Well, if a house is in probate, what that means is that it is one of the assets that was owned by the decedent, the person who passed away upon his or her death. And a probate case was started and the house was listed as one of the assets of the probate estate.

And so what that means is that the court has authority and oversight of the house and generally the executor has to get the court’s approval before the house can be sold.

In other words, the house is part of a court case and the judge ultimately will decide whether the house can be sold or not.

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A lot of people are curious about who to leave their property to if they don’t have family or loved ones. Now, you can leave your property to your friends or you could also leave property to charities. So, for example, you can leave property to a school that you support or any kind of charitable cause that you’re interested in.

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Yes, probate is needed even if there is a will. There are two types of probate in California. The first is probate when there’s a will. The second type is probate when there is no will. And that’s called an intestacy proceeding, somebody dies intestate or without a will.

Having a will does not avoid probate. There are only three ways to avoid probate in California. The first is to have a revocable trust. The second is to be married and have a surviving spouse do what’s called a spousal set aside. And the third way is to have a small estate which is having less than $188,000 in assets on the date of your death.

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We see people updating their wills or their trusts anytime there’s a major life change. The types of life changes that could warrant updating your will or your trust include death in the family, a birth, marriage, divorce, bankruptcy or a change in the law.

For most people, we find that meeting every three years with an attorney and talking about what has changed is efficient. For very young families who are going through a lot of dynamic changes, we might reach out to them once every year. And also with the elderly or an elderly person who might be transitioning into an assisted living facility or a nursing home, we might want to meet with that person once a year.

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When you set up a trust, you will designate who you want to be the successor trustee. This is the trustee who takes over management of the trust estate when you pass away. Now, best practice is to have multiple layers or multiple lists of trustees to take over. And so you’ll want person A to be first, person B to be second and so on.

Now in the event that you have a trust that does not have a trustee listed, so for example, you list person A and person A passes away and you don’t have a trustee next in line, the beneficiaries can petition the court to appoint a trustee. But, we want to avoid going to court to keep costs down. So you should have a first position, second position and third position.

Quick Question Corner is a video segment where we answer common questions about estate planning and elder law. If you have similar questions, leave them in the comment section and we can feature them in one of our videos in the future.

Probate is required regard regardless of whether there is a will or not. So if someone has a will and they own more than $188,000 their estate will still have to go through probate.

Quick Question Corner is a video segment where we answer common questions about estate planning and elder law. If you have similar questions, leave them in the comment section and we can feature them in one of our videos in the future.