Estate Planning, Probate, Wills & Trusts · Ventura County, California and statewide
Everything you own should go to the people you love. Not the court. Not the lawyers. Not a stranger.
Probate pays lawyers a percentage of everything you own and puts your family’s inheritance in a public court file for 12 to 18 months. A flat-fee living trust, built and funded in weeks, not months, ends that conversation before it starts.
Most trusts end at the signing table. Yours starts there.
(Not ready to talk? See if your current plan would actually work.)
(Handling a death in the family? Start here.)
The plan
From first call to finished plan.
- No. 1
A free thirty-minute call.
- No. 2
We design the plan, move your home into it, and map every account. That’s our five-meeting system.
- No. 3
When you’re gone, your family’s whole job is one phone call.
What’s at stake
A will doesn’t
keep your family out of court.
You’ve done everything else right, and this is the one thing that’s still undone. In California, when there’s no working plan, families don’t sort it out at the kitchen table. They go to probate. It’s slow, the fees are set by statute, and it all happens in a public courtroom. The statutory fees on a $1,000,000 estate come to about $46,000, and around here the house alone gets you most of the way to a million. The 401(k) and the brokerage account stack on top. Add a year or more before your family can touch any of it. Probate’s also a public record. A neighbor, a salesman, a distant relative, anyone at all can pull the file and read what you owned and who received it. A trust settles in private.
Wealthy families already have lawyers for this. The families who get hurt are the ones in between, with a paid-off house in Camarillo or Westlake Village, a 401(k), a brokerage account, maybe a rental. Enough to trigger a full probate. Not enough that anyone was watching.
And probate is only the half that comes after you die. The other half comes while you’re still here. It might be a stroke, a fall, or a long illness, and without a plan that names who steps in, a court decides who runs your money and your care.
If you’ve been meaning to handle this for years, and you’re not sure the documents in the drawer would even work, you’re who I built this practice for.
A family shouldn’t need a judge’s permission to keep its own house. The only part you control is whether the plan exists before you need it.
Keep your family out of probate court.
A plan that works moves assets the moment they need to move, without permission from a judge, without a public docket, without statutory fees.
Name who steps in if you can’t.
Incapacity is the half of the conversation nobody wants. Your plan should name, in advance, who manages the accounts, the property, and your care.
Keep a hand on the wheel after you’re gone.
A plan decides who inherits, and also how and when. A share can be held for the child who isn’t ready, or shielded from a divorce or a creditor, so the money goes where you meant it to.
A plan like this holds because it’s built to be tested against grief, family conflict, and the courthouse, long after the day you sign it.
“ The job is keeping you out of court, with someone you chose in charge and the money going where you meant it. I’ll tell you what you need, what you don’t, and why, then build it so it works.
The reason I practice
My father died thinking he had it handled, with a will, a trust, and thirty years of work behind them. It didn’t protect anyone. Thirty years of his work walked out the door with a stranger. That’s why I build plans that hold when your family needs them, instead of a binder that only looks like an estate plan.
Read my whole storyWhat it costs
An honest
number.
The fee is flat because you shouldn’t discover the price after the work. You’ll have the number in writing before anything starts, and it doesn’t change.
$4,100 for a married couple. $3,700 for one person. That covers the trust, the will, the incapacity documents, the deed that moves your California home into the trust, and a full map of how every account needs to be re-registered, tracked to completion. That fee also buys you lifetime access to me. Call anytime, with no hourly meter. If you have a CPA or financial advisor, I work with them directly, so account retitling and beneficiary changes get done in one pass.
That number fits a family with one California home. A second property, a business or a rental held in an LLC, a child with special needs, or children from a prior marriage takes more drafting. That describes a lot of the families I work with. If that’s you, nothing changes about the process: you’ll have the full number in writing before any work starts. Every fee is published in writing.
For comparison, probate, the court process a funded trust prevents, costs your family about $46,000 in statutory fees on a $1,000,000 estate, calculated on the gross value. On a $2,000,000 estate, the statutory fees come to about $66,000. A mortgage doesn’t reduce it. Run your own number with the probate calculator.
(Federal estate tax doesn’t reach most families under $15 million. What costs families like yours is probate, Prop 19, and a trust nobody funded.)
I’m not the cheapest way to get a trust. An online form is cheaper, right up until nobody moves the house into it.
A free thirty-minute call. I’ll tell you whether you even need one.
“Unlike other attorneys I’ve encountered, Eric genuinely puts people before paperwork.”
Practice
A focused practice.
Four kinds of work, and nothing else.
You likely arrive with one of these problems. I handle these and nothing else, from the planning that protects a family before the call comes to the administration that steadies it after.
Living Trusts & Wills
A working plan, drafted to keep your family out of probate court and funded so it does.
See how living trusts & wills work02Trust Administration
Quiet, careful work after a death, for the trustee handed a trust they didn’t write, and a family that’s grieving.
See trust administration services03California Probate
When there’s no plan, or the plan failed. Court-supervised administration of an estate, handled with as little friction as the law allows.
See probate representation04Plan Review & Repair
A second opinion on a plan you already have. Plans tend to fail at the same few points, like an unfunded house, a stale beneficiary form, or the wrong person named to serve. I find them before your family does.
Get a plan reviewBefore you call
The questions
families ask first.
These are the questions people ask me before they call, each with a plain answer and a link to read further. You can also browse the free guides.
Do I need a living trust, or just a will?
If you own a home in California, a will alone still goes through probate. A funded living trust is what keeps your family out of court.
Answer it in two minutes with the decision aidWill my children’s property taxes rise when they inherit?
Under Proposition 19, often yes, and sometimes sharply. There are ways to plan for it, but only before the property changes hands.
Read about Prop 19 planningWhich of my children should be in charge?
Trustee is a job, not an honor. Naming the oldest by default, or all of them together, is how many family fights start. There’s a better way to decide.
See how to choose a trusteeI already have a trust. Is it actually working?
A trust that was never funded doesn’t hold anything. If your home and accounts were never moved into it, your family can still end up in probate.
Read about trust fundingNot ready to talk?See if your current plan would actually workBrowse free guides & toolsAfter a death? Start here
Step two, up close
Five meetings, then
a plan that keeps working.
- I.
The Conversation
Where you tell me about your family and what you’re planning for. No documents drafted.
- II.
Asset Review
A full inventory of what there is to plan around.
- III.
The Design
A written plan in plain language, before any legal documents are drawn.
- IV.
Final Review
The documents read line by line, with you.
- V.
The Signing
Executed, witnessed, notary provided. This is where a lot of estate plans stop.
Then the part most plans skip: I move your house into your trust. We re-title your property and record the transfer with the county, you get a full map of how your Schwab and Fidelity accounts need to be re-registered, and your beneficiaries get aligned. Then you & I sit again every three years to keep your estate plan current. A plan that isn’t funded is just a useless binder.
See our five-meeting systemThe other side of the signing
What done
feels like.
The task that’s been on your list for years is off it, and it’s not coming back.
Every account has a destination. The deed is recorded, the house is in the trust, and the person you chose, not a judge, steps in if you can’t act. If the day comes, your children call a lawyer who already knows them. Your CPA and your advisor each have the trust certificate on file, so nothing stalls at tax time or at the brokerage.
If you’ve ever had to settle an estate yourself, you know what that’s worth. If you haven’t, take my word for it: it’s everything.
You become the parent who finished it.
Get it off your list.
Talk to EricWhat clients say
In their
own words.
★★★★★ 4.9 of 5.0 · 194 Google reviews
268 five-star reviews across Google, Yelp & Avvo
“After meeting with several firms, I felt that Eric was the most forthright and upfront about the whole process. He and his team are patient, informative, and helpful. A great experience all around.”
“Eric came highly-referred from a trusted CPA. I chose Eric for his comprehensive approach to estate planning… the tax implications, how to protect assets and deciding how to proceed in different scenarios of illness and/or incapacitation.”
“Eric and Spencer took my hand and walked me through the process of building my trust, and to the finish line. They were always available to answer all my questions. I’m happy I picked Ridley Law, and you will too.”
“Unlike other attorneys I’ve encountered, Eric genuinely puts people before paperwork. His personalized approach made us feel confident and at ease throughout the entire process.”
Not ready to call?
Start with a
free guide.
Thirty plain-English guides to California estate planning, probate, and trust administration. Free, instant, no meeting required.
The 7 Estate Planning Mistakes That Destroy California Families
The seven mistakes that cause most probate-court damage, what each costs, and how to shut them down.
Read the guide02What Probate Actually Costs in California
Statutory fees on the gross estate, the timeline, and the math that makes trusts pay for themselves.
Read the guide03The Trust Funding Checklist
Every asset type, and how each one gets retitled into the trust.
Read the guideBy appointment
Begin the
conversation.
The first call is unhurried, and there’s no fee for it. I’ll tell you whether you need me, what a working plan looks like for your family, and what it would cost, all before you decide anything.
I’d rather be useful to someone who doesn’t hire me than sell a plan to someone who wasn’t sure they needed it.
- 1. A free thirty-minute call.
- 2. We design the plan, move your home into it, and map every account. That’s our five-meeting system.
- 3. Every three years, we sit down and keep the plan current.
(Not ready to talk? See if your current plan would actually work, or browse free guides & tools. Handling a death in the family? Start here.)
- Hours
- Tue–Sat · 8–5 PT
- Office
- Port Hueneme, CA
- Serving
- Ventura, Camarillo, Oxnard, Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village & all of Ventura County
- Statewide
- by video, anywhere in California