Why a 2025 Estate Planning Checklist Still Works in 2026

The original version of this guide listed six steps: name or update beneficiaries, add payable on death designations, inventory your real estate, draft a basic will, organize key documents, and set up a revocable living trust. Every one of those still belongs on the list. What changed is the math around them.

The next California adjustment to those probate thresholds is scheduled for April 1, 2028[3]. The Prop 19 figure resets again for transfers after February 15, 2027[4]. So if you read an estate planning article that quotes a single dollar figure with no date attached, check the date. In this area of law the numbers move on a schedule.

The bigger point has not moved at all. In Orange County, almost any family that owns a house owns more than California’s ordinary small estate limit, which is why the real estate steps on this list carry more weight here than they would in most of the country.

Step 1: Name or Update Your Beneficiaries

This is the fastest win in estate planning, and the one people skip because it feels too small to matter.

Retirement accounts and life insurance policies pass to whoever is named on the beneficiary form, and that form generally controls even if your will says something different. An outdated or missing designation can send money to the wrong person, or to nobody in particular, which usually means the money ends up in your estate and has to go through the court process you were trying to avoid.

How to do it today

Log in to each retirement account and each life insurance portal. Find the beneficiary section. Check the names, the spelling, the percentages and whether a contingent beneficiary is listed. Update anything that no longer reflects your life, and save a copy of the confirmation.

If you have a trust, ask your attorney whether a given account should name the trust or name individuals. The answer varies by account type, and it is a question worth a phone call rather than a guess.

Step 2: Add Payable on Death Designations to Bank Accounts

A payable on death designation tells your bank who receives the money in an account when you die. With a POD in place, that person goes to the bank with a death certificate and identification, and the account transfers to them directly without passing through probate.

Why that matters in practice: when a parent dies, there are bills that arrive immediately. Property taxes, insurance on the house, utilities, sometimes a mortgage payment. A POD account gives a family access to cash in the weeks when a court has not yet appointed anyone to act for the estate.

Getting started

Call your bank or credit union, or walk into a branch, and ask for its POD or beneficiary designation form. Many banks now let you add one online. Fill in the beneficiary’s full legal name and the details the bank asks for, and keep a note of which accounts you updated.

A word of caution I give every client: a POD does exactly one thing. It moves one account to one or more named people. It does not coordinate with the rest of your plan. If your trust divides everything equally among three children and your largest bank account names only the child who lives closest, the bank will follow the form, and you have created an unequal inheritance by accident.

Step 3: Inventory Your Real Estate, Including How Each Property Is Titled

List every property you own. The primary residence, the condo in Laguna Woods you bought for your mother, the rental in Costa Mesa, the cabin, the vacation home out of state, any fractional interest you inherited with your siblings years ago. An inventory helps your heirs understand the scope of your estate, and it tells you and your attorney where the planning work is.

The column that matters most is the one people leave blank: how title is held. You will find it on the vesting line of your recorded deed, and it decides what happens at your death far more than anything you tell your family.

Next to each property, add the loan servicer, the approximate balance, the insurance carrier and the property tax parcel number. Your heirs will need every one of those in the first month. Without that list, families can spend weeks just figuring out which company holds the mortgage.

For rentals, add the leases and the security deposit amounts. Whoever steps in after you inherits your obligations to those tenants on the first day.

What Probate Actually Costs an Orange County Family

Most people want to avoid probate without being able to say why. Here is the why, in numbers.

California sets statutory compensation for the attorney who represents the estate’s personal representative in an ordinary probate. The percentages are applied to the value of the estate accounted for, which starts from the appraised value of the property in the inventory, and encumbrances such as a mortgage are not subtracted[7]. That last detail surprises nearly everyone. A house worth $1.5 million with a $900,000 loan is still a $1.5 million house for this calculation.

Run that schedule on a $1.5 million estate and the statutory attorney fee comes to $28,000: $4,000 on the first $100,000, $3,000 on the next, $16,000 on the next $800,000 and $5,000 on the last $500,000. That figure covers ordinary services. It does not include court costs or fees the court approves for extraordinary work.

Then there is time. A probate sale has its own notice and court confirmation rules, and the property sits in limbo while the court process runs. We have a full piece on how long a probate sale really takes in California if you want the timeline in detail.

When a family can skip full probate

California offers shorter routes for smaller estates. For deaths on or after April 1, 2025, personal property up to $208,850 can generally be collected by declaration, and a decedent’s California primary residence worth up to $750,000 can pass through a simplified court petition rather than a full probate[3]. That $750,000 route came from Assembly Bill 2016, which we explain in our post on California’s AB 2016.

Be realistic about who that helps. A $750,000 primary residence is a condo in some parts of Orange County, and very little in Newport Beach or Laguna Beach. For most of the families I work with, the simplified petition is a safety net, not a plan.

Step 4: Draft a Will That Will Actually Hold Up

A will gives clear instructions about how your assets should be distributed and who should be in charge of doing it. Even if you also create a trust, you still want one, usually a short pour-over will that sends anything left outside the trust into it.

California’s formal requirements are short and strict. A will must be in writing and signed by the testator, or by someone else in the testator’s name, in the testator’s presence and at the testator’s direction. It must then be signed by at least two witnesses who were present together and saw the signing or the testator’s acknowledgment of it. Each witness must also understand that the document is the testator’s will[5].

There is a safety valve. If a will was not executed that way, a court can still treat it as valid when the person offering it proves by clear and convincing evidence that the testator intended it to be their will[5]. That is a lawsuit standard, though, and depending on it means your family is arguing in court about what you meant.

Online templates

Our original post suggested an online template or an estate planning professional as starting points. I will be more direct now. A template is better than nothing, and nothing is what most people have. If you own real estate in Orange County, I would not stop at a template. A will alone sends that real estate through probate, and the schedule above shows what that costs. Use the template as your first draft of who gets what, then take it to an attorney.

Step 5: Set Up a Revocable Living Trust, and Fund It

For a family that owns a home in Orange County, the revocable living trust is the center of the plan. You keep full control while you are alive and well. When you can no longer act, or when you die, your successor trustee steps in and manages or transfers the property under the terms you wrote, without a probate court overseeing every step.

That is the theory. The practice depends on one thing that goes wrong more often than any other part of estate planning: the trust has to own the property. A trust document sitting in a binder controls nothing. Your house has to be deeded from you, as an individual, to you as trustee of your trust, and that deed has to be recorded.

Unfunded trusts are one of the most common problems I run into on trust sales. The usual pattern: a couple signs a trust, later refinances, the house is deeded out of the trust for the loan, and nobody deeds it back. Or they buy a second property years later and take title in their own names out of habit. When they die, the house that was supposed to avoid probate goes right into it. If that has already happened in your family, read our post on what happens when a home was never transferred into a trust.

How to begin

Consult an estate planning attorney to set up a trust tailored to your family. Bring your real estate inventory from Step 3, including the vesting for each property. Ask the attorney to prepare and record the trust transfer deeds as part of the engagement rather than leaving that step to you. Then pull a copy of each recorded deed a few weeks later and confirm the vesting reads in the name of the trustee.

We cover the broader advantages in why a living trust can simplify real estate transfers.

The Transfer on Death Deed: A Narrower Tool for the Family Home

California also allows a revocable transfer on death deed. It makes a donative transfer of real property to a named beneficiary that operates only on the owner’s death, and until then the owner can revoke it[6].

The formalities matter. To be effective, the deed must be signed and dated by the transferor and acknowledged before a notary public. Two witnesses also have to sign it, and they must have been present together for the signing or the acknowledgment[6]. It also has to be recorded, and the statute is unforgiving about timing, so record it immediately after signing rather than putting it in a drawer.

My opinion, which your attorney may or may not share: a TOD deed works well in a narrow case. One property, one or two adult beneficiaries who get along, no mortgage complications, no need for anyone to manage the house before you die. Once there is a blended family, a beneficiary with creditor or marriage issues, a minor, or a chance that you will need someone to handle the property during an incapacity, a funded trust is the better tool. A TOD deed does nothing while you are alive and unable to sign.

Prop 19 and the Family Home: Planning Around the Property Tax Bill

Here is the conversation I have most often with Orange County parents who bought decades ago. Their property tax bill is based on an assessed value from the 1980s or 1990s, and they assume their children will inherit that low tax base along with the house. Since Proposition 19, that is only partly true.

Under the Prop 19 parent-child exclusion, the low tax base carries over only when the home was the parent’s principal residence and becomes the child’s principal residence. A rental does not qualify. The exclusion is also capped: the child keeps the factored base year value plus an adjusted $1 million amount, which is $1,044,586 for transfers from February 16, 2025 through February 15, 2027, and any market value above that limit is added to the assessed value[4].

The deadlines are short. The homeowners’ exemption claim has to be filed within one year of the death or transfer, and the reassessment exclusion claim is due within three years or before a transfer to a third party, whichever comes first[4]. Only one of the children who receive the home needs to live there and file[4].

What this means for planning: if your children will not live in the house, it will most likely be reassessed to market value when they inherit it. That changes the keep or sell math for them, and it is a fact worth discussing with them while you can. Our Proposition 19 explainer covers the downsizing side of the same law.

Taxes Your Heirs Will Care About: Basis and the Federal Exclusion

Two federal rules shape what your heirs keep when they sell.

The step-up in basis

Inherited property generally takes a basis equal to its fair market value on the date of death[2]. For a house in Corona del Mar bought for $400,000 and worth $3 million at death, the gain built up over a lifetime largely disappears for income tax purposes when the heirs sell soon after.

For married couples in a community property state like California, the rule is even more generous. When either spouse dies, the whole community property generally takes a new basis based on its total value, including the surviving spouse’s half[2]. That is one reason the vesting column in your real estate inventory deserves a conversation with your attorney or CPA.

Why gifting the house early is usually a mistake

A gift works differently. When property is received as a gift and its value is at least the donor’s adjusted basis, the recipient’s basis is the donor’s adjusted basis[2]. In plain terms, your children inherit your old, low basis instead of a fresh one. Parents sometimes put the house in a child’s name to keep it out of probate. On a long-held Orange County home, that move can cost the family far more in capital gains tax than probate would have. Talk to a CPA before you sign any deed that gives the house away during your lifetime.

The federal estate tax

Most families will never owe it. The federal basic exclusion amount is $15,000,000 per person for 2026, up from $13,990,000 in 2025, and the annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000 per recipient for both years[1]. If your estate, including your real estate at today’s values, is anywhere near those figures, your planning needs an estate tax attorney rather than a checklist. If you want a deeper look at the income tax side for heirs, see whether you will owe capital gains tax on an inherited house in California.

Step 6: Organize Key Documents So Someone Can Find Them

A good plan that nobody can find is a bad plan. Gather the following in one place.

• Recorded deeds for every property, showing current vesting
• Mortgage statements and the servicer’s contact information
• Your trust with any amendments, plus the recorded trust transfer deeds
• Your signed will and any codicils
• Property tax bills and parcel numbers
• Homeowners insurance declarations pages
• HOA contact details and governing documents for any condo or planned community
• Leases and security deposit records for rentals
• A list of financial accounts with the beneficiary or POD status of each
• Powers of attorney and your advance health care directive

Keep originals in a secure place, such as a fireproof safe, and tell a trusted family member or your executor or successor trustee where they are. A bank safe deposit box sounds secure, and it is, which is the problem: access after a death can take paperwork your family will not have yet.

Scan everything as well. A shared, encrypted folder that your successor trustee can open saves days.

Your First Afternoon: The Order I Would Do This In

If you do nothing else this month, do these in order. The first two take minutes. The rest take a few weeks, mostly waiting on other people.

1. Beneficiaries. Log in to every retirement account and life insurance policy and confirm the primary and contingent beneficiaries.
2. POD designations. Add them to your bank accounts, keeping them consistent with what the rest of your plan says.
3. Real estate inventory. List each property with its vesting, loan, insurance and parcel number. Pull a copy of each deed if you are not sure how title is held.
4. Attorney appointment. Book an estate planning attorney and bring the inventory. Ask about a revocable trust, a pour-over will, powers of attorney and a health care directive.
5. Fund the trust. Confirm the attorney records trust transfer deeds for every California property, then verify the recorded vesting yourself.
6. Tell someone. Show your successor trustee or executor where the documents are, and walk your children through the Prop 19 reality for the family home.

Then put a reminder on your calendar to review all of it whenever there is a marriage, divorce, birth, death, refinance or new property purchase. The refinance is the one people forget.

Where a Real Estate Advisor Fits in Estate Planning

An estate planning attorney drafts the documents and a CPA handles the tax side. My part is the real estate itself, before and after.

Before, that means helping families understand what each property is likely worth today, which matters for deciding whether a simplified petition is even possible and for having an honest conversation about Prop 19 and who will live in the house. It also means connecting clients with attorneys we trust when they do not have one; that offer was in our original post, and it stands.

After, it means representing trustees and executors when a property has to be sold, whether through a trust sale or a probate sale. I hold the CPRES designation for probate real estate and the SRES designation for working with seniors, and a plan that was started and never quite finished is the situation I see behind many of the estate sales I handle in Orange County. If you are on the other side of this already, our comparison of probate and trust sales is a good place to start.