The Journal — Plain-English Estate Law
Plain-English guidance on wills, trusts, probate, and protecting your family in California.
How Do You Voluntarily Change or Substitute a Trustee?
Changing a trustee by agreement is far cheaper than removing one by petition, and most California trusts contain the machinery to do it. The mistake families make is…
Read →Who Controls a Minor’s Inheritance, and When Do They Get It?
Not the minor, and usually not the surviving parent automatically. Who controls the money depends entirely on how it was left, and the four common structures produce very…
Read →My Rights as a Beneficiary of an Irrevocable Trust
More than most beneficiaries realise, and they attach the moment the trust becomes irrevocable. That usually means the day the settlor died, and the rights are enforceable whether…
Read →Can a Trustee Buy the House From the Trust?
Only with real protection in place, and the burden is on the trustee to justify it rather than on you to attack it. A trustee buying trust property…
Read →The Trust Says Equal Shares But the Assets Can’t Be Split Evenly
Equal in value doesn’t mean identical in kind. A trustee dividing a house, a retirement account, and a coin collection three ways has to make choices, and the…
Read →The Trustee and the Only Beneficiary Are the Same Person
When one person becomes both the only trustee and the only beneficiary, the trust can collapse into outright ownership. Lawyers call it merger, and it matters because it…
Read →A Beneficiary Can’t Be Located. What Happens to Their Share?
The trustee has to look for them, document the search, and then ask the court what to do. What a trustee must not do is quietly divide the…
Read →What Happens If a Beneficiary Dies During Administration?
Their share doesn’t vanish. Where it goes depends on whether they survived the settlor, which is a different question from whether they survived long enough to be paid,…
Read →Want a straight read on where you stand?
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