Changes in the Law

California Assembly Bill 130 (2025–2026), Chapter 22, Statutes of 2025 — new Civil Code § 2924.13 Anyone who has litigated a foreclosure dispute involving an old junior lien knows the pattern: a homeowner took out a second mortgage or HELOC years ago, the loan went dormant, the servicer went silent for years, the homeowner reasonably assumed the debt was written off or forgotten — and then, sometimes a decade later, a mortgage servicer resurfaces and moves to foreclose on the

California Assembly Bill 1521 (2025–2026), Chapter 200, Statutes of 2025 Every legislative session, the Assembly Judiciary Committee bundles a grab-bag of technical corrections, cross-reference fixes, and small substantive tweaks into a single "judiciary omnibus" bill. Most of it is housekeeping. But buried in that housekeeping are a handful of changes that actually move deadlines, expand who has to be notified of what, and reshape discovery timing in unlawful detainer cases.

Estate planning documents are full of provisions that feel like standard, forgettable boilerplate — the kind of language a drafting attorney includes as a matter of course, without much thought about whether it will ever actually matter. A recent published decision from the California Court of Appeal is a striking illustration of how much can ride on exactly that kind of clause, and offers a clear, practical walkthrough of one of the more consequential doctrines in trust and