A $1.5M Walnut Creek home pays $56K+ in California probate fees. A virtual living trust avoids it. Two Zoom calls, flat fee, done in a few weeks.
If you own a single-family home in Walnut Creek and you die without a living trust, your family is heading to the Contra Costa County probate court. The combined attorney and executor fees alone on a $1.5 million home run roughly $56,000. Court costs, the probate referee, and a publication notice push the total past $64,000. The process takes 12 to 18 months, every filing is public record, and your heirs sit and wait.
All of it is avoidable with a properly funded living trust. And you don’t even need to find a Walnut Creek attorney to set one up. We draft California living trusts for Walnut Creek families entirely by Zoom, sign them with a remote online notary, and record the deed at the Contra Costa County Recorder without you ever leaving your home. Two virtual meetings, a 30-minute remote signing, $3,000 single or $4,000 married, done in about two weeks.
Single-family homes in the better Walnut Creek neighborhoods sit comfortably above $1.3 million. Many neighborhoods are $1.5 to $2 million and up.
California probate fees are calculated on the gross value of the estate, meaning the full fair market value of the home regardless of the mortgage. Your Walnut Creek house is worth $1.5 million. You owe $700,000 on it. For probate fee purposes, the asset is $1.5 million.
California Probate Code section 10810 sets a tiered percentage schedule for both the attorney and the executor. Each one is entitled to the full statutory fee. They are paid separately, out of the estate, before any beneficiary sees a dollar.
The schedule:
On a $1.5 million estate, the attorney fee works out to $28,000. The executor fee is another $28,000. Combined, $56,000. That is just the statutory piece.
Slide to your estate’s gross value and see how the statutory fees stack up against what a living trust would cost.
Slide to your estate's gross value (before mortgage) to see the full cost comparison for a Walnut Creek / Contra Costa County estate.
Probate
$64,000
Living trust
$33,500
| Probate | Living trust |
|---|---|
| Public record: assets, heirs, and amounts are filed with the Contra Costa County Superior Court | Entirely private. No court filing. No public record |
| 12 to 18 months or longer. Beneficiaries receive nothing while the estate is open | Typically settles in three to six months |
| Court approval required for routine decisions, including selling the family home | Successor trustee acts immediately, without court permission |
Probate attorney and executor fees are statutory under California Probate Code § 10810 and apply separately to each party. Court costs estimated at $8,000 (filing, publication, probate referee, bond). Trust administration attorney and trustee fees estimated at the greater of $7,500 or 1% of estate value each. Trust setup cost shown as $3,500 (Clark Allison flat-fee midpoint between $3,000 single and $4,000 married). Actual fees vary by estate complexity. This calculator is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
In addition to the probate attorney fee and the executor fee, probate also incurs costs.
Court filing fees. Contra Costa County Superior Court charges several hundred dollars to open the estate, plus additional filing fees as the case moves forward.
Publication of notice to creditors. California requires a notice in a local newspaper of general circulation. Expect $200 to $500.
Probate referee. A state-appointed referee appraises the non-cash assets at one-tenth of one percent of the appraised value. On a $1.5 million home, that is roughly $1,500.
Bond premiums. If the will did not waive bond, or there is no will, the executor may have to post a bond. Premiums run roughly 0.5 to 1 percent of estate value, paid each year the estate stays open.
Extraordinary fees. If the attorney has to handle a real estate sale, a will contest, a tax issue, or any complication, they can petition the court for fees beyond the statutory amount.
It is reasonable to plan on a Walnut Creek $1.5 million probate consuming $64,000 to $70,000 in total cost before the estate closes.
One more thing to keep in mind. We have focused only on your home. Your estate includes other assets that would go through probate, such as bank and investment accounts, rental or business properties, and businesses. Your actual probate fees and costs will be calculated on the whole estate, not just your home.
A revocable living trust is a document you sign during your lifetime. You retitle your assets into the trust. When you die, a successor trustee you named takes over and distributes the assets according to the instructions you wrote. No court. No statutory fee schedule. No 12 to 18 months of your family slogging through the court system.
Keep in mind, trust administration is not free. The successor trustee will usually hire an attorney to handle creditor notices, the decedent’s final tax return, accountings, and the deed transfers at the Contra Costa County Recorder. Our trust administration attorney fees typically start at the greater of $7,500 or 1 percent of the estate value. The trustee is also entitled to a fee in roughly the same range.
But even with those costs thrown in, the comparison is not close. On a $1.5 million Walnut Creek estate, full probate runs around $64,000 in total. Trust administration, plus the original cost of the trust itself, comes to roughly half that.
And the money is only part of it.
Privacy. Probate is public. The petition, the inventory, the appraisal, the names of your beneficiaries, and the dollar amount each one inherits are filed with the Contra Costa County Superior Court and available to anyone who wants to look. Trust administration is private.
Speed. Probate in Contra Costa County typically runs 12 to 18 months. Trust administration usually wraps in three to six months, and it is done privately, not in court.
Control. A trustee can act without a judge’s oversight. An executor needs court approval for routine decisions, including the sale of the home, paying certain debts, and some distributions.
If you bought your Walnut Creek home many years ago, the gap between your Prop 13 base year value and today’s market is significant. Proposition 19 changed the rules on how that basis transfers from parent to child. You need to consider the likely increase in property tax on your home and other properties when designing your living trust. Ignoring the effects of Prop 19 in your estate plan can cause real problems.
Plenty of Walnut Creek homeowners have a will sitting in a drawer and assume the planning is done. It is not. A will is basically a polite letter to the probate court asking them to take their time and bill your kids extra. A living trust avoids probate. A will without a living trust invites probate.
A living trust only controls the assets that have been transferred to the trust. If you sign a beautiful Walnut Creek living trust and the deed to your house still has you and your spouse as joint tenants, the trust does not control the house. When you die, the house still goes through probate. Transferring your probatable assets to your living trust is called funding your trust. Transferring your home to your trust is the big one, but you need to transfer all of your assets that will otherwise go through probate. Click here for more on how to fund your living trust.
Most of our Walnut Creek clients never set foot in one of our offices. They don’t need to. California estate planning is mostly conversation, connecting with and trusting your attorney to help design a plan that works for you, drafting the documents, reviewing, and signing and notarizing. None of that requires a freeway.
Here’s how we do virtual estate planning.
You sit at your kitchen table. We talk through your family, your assets, your home, what you want to happen when you die, and who you want in charge if you cannot speak for yourself. This is not a fill-in-the-blank intake. It is a real conversation with one of our California estate planning attorneys, the same attorney who will draft your documents and walk you through them at the next meeting.
We ask the questions that matter for a Walnut Creek family: Does your home have a Prop 13 base year value worth protecting for your kids? Do you have a Bay Area tech employer plan with stock that needs coordinating with the trust? Are there separate property issues from a prior marriage? Are you carrying a mortgage that your trust language needs to handle correctly? These are the issues that determine whether your trust actually works when it is needed, and a quick intake form will not surface them.
Your attorney drafts the full plan. Revocable living trust, pour-over will, durable power of attorney, advance health care directive, and the trust transfer deed for your Walnut Creek home. We send it to you to read at your own pace before the second meeting. Most clients spend 30 to 60 minutes with the draft.
We walk through every document on screen together. You ask questions. We change anything we need to change. Common Walnut Creek edits: tweaking the successor trustee order when adult children live in different states, adjusting the age at which kids receive their share, or naming a different person to handle health care decisions than the ones handling money.
Forty-six states plus DC allow their notaries to notarize remotely. California is the holdout. SB 696 targets full implementation of California-notary remote online notarization by January 1, 2030. The good news is that California Civil Code section 1189(b) makes a remote online notarization performed by a properly commissioned out-of-state notary valid in California today. Tens of thousands of California estate plans have been signed this way.
After you review and approve your estate planning documents, you will schedule a video call with a commissioned remote online notary in another state. The notary verifies your identity using knowledge-based authentication and a government ID. You and your spouse sign the documents on screen. The notary applies an electronic seal. The session runs about 30 minutes. You never leave your house.
After signing your estate plan, we will coordinate with the county recorder to record the deed that retitles your Walnut Creek home into the name of your trust. A trust with the deed never recorded is the single most common reason a $4,000 estate plan ends up in a $64,000 probate anyway.
A living trust estate plan drafted by a California estate planning law firm with 30 years of experience will hold up better than one drafted by a generalist on Main Street who handles estate planning between criminal defense and personal injury cases.
What you actually need is an attorney who does this work exclusively, who will return your calls, and a law firm that will still be there when your spouse dies in 15 years and your successor trustee needs help.
Clark Allison has been doing California estate planning since 1996. Estate planning and trust administration is the only thing the firm does. And we don’t hand off your file to a paralegal once the first meeting ends. You work directly with one of our attorneys from the first call through the final signing. Our flat fee for most families is $3,000 single or $4,000 married. Once you are a client, follow-up questions are always free, with no billable hours.
We serve Walnut Creek and the rest of the Bay Area virtually from anywhere in California. Our nearest physical office is in El Dorado Hills, which is exactly the point. You can meet us there, but you don’t have to.
Yes. Two Zoom meetings with one of our attorneys and a remote online signing session. You never have to walk into a law office. No driving.
No. A trust drafted by a California-licensed attorney is legally identical to one drafted in downtown Walnut Creek. What matters is the attorney’s experience, how exclusively the firm focuses on estate planning, and whether they will pick up the phone after the documents are signed. And most importantly, do they treat you well, and can they create a plan that actually works for your family?
On a $1.5 million home, the combined statutory attorney and executor fees are about $56,000. Court costs, the probate referee, and bond bring the total closer to $64,000 before any extraordinary fees.
From first call to fully signed and recorded, plan on about two to three weeks.
Plan on 12 to 18 months for a routine estate. Contested estates run longer.
Possibly. Prop 19 changed the rules on how property tax basis transfers from parents to children in California. If your estate plan was written before February 2021 and includes real property that you want to leave to your kids, the assumptions in the document may need updating. We help with this.
A revocable living trust, a pour-over will, a durable power of attorney, an advance health care directive, and the trust transfer deed for your Walnut Creek home, recorded with Contra Costa County. All in. No add-ons for basic documents. $3,000 single, $4,000 married.
Schedule a free intro call with one of our attorneys by calling us at (800) 394-1988 or clicking Get Started.
We serve Walnut Creek and the rest of the Bay Area virtually from our offices in El Dorado Hills, Roseville, San Luis Obispo, and San Diego.
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El Dorado Hills estate planning attorneys with 30 years of California experience. Flat fees, two to three weeks, and questions are always free.