (QDOT) can preserve the deferral that a citizen spouse would otherwise receive automatically.
Estate Planning for US Citizens with Non-Citizen Spouses
Unlike a U.S. citizen spouse, a surviving spouse who is not a U.S. citizen does not receive the unlimited marital deduction, so assets above the federal estate tax exemption can be taxed at the first death. A trust known as a Qualified Domestic Trust (QDOT) restores the deferral. A QDOT can be built into your estate plan now, or set up after death, as long as it is in place before the federal estate tax return is filed.
Income the QDOT pays to the surviving spouse is not subject to the deferred estate tax, although the spouse pays ordinary income tax on it. The federal estate tax is deferred until principal is distributed (other than for hardship) or the surviving spouse passes away. A QDOT must have at least one trustee who is a U.S. citizen or a U.S. corporation such as a bank, and a QDOT holding more than $2 million must have a U.S. bank as trustee or post a bond or letter of credit.
What Your Plan Includes
Every engagement includes the preparation of the essential documents:
- Revocable living trust
- Certification of trust
- Pour-over will
- Advance health care directive
- HIPAA authorization
- Financial power of attorney
- Review and re-titling of your real estate
- Detailed instructions for funding the remaining assets into your trust