Probate Blog

Imagine your partner of ten years is in the hospital, about to have risky surgery. He wants to sign his will right then and there to make sure you're taken care of. But his sister calls and tells you to hold off — she's got a better plan, a living trust, and her attorney friends are already on it. So you wait. He goes into surgery. He never wakes up the same. He dies without ever signing anything. And his sister inherits everything. That's not a movie plot — it's the real sto

Here's a question that sounds almost too simple to matter: if someone gets free rent and free meals in exchange for helping out around the house, are they getting "paid"? In most parts of life, most people would say obviously yes. But in one California courtroom, a judge said no — and that single word made the difference between a caregiver inheriting an entire estate or losing it all. That's the story of Robinson v. Gutierrez, decided by a California appeals court in Decembe

Some legal cases read like a mystery novel. Butler v. LeBouef, decided by a California appeals court in 2016, is one of them — complete with a suspicious burglary, a forensic handwriting expert, and a pattern of behavior stretching back 25 years. At the center of it all was an attorney who, according to the trial court, used his law license to take advantage of a vulnerable, elderly man and walk away with a $5 million estate. Meet John Patton John Patton was a well-known inte

Picture this: your father dies, and you find out his caregiver rewrote his trust so that she — not you — gets almost everything, including the house. You sue to undo it. But by the time your case gets moving, the caregiver has already used trust money to buy a different property. Can you put a legal hold on that new property while the case plays out? That was the real question behind Newell v. Superior Court, a California appeals court decision from December 2024. It's a case

Imagine an elderly man signs over his house to the woman who cooks his meals and helps him with errands. He says he did it because "she deserves it" and "I like her." Is that a valid gift? Or is it the kind of deal California law says can never be trusted? That question sat at the heart of Jenkins v. Teegarden, a 2014 case decided by a California appeals court. The case gives a clear lesson about a rule meant to protect older adults from losing their homes and savings to the

Most California litigators know the basic rule: if your defendant dies mid-case, or if the person who wronged your client is already dead when you file, you generally have to present a creditor's claim in the decedent's probate estate before you can pursue any recovery. Miss the claim window and the case is usually dead too. There is a narrow but useful exception, and it lives in Probate Code Part 13, Chapter 1 (§§ 550–555). If the decedent was covered by liability insurance,

You'd think proving someone died would be easy — just show a death certificate. Usually it is. But California law has a whole set of rules for when proving death matters legally, especially for property. These rules are in Probate Code Part 4, and they cover three jobs: proving death in court, putting that proof on property records, and telling certain government agencies. Here's the plain-language rundown. Proving Death in Court A common example: two people co-own a house as

Most people picture inheritance as something you write down in a will. But what happens if someone dies without one? Does the government just keep everything? Not quite. California has a detailed rulebook for exactly this situation, found in Probate Code Part 2, called "Intestate Succession." Here's how it actually works, explained in plain language. First, What Does "Intestate" Even Mean? "Intestate" just means someone died without a valid will covering their property. It do

If someone dies without a will, California law has to figure out who inherits — and that often comes down to who counts as the closest relative. But "closest relative" isn't just a feeling. California actually has a math formula for it, written into Probate Code section 13. Here's how it works, explained simply. Why Does the Law Even Need to Measure This? When a person dies without a will (or when other relatives need to be identified for a legal case), the law often has to r

Losing a parent or loved one is hard enough. Then comes the paperwork. If that person owned a house, their family often had to go through "probate" — a long, expensive court process — just to put the house in someone else's name. Starting April 1, 2025, California made that easier for many families. Here's what changed, explained in plain English. First, What Is Probate? When someone dies owning property, that property usually can't just be handed over to their kids or other

A trustee's duty to account is not a matter of custom or best practice. It is a statutory obligation, enforceable in court, and the consequences of getting it wrong are not merely reputational. This post sets out what California law requires of a trustee administering a trust — not as a general summary, but as a walk through the governing statutes themselves. I. The Duty to Account Is Mandatory, Not Discretionary Probate Code section 16060 imposes a general duty on every trus

If you're married (or in a registered domestic partnership) in California and you or your spouse passes away, what happens to the property you built together? California's Probate Code has a specific set of rules for exactly this situation — Sections 100 through 105. Here's what they actually mean, without the legal jargon. The Basic Rule: You Already Own Half Probate Code § 100 lays down the foundation: when a married person dies, one-half of the community property already b

What Happened On July 3, 2025, the California Supreme Court ordered attorney Drexel Andrew Bradshaw disbarred — the most severe punishment the State Bar can hand out — for defrauding an elderly, incapacitated client and lying to a probate court about it, repeatedly, under oath. The case, In re Bradshaw, is a cautionary tale about what happens when an attorney is trusted to manage someone else's money and life savings, and instead quietly funnels it toward himself. The Backsto

Estate of Bodmann (2025) 116 Cal.App.5th 401 Probate Code section 8420 is supposed to be a bright-line rule: the person named executor in a will has the right to appointment, full stop, unless a statutory ground for disqualification applies. Practitioners rely on that bright line constantly to resist attempts by disgruntled family members to keep a named executor out based on nothing more than personality conflicts or hurt feelings. Estate of Bodmann shows the line is real —

Barefoot v. Jennings (2020) 8 Cal.5th 822 Trust litigators run into this scenario constantly: a settlor amends her trust late in life, cuts out a child who was previously a beneficiary, and dies. The disinherited child suspects incompetence, undue influence, or fraud — but the moment she goes to probate court, she's told she has no standing because, under the trust's final version, she isn't a beneficiary at all. Isn't that circular? The California Supreme Court said yes, and

When a settlement agreement or assignment involving an estate is challenged, can a probate court decide the dispute on paper alone — declarations, exhibits, and argument — or does due process demand live testimony? The Fourth District Court of Appeal answered that question squarely in Estate of Bennett, 163 Cal. App. 4th 1303 (2008), and the rule it established remains a trap for the unwary in California probate litigation. The Setup A creditor's assignee held a decades-old j

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

Family businesses and family trusts create a particular kind of legal tangle: the same underlying conflict often spawns litigation in multiple courts at once, and it's easy to assume that anyone with skin in the game gets a seat at every table. A recent California Court of Appeal decision, arising out of a sprawling, multi-case dispute between cousins over control of a family corporation, makes clear that assumption is wrong — probate court standing has its own specific rules

Don Kirchner died in 2018, leaving an estate valued at $3-$4 million. His living trust lacked an important document, Exhibit A. A...

Joan Lee Maynord created a family trust in 1986, and after her death, her daughter Joan Mauri Barefoot, who was a trustee and...