Sacramento Probate Attorneys & Estate Planning

A revocable living trust is a legal entity you create during your lifetime.  Any property you choose to place into the trust will be distributed according to its terms after your death.  Just like a will, you name someone to manage distributions (the trustee) and the people who will receive your property (beneficiaries).

Unlike a will however, a revocable living trust does not have to go through the probate court to be executed.  In California, the probate court process can take 12-16 months to complete, costs approximately 5% of the value of the estate in court fees, and is completely public.  Creating a revocable living trust saves your loved ones time, money, and maintains your privacy.

Every Estate Plan includes:

• A Will or Revocable Living Trust (as appropriate),
• A Pour-Over Will, to catch any assets accidentally left out of the Trust
• A Family Wealth Inventory, a consolidated document containing all important financial account information
• Guardians+ Plan for Minor Children, designating both temporary and permanent guardians, and requesting the express exclusion of potential guardians
• A Financial Power of Attorney, designating someone to act on your behalf for financial matters when you are ill or otherwise incapacitated,
• An Advanced Health Care Directive, naming the person who could make medical decisions on your behalf if you were unable to communicate
• A HIPAA Waiver, granting access to confidential medical information to your chosen representatives

The first important way to protect minor children is by naming potential permanent guardians to care for them if you are no longer able. 

An Estate Plan adds the additional protection of naming temporary guardians, in the Guardians+ Plan for Minor Children.  These temporary guardians are physically located within 20 minutes of the children and can respond immediately during a family emergency.  Without a temporary guardian, minor children may be put under the care of Child Protective Services until their designated permanent guardian can be established, located, and brought to the children’s location.  Creating a Guardians+ Plan for Minor Children avoids that undesirable result.

A revocable living trust can also be crafted to ensure that a minor child’s inheritance will be both supervised and protected from future creditors, court judgments, and divorce proceedings.

In California, a family’s home is often its largest investment. If you own a home with a fair market value of more than $50,000 (meaning what the home would sell for, regardless of debt), your family will need to go to court to inherit the house, unless you plan ahead.

The court process, called probate, in CA costs on average 5% of the total value of the estate, is totally public, and delays distribution to your heirs for 12-16 months, minimum. 

If you have minor children at home, planning is a must. If you could no longer care for your children and had no estate planning in place, the court would decide who should raise them and appoint a fiduciary to manage their inheritance, for a fee. Then, when they turn 18, the remaining inheritance would be distributed to them outright, without any guidance or supervision. Your Estate Plan will be crafted to avoid this outcome, giving you the most possible influence on your children’s futures.

When you plan with Yee Law Group, we will have three important meetings. These meetings will be held via videoconference, from the comfort and convenience of your home or office or can be over the phone or in person. The entire process takes six to seven weeks.

The first meeting is the Design Meeting, where you decide the specifics of your estate plan distributions. The second meeting is the Review Meeting, where we will email you drafts of all your documents at least two weeks prior to your Delivery Meeting to review at home which gives you enough time to review all the documents and schedule a consult if you would like to go over the documents and any questions you may have. The third meeting is the Delivery Meeting, where you will sign all the documents in the presence of a notary and receive your complete Estate Plan Binder and a digital copy.

Currently we charge a flat fee of $2000.00 for a single person estate plan package and $2300.00 for a married couple estate plan package.

You have 1 year from the Delivery Meeting to make any changes to your existing plan at no additional cost.  Any changes after the 1 year there would be some minimal fee depending on the changes requested.

The first step is to contact our office to schedule a free consultation and you will need to fill out our initial questionnaire which I will use during the consultation to help design your personal estate plan!