State Bar Certified Specialist

          Life is not static and neither should be anyone’s living trust. Adjustments have to be made when compelling circumstances arise which necessitate alternative approaches.  For that reason a well drafted living trust should provide contingency planning ...

          Married persons, and registered domestic partners, need to consider how much control they want to allow one another - acting alone - over their community property assets.  This is important when creating their powers of attorney, wills and joint trust...

          California law protects a surviving spouse when the deceased spouse’s last will or trust, executed prior to marriage, fails to provide for the surviving spouse.  California’s policy is to protect a surviving spouse against accidental disinheritance und...

California law grants a surviving spouse special rights and obligations concerning the probate estate and personal debts of a deceased spouse.  These are governed by community property laws.  The same rules apply to California registered domestic partners.  Community and Quas...

           An elderly person’s mental capacity to make decisions affecting the management, investment and disposition at death of his trust estate is often disputed in lawsuits over alleged wrongs done to the elderly person and/or his family.  Such lawsuit...

           Assumptions people make about who will receive an inheritance share from their estate can sometimes fall far off the mark.  Peculiar results may occur when an intended beneficiary survives just long enough to inherit but not so lo...

          Most people who have heard about special needs trusts are familiar only about the Testamentary Special Needs Trust (hereafter Testamentary SNTs).  Testamentary trusts are established at the death of the person establishing the trust pursuan...

Understanding the importance of the team work that is involved in managing one’s financial, legal, property and health care affairs is important.  Hypothetically speaking, let us consider a husband and wife whose estate plan involves a revocable living trust, powers of attorney, and health ca...

          Getting one’s affairs in order is important to you and your loved ones at multiple levels.  First, a comprehensive, well drafted estate plan may afford you protection against an otherwise avoidable conservatorship of your own estate; agains...

          A cardinal rule of trust administration is that the intentions of the settlor(s) - the person(s) who created the trust - are to be given effect.  A second cardinal rule is that a trust must be strictly administered according to its stated t...