If you own a home in El Dorado Hills and you die with only a will, your home goes through California probate. A will does not avoid probate. A will is the instruction manual the court uses to run probate. That distinction surprises a lot of people, and in El Dorado Hills, where homes routinely sell from $900,000 to well over $1.5 million, that surprise is expensive.
Here is what actually happens, what it costs your family, and what an El Dorado Hills homeowner should do instead.
What Is California Probate, and Why Does It Apply to Your Home?
California probate is the court-supervised process for transferring assets from a person who has died to their heirs or beneficiaries. Any asset held in your individual name at death, with no beneficiary designation and no trust, ends up there. For most El Dorado Hills homeowners, that means the house.
A will does not change this. A will tells the probate court who you want to inherit. The court still runs the case, on its timeline, with statutory fees, appraisals, notices to creditors, and a judge who has never met your family. Twelve to eighteen months is normal. Longer if anything is contested.
The other piece that surprises people: the fees are calculated on the gross value of the estate, not your equity. If your El Dorado Hills home is worth $1.2 million and you owe $500,000 on it, the probate fees are calculated on the full $1.2 million. The mortgage does not reduce the math.
What Probate Actually Costs an El Dorado Hills Family
California Probate Code section 10810 sets statutory fees on a sliding scale. Both the attorney and the executor are entitled to the same fee, calculated separately, on the full gross value of the estate. So the family pays it twice.
Here is what that looks like for typical El Dorado Hills home values.
• On a $900,000 home: roughly $21,000 in attorney fees and another $21,000 in executor fees, for combined statutory fees of around $42,000.
• On a $1,200,000 home: roughly $25,000 each, or about $50,000 combined.
• On a $1,500,000 home: roughly $28,000 each, or about $56,000 combined.
• On a $2,000,000 home: roughly $33,000 each, or about $66,000 combined.
Add court filing fees, the probate referee's appraisal, certified copies, publication costs, and bond premiums if a bond is required. Add twelve to eighteen months of waiting while your family cannot sell or refinance the home without court permission. Add the public record. Probate is not private. Anyone can pull the file.
All of that is avoidable.
Who Actually Inherits If You Only Have a Will, or No Will at All?
If you have a will, the will controls who inherits, after probate runs its course. If your will names your spouse, your spouse inherits. If it names your kids in equal shares, that is what happens. The court follows the will.
If you have no will at all, California's intestate succession statute decides. For a married El Dorado Hills homeowner with children, the result may be different from what you thought. Community property generally goes to the surviving spouse. Separate property is split between the surviving spouse and the children based on a statutory formula. If the children are minors, their share is held by a court-supervised guardianship of the estate until they turn eighteen, with annual accountings and court oversight. Then they get the money outright at age eighteen.
Most parents do not want that outcome. A living trust solves it with the timing and conditions you choose.
How a Living Trust Avoids All of This
A revocable living trust is a legal entity you create and control during your lifetime. You move your home and your other major assets into the trust by re-titling them in the name of the trust. You serve as your own trustee, so nothing about your day-to-day life changes. You can sell the house, refinance it, take out a HELOC, exactly as you would if it were in your individual name.
When you die, the person you have named as successor trustee steps in. They distribute the assets according to the terms of your trust, on your timeline, in private, without a judge. No statutory attorney fees. No executor fees on a gross-value scale. No twelve to eighteen month wait. No public file.
If you also have minor children, the trust holds and manages their share until the ages you choose, with the trustee you choose. Twenty-five and thirty are common. Some families stagger it. The court is not involved.
And if you become incapacitated, the same successor trustee can step in to manage the trust assets without a conservatorship.
The Funding Step Is Not Optional
Here is the part where well-intentioned El Dorado Hills homeowners get tripped up. They get a trust. They put the documents in a drawer. They never re-title the house.
A living trust only controls the assets that are actually in it. If your El Dorado Hills home is still titled in your individual name when you die, your trust documents do not save it from probate. The house goes through the same process as if the trust never existed.
Funding a trust means recording a grant deed at the El Dorado County Recorder's Office that transfers your home from your individual name into the name of the trust. It also means coordinating bank, brokerage, and beneficiary designations on retirement and life insurance accounts. When we do an estate plan, the deed is part of the work, not an extra step you handle later.
We wrote a guide to funding your California living trust.
Prop 19 Makes the Will-Only Path Even Messier
California Proposition 19, which took effect in 2021, changed the rules on whether children who inherit a home keep their parents' property tax basis. Most of the time now, they do not. The county reassesses the home to current market value, and the property tax bill jumps accordingly.
Prop 19 applies whether your home passes through probate or through a trust. A trust does not automatically save the basis. But the planning around Prop 19, when it can help, when it cannot, and what to do if your kids do not plan to live in the house, is much easier to coordinate inside a living trust than through a probate court.
Our full Proposition 19 California guide walks through how it works.
What an El Dorado Hills Homeowner Should Actually Do
If you own a home in El Dorado Hills and you do not have a living trust, get one. A complete plan includes the trust, a pour-over will, durable powers of attorney for finances and health care, and a recorded deed transferring the home into the trust.
If you have a trust that is more than five years old, have it reviewed. Prop 19 alone is reason enough. Federal estate tax law has changed too. And the successor trustees you named ten years ago may not be the right people now.
How We Work
Clark Allison has been doing California estate planning for nearly thirty years. Our main office is in El Dorado Hills, on Windplay Drive, and we have helped families in El Dorado Hills, Folsom, Cameron Park, Shingle Springs, and the Sacramento region for decades. Estate planning and trust administration is all we do. We are not litigators or business attorneys who side hustle a living trust now and then. This is what we do.
When you hire us, you work directly with one of our attorneys from your first meeting through the signing. Not a paralegal. Not an intake coordinator who hands you off later. The attorney is the one in the room.
Most estate plans are completed in about two weeks. Two attorney meetings: one to design, one to review and sign. We can do all of it in person at our El Dorado Hills office, or entirely on Zoom from your living room.
Our fee for most families is $3,000 to $4,000. Flat fees which we publish, no hourly billing, no surprises. Once you are a client, follow-up questions are always free. We work with families virtually throughout California, and in-person in our four offices: El Dorado Hills, Roseville, San Luis Obispo, and San Diego.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a will avoid probate in California?
No. A will names your executor, guardians for your minor children, and names your beneficiaries. It's a formal statement of your intent, a probate judge will follow in the probate proceedings. If your home is in your individual name when you die, the will goes through probate, not around it. Only a properly funded living trust avoids probate for real property in California.
My home has a mortgage. Does that change the probate fees?
No. California's statutory probate fees are calculated on the gross value of the estate, not your equity. If your El Dorado Hills home is worth $1.2 million and you owe $500,000 on it, the probate fees are still calculated on $1.2 million.
Can my spouse just inherit the house automatically without probate?
Sometimes, but it depends on how the home is titled and what happens later. If your home is held in joint tenancy with your spouse, the survivor takes the home without probate at the first death. But the home is still in an individual name after that. When the surviving spouse dies, it goes through probate unless they transferred it to a living trust before then.
How long does a California living trust take to set up?
About two weeks for most El Dorado Hills families. Two attorney meetings, design and review, plus the signing with our notary.
Can I just put my children's names on the deed and skip the trust?
Please do not. Adding children to title on your home exposes the home to their creditors and divorces, can blow up the basis step-up that would otherwise erase the capital gains tax for your kids, and triggers Prop 19 reassessment problems. A living trust does what people are usually trying to do here, without the side effects.
What does it cost to do an estate plan in El Dorado Hills?
Our flat fee for most El Dorado Hills families is $3,000 to $4,000. There is more detail in our guide to estate planning costs in El Dorado Hills.
Now you know. If you own a home in El Dorado Hills with only a will, or no plan at all, your family is exposed to probate. Call us at (916) 983-9410 or click Get Started. One of our attorneys will reach out, walk through what you have, and tell you what you need and what it costs.
Our main office is in El Dorado Hills, at 4944 Windplay Drive, Suite 117. We also work with families from our Roseville, San Luis Obispo, and San Diego offices, and virtually from anywhere in California.