They finally sat down at the kitchen table on the Fourth of July. The kids were outside, the barbecue was going, and for the first time in a decade the whole family was in the same house. The conversation started casually — one of the adult children asking her mother whether the will was still current. It had been drafted in 2011.
By the time the fireworks started, the family had realized how much had changed. Two grandchildren had been born who weren’t in the plan. One child had gone through a divorce. Another had moved to Texas. The trust that had been drafted for the family that existed in 2011 no longer described the family that existed in 2026.
This is the moment I hope every Bay Area family finds this summer — not necessarily on the Fourth of July, but sometime between now and the end of September. Because if you wait until the fall, the conversation gets harder.
Why Summer Is the Right Time
For most Bay Area families, estate planning happens in Q4 — October, November, December. The end of the year brings tax deadlines, holiday family gatherings, and the annual we-really-need-to-get-this-done energy. It also brings, in every estate planning firm I know, the busiest three months of the year.
What most families do not realize is that starting in October means you probably will not have a completed plan before the end of the year. Estate plans take six to eight weeks to build well — from the discovery call to the fully executed, fully funded plan. If you call in November, we are booking discovery calls in January.
That is the practical reason to start now. There is a softer reason too.
If your plan is complete and funded before you sit down with your family at Thanksgiving, you can talk about it. You can tell your children what you have decided. You can explain the reasoning. You can hear their questions. That conversation belongs in November, over a meal, with a plan already in place — not in a hurry with paperwork half-drafted.
For families in Walnut Creek, Concord, Pleasant Hill, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Danville, and San Ramon — and across the East Bay — August and September are the quiet months. They are the months when we can give a family real time and attention. The rush comes later. This is the moment to plan before the rush.
The Five Conversations
Below are the five estate planning conversations most Bay Area families need to have this summer. Not all of them apply to every family, but at least two or three usually do. If you find yourself recognizing your family in more than one of these, that is the sign that it is time to schedule a discovery call.
1. The Trust You Have — Does It Still Reflect Your Life?
The most common conversation I have with clients is not about creating a plan. It is about updating a plan that no longer describes the family it was written for.
Trusts drafted five, ten, or fifteen years ago were designed for families that have since changed. New children have arrived. Adult children have married or divorced. Elderly parents have passed away. Property has been bought and sold. Businesses have started or closed. Relationships have shifted. The plan on paper describes a family that no longer exists.
If your plan was drafted before 2020, there is a very good chance it needs updating. If it was drafted before 2015, updates are almost certainly required. And if it was drafted before 2015 without any review since, some of the substantive California law changes since then — Proposition 19 on property tax, the 2026 Medi-Cal reinstatement, federal estate tax exemption changes — may mean the plan does not achieve what it was designed to achieve.
An updated plan is not a rebuild. It is a review, an adjustment, and an amendment. But it does need to be done. And it is much easier to do in August than in December.
2. The Plan You Don’t Have — and What Happens Without One
If you do not have an estate plan at all, California has one for you. It is written in the probate code. It is not the plan you would have written.
Under California intestate succession, if you die without a will or trust, your assets are distributed according to a fixed formula. Your spouse gets a share. Your children get a share. If you are unmarried without children, your parents inherit. If your parents have died, your siblings. If there are no siblings, more distant relatives. The formula does not know your family. It does not know that one of your children has a substance use disorder and cannot manage a lump-sum inheritance. It does not know that you and your sister have not spoken in fifteen years. It does not know that you want your goddaughter to inherit the piano, or that you want a portion of your estate to go to the animal shelter that saved your first dog.
Without a plan, the probate court decides. Your family waits — often a year or more in California — while the court works through the process. Assets that pass through probate generally cannot be distributed until the process is complete. Your family pays probate fees, statutory attorney fees, and court costs that can easily total thousands of dollars in fees on an estate of moderate size.
If you have been telling yourself for years that you will get to it, the version of getting to it that avoids all of this is called scheduling a discovery call. It takes twenty minutes. It costs nothing. By the end of that call you will know exactly what your family needs, how long it will take, and what it will cost.
3. The Parents You Haven’t Talked to About Their Plan
For adult children whose parents are in their seventies or eighties, this is the conversation that matters most this summer.
You do not need to ask your parents about the numbers in their estate. That is not the conversation. The conversation is simpler: Do you have a plan? Where are the documents? Who is your attorney? Is there someone I should be in touch with if something happens?
Most adult children I talk to have never asked their parents these questions. There is often a quiet reluctance on both sides — parents do not want to seem to be prompting the conversation about their own death, and children do not want to seem to be asking about their inheritance. The result is that many families arrive at a crisis — a stroke, a fall, a dementia diagnosis — without any of the information they need to act.
The August version of this conversation is easy. It happens over coffee on a Saturday morning. It takes twenty minutes. It saves years of unnecessary difficulty later.
If your parents’ plan is up to date and their documents are organized, you leave the conversation reassured. If their plan is missing or outdated, you leave with a specific next step: helping them schedule a discovery call with their attorney, or with ours, before the fall. This is the piece of estate planning that adult children can initiate on behalf of their parents, and it is one of the most valuable gifts you can give the whole family.
4. The Property Tax Conversation Your Family Needs to Have
If you own a home in the Bay Area — particularly a home you have owned since before 2000 — Proposition 19 is a conversation your family needs to have. It affects the property tax your children will pay when they inherit the home.
Before Proposition 19, transferring a family home from parents to children was often a straightforward tax matter — the base year value transferred with the property, and children inherited both the home and the low property tax that came with it. Since Proposition 19, the rules are meaningfully different. The inheriting child must make the property their primary residence within one year and file the required claims with the county assessor. If those requirements are not met, the property is reassessed to current market value. Even when they are met, the exclusion is capped — if the home’s fair market value exceeds the parent’s factored base year value plus the inflation-adjusted exclusion amount, only the excess is added to the inherited taxable value, a partial reassessment rather than a full one.
For a family with a Walnut Creek home purchased in 1985 for $180,000 and now worth $1.8 million, the property tax difference between the old rules and the new can be roughly $4,300 per year, indefinitely. Over ten years, the difference can be more than the cost of the estate planning work itself.
This is a conversation to have now because the planning strategies that work must be designed in advance of the transfer. Waiting until a parent has passed and the property is being distributed means the options have narrowed significantly. You can find our full discussion of Proposition 19 planning on the ATC blog if you want to go deeper before scheduling a meeting.
5. The Special-Needs Member of Your Family — Is Their Future Protected?
If your family includes a person with special needs — a child, a sibling, or an adult relative who receives government benefits like SSI or Medi-Cal — a well-designed estate plan is not optional. It is essential.
An inheritance received directly by a person receiving needs-based government benefits can disqualify them from those benefits. What was intended as a gift becomes a crisis. The solution is a Special Needs Trust — a legal structure that allows a person with disabilities to receive an inheritance while preserving their eligibility for government benefits.
Special Needs Trusts come in two forms: first-party and third-party. A first-party trust holds assets that already belong to the person with disabilities — often a personal injury settlement or an inheritance received before proper planning was in place. A third-party trust is created and funded by someone else — typically a parent or grandparent — for the benefit of the person with disabilities. Both structures work. They serve different purposes. A qualified estate planning attorney will help your family understand which is appropriate.
If someone in your family relies on government benefits, and no Special Needs Trust exists yet, this is the conversation that matters most. Not to have it during the year that a health event occurs — to have it now, this summer, when there is time and space to do it well.
How We Work at Absolute Trust Counsel — and Why the Summer Timing Matters
Our process starts with a discovery call. By the end of that call, families know exactly what we are going to do, how long it will take, and what it will cost. There are no surprises and no pressure.
For families who begin their planning this summer, the timing works out well. Most families who schedule their discovery call between now and September 30 have their plan complete and funded before the end of the year. That means the plan is in place before the holidays. The conversation you might have wanted to have with your family in November is a conversation about a plan that already exists.
What we have learned over 20 years of practice is that families who plan in August are calmer, more thorough, and clearer about what they want than families who plan in December. The season matters. So does the space we can give you when the calendar is not yet crowded.
A Family That Started Their Summer Right
The family from the Fourth of July has since scheduled their discovery call. It will happen at the end of August. By the second week of October, their trust will be updated, their new grandchildren added, and the plan will reflect the family they are now.
They are not thinking about it every day between now and then. They are enjoying summer. That is the whole point. Estate planning is not something that should hover over a family’s summer. It is something that gets done, at a good time, in a firm you trust, so that you can go back to the things that matter.
The plan is not just the documents. The plan is the way the documents work together, the way the family understands what is in place, and the way it adapts as your life changes. That is the work. And this summer is the right time to do it.
For East Bay Families
If you live in Walnut Creek, Concord, Pleasant Hill, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Danville, or San Ramon, and any of the five conversations above described your family — this is the summer to plan. At Absolute Trust Counsel in Walnut Creek, our team works exclusively with California families on estate planning, trust administration, probate, Medi-Cal planning, and special needs planning. For over 20 years as an estate planning attorney, my focus has been on helping East Bay families build plans that actually work in practice.
If you have questions about how any of the conversations above apply to your family, or if you are ready to schedule a discovery call with our team, we would welcome the conversation.
Estate planning addresses many important factors about your future and your legacy. Where do you get started if you don’t have an estate plan in place? If you do, how have new laws and life transitions changed it? Will your plan still protect you? Regardless of where you are, you deserve to have control over your wants, needs, goals, and hopes for the future. We can help you understand your options and, legally, how you will best be protected at all touchpoints. Get started today by scheduling a discovery call so we can discuss your needs. Visit https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/scheduling/ or call us at (925) 430-7990.
