Estate Planning Attorneys in Sacramento, CA

Planning for your estate can relieve a significant burden on your family in the event of your death or incapacitation. At Goyette, Ruano & Thompson, Inc., our experienced California estate planning attorneys are dedicated to helping individuals and families protect their assets and ensure their wishes are carried out. We offer tailored estate planning services to safeguard your family’s financial future and provide peace of mind.

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Last Will and Testament

A Last Will and Testament is a fundamental part of any estate plan, expressing your wishes regarding the distribution of your property after your passing. A properly drafted will allows you to:

Designate beneficiaries for your assets
Appoint a trusted executor to manage your estate
Name legal guardians for minor children
Expedite the California probate process for your heirs

Without a will, the California probate court will distribute your estate based on state intestacy laws, potentially leading to unintended outcomes. A skilled estate planning lawyer in California can ensure your will is legally sound and aligned with your goals.

Trusts

A Joint Trust is a type of revocable trust shared by two individuals, typically married couples. When a couple wants the surviving spouse to inherit all assets, setting up a joint trust can be a simpler and more efficient option compared to creating separate trusts.

Trusts are versatile estate planning tools that help protect assets, minimize taxes, and ensure a smooth transfer of wealth. Choosing the right trust depends on your unique financial goals and family situation. For personalized guidance on revocable trusts, irrevocable trusts, and other estate planning strategies, consult with an experienced CA estate planning lawyer at Goyette, Ruano & Thompson today.

Revocable Trust

A Revocable Trust is a trust in which you, as the settlor, reserve the right to change or terminate the trust during your life. It also allows you to name yourself as trustee, thus maintaining control over the trust assets. In contrast, in an irrevocable trust, you cannot change or dissolve the trust after it is legally executed.

Testamentary Trust

The terms of a Testamentary Trust are described in your will and go into effect only when you die. One common reason for establishing a Testamentary Trust is to provide for minor children.

Joint Trust

The terms of a Testamentary Trust are described in your will and go into effect only when you die. One common reason for establishing a Testamentary Trust is to provide for minor children.

Secure Your Legacy

Proactive estate planning helps to ensure that your loved ones are taken care of according to your wishes. At Goyette, Ruano & Thompson, Inc., our team of dedicated California estate planning lawyers is here to guide you.

Estate planning is a process that involves preparing for the distribution of your assets and wealth after your passing. Our estate planning attorneys help people just like you and ensure that their wishes are carried out effectively.

Don’t Leave Your Family’s Financial Future Up to Chance

By proactively planning your estate, you can minimize estate taxes, avoid probate, and protect your assets from creditors. Don’t underestimate skilled legal guidance. If you go into your estate planning matters without experienced, confident counsel, you could face:

Missed Opportunities: Without an experienced estate planning attorney, you may overlook crucial legal strategies or fail to maximize the benefits available to you under California estate laws.

Costly Mistakes: Handling estate matters without proper guidance can lead to costly errors, such as improper documentation, missed deadlines, or overlooking tax-saving opportunities.

Family Disputes: Poorly executed estate planning can sow seeds of discord among family members, leading to contentious disputes over inheritances or asset distributions.

Legal Challenges: Inadequate estate planning may leave your estate vulnerable to legal challenges, potentially resulting in prolonged litigation and depletion of assets.

Unintended Consequences: Without careful planning, your estate may be subject to unintended consequences, such as excessive taxation or distribution of assets contrary to your wishes.

Make sure your estate plan reflects your wishes while minimizing potential risks and challenges. Contact Goyette, Ruano & Thompson, Inc today to speak with our estate planning attorneys in California.

Why You Should Choose Our Team for Your Estate Planning Needs:

Our California estate planning lawyers are here to help you safeguard your wealth and ensure a smooth transition for your loved ones. Goyette, Ruano & Thompson, Inc. approaches each estate matter with:

Experience: Our California estate planning attorneys bring decades of collective experience in civil litigation and estate planning to the table. Over the years, we’ve honed our skills and gained a deep understanding of California estate laws and regulations. This depth of knowledge allows ensuring that our clients receive a high standard of representation.

A Personalized Approach: At Goyette, Ruano & Thompson, Inc., we understand that each client is unique, with distinct needs, goals, and concerns. That’s why we take a personalized approach to estate planning, taking the time to listen and understand your individual circumstances. Whether you’re planning for the future of your family or the succession of your business, our team works closely with you to create an estate plan that reflects your wishes and safeguards your legacy.

Comprehensive Services: Estate planning involves more than just drafting a will or establishing a trust. It’s a multifaceted process that requires careful consideration of various legal strategies. That’s why we offer a comprehensive range of estate planning services to meet your needs. From creating wills and trusts to handling probate and trust administration, our team provides the expertise and support you need to plan for the future with confidence.

Contact Us Today to Start Planning for Tomorrow

Don’t leave your legacy to chance. Contact Goyette, Ruano & Thompson, Inc. today to schedule a consultation with our California estate planning lawyers and take the first step towards securing your legacy.

Areas Of Practice

Estate Planning: Wills & Trust

Crafting Your Legacy: Wills and Trust Services

At Goyette, Ruano, Thompson, we understand the importance of thoughtful estate planning in securing your legacy and providing for your loved ones’ future. Our firm offers comprehensive wills and trust services tailored to your unique needs and objectives, providing peace of mind and ensuring that your wishes are carried out effectively.

Our Wills and Trust services include:

Estate Planning Consultation: We offer personalized estate planning consultations to assess clients’ individual circumstances, goals, and concerns. Our attorneys provide comprehensive estate planning advice, including strategies for asset protection, tax planning, incapacity planning, and charitable giving, to help clients achieve their long-term financial and personal objectives.

Trust Formation: We advise clients on the creation and implementation of various types of trusts, including revocable living trusts, irrevocable trusts, special needs trusts, charitable trusts, and asset protection trusts. Our firm helps clients tailor trust structures to achieve specific estate planning goals, such as minimizing estate taxes, protecting assets from creditors, or providing for beneficiaries with special needs.

Probate Avoidance Strategies: We help clients explore probate avoidance strategies to streamline the transfer of assets to heirs and beneficiaries, minimize estate administration costs, and maintain privacy in estate matters. Our firm assists clients in structuring their estate plans to utilize non-probate transfer mechanisms, such as trusts, joint ownership, beneficiary designations, and transfer-on-death arrangements.

Will Drafting: We assist clients in drafting clear and legally enforceable last wills and testaments that reflect their wishes regarding the distribution of assets, appointment of guardians for minor children, and designation of executors or personal representatives. Our attorneys provide personalized guidance to ensure that your will accurately reflects your intentions and complies with applicable legal requirements.

Will and Trust Amendments and Updates: We advise clients on the importance of periodically reviewing and updating their wills and trusts to reflect changes in personal circumstances, family dynamics, and estate planning goals. Our attorneys assist clients in making amendments or modifications to existing estate planning documents to ensure that their plans remain current and effective over time.

Trust Administration: We assist trustees and fiduciaries in fulfilling their duties and responsibilities in administering trusts, including managing trust assets, making distributions to beneficiaries, preparing trust accountings, and complying with legal requirements. Our attorneys provide guidance on trust administration best practices and help ensure compliance with trust terms and applicable laws.

Estate Settlement Assistance: We provide guidance and support to executors, administrators, and personal representatives in navigating the estate settlement process following a loved one’s passing. Our firm assists clients in fulfilling their fiduciary duties, administering estates efficiently, and resolving any disputes or challenges that may arise during the probate process.

If you’re ready to take control of your legacy and plan for the future, contact Goyette, Ruano, Thompson today to schedule a consultation with our experienced wills and trust attorneys. We’re dedicated to providing personalized, compassionate, and effective estate planning services to help you achieve your goals and protect your loved ones’ financial security and well-being.

After Death Procedures - Trust Administration

Please accept our sincerest condolences on the passing of your family member, friend, or loved one. The death of a loved one is a painful and difficult period.

Unfortunately, while you’re attempting to process the grief and come to terms with it, there are after death legal procedures to take care of like trust administration and probate.

Our team of experienced living trust administration attorneys in California can help you with all the matters and information related to trust administration.

Meanwhile here’s a helpful guide to trust administration in California along with answers to some of the most commonly asked questions like “what to do after someone dies with a living trust” or “what to do after someone dies with a will”.

What is Trust Administration?

Trust administration, as the name suggests, is the task of administering the estate, entrusted to the “successor trustee”. Administration of a trust includes a range of responsibilities including mobilization of assets, payment to creditors, and hand-over of remaining assets to the beneficiaries.

On paper the role of a successor trustee may seem like a straightforward process but the legal and fiduciary responsibilities they’re tasked with can be quite difficult to carry out. But of course it varies from situation to situation, with some simple cases requiring minimal intervention and challenging ones needing complex and lengthy procedures.

Generally speaking however, trust administration is a serious and major obligation to fulfill. Besides the tasks mentioned above, it also involves sending legal notices with the appropriate legal language given to family members and those included in the trust, preparation and filing of tax forms, and filing of other important legal documents.

Successor Trustees

Trust administration process requires the Successor Trustee to abide by several laws and deadlines. Successor Trustees owe a fiduciary duty to the trust beneficiaries and have several requirements by law (CA Probate Code Sections 16000-16105). As Successor Trustee, you are required to give notice to the trust beneficiaries, file taxes, communicate with beneficiaries, manage the trust assets and investments, provide notice to Department of Health Care Services, and in some cases, provide an accounting of trust assets to the trust beneficiaries.

A Successor Trustee must abide by the terms of the trust and the law. At Goyette, Ruano & Thompson, our team of living trust administration attorneys in California can help you abide by your duties and manage your responsibilities. We will help you distribute the trust assets according to the terms of the trust in a manner to protect yourself from contentious beneficiaries. Beneficiaries may contest your trust administration or petition a court to remove you a Successor Trustee for breach of fiduciary duties.

In most cases, attorney fees are paid directly from the trust at no cost to you as Successor Trustee. This provides an opportunity for you to obtain a living trust attorney and protect yourself from unintentional mistakes and contentious beneficiaries.

Beneficiary Representation

What can a trust administration attorney help you do? If you are the beneficiary of an estate and you have concerns about how the trust is being administered, we can assist you in getting the answers you are entitled to by law. As a beneficiary of a trust, you are entitled to a copy of the trust and an accounting. Our living trust administration attorneys in California can help you obtain an accounting or petition the court to remove a successor trustee for breach of fiduciary duty.

If someone passed away without a will or trust, or with just a will, please visit our probate page for more information on how our office can help you with the estate administration.

California Probate Lawyers

Please accept our sincerest condolences on the passing of your family member, friend or loved one. The loss of someone dear is one of the most heartbreaking and challenging times we face. One of the most difficult parts of all of this is that as the ones left behind try to cope with the passing, they also have to manage the legal formalities of the will and probate, which may not always be easy to follow.

Our team, which comprises some of the best probate lawyers in California, can help you navigate the complex process of probate during your time of grief. Here we deep-dive into the process, what it entails, and relevant information pertaining to the probate laws in California and important questions like, “What to do after someone dies with a will?”, “Is probate required in California?”, and “How to probate an estate in California?”

What is Probate?

A probate is a judicial process to administer a decedent’s estate, which includes all the property they’ve left behind. In California, if a decedent owned a home or had assets whose total value is greater than $150,000, you will likely be subject to a probate process to gain access to the decedent’s estate and to distribute the assets.

In essence, a probate is a court case to determine several crucial aspects of the decedent’s property including who the heirs or beneficiaries are and what is the value of the total estate. But that’s not all. The process also involves determining the validity of the will if it exists. In addition, in the final stage, a probate handles the transfer of the estate to the rightful heirs and beneficiaries after all debts, expenses, and financial obligations of the decedent have been paid and fulfilled.

Even if the decedent had a will but no trust…

Often times people confuse a will with a trust. If the decedent had a trust, we can help the successor trustee administer the trust (click here for more information). However, if the decedent died with a will, but without a trust, it is possible that a probate proceeding will be required to administer the decedent’s estate.

One of the common questions we encounter is, “Do I need probate court?” or “Do I need probate if I have a will?” It would be best to consult our team of experienced probate attorneys who will review your complete situation and then advise accordingly.

In the event that you do require a probate court case, note that the average process takes one year to complete, but our probate lawyers in California will help you get through it and ensure you and your family understand what to expect along the way.

Executor vs. Administrator vs. Personal Representative

The terms executor, administrator, and personal representative can be confusing to understand and hence used interchangeably. Here’s what they mean:

An Executor is a technical term to identify a person who will handle the estate administration as appointed by the decedent’s Will.
An Administrator is a technical term for the person who will handle the estate administration as appointed by the Court when a decedent dies without a will.
A Personal Representative is the person handling the estate administration, which may be either the Executor or the Administrator.

How to get started?

Contact our office for a free consultation with one of our highly qualified and experienced probate lawyers in California. We will send you an initial probate client questionnaire to fill out and return to us to discuss over the telephone or in person. We will also send you a letter with a checklist of documents we will need to get started. If you decide to move forward with our office, we will send you a fee agreement.

After your consultation, we will draft the initial probate documents for your review and signature. Once we have your original signatures on the initial probate documents, we will file them with the Court. The Court will then set an initial hearing date, which may be three to four months out.

Bond Requirement

Under the California Probate Code, an estate’s representative (either Executor or Administrator) is required to post bond for the value of the estate. This is a security measure that the representative will fulfill his or her duties as required by law. The bond would establish a fund to satisfy a claim by the beneficiaries if the representative breaches his or her fiduciary duty. In some cases, the bond requirement may be waived by all the beneficiaries. We will help guide you on providing waivers to the beneficiaries or how to get bond.

Debt and Creditors

If the decedent died with debt, then creditors may file a claim against the estate for the outstanding debt. We will help you give notice to the necessary creditors and send the claim form that may be filed with the court.

Beneficiary Representation

If you are the beneficiary of an estate and you have concerns about how the estate is being administered, our accomplished probate lawyers in California can assist you in getting the answers you are entitled to by law.

Goyette, Ruano & Thompson, Inc. are prepared to help you with your probate needs in any county in CA state.