Best Estate Planning Attorneys in Santa Clarita, CA

If you die with a will, although the will helps the court determine your wishes as to who will get your estate, your estate still has to go through a long and expensive process called probate before any of the assets are passed on to your loved ones. The probate process can take deplete 4-5% of your estate, and keep all the assets tied up for a year or two before resolution. A Living Trust, on the other hand, allows you to avoid probate proceedings, and its high costs and delays. A Living Trust allows your assets to transfer relatively quickly, most of the time within weeks or months. Living trusts also allow privacy, whereas a will allows all of your personal information to become part of the public court records, accessible to anyone in the world. Living Trust also have much more flexibility and allow various beneficial estate planning tools to be used which can provide tax and asset protection, creditor protection and other benefits making them the preferred estate planning method in almost all cases.

Yes. Many people choose the same person to act as guardian and trustee. However, many others name a different person to act as trustee of the trust. It depends on the overall characteristics of the person chosen as guardian. The guardian may have the best parenting skills, but may not be good at managing money. If you have concerns that the guardian may not be able to manage and make distributions under the trust according to what is specified, then naming another to act as trustee is advisable.

No, not unless the children themselves contact the attorney to initiate or independently agree to be represented by the attorney. Creating an estate plan creates an attorney-client relationship between the attorney and the client, thus the client must be the one who retains the attorney. Anyone seeking to have their adult children complete estate planning may send the link to JD law to their children and/or encourage them to contact us for a free consultation to discuss their needs.

Yes. You may create a special needs trust along with your will that will include a comprehensive care plan for your special needs child with a trustee to manage the trust according to its terms.

No. Absolutely not. A divorce does not automatically cancel out the will or living trust. It is imperative that, following a divorce, you have your entire estate plan reviewed and updated. Many divorcees neglect to update their plans, inadvertently leaving their ex-spouses to inherit sometime large sums of money and property that was intended to go to someone else.