Practice Areas
Our firm specializes in Estate Planning, Probate, and Trust Administration.
Estate Planning
Effective estate planning is the best way to ensure that your assets will be transferred to and used appropriately by your intended beneficiaries. Our firm is committed to assisting you throughout the process of planning for your future. Good planning prior to your death provides the means to control your assets, your health care and future medical treatment. It also designates which of your loved ones gets what, when and how. When we meet with you, we will consider the following tools in preparing your estate plan: a trust, pour over will, durable power of attorney, health care directive, deeds to trust, and if applicable, a community property agreement.
Probate and Trust Administration
A proper estate plan is only complete when you designate individuals to follow through on your wishes. Unlike wills, trusts afford the benefit of avoiding probate, a lengthy and costly legal process that oversees the transfer of assets. Setting up a living trust is the best way to avoid the costs and frustrations of probate at death. Properly created revocable trusts are implemented by individuals while living for their benefit and for the benefit of children and beneficiaries after one dies. When death occurs, your estate plan should be designed to protect the assets for the surviving spouse and for beneficiaries. When a spouse dies we assist the surviving spouse to implement the wishes of the decedent. We also assist successor trustees with the responsibilities they have upon the death of a trustee. If you serve as a trustee or as a personal representative of a decedent’s estate, you assume responsibilities.
We are able to assist in probates in most counties of California but primarily work in Contra Costa, Alameda, and Solano Counties.
An open book with a pencil