2890 N. Main Street, Suite 206 • Walnut Creek, CA 94597
He had always assumed the house would pass to his children the way his parents’ house had passed to him—with the property tax staying roughly the same. He grew up believing that a family home in California was a legacy in the truest sense: an asset that could stay in the family across generations without becoming a financial burden. It…
She called on a Tuesday afternoon. Her father had been diagnosed with dementia six weeks earlier, his decline had been faster than the family expected, and she was beginning to look at what came next. He still lived in the home he had owned for forty years in Lafayette. He had savings. He had a small pension. He had two…
If you own a home in the East Bay, you’ve raised a family here, or you’ve spent a lifetime building up savings, it’s natural to assume those assets will simply pass to the people you love. I wish it were that simple. In more than 20 years as an estate planning attorney here in Walnut Creek, I’ve sat with too…
A friend and colleague recently brought to my attention an aspect of our estate planning that neither of us had understood before and which had profoundly affected the family of a dear friend of hers. I am sharing this now to help spread awareness. As with many of the issues we must address in our estate planning, there is no…
Over the years I have seen clients struggle to get access to a parent’s safe deposit box after death. More than once, this seemingly simple task required us to open a probate proceeding in court, even though the deceased parent had set up a revocable trust to avoid probate. I’ve said this before: telling a client we have to do…